Call for Participation! Book Trailer Study

Fellow student Nicole is working with me on a project about book trailers. Exciting right?!

Have you ever seen a book trailer?

Have a look below and PLEASE fill in our survey!!



We appreciate you sharing our survey across your networks.

Week 10: Technobiophilia Guest Lecture from Professor Sue Thomas

Thank you so much to Professor Sue Thomas for the guest lecture this week. As usual, please respond with any comments, questions and answers to Sue's questions, in the comments' section below.

Technobiophilia: theory and practice
Dr Sue Thomas, www.suethomas.net, @suethomas
New Media Narratives 2014, University of Alberta, 10 March 2014

I’ve decided to present this material as a series of videos and weblinks along with questions for you to choose from and respond to in the comments section. It’s something of an experiment, so I hope it works! I look forward to discussing it with you online this week.

1. Watch the trailer for Biophilic Design: The Architecture of Life http://vimeo.com/27874539

Biophilic Design: The Architecture of Life (Trailer) from Tamarack Media on Vimeo.

Question:  Have you encountered an example of biophilic design in your own surroundings? If so, please describe it and any beneficial effect you experienced.

2. Watch this advertisement for Meetup.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhpf-CcPy-s

Question: Does the kind of life shown here resemble your own life or that of anyone you know? What are the features of this kind of life?

3. Read this discussion Does Technology destroy our relationship with Nature? http://www.ted.com/conversations/18068/does_technology_destroy_our_re.html

Question: What do you think are the most important points made in the discussion?

4.  In this article I outline my theory of technobiophilia and digital well-being. But the magazine editors gave it a title which is not what I was saying:  We surf the net, stream our films and save stuff in the cloud. Can we get all the nature we need from the digital world? http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/can-we-get-all-the-nature-we-need-from-the-digital-world/  

Question:  Contrary to the article title, I don’t believe that we can get all the nature we need from the digital world. Do you? Why? Why not?

5. Watch this trailer for Flower, by ThatGameCompany. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJam5Auwj1E#t=34

Question: Do you think playing games like this can provide similar feelings to being out in nature?

6. At Medium I’m creating a collection of suggestions for ways to bring nature in our digital world. https://medium.com/how-to-bring-nature-into-your-digital-world You can also find it on my blog http://suethomasnet.wordpress.com/category/how-to-bring-nature-into-your-digital-world/

Question: If you have a Medium account, feel free to write an article and submit it to the collection for consideration. Or maybe you’d just like to add a suggestion to the blog?

Other materials which may be of interest

·      Technobiophilia website including articles, videos and bibliography: http://suethomasnet.wordpress.com/technobiophilia/

·      
My blog http://suethomasnet.wordpress.com/blog/

Week 9: Transmedia

Week 9: Transmedia	Required and Recommended Readings
Guest Lecture by Christy Deena	n  O'Flynn, S. (2012). Documentary's metamorphic form: Webdoc, interactive, transmedia, participatory and beyond. Studies In Documentary Film, 6(2), 141-157.

A bit about Christy Deena, our fantabulous guest-lecturer for this week.

Christy Dena is a writer-designer-director who has worked on award-winning pervasive games, film, digital and theatre projects. Clients include Nokia, Cisco/No Mimes Media, ABC, Wieden+Kennedy, Bangarra Dance Theatre, Noah Falstein, Ken Eklund & Agency of Coney, and many more.
Christy was granted Australia’s first Digital Writing Residency at The Cube for her project “Robot University,” funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and QUT. In 2012, she was the “Digital Writing Ambassador” for the Emerging Writers Festival; and a prototype of her project “AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS” was Finalist for “Best Writing in a Game” Award at the Freeplay Independent Gaming Festival. Christy co-wrote “The Writers Guide to Making a Digital Living” for the Australian Literature Board.
She has given keynotes and presentations at film, tech, writing, and gaming festivals worldwide, including Power to the Pixel (London), DIYDays (LA), TEDxTransmedia (Switzerland). She has mentored industry professionals around the world, including The Pixel Lab and Crossover; has written numerous articles on writing and design, and been published in numerous industry books. Christy was commissioned to run Transmedia Victoria, a key transmedia event in Melbourne bringing professionals from TV, film, performance, art, and gaming together.
She is Professor Adjunct at Creative Industries, QUT; Game Design Lecturer at SAE Brisbane; a Member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Emmys); and a Board Member of the Entertainment Technology Press (ETC).
Christy has been a juror for the International Digital Emmy Awards, IPF Web Drama Series, and many other programs including the Australia Council for the Arts. She wrote the first PhD on Transmedia Practice, and wrote the definition of ‘transmedial fictions’ for the forthcoming The Johns Hopkins Encyclopedia of Digital Textuality. Christy has released her award-nominated web audio adventure for the iPad called AUTHENTIC IN ALL CAPS (with the crowdfunding campaign being the biggest successful campaign for a game on Pozible to date).  Her digital installation “Robot University” was launched at The Cube, QUT; and her playful story for the phone, “Guardians of Hidden Universes” was released at the first outdoor pervasive gaming festival: Popup Playground’s Fresh Air Festival.

Week 8: Remixing Story

Read more on the site here: http://www.remixmylit.com/

Week 8: Remixing Story	Required and Recommended Readings
Guest Lecture by Carolyn Guertin	n  Carolyn Guertin, “Handholding, Remixing and the Instant Replay: New Narratives I a Postnarrative World,” A Companion to Digital Literary Studies, ed. Susan Schreibman and Ray Siemens. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008. http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companionDLS/ n  Carolyn Guertin, "From Karaoke Culture to Vernacular Video," Excerpt available in our e-class Moodle.

Watch this Learning without Frontiers talk by Malcolm McLaren which Carolyn mentions in her chapter.

Take a look at this poster presentation from Carolyn which sums up her key ideas:



Digital Prohibition: Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art from Carolyn Guertin

This week, rather than having several key questions for you to mull over as you read and interact with the week's content, I would like to present one idea from Marsha Kinder:

"Narrative is a cognitive mode in all human societies that we use to contextualize experiences. Cultures are kept alive through open-ended narratives. Each remix of a narrative opens space for the unknown, filters out the unimportant and determines new priorities."

Week 6: Content Creation with Pinterest

Along with the readings for this week, please see my powerpoint lecture in our moodle.

Week 2: Print Culture & Publishing

To help put our readings in context, you might like to begin by listening to this podcast on the changing face of publishing.