I won't be in class tomorrow, but my video will. If you have any suggestions, critique, etc., feel free to post them as comments to this entry.
Thanks!
-Derek VG
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
economy for dummies
Here's a link to the This American Life broadcast about the economy I mentioned in class:
The Giant Pool of Money
It's being updated this week-end, so check back. JG
The Giant Pool of Money
It's being updated this week-end, so check back. JG
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Political Machine Express
To bring a bit of Ed Halter flavor...
I found it amusing that if you go to politicalmachine.com, you'll find a computer game loosely based on simulating the election. Granted, the main page is full of political discussion threads (and updates on the game itself), but I think it's interesting that one of the ways people interface with a real-world political situation is through a form of play. Maybe it appeals to the backseat campaigner. Maybe it gives gamers insight into the election beyond the talking points and punditry. Maybe McCain and Palin look better as bobbleheads.
Wired article:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/09/stardock-offers.html
Main website:
http://www.politicalmachine.com/
Link to free version of the game:
http://www.politicalmachine.com/express/
I found it amusing that if you go to politicalmachine.com, you'll find a computer game loosely based on simulating the election. Granted, the main page is full of political discussion threads (and updates on the game itself), but I think it's interesting that one of the ways people interface with a real-world political situation is through a form of play. Maybe it appeals to the backseat campaigner. Maybe it gives gamers insight into the election beyond the talking points and punditry. Maybe McCain and Palin look better as bobbleheads.
Wired article:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/09/stardock-offers.html
Main website:
http://www.politicalmachine.com/
Link to free version of the game:
http://www.politicalmachine.com/express/
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
loop de loop
Two quick comments:
1. Didion's description of the newspapers recycled as posters that are then given out to the reporters of those newspapers conjured up thoughts of recycling and the eternal return of players, themes, and visual tropes from convention to convention. Do these ever change? Is there a way to write about (or document in any fashion) these events without this sense of seen-it-already? What do Thompson, Didon, and Mencken DO as writers to freshen up this tedium?
2. It occurred to me while reading these essays that each writer, though unstated, works with the big spectres of previous conventions and presidencies. For Didion, it's the Reagan Years; Thompson has '68 and its ghosts; and Mencken's reporting comes after the four terms of FDR.
How do these events shape their interests and writing styles?
1. Didion's description of the newspapers recycled as posters that are then given out to the reporters of those newspapers conjured up thoughts of recycling and the eternal return of players, themes, and visual tropes from convention to convention. Do these ever change? Is there a way to write about (or document in any fashion) these events without this sense of seen-it-already? What do Thompson, Didon, and Mencken DO as writers to freshen up this tedium?
2. It occurred to me while reading these essays that each writer, though unstated, works with the big spectres of previous conventions and presidencies. For Didion, it's the Reagan Years; Thompson has '68 and its ghosts; and Mencken's reporting comes after the four terms of FDR.
How do these events shape their interests and writing styles?
Reponse to Readings
Television primarily allows viewers to indulge in fiction, to accept that a given image or narrative is "false" or "constructed", but nevertheless enjoy it. In order for politicians to even enter this medium, they must invariably fictionalize themselves; you view your candidate of choice on TV the same way you view a melodrama; you accept the narrative it constructs, ridiculous or implausible as it may be, so that you can enjoy the emotional response it drags out of you.
Yet somewhere in Joan Didion's description of a lifeless, plasticized, self-perpetuating and anti-politics political campaign she touches on the existence of people who are sick of what they see on TV; people faintly thirsty for something other than the "consensualist centrist politics" that American democracy proudly produces and American television flamboyantly exacerbates.
The desire-- though often unspoken, inarticulated-- is an inherently radical one, because it is anti-stability, anti-stagnation, and thusly it is inherently political in a more primal sense than we are used to. Conversely, the televised election cycle represents the quest for ultimate immobility through the repitition of distracting noise; it convinces each candidate to appeal to the widest audience possible, and in doing so, render their public policy stances increasingly ambiguous, meaningless, and uncontentious. "Politics" dissapears almost completely from this public performance. As Didion writes, the notion that "the citzen's choice among determinedly centrist candidates makes a 'difference,' is in fact the narrative's most central element, and its most fictive."
Film and video have proved invaluable tools in removing politics from the public sphere; whenever they are used in an attempt to harness the latent desire in people for something besides "politics as usual," it simply transforms this potential energy into more of the same, similar to how Coca-Cola attempts to find the new "cool" and in doing so destroys it. I wonder if there is something inherent in a dominant medium that causes such destruction, or if large media networks can ever be used to promote anything other than mediocrity (in other words, is the "radical" forever confined to the limited venue, or can popular media be transformed?).
Yet somewhere in Joan Didion's description of a lifeless, plasticized, self-perpetuating and anti-politics political campaign she touches on the existence of people who are sick of what they see on TV; people faintly thirsty for something other than the "consensualist centrist politics" that American democracy proudly produces and American television flamboyantly exacerbates.
The desire-- though often unspoken, inarticulated-- is an inherently radical one, because it is anti-stability, anti-stagnation, and thusly it is inherently political in a more primal sense than we are used to. Conversely, the televised election cycle represents the quest for ultimate immobility through the repitition of distracting noise; it convinces each candidate to appeal to the widest audience possible, and in doing so, render their public policy stances increasingly ambiguous, meaningless, and uncontentious. "Politics" dissapears almost completely from this public performance. As Didion writes, the notion that "the citzen's choice among determinedly centrist candidates makes a 'difference,' is in fact the narrative's most central element, and its most fictive."
Film and video have proved invaluable tools in removing politics from the public sphere; whenever they are used in an attempt to harness the latent desire in people for something besides "politics as usual," it simply transforms this potential energy into more of the same, similar to how Coca-Cola attempts to find the new "cool" and in doing so destroys it. I wonder if there is something inherent in a dominant medium that causes such destruction, or if large media networks can ever be used to promote anything other than mediocrity (in other words, is the "radical" forever confined to the limited venue, or can popular media be transformed?).
Unconventional, or: "John Chancellor, you dirty bastard!"
It's 1948, 1972, 1988; the editor at the Baltimore Sun, Rolling Stone, the New York Review, assigns you to do a story on "The Conventions." But what exactly does "The Conventions" mean? According to the editors at ABC, NBC, CBS, or at almost any other mainstream newspaper, magazine, or review, it probably means the message delivered from the lectern, maybe a paragraph or two about the response from the crowd. That may have been what the editors at the Sun, the Stone, and the Review had in mind as well - but it is not what H.L. Mencken, Hunter S. Thompson, and Joan Didion gave them. When they were assigned to "The Conventions," that is what they heard and that is what they pursued, in it's entirety. For Didion, it meant a look into the incestual (sic) exclusivity of a "process" which ignored the very citizens it claimed to champion. For Thompson, it meant exposing the organization that went into producing a spectacle of "spontaneous" political fervor. For Mencken, highlighting the excessive emphasis on lights and camera that produced no action. All three of them, recognizing the pitiful obedience of the other political hacks, turned their backs to the stage in order to observe the crowd, the organization, the sham. They kept their ears to the speakers, to be sure, because there was a sham going on there as well, but their story was offstage: Mencken's "female politicos" looking for the appropriate television makeup, "sopranos, crooners and choirs" giving the mundane a false air of jubilance; Thompson's "Nixon Youth's," defending their individual agency while an organizer screamed orders through a megaphone; Didion's celebrity scribbler's eagerly awaiting the opportunity to be little more than mouthpieces, a privileged few given backstage passes who wouldn't be bothered to take a moments notice of the ropes. The message: the election is being framed. To that, Mencken adds his ironic wit; Thompson his comic fear and loathing. It is only Didion who addresses outright the true gravity of the circumstances: the election no longer belongs to you, it belongs to the media. And the media belongs to Washington.
- Dylan Byers
Saturday, September 6, 2008
purple map
Here's a link to an animated version of the county-by-county "purple map" mentioned in class on Thursday.
http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/
Sunday, August 10, 2008
this is the syllabus (rough!)
FRAMING THE ELECTION
FILM 248 FALL 2008
Thursdays 9:30-12:30 Avery 217/333
INSTRUCTOR: Jacqueline Goss (goss@bard.edu)
OFFICE HOURS: Wednesdays 1:30-4:30 and by appointment
Avery 324 phone: 758-7366
BLOG: http://framers2008.blogspot.com/
YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/Framers2008
Objectives and Format of the Class:
This course is designed to coincide with the months immediately prior to and following the US presidential election in November. “Framing the Election” provides a structure for the course participant to capture, process, frame, and produce some aspect of presidential politics in terms of one’s own personal experience. Following the chronology of the election, we will use the first two months of the semester to consider texts (written, visual, sonic, interactive) made in response to prior US presidential elections and develop a vocabulary for describing their various ways of working. The latter part of the semester is dedicated to the production of films, videos, sound works or internet-based projects made in response to the results of this year’s presidential election. Works may reflect any political persuasion and take any form including documentary, diary, personal essay, fiction, and music.
Prerequisite: a familiarity with and access to the tools one intends to use to produce work.
Materials:
Tape Stock (miniDV, DAT, VHS), zip disks for small storage and backup, and I also strongly recommend you buy your own Firewire drive to store digital media if at all possible.
Grading:
Your grade is based on three criteria: engagement in the class (attendance, participation in critique and conversations); productivity outside of class (assignments, readings completed); and innovation (formal risk-taking, creativity, complexity of work). Each criterion is worth a maximum of three points (0-3). Nine points is equal to an A+, eight an A, seven an A-, etc.
Attendance:
Attendance is crucial. I don’t differentiate between excused and unexcused absences. If you are more than 20 minutes late to class, I will consider your tardiness an absence. Each absence reduces your grade by a point. If you miss more than three classes you will automatically fail the class.
Method:
Each class will be dedicated to examination and discussion of a particular work or genre of political writing or media production, including our own. As the semester progresses, we will consider work of all natures including reportage, analysis, testimony, bricolage, propaganda, and satire. After a series of video editing workshops, we'll budget time for de facto technical workshops as they become necessary. We will hold one public screening of our work prior to the election, and each course participant will also complete a longer, final project for the end of the semester.
Schedule:
September 1
Introductions, review syllabus, develop taxonomy for political work. look at "Spin" (Brian Springer), livingroomcandidate.org, "Decision 80" (Jim Finn)
Read selections from Mencken’s Last Campaign (HL Mencken), Insider Baseball (Joan Didion), Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
(Hunter S Thompson)
Assignment: choose two ads to compare from livingroomcandidate.org
September 8
Nonlinear workshop I
livingroomcandidate presentations
Look at "Perfect Leader" (Maxine Almy), "Triumf" (Seth Price)
Assignment: fashion an artifact from previous presidential campaign
September 15
Nonlinear editing workshop II
Look at "Notes From The Underground" (Les LeVeque), "We Will Rock You" (EBN), "Hot Bush" (Damian Catera), "Burnt Coal" (Jason Vosu), "States of the Union" (Aaron Valdez), and “Yippees”
Assignment: make a found footage piece from State of the Union address or Convention speeches
September 22
Discuss found footage projects
Watch: "Primary" (Ricky Leacock)
Assignment: record and then edit an interview two different ways (due 10/6)
September 29
Visiting artist: Skip Blumberg, producer: "Four More Years" (tentative)
Look at on-line communities and projects: votauction.com, yesmen.org, warroomproject.org, moveon.org, blogs, radio.socialtechnology.net
Assignment: read sections from “Partly Cloudy Patriot” (Sarah Vowell)
October 6
Power of direct address, discuss cut interviews, Watch "Artist Statement "(YH Chang), "Tower of Industrial Life" (Alfred Guzzetti), "Stanley (Steve Mattheson), "It’s Not My Memory Of It" (The Speculative Archive for Historical Clarification), “No Power To Push Up the Sky” (Lana Lin)
Assignment: make a first or second person piece (any medium)
October 13
Discuss first or second person pieces
Watch "Medium Cool" (Haskell Wexler)
Assignment: propose final project
October 20
Visiting lecturer Michael Slackman: reporter New York Times (tentative)
Review proposals, discuss curated public screening on October 27
Assignment: start work on final projects
Read: "Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions" (Edward Tufte)
and bring in a chart or graph relating to election
October 27
Group curate selection of works to show in evening
discuss "Displays of Evidence", charts, graphs
Screening in evening
November 3
Discuss election results
Read “The Selling of the President" (Joe McGinniss) (due: 11/17)
November 10
Look at work in progress
November 17
Watch: "Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed" (Shola Lynch) (tentative)
Discuss "The Selling of the President"
November 24 (Thanksgiving: no class)
Schedule individual meetings
December 1
Look at rough cuts
December 8 (Registration: no class)
December 15
Final projects revealed.
FILM 248 FALL 2008
Thursdays 9:30-12:30 Avery 217/333
INSTRUCTOR: Jacqueline Goss (goss@bard.edu)
OFFICE HOURS: Wednesdays 1:30-4:30 and by appointment
Avery 324 phone: 758-7366
BLOG: http://framers2008.blogspot.com/
YOU TUBE: http://www.youtube.com/Framers2008
Objectives and Format of the Class:
This course is designed to coincide with the months immediately prior to and following the US presidential election in November. “Framing the Election” provides a structure for the course participant to capture, process, frame, and produce some aspect of presidential politics in terms of one’s own personal experience. Following the chronology of the election, we will use the first two months of the semester to consider texts (written, visual, sonic, interactive) made in response to prior US presidential elections and develop a vocabulary for describing their various ways of working. The latter part of the semester is dedicated to the production of films, videos, sound works or internet-based projects made in response to the results of this year’s presidential election. Works may reflect any political persuasion and take any form including documentary, diary, personal essay, fiction, and music.
Prerequisite: a familiarity with and access to the tools one intends to use to produce work.
Materials:
Tape Stock (miniDV, DAT, VHS), zip disks for small storage and backup, and I also strongly recommend you buy your own Firewire drive to store digital media if at all possible.
Grading:
Your grade is based on three criteria: engagement in the class (attendance, participation in critique and conversations); productivity outside of class (assignments, readings completed); and innovation (formal risk-taking, creativity, complexity of work). Each criterion is worth a maximum of three points (0-3). Nine points is equal to an A+, eight an A, seven an A-, etc.
Attendance:
Attendance is crucial. I don’t differentiate between excused and unexcused absences. If you are more than 20 minutes late to class, I will consider your tardiness an absence. Each absence reduces your grade by a point. If you miss more than three classes you will automatically fail the class.
Method:
Each class will be dedicated to examination and discussion of a particular work or genre of political writing or media production, including our own. As the semester progresses, we will consider work of all natures including reportage, analysis, testimony, bricolage, propaganda, and satire. After a series of video editing workshops, we'll budget time for de facto technical workshops as they become necessary. We will hold one public screening of our work prior to the election, and each course participant will also complete a longer, final project for the end of the semester.
Schedule:
September 1
Introductions, review syllabus, develop taxonomy for political work. look at "Spin" (Brian Springer), livingroomcandidate.org, "Decision 80" (Jim Finn)
Read selections from Mencken’s Last Campaign (HL Mencken), Insider Baseball (Joan Didion), Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
(Hunter S Thompson)
Assignment: choose two ads to compare from livingroomcandidate.org
September 8
Nonlinear workshop I
livingroomcandidate presentations
Look at "Perfect Leader" (Maxine Almy), "Triumf" (Seth Price)
Assignment: fashion an artifact from previous presidential campaign
September 15
Nonlinear editing workshop II
Look at "Notes From The Underground" (Les LeVeque), "We Will Rock You" (EBN), "Hot Bush" (Damian Catera), "Burnt Coal" (Jason Vosu), "States of the Union" (Aaron Valdez), and “Yippees”
Assignment: make a found footage piece from State of the Union address or Convention speeches
September 22
Discuss found footage projects
Watch: "Primary" (Ricky Leacock)
Assignment: record and then edit an interview two different ways (due 10/6)
September 29
Visiting artist: Skip Blumberg, producer: "Four More Years" (tentative)
Look at on-line communities and projects: votauction.com, yesmen.org, warroomproject.org, moveon.org, blogs, radio.socialtechnology.net
Assignment: read sections from “Partly Cloudy Patriot” (Sarah Vowell)
October 6
Power of direct address, discuss cut interviews, Watch "Artist Statement "(YH Chang), "Tower of Industrial Life" (Alfred Guzzetti), "Stanley (Steve Mattheson), "It’s Not My Memory Of It" (The Speculative Archive for Historical Clarification), “No Power To Push Up the Sky” (Lana Lin)
Assignment: make a first or second person piece (any medium)
October 13
Discuss first or second person pieces
Watch "Medium Cool" (Haskell Wexler)
Assignment: propose final project
October 20
Visiting lecturer Michael Slackman: reporter New York Times (tentative)
Review proposals, discuss curated public screening on October 27
Assignment: start work on final projects
Read: "Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions" (Edward Tufte)
and bring in a chart or graph relating to election
October 27
Group curate selection of works to show in evening
discuss "Displays of Evidence", charts, graphs
Screening in evening
November 3
Discuss election results
Read “The Selling of the President" (Joe McGinniss) (due: 11/17)
November 10
Look at work in progress
November 17
Watch: "Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed" (Shola Lynch) (tentative)
Discuss "The Selling of the President"
November 24 (Thanksgiving: no class)
Schedule individual meetings
December 1
Look at rough cuts
December 8 (Registration: no class)
December 15
Final projects revealed.
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