Contemporary Technologies

MIVC503 Conclusion

Following my unsuccessful first coursework, I took a new direction towards something I was personally interested in and could explore in depth. My ideas began with the technology of literature: from the oral tradition to the printing press to today’s e-readers. Through investigation of such technology I was able to gain a better understanding of the pros and cons of books vs. the Internet.

I looked at the way literary works have found their way online through Twitter and Facebook. I took this a step further, translating book extracts into texts and email, comparing the effects. These ideas helped my attempt to overcome my bias towards real books, which found focus in the online study guide phenomena. This is something that interested me as a way the Internet can help rather than hinder literacy. Eager to become part of this, I immediately noticed what these sites lacked: images. Noting the success of visual study guides in book form (Horrible Histories) I wondered why sites such as Sparknotes had not utilized the potential of visual aids. I showed through experimentation that just a few images and colour could be effective in combating boredom and being memorable.

Sarah Maple (source)
more detailed post

Not content with simply supplementing my images into the websites, contemporary artist Sarah Maple inspired me to take more guerilla-style approach. I experimented with pop up windows, attacking the reader of the study site with the images they were lacking, to compliment and aid their learning. I found this led me to ask further questions about springing information on a larger group than just students; why not the whole world. With this in mind I aimed to target gossip and social networking sites and I found the outcome both humorous and thought-provoking. All day we stare at a screen with the potential to teach us so much, yet we waste it looking at rubbish. Would my proposal ever change this? To find out I could have made the website itself to see what response I received. However, I think my investigation has effectively identified a problem and offered a solution.

Links to final animations:

http://i39.tinypic.com/35ml27d.gif

http://i44.tinypic.com/egr03s.gif

http://i42.tinypic.com/bi3tb5.gif

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/autumn_daze/gracebook.gif

Afterthought: A distraction FROM distractions?

Obviously posting Pop Up images on an existing study site would find an audience of people already in the mindset of being willing to learn.
But what about those people who go through life ignoring art and literature in favour of mind-numbing 'x-factor culture'? Could I ever get them to care about books like The Odyssey?

I know a lot of people who'd rather read Heat magazine....

What about people who are students and do need to read, but spend their lives procrastinating on Facebook, and Tumblr (see the girls in the post below) instead?

Bombarding these kind of sites with my guerilla-style educating techniques might have a surprising outcome in sparking people's interest. Or they'll ignore it as they would any Pop Up, despite my efforts to make facts visually interesting and accessible. This is something to explore in the future, obviously the chapter guides I have made would be lost on people not seeking knowledge of them, but dropping minor facts into people's day would be great, they might be able to drop them into a conversation to sound clever or use them in a quiz!

Rosy Fingers

.gif of the factual pop up example (click to see it full size)

Target audience...

These are some of the people I found on Tumblr that might benefit from some help with The Odyssey!

"gotta read dis shit"

"fuck my life"

"someone tell me why"

Looks like my guides could be a big success...

Further steps...

Though I have achieved the message I wanted to put across, I have lots of ideas about where this could go next. I think as an idea, it has a lot of potential.

To start with I could finish making summaries of every book in the Odyssey and make more Pop Ups with just one useful fact on, like the epithet one. But why stop there? There are thousands different books provided for on the sites I have looked at. I could give the organisation a catchy title and every Pop Up could link back to this: a manifesto about supporting visual learning and technology and links to the study guide for every book on the database.

It never ends...

Students are constantly on the internet so it would not take long for this to spread by friends sharing it. I would like it to be used by everyone, not just students, encouraging the world to become familiar with challenging literature they may not have touched before. And I don't mean watching the film version.

The proposed site could have downloadable .PDF files to aid studies and posters to print off, utilizing the power of images in learning.

Gif version

I have struggled with Dreamweaver and it does not look as though I will be able to make actual web pages with pop ups. This gives a better idea of how the image would pop up, surprising the reader.