Grab the Spoons! The Viruses are Attacking!

Let's begin on a light note - below is a selection of recent viral videos recut and put to fantastic music:



Viral information can be described as information which is able to "convert other objects into copies of themselves when these objects are exposed to them." Although the strict definition of an artifact which is able to replicate itself does not hold for viral information, we do not need to make a huge conceptual leap if we consider that viral information is able to change the thoughts of humans to want to replicate the information.  I think it is pertinent to note that the term viral was around before the internet; indeed, biological viruses act in much the same way as computer ones do: by injecting a small amount of code into a host cell and reprogramming cellular machinery. So, here is a brief overview of how biological viruses - in this case HIV - work (and doing it in lego is amazing!).




How Does Viral Information Travel?
Briefly, a video, picture, web-site  is discovered by someone. This person likes it so much they share it - via eMail, Twitter, Facebook... - their friends also share it and so the cycle continues. The most interesting thing about viral information is that it is quick. Information is rapidly discovered, shared, and interest then moves on to the next big thing. For an interesting discussion of using the viral approach to market a product see this article about Two Gentlemen of Lebowski - within 24 hours a script has a professional production planned in NY.

Happy Cat

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

This is perhaps one of the most well-known phenomena. His discovery, in around 2003, kick-started lolcats.  As with many viral phenomena, the source is disputed. However, Know Your Meme, traces Happy Cat's first on-line appearance to an advert from a Russian Cat Food company.

Some More Viral Videos

Here is a particularly NZ example. This video is a particular favourite with Librarians:



And to revert to the lego theme (and not really sure this qualifies as viral, but it should):

Various Sundry Titbits

I first wanted to post something that was of the utmost importance and I felt I REALLY needed to post - but do you think I can remember what it is?

I have been working on reading published articles for academics' blogs to help show the Theatre Studies Programme what benefit they could gain for blogging. The benefits mentioned are all pretty obvious: greater collaboration, quicker publishing time, increased exposure, more freedom to mix the personal and professional (one thing I particularly admire). The negative aspects all seem to boil down to one piece of advice: what you write online is viewable by everyone. Pretty common sense really...However, I will be putting up something a wee bit more fulsome here eventually.

Now I remember what I was going to write about: why am I exploring on-line video editors when their off-line counterparts are often much more powerful and just as simple to use (I am thinking here of iMovies which has been designed with those with little or no video editing experience). However, the advantage with an online editor is that you do not have to have a terminal set aside as a video-editing station but students can use any terminal on campus - or indeed off. The good thing about a free service is that there is no further cost outlay to provide software licences.

However, it seems I have hit somewhat of a stumbling block. There are many tools out there designed to share your clips or add social bookmarks but very few for creating your own clips. Is this because the coding is so difficult? Is it too hard to make such tools easy enough to use? I know not...

Dawn and I also had a chat about online photo editors. In particular, we discussed those which claim to improve your photos. Whilst it could be a good idea to use these to improve that pic you snapped spur of the moment there could be some danger in relying on them heavily. This danger comes from diluting the basic skills of photography. I am not saying we shouldn't digitally manipulate images after we take them - this is a common-place and is part of photography. It is just that you can only improve the quality of an image so much; you can never make a bad image good with digital manipulation. Also, these editors are designed for web display. If you are using them for any purpose other than web display they will be effectively useless.

Today was also a first for me. I made my first comment on a colleague's blog. I found the blog of one of the Otago Polytechnic participants who is undertaking a project very similar to mine so could provide her with, I hope, helpful information on where she can locate tools to create an online slide show.

I also have discovered the danger in online tools where you quickly update what you are doing - such as Twitter and Facebook. My boss is my friend on Facebook and saw that I had updated my status somewhat flippantly. You see, I had insinuated that I sometimes do not apply myself fully to the task at hand. This, however, was not my intended meaning. I simply meant to state that I had the energy/motivation to get work done - two things that can begin to fade when you work the 5-9 shift. Just a word of caution: be clear in your communication and you can avoid possibly embarrassing situations. Incidentally, this brings me back to the topic with which I started my blog as this is one of the warnings that constantly cropped up in the readings I was doing for academic blogging...

Video Editing

Here are the results from my first playing session with JayCut. The video is not very "theatrical" but then it can be seen as more ritualistic - my colleague even mentioned that it reminded him of a wedding.

I was searching for videos to upload and came across the following two sites:

Internet Archive
"The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public."

Ourmedia
"Video producers and podcasters use Ourmedia to show off their works and create communities of interest."

Both sites have a wealth of information in many different forms.

Reflection?

Well, I have been asked to reflect on what I am doing in the DIL. Last night, however, I realised that because I was not carrying out reflection in action I could not reflect on action since I wasn't even recording what my actions were! Consequently, my day yesterday was not quite as effective as it could have been.

I did start working on Wikis and video editing so I will summarise what I remember.

Simon Hart was keen that I look at wikis for the Theatre Studies Programme to use as a way of collaborating between staff since they could post an entry and other staff could edit it and provide feedback thereby having a living document. The other option for these purposes is to have a blog with an RSS feed so staff knew when a change had been made; the changes would be in their face rather than staff having to go and hunt for them. My next step is to set up a wiki to see just how they work from a practical perspective.

I also skulked around the net to see if I could find either wikis or blogs which fostered a community of practice. This was very hard since most of them talk about theatre in general rather than specific forms of theatre - queer theatre was the community of practice with which I was concerned. My thoughts here lead me in the direction of setting up a community site for queer theatre. Although the problem will be buy-in since, for the site to be of any use, the community would need to embrace it fully. Add to this the phenomenon that theatre practitioners have very little time/effort to update a blog or other site this task may be quite difficult.

I then changed my concentration ever so slightly to look at on-line video editors. Why? A practitioner could use them to report/reflect on their work (if they are working in a traditional paradigm); they could be blended with live theatre; they could be used as a digital performance. I am using a web 2.0 directory to find on-line editors to use. So far this has been fruitful but has not been carried out in a co-ordinated fashion. My colleague Allison Brown, Digital Initiatives Librarian, who had the brilliant idea that I compare the different editors I find on a spreadsheet. What a fantastic idea! And, I know, you are thinking it is also so banal but my mind is working slowly these days. So, you can look forward to more...