September 24

Lecture notes and comments

Week #4

Date: September 24

Outline: For today’s lecture, we had new media faculty member  Mike Scott come in and discuss with us about the capstone project for new media majors. The handout we were given for class can be found here. (What is the Capstone Project?)

Comments: Let me start off by saying this was a very informative lecture, and one that I found very inspiring and thought provoking. Mike Scott teaches my NMD 295 class, which is an introductory course in new media technologies. This class is not an easy one because of his extremely indirect teaching style. However, that is one of the reasons that I like the class so much, and why I was so surprised how direct and specific he was about the lecture material.

One reason I could see was because he taught the capstone course that every new media major is required to take their senior year in order to graduate from the program. He is very personally involved in the process of teaching the class and inspiring the students to create something that is really spectacular, rather than average and non-impressive. I got the feeling that he really wanted to get this message through to the class, and to inspire us to start thinking about what we would do for our capstone project now in our freshman year. So I did as he asked, and these are my musings.

I would like to do something really spectacular and noteworthy, something no one else has thought to do. However, I don’t even know where my strengths are within the program, let alone what is new and exciting within the field of new media. From this I determined I was going to have to catch up. I’m going to have to start experimenting with different medium now, and outside of class where I won’t have the pressures of a grade hanging over my head to impede my learning process. Photography, cinematography, filming, researching, data storage and transfer, the list goes on and on. All these things I’m going to need to play with and work with, so I know my strengths and weaknesses, and what I would like to implement in my capstone.

I’m also going to have to start researching new technologies and ideas that are being discovered in the new media realm. I will also have to keep up with this research, as technology is always changing and evolving, which emphasizes the importance that I start this good habits early so that when it comes closer to my senior year, I will already have a large base of information I can draw from, and the skills and habits will already be in place to implement when it comes time to make my capstone.

Mike Scott mentions that we can make our capstone any year we want. I may not be ready before senior year, but I can take his advice and start looking for projects that I can do to that will challenge me, intrigue me, inspire me and enlighten me. I can’t wait to start!

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September 22

Lecture notes and comments

Week #4

Date: September 22

Outline: For this lecture, we had a guest speaker. Her name was Sheradon Kelly, and she spoke with us about some of the things she had done in the new media field in her life. Here are my notes on this lecture. Journal for September 22

During the lecture, Kelly talked about her experience in the film side of new media, more specifically the 3D animated movies that she made throughout her career. She started off in a totally different field, which was painting, but through a series of events ended up taking the inter-media graduate program at the University of Maine. While finishing her degree, she got invested in the film industry and made a company with a friend called Knife Edge Productions. They made films for the engineering department of UMaine, the governor, and others.

Comments: I myself have never really worked closely with the medium of film. I found her life story interesting mainly because of the fact that she made her own company around new media, not  because she worked with film. My dad owns his own small automotive repair shop, so I can sympathize with someone who owns their own business. I found it inspiring to see how much success she had achieved so soon outside of college, which was a nice message to deliver to first year new media students.

So how does this lecture pertain to new media? I see it as a success story, a story that we can look to and strive towards as we continue through our new media career. It is a real world application of what she had learned through the program here at UMaine. A nice lecture overall.

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September 20

Lecture notes and comments

Week #4

Date: September 20

Outline: Today our lecture was lead by my professor, Bill Kuykendall. Here are my notes from the lecture. Journal for September 20

The lecture today was different than we usually have. We started off class by Bill introducing a term for us to consider and to comment upon. The term was auto amputation, which is defined as technology’s hindering of humanities development. An example of this auto amputation would be Global Positioning Devices (GPS’), which harms our ability to intuit our orientation and direction in a foreign place. Another would be texting, which some would say decreases the need for face-to-face interaction and therefore hindering humanities ability to properly communicate with each other in face-to-face situations.

Comments: This is an interesting topic to me, because I see the issue from both sides. Yes, technology can hinder certain aspects of human growth or human nature, such as intuitive direction. Technology takes away the need to rely on that instinct that ancient man had to depend on everyday to stay alive in the world. But is this a bad thing? Overall, I would argue no.

Just because we are losing the instinct of past generations doesn’t mean we have totally lost it, at least not yet. Every human still has a base understanding of how to conceptualize where they are in relation to their surroundings, some worse than others, but nevertheless still there. What technology has done is give us the option of letting the machine do the work instead of us. The technology itself is neither good nor bad, it just gives us another way of living our lives. And most people that I know would agree that choices are good.

When you hit the stage of reliance however, you’re in a different realm. You no longer see the technology as a choice, but rather as a necessity. This is where the problems can occur. When human beings start to rely on machines to do the thinking for them all the time, this is when the brain’s ability to think clearly and efficiently is compromised for convenience. This is the darker side of the technology, but is still dependent on how humans choose to use the technology that is available to them.

Why is this topic so important to new media? As our society becomes more and more integrated with the technology all around us, we begin to take it for granted. As students of this very technology, some of us will be the pioneers of this future technology. We will create the next machine that allows us to live our lives a little easier. This is why it is so imperative we think about these things and others as we study new media, and are acutely aware of the possibilities we are opening to the public and the risks we are taking with every new invention. For this very reason I am here at the University of Maine studying new media, and why I chose to be an informed and conscious learner as I continue my career.

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