Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

My topic is “The Cross-Pollination of Appearance and Infrastructure in Mainstream Media Culture” –based on a paper of the same title, which I wrote for my final in Clay Shirky’s User Generated Class. Presenting Sunday February 17th @ 12:30.

http://www.cinematologists.com/2008/

“This year’s Department of Cinema Studies Student Conference builds on a decade-long tradition of a student-run event where student presenters defend their own unique work. Begun in the NYU Cinema Studies department, the conference has recently grown into an interdisciplinary look at cinema, media, and culture. This year’s two-day event, hosted by the Department of Cinema Studies, will feature several panels showcasing student research, and much more! The conference is co-sponsored by CASC, TUSC, the Tisch GSO, and GSAS.”

Tisch School of the Arts
721 Broadway - Basement Room 006
February 16 & 17

Two weeks ago Paramount Pictures released “Bee Movie.” The plot involves a bee student that graduates from college with only one career choice—honey. This typical massively marketed film release—which included huge billboards of the letter “B”, flashy web banners on hundreds of sites, and a trailer featuring George Michael’s classic tune, “Freedom”—has since grossed $180,000,000 worldwide. “Bee Movie’s” professional infrastructure is complimented by its equally professional appearance, a derivative of tried-and-true 3D character animation techniques established by Disney’s 1995 hit, “Toy Story.”

Historically films were either strictly professional or amateur in terms of both infrastructure and their appearance, but nowadays “Bee Movie” stands firmly in just one corner of a broad landscape that accepts new possibilities between professional and amateur—appearance and infrastructure.

Read more

I aim to explore the inherent out-of-the box software artifacts found within User-Generated content and how and to what end these elements are embraced or disguised in various communities of practice. Examples range the gamut, from the factory fonts of “lol cats” on icanhascheezburger.com, to the perfection-obsessed photography groups on flickr.com. Along the way I will distinguish–capital aside–the differences between technical/aesthetic approaches to making amateur and professional content, and cite current instances where each has tried to become the other, pointing to such specifics as band profiles on Myspace.com and user-generated, corporation-backed advertisement campaigns.

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/11/04/apple-set-to-disable-iphone-apps-again/?source=yahoo_quote
I found this news pretty disturbing.  Mac OS has many built-in features and applications that assume a lot of functionality and features for its users, but that’s never been a problem for anyone who wants to go about things differently, because they could always just use a third-party application in conjunction with the built-in applications that meet their needs.  Until now.

When the iPhone was released many people remarked how, “it’s just a little a computer,” and I think that speaks to freedom one experiences on the device, even more so than the obvious defining hardware set-up that we think of as a computer ( a screen, a hard drive, a user interface, etc. )

Can you imagine if Apple released an update to the Mac OS on their desktop computers that wiped out all the third party applications, even those that aren’t harmless to the flow commerce?  Or eventually banned applications developed by the SDK that didn’t meet the Apple agenda?

I think that as innovators we have a real problem on our hands.  Sure. The iPhone can run user-generated web applications, so long as they run in the Apple-sanctioned web browser, Safari, but that’s just one layer.  A fellow student recently said that “if it weren’t for Adobe, I would switch to Linux.”  Its times like these when I feel like making that switch myself.

In an attempt to diagram relationships within my social networks, I’ve become interested those friends who exist in multiple networks, friends I’ve met through an acquaintance, and friends whose relationship exists primarily through myself as a liaison; outside a clear social network. The reason for the specificity, in addition to my personal interests, is due largely to the clustered redundancy within in social networks which are difficult to diagram due to the overlap. So I focused on the above mentioned anomalies, and came up with the following list of relationships that extend beyond the cluster, several of which I’ve incorporated into Figure 2:

- family: mom
- first colonial hs (former school): amanda s.
- u miami (former school): gary, kabir, sarah
- calarts (former school): tim k., miah, emory, jory, dane, ron horwitz, lee, casey
- smith college: amanda s., gloria, melody
- hollywood industry
— lowry (film editorial where friends have been employed): sarah, gary, tim k., casey
— danetracks (studio of calarts alumni): dane
— technicolor (studio of calarts alumni): ron horowitz
- la friends: tim k., miah, gary, kabir, lee
- itp (current school program): emory
- apple the grove (former employment): arik, nathaniel
- apple fifth avenue (former employment): arik, anita

Other connections of interest were those friendships established outside a social network altogether, friendships established through an individual encounter in physical space, a connections within several degrees of separation through an individual unknown to me, and finally a connection largely due to the efforts of a single individual. The latter example, where my mom connects me to a job through a bed and breakfast owner in rural Virginia, whose son is an architect, who designed a studio facility for Warner Brothers and knows the head of post-production, who in turn passes my resume down to the head of audio post-production, who then puts me in touch with a sound editor, who I eventually worked with on a game project (!), is diagrammed in Figure 1. The Kevin Bacon effect was recently proved to be more complex than previously thought, though the connection I’ve cited at least follows its person-to-person model, spending less time within level social clusters; as we now know to be the effect’s primary mode of connection.

- encounter in physical space: michael capio –> anita
- physical encounter after internet introduction: sara bader, jory
- connection with middle party unknown to me: kabir, kabir’s sister, kabir’s sister’s roommate*, kabir’s sister’s roommate’s boyfriend ( my dad’s co-worker’s son!)
- physical encounter due to one individual’s effort: me, my mom*, thomas’s mom, thomas, head of warner post, kim wahl, gregory hainer.

Couch Surfing is a non-profit company established in 2004 by a well-traveled IT consultant from Alaska named Casey Fenton.  Fenton found a cheap plane ticket from Boston to Iceland, but had no place to stay for the visit, so resorted to emailing a request to 1,500 students at the University of Iceland.  In end he found many people willing to provide him a place to stay and decided to start CouchSurfing.com to organize travelers and their hosts.  It is free to join CouchSurfing—the site makes its money off of members who pay to have their legal identity verified through credit card.  The group currently has 286,000 members from 223 countries, living and traveling in areas as remote as the South Pacific and Antarctica.

On the surface CouchSurfing is a social networking site for travelers and the folks who accommodate them.  A couch serves as a metaphor for everything from a room, to an extra bed, a hut, or just meeting for coffee.  Surfing refers not only to movement, but a freeness of spirit and risk within reason.

CouchSurfing users tend to play the roles of host and guest at various points in time, staying on the couch of a person and then in turn offering up their own couch to a different person at another time.  The site even claims, “You don’t need a couch to join, as long as you anticipate sharing your couch sometime in your lifetime, or have already shared it, you’ve 100% welcome here.”  Couch Surfing works, yet if a site such as eBay had an approach where goods were given out with the intention of one day getting back goods, the site would most certainly fail, as greedy members would take more than their fair share, discouraging the users with a more karmic approach to giving and receiving.  In couch surfing one generally gives to receive.

The prevention of an imbalance within Couch Surfing is two-fold.  1) The commodity traded involves shared experience and cross-cultural learning and does not carry a set monetary value such as a hotel room, which provides guests an escape from the very influences and ability to influence that CS promotes and profits from socially.  2) There are community regulations and norms established on CS that are enforced through a feedback system recalling face-to-face interactions with members, often over an extended period of time of several days.  Members openly comment on each other’s profiles, offering their firsthand impressions of a host/guest to the community.

On the profile of CS user Zondra Skertich, Andre Fleutte of McMurdo Station, Antarctica writes: “Extremely Positive.  ah zondra.  she was sick when we met…but we’re friends anyway.  talented and fun!  I always enjoy hanging out with zondra and james!”

The CS mission statement says the site intends to, “to network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness.”  If CS relies so heavily on trust, how can it also succeed as a site of user-generated content, to further it’s mission goals?  Does opening up CS for creative expression pose a kind of threat to trust?  With these questions of in mind, let’s examine the user profile and the small amount user-generated content that’s already in place on Couch Surfing.
The CS profile provides fields for a user to enter a personal description, experience, interests, type of people they enjoy, locations traveled, languages spoken.  These fields are text-only, and typically a paragraph in length.  Members are also permitted to have photo galleries.  The remainder of page includes personal references from other members of the site, and also feedback received and left by the couch surfer.

Also featured on the profile are icons of various objects, including couches, coffee mugs, and other symbols.  Members may choose to add these to their profile.  Icons are reminiscent of toys or free toys on Facebook, but whereas a unicorn or muffin on Facebook may represent an inside joke between users, the CS Icons contain universal meaning and serve as a visual filter when scanning user profiles.  There are a number of variations on the couch icon that describe the users couch situation, a thumbs up icon for verifications ( members may donate $25 to Couch Surfing to verify identity with a credit card ), a globe icon to show that a member meets with others to discuss the CS community, and ambassador icon for someone who is an active in the community and has level three verification.

User feedback is crucial information for couch surfers, because it not only establishes trust; it is revealing of a member’s personality or interests, perhaps even more of an indicator than the user listing those traits and interests out on the provided form.  On eBay the fact that a seller is into online gaming or a vegetarian—which could be inherent in a user name or bid history—is of little consequence to the buyer, yet to a couch surfer it can be a deciding factor as to whether a member will accommodate another, not simply in terms of hospitality, but also in terms of accommodating conversation.  Couch Surfing is not just about giving someone your couch for a couple days while of they explore your home turf.  User Rafael Nussbaum of Switzerland elaborates, “If somebody visits your place…it’s like traveling from your own couch, you experience the world through his eyes.”  In this observation he is touching on the nature of the CouchSurfing commodity as being more than just a binary host/guest relationship, but rather perspective of empathy and learning, which merges these seemingly separate roles into one.

The user-generated portions on the CS website are currently limited to the Video page, which features two video—an infomercial and documentary—about Couch Surfing and one downloadable song about Couch Surfing; and the Surf Shop—a not-for-profit store, where users can sell custom designed merchandise that relates to couch surfing, including posters and clothes, and deal with proceeds on their own terms.  Currently neither section provides a feedback forum for user-generated media.  It is also unclear how and additional user-generated media can be posted once submitted.  Nonetheless the additional of user-generated content is a slow and careful step in a new direction for Couch Surfers.

What would it take for Couch Surfing to become a community of practice—a place where user-generated content is presented for critique by fellow users?  One would hope the site would allow users the ability to upload videos or their couch areas and surrounding communities—an easy add-on.  The prospect of Travel documentation seems to be just as valuable to users, providing even more point-to-point links within the community.  A challenge however exists in presenting the medium of travel on a webpage.  Travel embodies both physical movement and personal relationships, moving person through a wide, multi-dimensional, psycho-geography.  Travel presents a documentation challenge that requires a combination of different forms of media for realization on the web.

On Couch Surfing Google Maps are already used to display the countries a user has visited, and also for members to search for other users based on location, but the current web interface on CS could be developed further to allow users richer documentation of their travels.  The technology is available to integrate video clips and images into maps, so that a trip might exist in a form where it could receive utilization and critique within a community of practice, as well as lesson the development load by linking in pre-existing methods for uploading videos and images, such as YouTube and Flickr.

In one example a user on course of a well-documented trip could be persuaded to modify their planned route along the Trans-Canada Highway, which would be on display to couch owners living along the route, who had filtered their search to see nearby travelers.  These maps could also be overlaid onto the maps of other users, so that travelers might see where their route will intersect another user’s route, to facilitate a meeting point, or similarly see where they had once crossed paths, to facilitate a recollection.  By pulling data from these maps, statistics could be gathered about routes most and least traveled—currently lacking on the Couch Surfing Statistics page.  Furthermore a protocol could be established using a secondary set of profile icons to describe what travelers would be willing to do if they meet up with other travelers—go to a bar, have coffee, share a tent, etc.

Does a need for trust diminish the potential for user-generated media on CouchSurfing?  On sites like Myspace we have seen users create an overwhelming amount of content that is subjective and registers as noisy to the outsider.  Photos are strategically angled, edited, or not photos of the person managing the profile at all.  If one were to simply scan profiles, as members of the site often do, we notice that Myspace users don’t share a common goal such as travel.  CS user Ana Smith of from the United States says CouchSurfing is, “creating a world not full of doubt, but one of friendships, love of new people, and bridges.”  For creativity and trust to coexists successfully, CouchSurfing, must stay the course of the real world; and venture as far as possible from the fantasy world or small talk world in which other social networking sites thrive.  So long as user-generated media on the site is created to that end, as is the case with the small, but growing group of videos and songs that already exist on the site and narrative mapping capabilities that will likely exist in the future, user-generated content and serve to inspire and benefit the Couch Surfing Community.

Follow theses simple directions to create your own serving of ASCII Rap!

Ingredients:

- Text Edit, Word Pad, or other text editing software

- iTunes, WinAmp , or similar MP3 player

- SnapzPro or any screen capturing program

Steps:

1. Find a good beat from your MP3 library, favorite streaming radio station, or file sharing software (i.e. Limewire ). Cue the track up, then minimize the player on your computer screen. ( This will allow you to credit your sources )

2. Open text editing software, select a font of your choosing, then resize the window so that is compact, though substantially larger than the MP3 player. Make sure these are adjacent to one another.

3. Launch screen capture software, selecting the range tool so that it encompasses both text edit and MP3 player window. 320×240 works well for maximum visibility / streamibility. Press Record. ( Worst case scenario, you can use the built in iSight camera on a Macbook placed uncomfortably close to one computer in conjunction with iMovie to record the screen of another computer. )

4. Type along with beat. You can either freestyle type over the beat, add a backup here and there (i.e. “jeah” “that’s right”) or if your not feeling ready, just double up for the chorus of the song. Also feel free to utilize such techniques as on-the-fly format changes to text and rapid use of the tab button.

5. Finally export the video an Quicktime, Windows Media Video or related, and upload it to your website or YouTube. Now your ASCII Rapping!

Serving size:

- The masses

Sample:

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ts1200/Usergenerated/Cookbook/ASCII-MC.mov