Featured Image: Screenshot from Annie Hall (1977)
Attendance Assignment (10 Minutes)
Look inside your backpack. What is the one thing that most directly signifies who you are as a person? This is an open-ended question and obviously open to interpretation. Explain to your partner why this object represents you.
Think, Pair, Share (30 Minutes)
The beginning of Jeff Rice’s article “I am McLuhan” recounts Rice’s early encounter with McLuhan in the film Annie Hall (1977).
Rice stresses that he came to know McLuhan by mistake. He was never taught McLuhan formally in school, but bought The Gutenberg Galaxy for 25 cents
as an undergraduate at The University of Florida, probably around 1987 or 1988, at a university library book sale. I cannot tell you why I bought this used book, other than I recognized McLuhan’s name – as do most people who are unfamiliar with his writings – from Woody Allen’s 1977 film Annie Hall.
Later on in the essay he says this:
To say I am McLuhan is also to say I am a network of many moments, individuals, experiences, texts, and other items that extend, mix, and clash as they interact. McLuhan continues to be such a network or interplay for me (and the network called McLuhan will change with each person who also states, “I am McLuhan” since different agents will produce different networks). An anecdote, such as buying a book in college, is not, then, inconsequential, but serves as one actor within this network. Another anecdote, such as watching a movie when I was a teenager might frame another network. Or both moments might be framed as belonging within the same network.
We talked about this question of identification with regards to DJ Spooky’s discussion about how media create “the all consuming desire of average kids to be like Michael Jackson, Steve Jobs, Madonna, or Lady Gaga or Danger Mouse: a desire that has resulted in a culture of plastic surgery and drive-by shootings to obtain tennis shoes.”
Compare the object that you mentioned in the attendance assignment as representing you to a quote from McLuhan that struck you as reflecting your own life or experiences. Why / how do you identify with some things and not others? Consider the answer to this question in light of McLuhan’s discussion of media as extensions of human beings.
Work On Your Project (30 Minutes)
Think about this lesson in light of your own project. What are you remediating and why? Spend the rest of the period discussing your project with a partner. Remember, you need:
- one quote, idea, or image from McLuhan, Eames, or O’Neil
- two different types of media
- Prezi multimedia project that remediates this idea.
The project is due Tuesday, September 27 by midnight. Post the embed code of your Prezi to this blog, and tag the post “Project 1.” Tagging your post this way is absolutely essential, because I’ll have difficulty finding your project if it isn’t tagged properly.
There is no class on Thursday (work on your projects). Next Tuesday, we don’t have class either. Instead, I’d like to invite you to the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation (CDSC) at 10:35-11:50 to play board games with my DTC 101 students. Snacks will be provided!