Blog – The Disrupted Journal of Media Practice

Multimodal Research – Edward Said, The Amateur and The Exile

Janneke Adema — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 20:40:14 +0000

By Matthew Hawkins

I recall a conversation between an academic and an MA student. The two were discussing the ocularcentric approach to the analysis, and conceptualisation of cinema. The MA student was annoyed by the structure of his own utterances, and his continual, unconscious references to viewing, and to seeing the cinema. He was somewhat embarrassed by his inability to verbally engage with the rhetoric and discourse of audio, and to give full weight to the importance of sound in the conceptualisation of cinema. The academic responded by acknowledging the devious ability of language to colonise our ideas. Often, we do not speak language, rather language speaks us. The form in which we express our ideas not only informs said ideas, but rather shapes, constrains and constructs concepts on our behalf. What media practice can offer the academy is the creation of new forms of argumentation, new languages, and ways to construct and disseminate ideas. These new forms of course present their own problems, limitations, and devious discourse shaping techniques, but despite this they may present the opportunity for new forms of thinking. Gilles Deleuze notes, for example, that the invention of cinema opened up a possibility for the creation of new concepts, and new modes of thought (1986)[i]. Thinking, the creation of ideas, and the production of new knowledge is dependent upon technology, whether that be the technology of language, image making machines, networks, or others.

The discipline of media studies attracts academics from a wide range of fields. Lecturers, and researchers regularly move from their original areas of training and study, bringing with them BAs, MAs, and PhDs in literature, sociology, history, philosophy, etc. The study of media in this regard is an outsider sport. Intellectuals positioned in media departments are exiled from their original homes, and they bring with them a wide collection of methods, theories and concepts. Media studies is far from a unified field, and this is its strength. The language it speaks is diverse, and constantly in flux.

Media practitioners are equally exiled, stuck on a hinterland somewhere between industry, and what is regarded as serious scholarship. My practice doesn’t sit easily in either category. I’m a filmmaker, and this pursuit is not held in the same esteem as the writing of complex philosophical tomes, yet my work’s lack of obvious entertainment value positions it outside of the realm of ‘the movie’, or the entertainment industry. I am an outsider on all fronts, but this is not a de facto negative position. My writing, and my moving image work exist in dialogue with one another. They disrupt one another in a positive sense, not allowing for any of the two forms to remain too comfortable for too long. Edward Said comments in detail on the representation of the intellectual in this regard. For Said, the position of the outsider is the right role for the modern intellectual, as “[e]xile for the intellectual in this metaphysical sense is restlessness, movement, constantly being unsettled, and unsettling others” (1993a)[ii]. Said also calls for an amateurism in the image of the modern intellectual. The amateur works not out of obligation, but out of love, and this method, if we can call it that, allows one to make “connections across lines and barriers, in refusing to be tied down to a speciality, in caring for ideas and values despite the restrictions of a profession” (1993b)[iii]. A multimodal research praxis allows for an unsettling of discipline, an unsettling of technology and, most importantly, an unsettling of the researcher. Like the amateur and the exile, the practitioner/researcher hybrid creature looks for connections, and attempts to crack open the machine to see what’s inside. The connections made are not neat, and they are not always successful, but the method is open to the possibility of the new, of the unique, of the innovative.

This draws comparison with the inter-disciplinary research team. Inter-disciplinary research should not exclusively consist of harmonious, loving exchanges. Rather, this approach should result in the violent and destructive collision of ideas and methods, which scar, bend, crack and bastardise the respective disciplines. The researchers and their disciplines should be permanently changed after this meeting. This is where notions of professionalism constrain the production of knowledge. The professional, upstanding, Society indorsed researcher is so loyal to discipline, and their respective methodologies that they dare not step out of line for fear of being ostracised.

The multimodal academic exile is perfectly placed to produce challenging, vitalistic, forceful work capable of opening new vistas, and creating unique concepts. Adam Brown’s UniverCity offers the potential to appropriate a discourse of hypercapitalistic property development, as a ground for the critical investigation of the changing spaces of the university campus in a physical, digital and virtual sense[iv]. The use of the web forum[v] opens up a potential for a polyphony of voices, and a non-linear exploration of ideas. Sara Jones reflects on her first meeting with Claire Anterea from the ‘drowning island’ of Kiribati[vi]. Jones encounters Anterea through the camera lens, which mediates their relationship, and frames the subject (literally) and the response of the researcher (physically). The camera in this sense does not simply record an encounter, it facilitates a response which itself can be ‘data’ to be recovered and investigated. The physical relationship between the photographer and the camera creates liminal, emotional moments, which have value but are difficult to grasp. As Marta Rabikowska notes, “conflict, frustration, agony, uncertainty, and surprise brings about unexpected research findings and new research questions”[vii]. Anthony Luvera similarly explores the power relations between the object of the camera, and the wielder of this object in his project Assembly[viii], whereas Katherine Wimpenny, Peter Gouzouasis, and Karen Benthall bring together poetry, music, and images, as well as a multitude of voices[ix]. Wimpenny et al mobilise their own poetry as a reflective device and a graphological disruption. Many of the relationships in the projects presented (words/screen, light/lens, flesh/machine) have the potential to create and to reveal knowledge. The form in which this knowledge is expressed, the language in which we speak, can also have the potential to surprise and reveal if open to a certain amount of disruption.

[i] Deleuze, G. (1986) Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. 4th edn. Minneapolis: Continuum International Publishing Group – Athlone Press.

[ii] Said, E. (1993a) REITH LECTURES 1993: Representations of an Intellectual Edward Said Lecture 3: Intellectual Exiles. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith3.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2016).

[iii] Said, E. (1993b) REITH LECTURES 1993: Representations of an Intellectual Edward Said Lecture 4: Professionals and Amateurs. Available at: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1993_reith4.pdf (Accessed: 7 October 2016).

[iv] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/univercity/

[v] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/forum/index.php

[vi] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/performing-vulnerability-in-kiribati/

[vii] Betwixt and between: Exploring the liminal through the social sciences, arts and humanities available at – https://www.academia.edu/9917241/Conference_paper_interdisciplinarity_and_visual_methods

[viii] http://www.luvera.com/assembly/

[ix] https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/remembering-reflecting-returning/

An a/r/tographer’s perspective on practice

Janneke Adema — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 08:54:32 +0000

By Peter Gouzouasis

Whenever I hear or read the word ‘practice’ I think of the infamous Allen Iverson rant from 2001.

“If I can’t practice, I can’t practice man. If I’m hurt, I’m hurt. I mean … simple as that. It ain’t about that … I mean it’s … It’s not about that … At all. You know what I’m saying I mean… But it’s…it’s easy … to, to talk about… It’s easy to sum it up when you’re just talking about practice. We’re sitting in here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game, but we’re talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? … And we talking about practice. I know I supposed to be there. I know I’m supposed to lead by example… I know that … And I’m not … I’m not shoving it aside, you know, like it don’t mean anything. I know it’s important, I do. I honestly do… But we’re talking about practice man. What are we talking about? Practice? We’re talking about practice, man. [laughter from the media crowd] We’re talking about practice. We’re talking about practice. We ain’t talking about the game. [more laughter] We’re talking about practice, man. When you come to the arena, and you see me play, you see me play don’t you? You’ve seen me give everything I’ve got, right? But we’re talking about practice right now.”

(Iverson, 2001)

All kidding aside, the term ‘practice’ means different things to different people, in different professions.

I started playing guitar at age 8. I didn’t ‘practice’ the guitar much from age 8-12. I was mostly interested in baseball and playing outdoors with friends. In fact, I recall a glorious summer morning when I was waiting for my old guitar teacher, Mr. Shumsky, to come to our house for my weekly lesson when we received a phone call that he’d suddenly passed away the day before. “Woo hoo, I can go play ball with my friends!” was my typical 10 year old reaction.

Mr. Shumsky was a patient man. His older brother was a world famous violinist, but he was merely a ‘jack of all trades’ when it came to musical instruments – he played guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo, violin, cello, and mandola. A confirmed bachelor, he lived at the YMCA in center city, and always wore a nice cleanly pressed wool suit, crisp white shirt, and tie. A week after he passed my mother saw the obituary in the newspaper – he’d left close to $200,000 to the American Cancer Society.

I recall that we’d always have fun lessons. He’d take the time to review exactly how I was to approach and go though his prescribed music readings, songs, and chord progressions. It was from him I learned that it was important to engage a child with playing music to develop a deep, sustainable love of music making. Without ever saying anything about my habits, he knew I’d rarely practice more than 20 minutes a day, and sometimes I’d be more interested in making feedback sounds with my electric guitar and old tube (valve) amplifier than in learning to play “Home on the range.” But somehow, I was always prepared to play my lesson and take my learning to the next level.

Even in my early teens, when I started to play guitar two to three hours a day, I never thought of play as practice. Learning to transcribe songs while playing drop the needle with LPs on my small turntable was sometimes arduous. But the rewards of learning a new song to play at a weekend coffeehouse or house party were plentiful.

Playing didn’t become practice – in the tedious, repetitive sense of playing scales and arpeggios over and over to reach technical perfection – until I started studying music at age 15. It was then I received my first book of classical guitar etudes by Fernando Sor, which built upon the techniques gleaned from scales and arpeggios, and went about the demanding task of learning to play like my new found idols, Andres Segovia and John Williams. And of course, by the time I auditioned for university and I began the ‘serious study’ of music, I was practicing 4-6 hours a day – the monotony of repeating the same passages of music, over and over, until my fingers and mind could perform at perfection and from memory.

In consideration, perhaps playing music – making music, musicking – should be equated with praxis, not practice.

Practice-Based Methodologies And The Researcher As Subject

Janneke Adema — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 10:14:49 +0000

By Katherine Wimpenny

In this short blog post I would like to discuss the theme of practice-based methodologies and in particular the researcher as subject.

I have enjoyed reading Emma Walters ‘Autoethnographer’s Tale’ and her use of a blog to walk beside her on her doctorate journey, a neutral friend, an ear that never tires. Herself – shared, open, honest, vulnerable, and a research practice that parallels the work presented in our paper ‘Remembering, reflecting, returning: A return to practice journey through poetry and images’ as part of the present Special Issue. In our piece we share our willingness to be open to experiencing the world in and through our methodological and pedagogical practices, to develop a greater awareness of self in the world, to receive, to understand, to create, to write – to be consciously acquainted. Importantly, we are interested in exploring how aspects of knowing and learning about the self can enhance our own and our students/researchers/practitioners learning experiences. As we write stories of practice we not only learn to be critical of our actions, we learn to better inform our practice and those who are engaged in similar life experiences. As Gouzouasis (2008:231)[1] asserts “the more questions we unearth from fertile s/p/laces (de Cosson, 2004)[2] of inquiry and the more we describe and understand the qualities of our work in new, imaginative ways, the less finite, reckless, fleeting and self-absorbed our work may become”.

A broad landscape of scholarly practice has emerged that reinstates the author as subject, and embraces creative and storied means of representation. Through a storied blog or paper or poem we can artfully describe the highly subjective social, emotional, spiritual, and heartful aspects of being a researcher, an academic, a practitioner. Working with artists/researchers/teachers such as Peter Gouzouasis has enlivened my research practice and enabled me to enrich, deepen and expand the ways in which I explore, question and open up conversations with research participants, whilst also leaving space for the viewer to add to the picture, which sits well when considering the complexity of human life and experience. Emma’s writing reminds me of the research practice which Ron Pelias (2004:1)[3] writes about, knowing there is more to making a critical case, more than establishing criteria and authority, more to presenting research findings when we connect from the heart, the body, the spirit.

Emma’s blog also re-connected me to my own research experiences not least in the challenges of conducting authentic PAR. During my doctoral journey I used a similar method of self-reflexive write ups, and whilst not in the form of a blog, they were shared openly with my supervisory team and participants. As a valid form of ‘data,’ these entries were used alongside the practitioners’ narratives, and anlaysed as part of ‘first person action research practice’ as discussed by Heron and Reason (2001)[4], as part of fostering an inquiring approach, acting with awareness, and carefully considering the effects of action. This emphasis on the researcher playing a committed part within the inquiry process, and not taking an outsider researcher role, can only help to portray the layers of complexity involved in research inquiry and to question established theories, to situations as they arise, to acknowledge that people think differently from one another, and importantly that one does not always know what is best.

Whilst also wary of such self-reflexive work not being about unnecessary navel-gazing (Finlay, 2003)[5] the opportunity to reach out and connect with others, to offer a space for dialogue, to evoke incitements to action, are all worthy scholarly purposes for research practices. Emma’s willingness to be open about her own journeying outwardly exemplifies the labour of learning, the joys and anguish felt, yet benefits to be realised from such personal risk taking made transparent.

As the piece ‘Creating future memories: a dialogue on process’, also highlights, the experience of reality is multisensory and embodied and our methods of inquiry need to move beyond the textual, to incorporate the auditory, the visual, the immersive. We need to expand the palettes from which we can represent our work, along with our understanding of how these can be shared with others. Similar then to the questions posed about conducting ‘messy ethnography of digital materialities across a series of cultures’, is the importance of questioning the substantive features of our inquiry and how as artists/researchers/teachers we manage the tensions of research practice which is dynamic, fluid and seeks not to be contained yet generates possibilities for fresh approaches for creating, translating, and exchanging knowledge. Creative practice based methodologies have potential to extend the researcher and participants outside of their comfort zone through both the process of inquiry into human experience, as well as in the questioning of how theoretical perspectives might be fruitfully integrated, and how through grappling with this integration we can continue to extend our use of the power of aesthetic portrayal to study human experience.

[1] Gouzouasis, P. (2008) Toccata on assessment, validity & interpretation. In S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with A/r/tography. Sense Publishers: Rotterdam, pp. 221 – 232.

[2] de Cosson, A. F. (2004) The hermeneutic dialogue: Finding patterns amid the aporia of the Artist/Reseacher/Teacher. In R. L. Irwin & A. de Cosson (Eds.), A/r/tography: rendering self through arts-based living inquiry. Vancouver, BC: Pacific Educational Press, pp 127 – 152

[3] Pelias, R. (2004) A methodology of the heart: evoking academic and daily life. Oxford; Altamira Press.

[4] Heron J., & Reason, P. (2001) ‘The Practice of Co-operative Inquiry: Research ‘with’ rather than ‘on’ people’. In P. Reason, & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of Action Research: Participative Inquiry and Practice. London, SAGE.

[5] Finlay, L. (2003) Through the looking glass: intersubjectivity and hermeneutic refection. In L. Finaly & B. Gouch (Eds.), (2003) Reflexivity: a practical guide for researchers in health and social science. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.

Conversations Around The Politics And Economics Of Media Practice Publishing

Janneke Adema — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 09:02:58 +0000

In this first of a series of short blog posts by the editors of this special issue I would like to highlight one of the themes we have selected to structure the content of the disrupted Journal of Media Practice, namely Politics and Economics. This theme explores the following questions:

What kind of inhibitions do the politics and economics of publishing pose to a disruptive media journal?
How can alternative forms of publishing form the starting point for a new politics and new social and economic relations?

Within this theme we have placed or identified 4 of the projects/papers that are available on or through the platform, although several of the other contributions will be discussing elements related to this theme too. I would like to shortly introduce the projects within this theme and the conversations that have been building up around and across them.

Adam Brown’s paper ‘UniverCity: Images of Success and Structures of Risk’, is based on a participatory web forum (available here) on which Brown and other contributors are compiling and exploring an archive of digitally produced images and videos (flythroughs) that accompany educational architecture, or more in specific, the territorial expansion and redevelopment projects that increasingly characterise the neoliberal university. Brown analyses these renderings as temporary forms of intellectual and physical knowledge production, ideologies replaced afterwards by more messy realities. As Brown argues, these architectures and architectural imagings are produced to convince, persuade, embolden and reassure, where they are mobilised to produce a certain vision and ideology of the university. Brown makes some interesting observations of how this relates directly to publishing, both in form and development and in practice, where, as he argues, the political-economy of publishing is directly implicated in these expansion strategies: both are material and speculative manifestations of the marketization of the university and HE. As Brown states: ‘The traditional academic paper is now structurally implicated in the architecture of the University. As conventional publications generate capital via pseudo-empirical measurements of research activity, capital growth is factored into expansion plans.’ ‘From the promise of this income, buildings arise’

Zach McDowell looks directly at the political-economy of journal publishing as part of his paper ‘Disrupting Academic Publishing: Questions of Access in a Digital Environment’. He focuses in specific on issues of economics and free un(der)paid labor in traditional academic publishing and how these practices undermine the intent of knowledge production and dissemination. McDowell’s paper is set-up as a wiki to allow other contributors to directly contribute to and comment on his paper. McDowell puts forward a question that is of fundamental importance to this special issue, namely, ‘how can a journal of media practice ever hope to be disruptive if it remains behind a paywall?’ As McDowell argues, this disruption would end up being only a side-step, a gap for this special issue, where he conceives of large-publisher supported academic journals (JMP is published by Taylor & Francis) as an ‘outdated and dying practice’.

Jurij Smrke’s contribution to this special issue ‘Philosophers Have Only Referred to Texts, the Point is to Link Them’ is a meta project in which he aims to explore the potential of automated direct linking from references to the location of these references. Smrke wants to help the contributors to this special issue to link from their texts/references directly to the passages they quote, within the limits of online availability of the originals. Not only is Smrke’s contribution an exploration of the question why this is not yet common practice from a technical perspective, he also aims to explore the ethical and moral questions of linking to online available content, especially to what he calls the ‘deprivatized content’ available in shadow libraries. As Smrke states, even though linking to pirated content that is already available to the public can not be seen as copyright infringement under the European Copyright Directive, many may see it as a grey area best avoided in “public”. This eventhough it offers various possibilities to extend direct linking and make it more robust by offering various locations to link to in inevitable cases of link rot. Smrke is developing his project during the duration of this special issue and is soliciting feedback, both from contributors and others, on some of the issues he is raising, which people can submit via hypothes.is or the blog comments here: https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/blog/commons-practice/

My own paper, Performative Publications, also falls within the politics and economics theme. It explores how we can better align the form of our research with its contents, from both an ethical and a political perspective. Based on a co-authored journal article originally published in New Formations, this project is an ‘extension’ or a further instantiation of that article, republishing it in a form that more closely aligns the argument made within the original article. The contribution to this special issue further extends this performative project/adaptation by adding further observations and reflections on the practice and idea of performative publishing and performative publications via hypothes.is, intermixed with user comments and further peer reviews. These comments then get further entangled with and developed, in an inherently collaborative way, with the content it originally responded to. From a political-economy perspective this contribution wants to further explore what a journal article is or can be, highlighting its processual, collaborative, and inherently multimodal potential. At the same time it continues to extend the ideas of the open access community, where it argues that in line with ideas and practices of ‘radical open access’ the intention is not only to enable more access to publications, but also to promote a continued experimentation with the form of publications, something which unfortunately tends to get de-prioritised within discussions on and strategies for open access.

If you want to join the conversations around this theme, please contribute your thoughts via hypothes.is either on the sites of the various papers, or elsewhere, using the tags disruptedjournal and politicseconomics. You can follow the conversation around this theme as it unfolds here:

https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/conversations/politics-economics/

Why is this not common(s) practice?

Jurij Smrke — Thu, 28 Jul 2016 08:38:32 +0000

DEATHBEDS SYMPOSIUM

Janneke Adema — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 17:33:43 +0000

We at DOORS UNLIMITED have been recently developing & testing some iffy convocational technologies. What kinds of intranests become possible among users who have internalized their internets, we wonder. Imagine an internet. Now, beside that, down the hall, imagine a researcher prototyping a device for transmitting high-speed data thru auxiliary pieces of meat (pork loins, beef livers), while in the next room a child is ashamed for having swallowed a button, while on the beach, out the window, a family is taking turns holding up towels while the others take on or off their bathing suits. Imagine all this happening on the internet while at the same time, you’re waiting in a waiting room or changing in a changing room. How, abductively, you are strategizing a procedure for blending both- as-all-as-it. You are alternating revealing centrifugally & concealing centripetally. All this time, you have been “as”-ing this place as that, enacting yet another neither-time in so doing.

Nobody needs to imagine an internet as the staging for this, but when we do, we alleviate its significance some, soften its volume to a mention less overpoweringly articulate than is so often the case. Likewise, it would be foolish, if wishful, to call the the various conduits, programs & interfaces that we’ve been developing “useless.” So far as we have figured, from preliminary demos, the Inner Browser is pretty good for deforming & reorienting ideas about where or why or how we use the internet. But this, for us, is only its most basic application. Just as the internet has invigorated a shared sense of/for screens & scrims & perpetually displaced networlds, we are excited by the glimmers & glissandos, parades & paragrammars, blurs & breathing books prompted by/thru an urge to inner browse.

We are designing instruments for destabilizing immediacies, for precariously occupying what zones emerge between play & not-play. These technologies are expressly inefficient & inexact. They do not locate, determine, capture or convey matter that purports to be exterior to the conscious curiosity of the user. Rather, these provisional- conditional devices readily riddle their own pre-settings (as well as whatever settings they operate within). Each Inner Browser is co-authored by its operator to persistently adapt the investigative proclivities of its user, mimicking the characteristic interchanges a user is accustomed to performing in a variety of evocative shapes & textures that themselves bespeak adaption. Once a familiarity with the device is established, a useris likely to encounter everyday interstices as seeming to act up, act out or carry on excessively, unexplainably. Indeed, the technology provokes engagement among contingencies that are not ordinarily communicative. Inner Browsers are even known to intend such intense hyper-causality that their effects are mistaken for melodrama.

These same properties of hyper-correlativity & over-emphasis struck us at DOORS UNLIMITED as particularly promising. Our practitioners are eager to test Inner Browser technologies in the emergent fields of soap-operatic symposia & ante-institutional resilient resourcefulness. Beginning June 6th, we’ll be hosting a temporary workshop-lab just down the hall from SenseLab at Concordia University in Montréal, QC. Our goal is to work with area researchers & practitioners to further develop & test a variety of low-fi technologies for inner browsing. We propose to share our findings & pose questions regarding the technology’s implications & ramifications with the readership of the Journal of Media Practice as part of its special online issue/forum.

Some questions we can imagine arising include:

How might the residues of exhaustive internet navigation be reinvigorated as vital pluripotencies?
Which methods & maneuvers inherent to existing digital processes already resemble play?
What would have to be the case in order for matters of compatibility with existing technologies to be rendered null?
How does “deep riddling” compare to “deep googling” & other expressions of habitual internet usage?
What kinds of games, jokes & vernacular will the Inner Browser spawn? How will this affect other, related modes of discourse?

Our intention is to stoke the dJMP conversations throughout the symposium (http://deathbedssymposium.blogspot.ca.), to have materials at the ready during shared meals & on walks, all during the elastic “down” time(s).

The way we would like best & perhaps be best suited to engage the issue would be less as content contributors & more as transducers. We propose to enter the conversation mid-way through, adopt threads of discourse in progress, & reconfigure those as actual live-flesh/habeas corpus/analogue/non-data, immanently changeable & resilient to the methods of infinite dispersal/cut&parcel&paste tactics of the digital domain. Rather, these ideas will find form & reflexive subjectivity in real bodies, vested in their particular spacial-temporal relationality. Specifically, we are proposing to mount a dialogue that emerges from those represented on the JMP/CDM special issue site. Participant artists & scholars–– we are envisioning more than 2, but fewer than 6–– will each take a thread (a position, exploration, proposition, etc) from one of the issue’s contributors, further research & write themselves into that thread, then synthesize this role in a dialectical picnic staged as part of a symposium set for the weekend of July 15 – 17, here in Montréal.

Notably, we will not be producing any content for the internet. There will be no redux, no snapshots, no FOMO prophylaxis. We are not proposing that any convocational eventedness would or could or should gain efficacy by means of its becoming distinctly less situated. Our approach is one that is very likely to induce connectivity around the sharing & refining of ideas pertaining to the issue’s focus, however we would not like for the “result” to be represented as part of the issue’s document. Perhaps it is more that the issue is represented as part of the picnic. This is problematic to publishing, but it is this very problem we would like to place our picnic directly inside of.

Still, it is also our distinct wish to collaborate. (We love collaboration!) So, we would like to contribute the invitation for the event to the issue. That invitation will be elaborate–– part invocation, part ilynx-ive reading ritual, part provocation, part score, etc. It is a pact that something will have taken place & is keeping taking place in the processual present.

Our work of the past couple weeks (since the Inner Browser Lab) has been in developing & working with what we call a “play mat,” mutable-tactile platform for active conversation. (Some pictures from that here >> https://we.tl/1AEKSn7Pbl) Our plan for the coming days leading up to the symposium is to design a format whereby papers & other assorted notes might be further annotated, interpreted & played [thru/on/with] in real time among & between real bodies.

In the meantime–– & any time–– we consider our projects as unruly & porous, predictably (if not impossibly). That is to say: please do adapt any images &/or ideas as/into any apertures that open interestingly to/for you & your projects! Really, we are much more interested in propositional politically than propriety, so permission for us is never an issue. Communication, tho, is especially lovely–– made all the lovelier by the removal of its regulation.

A week form today, I’m sure new forms will have emerged from the dust clouds, too. So, we’ll plan to keep revisiting our contributions thusly, to be sure, tho it is hard to tell from the vantage of before-the-symposium just how that might be.

We’ve added a bit more in the way of description to the main Symposium blog, re: our project for dJMP: http://deathbedssymposium.blogspot.ca.

Please do feel free to point other contributors toward it &/or put them directly in touch w/ us. It would be wonderful if, for instance, some wanted to send us some of their notes & thoughts on the implications, stipulations & ramifications they see framing their projects &/or thusly, their projects framing.

More info will be added to the site in the coming days as well.

Using Hypothes.is

The Disrupted Journal Team — Tue, 28 Jun 2016 12:36:31 +0000

To enable and structure the conversations around the content of this special ‘disrupted’ issue of the Journal of Media Practice, we are planning to use hypothes.is. Kris Schaffer (http://kris.shaffermusic.com/2016/04/hypothesis-public-research-notebook/) gives a useful summary of what hypothes.is is and does: ‘Hypothes.is is an open annotation tool for the web, allowing anyone to highlight, annotate, or comment on any webpage via a Chrome plugin (web developers can also install it on their sites, like I have with my blog). It’s similar to how Medium users can annotate and highlight blog posts on that platform, but you can use the hypothes.is plugin on any website. It’s important to note that hypothes.is users don’t alter the original website. Rather the hypothes.is plugin adds an annotation/highlighting layer over the webpage that only hypothes.is users can see, and hypothes.is users can toggle that annotation/highlighting layer on and off as they like.’

With the aid of hypothes.is we will thus create a comment or annotation layer over your various projects, binding them together to some extent, and enabling the disrupted JMP community to establish connections and to interact with specific aspects of your projects as they evolve. Hypothes.is is already used as a comment, annotation and conversation tool within various academic settings, for example to enable the collaborative annotation of James Brown’s book Ethical Programs: Hospitality and the Rhetorics of Software (University of Michigan Press, 2015).

To structure the various commentaries – and thus the conversations – across the disrupted JMP projects, we will be using tags or keywords to categorise the comments, questions and/or replies. We will create a live feed on the disrupted JMP platform that collects all the responses around the papers together using the tag or keyword disruptedjournal. Based on the submissions received, we have also structured the conversations around specific themes or topics of conversation. These are Performative Publishing; Practice-based Methodologies, Processual Research; Debating Media Practice Publishing; Multimodal research; and Politics and Economics. These themes will make it easier for people to identify the projects that are of interest to them, and will enable us to structure the conversations around certain topics more clearly. The conversations around these themes will similarly be structured around specific tags, which can be filtered out of the larger live feed to enable people to follow the conversation around specific themes of interest.

In order for this set-up to work smoothly, you can find some more detailed information underneath about how to use hypothes.is, and how to set up an account. You can also find some more information here on how to add tags to your comments and about how we will be using these (specific) tags or keywords to structure the conversations around the projects/papers.

Getting started with hypothes.is

Before you start annotating with hypothes.is, you will need to create an account, which you can do here: https://hypothes.is/register. You will find that you can interact with webpages and documents using hypothes.is in a variety of ways, via a Chrome plugin, by adding some code to your own webpage or by using a bookmarklet. For more about these options, please see here: https://hypothes.is/

Once you are all set-up, you can start annotating/leaving comments. For some basic instructions on how the hypothes.is interface works please see here (https://hypothes.is/docs/help) and the screenshots underneath.

We have also collected a few videos that show you how to use the interface underneath. Make sure to make your comments related to this special issue public (see picture above) to enable others to see your comments and for them to go into the live feed. You are of course free to make additional private annotations wherever you see fit.

Tags

As said before we will be using tags to structure the content into live feeds (see here and here). Please see the slideshow underneath to familiarise yourself with the use of tags when commenting/annotating. For this special issue we will be using specific tags to structure the content. Please make sure that you use the tag disruptedjournal for every comment that you place that relates to this special issue. Next to this general tag we will ask you to add additional tags based on the theme you are contributing to or responding to. These tags are:

performativepublishing, practicemethods, processualresearch, mediapracticepublishing, multimodalresearch, politicseconomics

Download (PDF, 395KB)

So for example, if you are leaving a comment on a paper that deals with processual research, please make sure to add the tags disruptedjournal and processualresearch. This is a bit of additional work, but we hope this will become easier once we have all familiarised ourselves with this process (it remains very much an experiment for us too so please let us know if this is not working out for you).

If you have any more question related to this please use hypothes.is to the right to ask for questions or clarifications or alternatively use the regular comment section underneath this blog post.

Joint Clipper & DMLL Project Workshop: Coventry University 20th November

The Disrupted Journal Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 18:28:55 +0000

The Clipper project is developing a free and open source software toolkit to support researchers in all disciplines who work with online digital audio-visual media and we extend a warm invite to attend our upcoming free community consultation workshop on Friday the 20^th November at the Disruptive Media Learning Lab, Coventry University, it starts at 10:00. At the workshop we shall be reviewing the latest prototype and discussing the implications of tools like Clipper for creative practice, research data management and new publishing models.

To book your place please visit this web link:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/clipper-project-workshop-coventry-university-tickets-19278500514

Workshop Content and Format

10:00 Arrival, registration and tea / coffee

10:30 Introductions, project overview and aims

10:45 Demonstration of prototype system, initial feedback & discussion

11:15 Hands-on session, feedback (please bring laptop & use Chrome browser)

12:00 Discussion

12:30 – 1:30 lunch, discussions and networking

Clipper Toolkit Description (from our brochure)

Clipper enables researchers to create and share virtual-clips from online media without altering the original data files. Clipper enables you to mark the start and end of interesting events while playing audio or video data files through a standard web browser. You can add rich text annotations to each clip, and combine clips into playlists (cliplists). For the latest overview of the Clipper Toolkit and what it does please visit this page.

One of the aims of Clipper is to make online audio visual resources more accessible and to enable collaborative opportunities. The Clipper toolkit aims to make it as easy to cite, reference and quote online audio-visual media as it is currently for textual resources.

The choice of HTML for the native system data file format is starting to bring big benefits and we are still exploring the implications and opportunities connected with this decision – one of the advantages being that user can ‘own’ their clipper documents and place them where they like for reuse.

Call for Papers

The Disrupted Journal Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2015 16:52:11 +0000

Call for Creative Works and Papers

Although media practice as a field and community embraces a plurality of media, the materiality of its scholarly forms of production and communication remain predominantly text-based. How then, can a journal of media practice (JMP) extend from a speculative focus on what media practice as research could be, to an exploration of the alternative forms of communication and circulation it could enable?

This special issue— guest edited by the Centre for Disruptive Media and Disruptive Media Learning Lab — will experiment with how media practice, in rethinking research as practice, could also disrupt the way we mediate this research through various formal and informal scholarly forms (including the academic journal).

Three central questions will be posed:

How is media practice disruptive of and re-performing the way we do scholarly communication and education?

How can JMP reconfigure (the politics of) its own practice?

What should a disruptive ‘journal’ of media practice look / sound / feel like?

Topics of Conversation

The aim of this digital only, open access special issue is to put forward a number of provocations with respect to what a ‘journal of media practice’ should or could be. To provide an alternative to the standard journal article, the guest editors will structure this issue around a selection of conversations to emphasise the evolving and collaborative nature of research.

The format and length of the publications or works around which these conversations will be centred will be open to negotiation – they can be multimodal, text-based or hybrid; articles, blog posts or books. The conversations will then be able to openly evolve (from ‘drafts’ to ‘final versions’ and beyond) incorporating peer commentary and reviews from invited media practitioners and the audience at large.

We propose the following topics of conversation, but are also open to other suggestions:

Disrupting the journal
What could a journal of media practice be in a digital environment? What can we learn from best practices?

Alternative forms of assessment
What can we learn from open peer review experiments and alternative forms of assessment in education? Instead of a verdict, how can assessment be shaped around processes of revision?

Processual research
From iterative publications to evolving scholarship, in what ways can we better emphasise the processual and ongoing nature of scholarship?

Performative publishing
How do the media we use perform their content and vice versa? What is the agency of our media, and how are we entangled with the media we use?

Education
What can we learn from experiments in online pedagogy for the way we communicate our research findings?

Multimodality and Practice-based Research
How can we explore criticality with or via different media forms?

Politics and Economics
What kind of inhibitions do the politics and economics of publishing pose to a disruptive media journal? How can alternative forms of publishing form the starting point for new politics and new social and economic relations?

JMP Editors Note

Longer term, the editors are interested in further exploring the legacy of this special edition in terms of a replacement for JMP Screenworks which will no longer be formally supported by JMP, but which will be an archive space for the period it has run.

Expressions of interest / outlines of proposed submissions to guest editors Jonathan Shaw and Janneke Adema by December 11^th 2015 at cfp@dmll.org.uk

Following initial discussions, submissions will be required by the end of February 2016. These will then be developed and explored as online conversations around the experimental platform during March and April 2016.

This experimental issue of JMP will be hosted at https://disruptedjournal.postdigitalcultures.org/