a grockle in new york

Well, I have to say, it finally got to me: the grockle tendency which inhabits all of us when we travel. I have the camera, the hat, the armful of leaflets, the suncream that smells of dulux… all one really needs to be a tourist. A grockle, as those in the West Country might say.

I should now really do the new-media-tourist thing and blog about the exciting things I have seen and done – including all recommendations and links etc. During the Women, Business & Blogging conference, Jess spoke about how blogs are often used as a kind of human filter for all the stuff that is out there. I did not really appreciate this use of blogs until moving to Word Press, which provides me with far more stats about my readers and how they get here. People are out there looking for things: blogs provide human summaries of those things through experience and opinion.

So, here are my brief experiences and opinions following my visit to New York over the last week – in true web 2.0 grockle style!

The Down Town Tour:

I am a bad person to review any tour, as I become a profession-snob as soon as someone else takes the microphone. Our open top tour of Down Town New York took far longer than planned due to UN week traffic and included two tour guides. The first really wanted everyone off the bus at the stop at which we boarded. He proceeded to sit behind us, rambling in quick-time-new-york tones about people and ball players we had never heard of, whilst pointing out random buildings which we had already passed. The second guide was better, but really only gave soundbites of information whilst repeatedly reminding us of his name, the driver’s name, safety and tips.

See? Profession-snob! No mention of the route of the tour, the sites we took in or anything! I will restrain myself.

The down town tour included Times Square, China Town (where we saw this great Macky D’s), Greenwich Village, Wall Street (where other grockles were taking pictures of each other at the bull’s behind :S), Diamond District, Garment District… basically, all the accessible areas of lower Manhatten. Diversion and traffic plagues the bus as UN diplomats moved around the city, but otherwise it was good to see so much from up high without the stress of people and cabs.

Ellis Island/Statue of Liberty/Harbour Cruise:

All of the above in one go. This trip was at the request of my youngest sister to help with her A Level courses. Unfortunately, she went round like death all morning having drugged up on travel-sickness medication. Sorry, I mean “meds” – must get with the lingo!

We decided not to get off at boat at the Statue of Liberty, as we got plenty of photos from the approach. Ellis Island was quite another matter. A free museum on the island chronicles immigration to the US through NY, particularly those experiences relating to the people who were checked into the country through the facilities at Ellis Island. I could certainly have spent a while day at the museum – it covers social history, immigration patterns across the world… all sorts! Not a place to go with any person who does not like museums though – speaketh bitter experience here

Wicked (@ The Gershwin Theatre, Broadway):

FANTASTIC show! Want to go again already! The soundtrack CD (currently playing) has been providing one of my main distractions from constructive thought ever since (as I don’t appear to be able to think and listen to lyrics at the same time). Some of the numbers were much more musically complex than one would expect in a musical, but the storyline was very clever and the light show extremely effective. I came away desparately wanting to write something with that much passion. Everyone should go see it!

Bodies:

I pretty much rail-roaded my sisters into accompanying me to this exhibition. I had to study photographs from it as prompts in a poetry class once, and despite the initial repulsion which affected me at that time (when it was still very controversial) I couldn’t help myself wanting to see it in the flash, so to speak.

The exhibition consists of models made from human bodies, using a technique involving polymers and acids. The idea was to de-construct the human body and show our inner workings – the way the public dissections did during the renaissance – making anatomy more real and tangible than mere textbook diagrams. The ones created by injecting a red polymer into the blood vessels of donated bodies, then removing the flesh to leave a cost of the circulatory system were actually extremely beautiful. I think I will blog about this separately on another occasion, as there is so much more I could say….

Night Tour:

Another open top tour, which took us around part of the down town loop and then across to Brooklyn to see the lights of the Manhatten skyline. The guide was much better and the views stunning – although I discovered that my night photography skills leave much to be desired. Coming across the Manhatten Bridge on an open top was much like riding a rollercoaster – the side of the bus was very close to the edge of the bridge, with the associated sheer drop on the other side. My hair was a little wind-frizzled by the end, but it was definitely worth it.

Uptown Tour:

As if I had not spent enough time on an open top by this stage (is it possible to spend too long on an open top?) I had to go one last tour, which took us Uptown through Harlaam, Columbia University and round Central park. This featured the best guide of the lot, who had quite a dry sense of humour and attitude towards politics (“we don’t go to war under false pretences anymore, of course”). He gave the most informative tour I have heard in a good while – including the background to Hell’s Kitchen, the details of the project to build the largest stone cathedral in the world (currently ongoing since the 1800’s) and how Ella Fitzgerald started out in the Apollo Theatre. My only criticism was that he was evidently a tape recorder: if he got distracted or interrupted, he had to go back to the beginning of his story and repeat it word-for-word, intonation and everything. You know what though? I actually didn’t mind!

Macy’s/Times Square:

Several trips were made to both Macy’s and Times Square during our stay. The highlight of Macy’s (for me) was the wooden escalators towards the top of the building. Apparently these are not permitted in the UK any more, following the Kings Cross fire in the London Underground. Using the ones in Macy’s felt like stepping into a Terry Pratchett novel – using something inherently modern, presented in a medieval way. Times Square was just a mass of lights and advertisements – fun, but crowded. As Forest Gump would say, “that’s all I have to say about that”… except that they did have a restaurant called Bubba Gump Shrimps!

So, there you have it: a potted account of our trip to the Big Apple, just in case you were interested!

Counting Prayers

Spirituality might not sound like something that should really have a presence online. However, I find I have reason to speak of it as I blog from the 50th floor of the Millennium Hilton Hotel, New York on a glorious Sunday morning.

My mother and I have just returned from a service at St Paul’s Chapel - known as “the little chapel that stood”. On 11th September 2001, the chapel witnessed the world-changing terror attacks first hand, and was the only structure in the square around the WTC that did not suffer any damage at all. That, in itself, is an amazing feat, that cannot really be explained by earthly-minded people. However, the chapel then played an important part in the emergency efforts, with firefighters sleeping in the pews as the round-the-clock rescue efforts got under way.

Today, the chapel is more of a museum, with exhibits around the edges detailing events and banners of support still hanging on walls around. There is a constant flow of site-seers, even throughout services, and the place seems to be constantly busy with people – for many of whom this is a kind of pilgrimage.

For us, it is the nearest church celebrating Eucarist close to the hotel (I can see the chapel from the window of the hotel landing (as pictured). We went to experience the quite different style of service at this Episcopal church. What we found, was that we ended up at the launch of a spiritual online iniciative.

Today, at St Paul’s Chapel, the Counting Prayers project was launched. A very simple prayer, aimed at tackling world poverty, was said several times (followed by the church’s traditional response, which is to sing “we are your hands, we are your voice”), thus launching an online project to count the number of times this prayer is said and how many prayers it will take before the UN Millennium Delvelopment Goals are met. The site can be found at www.countingprayers.org and I have a copy of the counter here on my blog, so we can keep up with how they are doing.

Religious people (not just Christians) are suddenly realising the power of the Internet to spread prayer. What will be interesting to see (and study prehaps) is the way in which the t’internet is used in relation to spirituality in the future. Will it be a way of just delivering messages and counting support for spiritual ideologies? Will it become a part of the spiritual experience? Can you have a spiritual experience using a computer? Is this what we want?

I may well have to come back to these ideas. For now, I shall leave you with them… as I really want to enjoy the view!

community laughter

I have just returned from a fabulous production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Penelope Keith, currently playing at the Theatre Royal in Bath. Last minute tickets are truely a fantastic blessing!

I say this not to envoke jealousy (although it really was a very good show!). I mention it because something occurred to me as I returned with my young ward on the Number 5 bus…

The Number 5 bus is not the most inspiring place in the world. A journey on it can be called a life experience, but that is as far as it goes. However, on this particular journey, I observed that the production was far funnier than the recent film production. My neighbour’s daughter is a big fan of the film (mainly because the cast list includes Colin Firth), but even she agreed with me that the play was much funnier. The whole audience was laughing all the way through, in fact. The lines were the same, the sets pretty much the same… but it just seemed to provoke more outright laughter.

It occurred to me that this is true of many plays and films: if you watch as part of a community, you gain more from the experience – particularly with humorous pieces. You don’t need to know the other people in the audience, or even speak to them (except to apologise for squishing past them to get to the loo in the interval – of which there were 2 on this occasion). Being with other people who are laughing and sharing the experience makes it a more involved experience than simply being a passive observer in front of a small screen.

Maybe it is this community of viewing that humour on the web is missing – although there are admittedly some very funny things out there. Maybe the experience could be enhanced by watching in real time with other people… hearing them laugh, being able to whisper cynical comments to them, or even pull faces at them. I know we can already participate in group events such as concerts in Second Life, but are we really experiencing the presence of others? Or are we just seeing animated representations of these others and being left to imagine the web of people around us – prehaps speculating who is really there and who has popped away from their machine to make a cup of tea?

Personally, I would prefer to have the real contact – prehaps by combining a VoIP feature. Wouldn’t it be great if you could choose who to sit next to at an online event… see their faces by webcam and “whisper” to them directly whilst watching a performance… hear the laughter and mutterings of the rest of the audience… prehaps have a scheduled break for ice cream…

Maybe one day we will. I’m not sure whether I would participate, or whether I would still hop on the Number 5 down to the proper theatre with its confined seating and exorbitant ice cream prices. I would just be interested to see whether the live element really makes things funnier or whether it was just the fantastic skill of Penelope Keith…

Transliteracy: 3D Literacy

I first came across the term “transliteracy” when I started studying New Media last year. I thought it was an academic term for what is an essential and unnamed study in linguistics – the switching between different forms of media or styles of language/communication. I have been teaching this at GCSE and A Level for years. Odd that it surfaced in New Media circles with a posh name. Thought no more of it.

Then I was introduced to the work of the PART group, and subscribed to the rss feed for their blog. I then started to think: “Maybe I have misunderstood something fundemental here…”. Ask no questions – don’t want to look stupid, afterall! Maybe all will become clear :S

Today, the blog invited people to join their GoogleGroup, and in the spirit of all things communal and interesting, I did so. In the spirit of all things live and therefore imperfect, the GoogleGod appears to be having a problem with this site at the momet, so I cannot include the link. How frustrating!

I found the conversation engaged in finding a focus for the study of transliteracy, and the wonderfully clarifying point that transliteracy is really something linguists have been working on for a long time. I felt soooo much better for seeing that in print in a discussion! It did make me feel a bit of a numpty for never asking if it was one and the same issue.

So, what is different?

Well, the PART group look like they are trying to establish an interdisciplinary approach to looking at how people communicate across a range of media. The issue involves not just linguists apparently, but many other fields where communication methods are of interest. Giving the study of this issue a name (the ubiquitous “Transliteracy”) and establishing a dialogue across these fields highlights this very interesting propensity in the human communicative constitution. It also has identified the very new skills people are developing in response to New Media and the internet – what Joanna Howard dubbed “3D Literacy” after I commented that I thought of transliteracy as being a very much three dimensional thing in this new media age. We are no longer just reading an article, or listening to the radio, or whatever…. we are now doing several of these activities simultaneously using our computers – sometimes within one single piece. These are being dubbed “transliterate artefacts”, which the PART group is seeking to collect (or links thereof).

This might sound like multi-tasking gone mad, but people are doing it! I find myself engaged in this type of experience virtually every time my computer is switched on. I have podcasts playing, blog feeds appearing on my screen, people popping up on msn or skype… and yet I don’t think anything of juggling these communication platforms, with their different conventions and jargons – absorbing information at different levels from each. When I teach students to identify texts by audience and publication context, I now think of all these new internet forms and wonder how long it will be before their conventions will creep into GCSE and A Level syllabii. Probably not soon enough, knowing just a little about how curriculae work!

That said, I quite like the idea of 3D-literacy and transliteracy as expressions of how we move between vastly different modes of communication. When you sit back and think about it, it really is quite amazing how we do this… you can’t possibly say the human brain is not hard-wired for communication: we seem to do it by whatever means available, absorbing codes and establishing agreed symbols to bridge any divide – electronic or otherwise. Transliteracy is pretty clever stuff, really!

a question of distance

I am no photographer.

I readily admit this. You can see my dabblings in my flickr feed to the right here, but these really are just dabblings. Most of the time, I just point and click. The pure serendipidy of the camera and the subject being conveniently syncronised in their progress through life makes the picture.

What I have found interesting, as a recent explorer into pictorial realms, is the way our attitudes towards taking pictures is changing with the development of sophisticated digital cameras. There is now a physical distance between ourselves and the camera as we take a picture using a digital camera – we are no longer right up close to the machine in the same intimate way as was previously required. We can also view each picture within seconds, judge it, and discard it instantly if it is not to our liking. We no longer have to finish the film, pay to process it and wait days for the finished, silky prints to arrive.

Being the owner and user of a nice new digital camera (my first ever camera in fact!), I am particularly interested to know what difference this physical distance makes, as we hold our cameras away from us to take a picture, instead of up to our eyes. For my own part, it means that my pictures are much less about what I am seeing from my position in the world, but more about what the world looks like at arms’ length away. It is almost like looking at the world through my finger tips – I see what they would see in my jpgs. On one occasion, I held my camera out over the edge of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol to get a shot of the bridge’s shadow on the cliff: something I did not see with my own eyes in full. Does this make the camera my aid to seeing things in the world that my eyes, due to their geography in my body, cannot see?

Maybe holding the machine close and committing a physical process in taking the photograph – involving chemical imprinting – causes us to have a more precious, personal relationship with the resulting picture? The results of this process are also physical, rather than simply light impulses on our computer screens. Does this deepen our involvement with the picture? Does it mean I am missing something intimate and pure about the art by going digital? Is it like the way taste and smell invoke memory? Or does it not really matter at all, as long as the image captures an essence in colours and shadows that can be manipulated and stored?

I am sure the issue will continue to puzzle me as I wander through scenes, hopefully clicking/ticking away, but many things puzzle me about images and views, so what’s new?!

what does your email address say about you?

Imagine that you are REALLY angry about something.

You choose to send an email of complaint to the relevant company or authority, expressing your frustrations (eloquently, of course!).

You hit send with a great flourish and sit back, bristling with indignation, to wait for the response.

When this response comes, it is quite cool and snide… not what you might expect, under the circumstances.

Do you:

a) write back in outrage?
or
b) check which email account you used to send your initial complaint?

It is quite an amazing thing how many people will write emails in which they wish to be taken seriously, but give little or no thought to the construction of the email address they are using. I mean… could YOU take any of the following email address components seriously?

lovingforaliving@… (screams: “I’m on the game”)
jelly_kitty@… (what?!)
ali_is_a_superhero@… (really?)
purpleypink_fluffyhippy@… (ok…)

Maybe people assume that no-one looks at their email address anymore, in this age of digital address books and “reply” buttons. These email addresses are great for corresponding with friends, who probably *get* the joke, but in any professional setting they can give out totally the wrong idea.

Whilst exclaiming over a particularly cring-worthy address today (wobblybits@…) I commented that someone should do a piece of research studying the ways in which people choose and apply their email addresses in the variety of cultural settings that now exist on t’internet. As the average number of email addresses per user increases, will a social code develop that prohibits these addresses being paraded in the more serious areas of the world? Are people developing personal rules for their personal email accounts or even considering their email address as part of their online image? Or are the culprits here those who only have the one freemail address and have to scramble around for the bit of paper it is scribbled on any time it needs to be recounted?

I may seem a little flippant here – but what underlies is, I believe, an important social point. There is obviously a lot of language play going on in the construction of such addresses, which in itself would be interesting to study. Also, in all the hype surrounding other net applications, the simple email runs the risk of taken for granted and seems to be little considered in terms of its social representation of a person online.

Does anyone really study these things? If not, they jolly well should! I can see a happy evening of curiosity-browsing ahead of me, in pursuit of such a dedicated social researcher so I can send them cake…

becoming a feed-addict

I have noticed over the last few weeks that I am slowly turning into a feed-addict.

It all started with the summer slow down of correspondence via our degree notice board… which lead to my subscribing to a number of blog feeds via Bloglines. This started to replace the notice board in my daily ritual. Then I joined Facebook and started popping in each day to update my status. Today, I have subscribed to 11 new podcast feeds via iTunes, including several BBC Radio 4 programmes that I could very easily hear via my good olde wind-up, if I was organised enough. I wouldn’t mind this, except I don’t own any form of mp3 player, much less an iPod!

The reason for all this? Well, I think the more deeply engrossed in t’internet that one becomes, the greater one’s need to “touch base” in familiar locations. It is like any landscape in that respect: you might really enjoy the thrill of seeing new places and exploring, but there is a huge, comforting relief to be found in finding yourself in a familiar one. You just want to keep returning to make sure that it is all still there, exactly as you left it, and you haven’t missed any vital developments there whilst you have been away.

For now, I do not wish to engage in therapy for this addiction. I am happy to kid myself that my new interest in this plethera of podcasts in purely academic – a study of production quality, length, content, update frequency, etc… However, it is interesting to see a routine developing in which I have a set pattern for checking each of my little cubby-holes on the net for updates. It is like seeing yourself becoming woven into a big piece of fabric, with neat little stitches. I wonder what it will be like when there is no longer a seam between us and the ether…