Disruption: The role of image in communication.

" . . . we are “turning photography into a communication medium.” There seems a tendency to treat the time before social media as a pre-tech cavern in which there were few extant tools available for communication. I argue that photography was a communication medium from its inception. To document the aftermath of the battle of Antietam a set of photographs was made of the battlefield carnage. Matthew Brady displayed these in his New York City studio. The effect on the viewing public was profound and is often cited as having played a major role in changing public sentiment regarding the war. There are myriad other historical examples of photography's impact as a communication medium--getting across salient ideas without words or text; Jacob Riis' "How the Other Half Lives," images from Alabama and Mississippi during the 1960s Civil Rights campaign and television images of the Vietnam War to name a few. It is not the media, but the platform that allows their use that has and is changing. I think it would be more accurate to that platforms created by contemporary technology to host social media have offered people more opportunities to utilize non-text media types as means to enhance the way they share their day to day stories.

Final Presentation

So, we've decided that the final presentation will be a collaboration (appropos).

There is an After Effects Composition (.aep) file on the Server.

afp://rocky.drama.uga.edu/Groups/Dark Ride/Presentation.aep

Open this and edit-in your film clips and images.

I'll open the discussion--we'll show the presentation--then,
we'll have an open discusion based
on the research questions we discussed.

I will make our reservation with David tomorrow for Friday.
At this point we will try to make it before noon--

Physical Plant & Video Wall

The Video Wall is up and user friendly. We'll go over switching between MAC and Windows tomorrow along with more talk about presentations. I would also like to discuss the physical plant of the FA.

First--generic definition: Physical plant or mechanical plant (and where context is given, often just plant) refers to the necessary infrastructure used in support and maintenance of a given facility.


And--the definition from the UGA website:The Physical Plant is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the University's physical facilities, grounds, and utilities. This encompasses responsibility for building maintenance and repairs, building alterations, maintenance of mechanical and electrical systems, custodial services, and related activities. Physical Plant also operates the central steam and chiller plants and provides construction, operation, and maintenance of utility systems. Other responsibilities include providing engineering support, maintenance of roads and grounds, landscaping, maintaining an inventory of university buildings and land, operation of a construction materials warehouse, operating a vehicle rental fleet and automotive maintenance shop.

So, just let your ideas about the definition roll around a bit prior to class.

VW - we are closer than we've ever been.

When you see our producer this week--show him your appreciation. He came in and helped us clear up a few things--and taught us some of the finer points of the care and feeding of the video wall.
Monitors are sequenced and ready to roll. We need to clean up some cabling issues which can happen tomorrow night. Let's continue talking about presentations including the date.

The process, MFA, and other thoughts

Indeed, the process has been tedious in many ways, which IF we allow can be prohibitive; however, I think coming in we all had some idea that there would be hurdles to clear. I don't want to get too Zen about this, but there is a journey that exists outside the text, outside the project, and even outside the university.

Now that the VW is moved and the cabling is underway, I think one of the tallest hurdles is behind us.

Perhaps a documentary or "making of" would be good, not only for us, but for those who come along after, that way we'll have an official way to track truly progressive moments, and a way to document the non-progressive moments as well. It could be interesting to come back to it, say two years later, to see how much has changed, or not changed.

About the MFA...yes, an MFA is a degree about "doing" things. It taps into a very particular intelligence--imagination. "Masters" degrees are meant to be apprenticeships. We are to learn the craft from the Masters who came before us. The efficacy of these apprenticeships depends, of course, on the skills of the masters who teach us. There's a lot that can be said about that, in terms of both the historical idea of the Masters degree and how that's changed, as well as what this all means in a university setting.

Cabling

We are close. So close.
Thanks for the work this evening.
I think it would be wise for us to label as much
as we can as clearly as we can for ourselves and future generations.
I want to continue the business discussion we began last week.
Interesting observations this evening--let's talk about the
acronym MFA and what it means in relation to what we are learning.
I think its very important to pay attention to the business aspects
of what we do. I have heard an MFA degree as a
"do something" degree. What are your thoughts?

State of the Quest

We have discussed a lot of ideas. That's good. We have been able to bring to fruition but a few of these. That is not bad. Our imaginations are held in check by speed at which the producorial vocabulary can move events. Getting the VW moved and now re-cabled has been a process that has taken longer than I would gave liked, but re-call that we discussed the vocabulary of leanness that we would have to adopt to make all of this work w/o friction. Acknowledging that we work in an environment with lean resources we must accept that efficient communication is a resource--perhaps one of the most important resources; more important even than even capital, for w/o efficient communication the dispensing of capital can go seriously awry. We also discussed the issus w/the Kinect. I am working to resolve those.
Tifany, Casey and I will now assume a more aggressive brand of guerilla art; taking the cellar by storm! When no-one's looking of course.
By now I hope the wisdom of Dark Ride as a vehicle is clear (especially from the resource perspective); it's a play with its own imagination we just have to complement it.


We are now concentrating our efforts on these objectives:
Cabling the VW and getting it squared away for us to play with.
Final presentations.

Alright. Comments? Fire away.

brainstorming

I thought of fire for the beginning of Dark Ride in the video wall--specifically, five different live-action pyres to offset the imposing technological aspect of the video wall itself and to coincide with the shamanic idea that's been brewing. A contrasting of new and old, so to speak.

Milan was telling me about work he is doing with his thesis that creates the visual narrative built along the structure of the narrative. This process entails mapping out the narrative and then deciding visual, spatial cues to match these points in the script. For instance, a particular scene is a mini-peak along the greater crescendo and so will have warm colors with more 3D space; plateaus coincide with cooler colors and 2D space. He was going to look through his notes and see if he had anything he could give us in the way of graphs. I think it is an interesting idea, especially with Dark Ride--what are significant moments? What are plateaus?

Request from Publicity

I want to share this with you guys and we can talk about this Wed. as well.
The directors of next years main stage productions received a request from Tressa Preston
of the publicity committee:

Dear Directors,

In an effort to get a jump start on promoting the University Theatre 2011-2012 season, the publicity team is already compiling ideas for images to promote each show.

The goal is for publicity to stage and take photographs representing iconic images for each show to include in the season brochure and other promotional material, before the end of the semester.

It would be extremely helpful if directors could submit a few rough ideas of images that they see as representative of their show for us to go from. Keep in mind that we can solicit actors, do our best to suggest costume/period style, and work at different locations around town. Also iconic props or objects important to the show could be used additionally or exclusively.

Take our promotion of Hamlet for an example. The image of the rotten apple is one of our promotions capitalizing on the rotten state of Denmark. For the commercial we used images of the actor playing Hamlet holding a skull in a cemetery, and a partial image of the head and face of the actor playing Ophelia lying in a stream with her eyes open.

Thank you for your help in this! Please don't hesitate to call, email, or just stop me in the hall or class with ideas or questions.

Monday in the IPL

Good meet and a pre-cursor to more in-depth collaboration.
There is an urgent need now to move the VW, so we shall.
We will cordon off a corner of the IPL and set up shop
and that will become our base of operations.

Current intention is to work on and complete the first act
story-boarding and have media prototypes avail for
proof of concept by end of semester.

We did not re-visit the semester expectations
as I had planned but that can happen on Wed.

We agreed that Monday and Wednesdays evenings @ 7:00 PM in the IPL
will be considered regular meet times for the rest of the
semester--unless informed otherwise--essentially times toward the
end of the semester when David will join us for presentations.

I would like to hear comments on some of the ideas that were floated this evening.
Please expand and contract the ideas however you wish.
These posts are really fueling the class conversation.

I was drawn to all of the ideas floated tonight--Question; does deploying the media strongly & quickly seem like it would dampen the effect of the audience's surprise towards media choices later in the production?--just a concern of mine. What do you think?

Alex and Erin like the wormhole effect (is that right - 'wormhole'?) at the beginning--taking you to another dimension if you will (actually--sail out to you tube and watch the opening credits of a twilight zone episodes--I think they use a wormhole effect.

Josh likes the idea of a mediated translator at the top of the show--giving the audience the idea that the translator is the narrator and then