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In keeping with the Headless theme I have used Movie Maker to create a small movie. Please remember that I am one of the few people who have not succumbed to the lure of Apple so I have no iPad, iPod or any iEquipment. I also have the distressing tende...

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Having called for more and more systematic description of literary texts, just what do I have in mind? A variety of things, of course, a variety of things.

First I want to mention work I’ve done on canonical texts of English literature, Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” and Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness. Then I want to look a tables I developed in analyzing pop cultural materials, two manga by Osamu Tezuka, and two animated feature films, Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley, and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence by Mamoru Oshii. I end by suggesting that the future of research in literature and film depends on setting up online collaboratories where people can work on building up a body of descriptive materials for both canonical and non-canonical texts.

Two Poems

One thing in particular, is an account of parts, and parts within parts. At the sentence level linguists call this constituent structure.

Poems often consist of multiple stanzas. Those divisions are obvious as they are marked in the text by a line break. Poems with several to many stanzas, especially long narrative poems, will often have stanzas grouped into larger units, which may or may not be explicitly grouped into larger units. And stanzas generally have internal grouping as well. My papers on “Kubla Khan” (pp. 9-39) and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (pp. 31-35, pp. 41-49) undertake this kind of analysis; the “Kubla Khan” paper is especially detailed.

A Novella

My working papers on Heart of Darkness contain a great deal of descriptive work of various kinds, though it is not always demarcated from more speculative and interpretive comments. Paragraph Length in Heart of Darkness: Some Basic Numbers and Charts is pure description of a fairly simple kind, as is Periodicity in Heart of Darkness: A Working Paper. I suppose, since I used a computer to compile the counts in those papers, I could even claim them for digital humanities, though that’s secondary. In The Nexus in Heart of Darkness: A Working Paper I comment in the content of a single paragraph in the text; it’s also the longest paragraph and it’s a bit after the middle. The commentary is informal, and perhaps a bit interpretive in that I single out certain things and make connections with other sections of the text; but I do not seek to infer any hidden meanings here. Much of the work in those three papers is also in Heart of Darkness: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis on Several Scales, and there is other descriptive work as well, but I would call particular attention to the postscript, where I discuss a hypothetical handbook for Heart of Darkness. Much of such a handbook would be devoted to description.

I do not regard my descriptive work on any of those three texts, “Kubla Khan”, “This Lime-Tree Bower”, and Heart of Darkness, as complete. I don’t know what that would be, complete. But it is extensive and contains observations you won’t find in the standard literature. Just how important those observations are, well, that remains to be determined. And an important aspect of figuring out what’s important has to do with comparing texts with one another. What features do they have in common? Where do they differ?

We must do a lot of description. That’s the only way we’ll know what we’ve got.

Two Manga

Several years ago the late Mary Douglas got me interested in ring form, where texts will be organized like so: A, B, C,…X…C’, B’, A’. The last episode mirrors the first, the next to last mirrors and second, and so forth around a central episode. At the time I was interested in some early manga by Osamu Tezuka, Metropolis and Lost World.

I suspected that Metropolis had a ring-form. But how could I find out? It was one continuous text of 150+ pages with no marked divisions. I had to undertake some analytical and descriptive process While I could make marginal notes, that didn’t seem very promising.

I decided to create a simple table in MSWord. It had three columns, but didn’t actually use the first column in the main table, though I used it in a summary table. I placed page numbers in the second column and descriptive comments, even bits of dialogue, in the third column. I then went through the entire text from beginning to end, and made an entry for each scene. By inspecting that table I was able to determine that, yes, Metropolis had a ring form, which I outlined in a summary table.

I undertook a similar analysis for Lost World. Tezuka had divided the text into short chapters so I made a single row for each chapter. I couldn’t see a ring-form there so I didn’t bother to describe internal structure for the chapters.

I’ve placed these two tables online as a document on Google Drive: Tezuka Tables draft. While I’ve cleaned it up a bit and added some explanation that document is basically a document I created for my own use, not for publication. I’ve published the Metropolis results in an edited volume: Tezuka’s Metropolis: A Modern Japanese Fable about Art and the Cosmos. In Uta Klein, Katja Mellmann, Steffanie Metzger, eds. Heurisiken der Literaturwissenschaft: Disciplinexterne Perspektiven auf Literatur. mentis Verlag GmbH, 2006, pp. 527-545.

Sita Sings the Blues

Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues has been all over the world and won many prizes. It’s a wonderful film and technically innovative. One of the things Paley did was to present different narrative stands in different animation styles. In order to get a handle on that I created a table in which each I had a row for each scene.

The table has four columns. In the first I list the beginning and end points for the scene and I indicate the scene’s duration (in seconds) in the second column. In the third column I indicate which of four styles Paley used in the scene while the fourth column has a brief description. The table is here: SSTB Overall Organization2 (color-coded). The table shows that Paley blended her visual styles after one particular episode, the Agni Pariksha, which is in a fifth style. I discuss that blending and its significance in The Agni Pariksha in Context and in Ritual in Sita Sings the Blues, Part 3 - Shakespearean Resonance.

Given the importance of the Agni Pariksha episode (trial by fire) I created a table for that one episode and determined that the episode had twelve segments. Here’s the table: SSTB Agni Parkisha org. I analyzed The Agni Pariksha episode in a post for The National Humanities Center, Cultural Evolution, where I conclude:
By making this segment visually different from anything else in the film Paley is giving the film itself a ritual dimension – though the part of me that is a child of the 60s is thinking “altered state of consciousness” (cf. Fischer 1975). She’s not merely showing a ritual, depicting one in the film; she is inviting us to enact a ritual by experiencing the visual world in a way that is radically different from what we experience anywhere else in the film. This segment of the film IS ritual.
Now, one could analyze and describe each scene in the film in the same detail I’ve given to this one scene. One might do so with a specific objective in mind, or one might do so on general principle: this is an important piece of work, therefore it is important to have a good description of it.

One could conceivably drive the description of a film down to a frame-by-frame description. And one might also want to take sound track music into account, as well as a detailed transcription of dialog. Description is an open-ended process.

Locus Solus

Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell 2 (Innosenzu in Japanese) is a text in the Ghost in the Shell franchise; the franchise started as a manga and has since sprouted two feature films, a TV series of half-hour episodes, a video game, and a novel – that’s what I know of off the top of my head. There’s probably more.

These stories are set in a near future in the science fiction noir style popularized by Blade Runner. In this world humans and machines are intimately intertwined, with most people having some degree of ‘cyberization’ applied to body and brain.

About two-thirds of the way through there’s a 17 minute sequence set in and near a mansion called Locus Solus. More or less the same set of events happens three times. It’s the “more or less” that interests me. The sequence isn’t the same, but it’s so fast and complex that you can’t figure out what’s going on without, well, you know, doing something.

And so I did what I know best. I made a table. It’s a three column table where the first column contains the time a segment begins. The second column contains a short descriptor and the last has a summary. Here’s the document: Ghost Locus Solus Transit DRAFT.

So far I haven’t done anything with that analysis beyond constructing the table.

Crowd-Sourcing Descriptive Work

My first point is this: description is exacting and open-ended, but it’s not so-called rocket science. Anyone who is interested and dedicated can do it and do it well provided that they have examples to follow and perhaps a bit of coaching along the way. This is something you get better at the more you do. Experience counts.

That’s important because I’m all but convinced that the future of the humanities depends in part on developing a rich body of descriptions of primary texts, literary works and films, but also musical scores, paintings, and so forth. The kinds of descriptions we need have to be done by knowledgeable humans. Biology has depended on and benefitted from the fieldwork and descriptive skills of dedicated amateurs. The humanities now need to follow biology’s example.
 
* * * * *
 
You can now download this post plus the example tables (for the two Tezuka texts, and the two films) as well as some other posts on description in a single document: Description 2: The Primacy of the Text.

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Well I believe I have done it. I have created my first ever animated gif for DS106 ( a very easy one I admit.) Once upon a time, there was a program called Fireworks that I did know how to use, but Macromedia was eaten up by Adobe and it disappeared. (...

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cogdogblog posted a photo:

Growing #phonar

You just plant seeds of ideas in an open course and then watch what emerges….

phonar.org/

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Now for some reason, the idea of a photoblitz triggers the song "Ballroom Blitz" in my mind. Don't ask me why, it may be just the word blitz is common to both.So I did my photo blitz at home over the lunch hour. My camera is at home, the strongest shad...

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1 week ago I read here a announcement about new portal http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/ . I was verry excited to read the annoncement because 4 years ago I registered here to collaborate with eLearning experts like you can see http://elearningeuropa.info/en/users/dumacornellucian 
and still today I want to collaborate also with social media curators, teachers and researchers  on the new ePortal  http://www.openeducationeuropa.eu/en/users/dumacornellucian  . 
Do you like the new portal, leave a comment after you read my post because today European Commission launches 'Opening up Education' to boost innovation and digital skills in schools and universities . 
More than 60% of nine year olds in the EU are in schools which are still not digitally equipped. The European Commission today unveils 'Opening up Education', an action plan to tackle this and other digital problems which are hampering schools and universities from delivering high quality education and the digital skills which 90% of jobs will require by 2020. To help kick-off the initiative, the Commission today launches a new website, Open Education Europa, which will allow students, practitioners and educational institutions to share free-to-use open educational resources.
Between 50% and 80% of students in EU countries never use digital textbooks, exercise software, broadcasts/podcasts, simulations or learning games. Most teachers at primary and secondary level do not consider themselves as 'digitally confident' or able to teach digital skills effectively, and 70% would like more training in using ICTs. Pupils in Latvia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic are the most likely to have internet access at school (more than 90%), twice as much as in Greece and Croatia (around 45%).The European Commission launched Open Education Europa in September 2013 as part of the Opening Up Education initiative to provide a single gateway to European OER. This portal is grounded on the basis of the elearningeuropa.info portal, active since 2002 to support the transformation of education through technology. Today, with close to 38,000 registered users and an average of 55,000 monthly visits, it has become the meeting point for exploring change and innovation in education.
The main goal of the Open Education Europa portal is to offer access to all existing European Open Educational Resources in different languages in order to be able to present them to learners, teachers and researchers.Open Education Europa is a dynamic platform built with the latest cutting-edge open-source technology, offering tools for communicating, sharing and discussing. The portal has many features and it is structured in 3 main sections:
• The FIND section showcases MOOCs, courses, and Open Educational Resources by leading European institutions. Each institution is also featured in this section alongside the MOOCs, courses, and the Open Educational Resources it provides.
• The SHARE section is the space where portal users (scholars, educators, policymakers, students and other stakeholders) come together to share and discuss solutions for a diverse range of educational issues by posting blogs, sharing events, and engaging in thematic discussions.
• The IN-DEPTH section hosts eLearning Papers — the world’s most visited e-journal on open education and new technologies —, provides an exhaustive list of EU-funded projects, and highlights the latest news about open education as well as the most relevant recently published scholarly articles.
Follow @se_hq 
Nellie Kroes , European Comission Vice-President launch also this week #connectedcontinent Initiative after she launched the official website of #startupeurope http://www.startupeuropehq.eu as a part of Digital Agenda for Europe and you can read her speech here . 
Don't forget to visit weekly my blog to discover top 20 edtools .

References : 
Open Education Europa Official Website
European Comission , Nellie Kroes Connectedcontinent Speech 
New website #StartupEurope

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It's amazing what publishing your first sound does for you. It's gone right to my head and I am feeling downright cocky. So, this time when creating a sound, understanding the program was not as much of an issue as finding the right sound to do the Sou...

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So  I've been playing with sound over the last few days. It has been a little frustrating partially because tools and devices that worked when a tutorial was built in 2008 or 2010 or 2012 may not be as useful as they once were due to the ever chan...

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This past week on Headless 2013 we've been discussing storytelling,the arc of stories and Kurt Vonnegut's idea that stories have a shape. Well, I loved both the infographic and the video of Kurt Vonnegut discussing the shapes of stories. I had never t...

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21st September 2014:

Prologue
As I was reading my Twitter stream, I was  reflecting on my next act, which will speak of music, space and silence.  Then, a number of tweets and posts decided me to produce a revival of the following play: All the world's a stage...(and we are just poor teachers?)

So in no particular order here are some of these linked elements which inspired this revival:



RT @Bali_Maha: The “learner’s why” vs the “teacher’s why” http://ift.tt/1BZlWgT  #ccoursesSometimes the operative words is versus, yes?


All the world's a stage...(and we are just poor teachers?) A revival. 
Originally performed in September 2013.
And we are just poor teachers, who strut and fret our time, stage front, tutting and grumbling about dwindling levels of interest amongst a distracted audience...and then blogging about it (with apologies to William).


Oh the distraction!

Before it was just the turnip throwers in the gods,a rowdy rabble if ever there was. We got rid of them by employing muscular stewards and a brilliant policy of over-priced seats. William came up with a master-stroke: "Why didn't we organise a cheap knees-up for the mob and keep them far away from our classical theatre?" Masterful William!  Alas! Now it's spread to the monied classes in the posh seats. My monologue was interrupted last night by the dim lights emitted from their damned smartphones. Have they no respect for the thespian art?

The critics are out. The notices are rather mixed.

We organised a meeting of the company. What might we do to stop declining ticket sales? Helmut suggested we might get a microphone.  I thought that we should just change the play. Bob came up with a new fangled (and awfully expensive) pyrotechnic effect to thrill the stalls.  Walpole, as usual, was more than helpful. "Why didn't we try stilts?", he suggested (idiot!).

After a few beers, Harry started getting carried away. "Couldn't we introduce a flying carpet to give them a music-hall eyeball?" Frankly we were heading towards pantomime. Besides, such extravaganza would demand skilled technicians in the wings, an almighty budget, sponsors even! Walpole was charming, but seemed to only be able to drink tea in the green room.

Theatre in the Round

 In the face of declining audience behaviour, we ended up doing some research. Someone came up with "Theatre in the Round". We discussed this question at length. Should we use the same theatre building? Was it a question of taking out a few seats, moving the stage to the centre? With diminishing budgets and audiences, this was viewed as a feasible option. Rather than knocking down the protected classical edifice, we asked a local architect to modify it somewhat.

First reviews for our new season were much improved. We did have to modify our dramatic art rather to adapt, but it was better than leaving the theatre altogether and ending up recording jingles for soap powder. We gradually worked towards a concept of immersive theatre, with massive audience participation. That was excellent!

Street Theatre

We even ventured out into the streets. It was romantic, getting back to the roots, a life of the wandering player. The other day we bumped into the rabble from the gods. They were dancing and drinking in the park. There were masses of them. What on earth were they doing there just behind the band-stand? I later learnt that it was what is called these days "A Flash mob." They had all arrived there, apparently separately,  like an army of goddam ants via some Facebook page or some sort. For once, I was stumped for words. They, I thought to myself, would make a wonderful audience in the theatre.

The Seventh Art

I am no Eisenstein, but I admit to daydreaming between acts in the green-room. Might they not be persuaded to be extras in a little movie project of mine? Then the penny dropped. They were actually making a movie (of sorts). I had a dreadful Pauline moment, on my way to the theatre, I realised that I had, in this haphazard, unplotted cinema, become rather the extra. I sat in the wings, deep in reflection...

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I've been rendered a human again,  a gift of love from @JLVala. It's been odd to return to my human form, especially since I was a zombie almost from the beginning of the plague. As a zombie, I was a ruthless killer, hunting down unsuspecting...

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Let me sing you a lullaby as we lull you to sleep.Life is short and painfulbut death is long and deep.In life, friends are fleeting,in death they're the ones you eat.Slip the chains of your mortality,Enter the depths of calm,Being undead is so moving,y...

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Dear friends like I promise you in my previous post here where I describe Top 100 edtools and ipad apps to mLearning rediscovered through #iste13 http://bitly.com/iste13edtools , now when we back to school I will share weekly when I have time TOP 20 wi...

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Always excited and anxious at the beginning of a new semester. Enjoyed meeting students yesterday in Literacy Studies and Academic Writing, and turning to research in the Scientific Inquiry course.  Living the dream… Here are some resources I’m finding particularly interesting as we begin the new semester: Mark Sample’s Introduction …

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“We’re all a little weird and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone who’s weirdness is compatible with ours, we fall into mutual weirdness and call it love.” – the brilliant Dr. Seuss
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