DrJoolz Snapshotz on Life

One purpose might be political resistance. See here - and please watch carefully. You won’t regret it.

Made by Judith Supine some of whose work I have already photographed:

When I was in NYC I spoke to some people who are street artists and asked about their motivations. They said that different artists have many different reasons for wanting to put their work up in the street. I was fascinated by some of these reasons and find some of them really persuasive. I understand the responses as the following:

1. It is a way of bringing Art into the open; out of the galleries and amongst people. Outside from behind closed doors. A move away from elitism.
2. As a way of finding a voice; expression to ‘reply’ to imposed institutionalised messages ; a reply to capitalism- ‘they have their advertising on walls and everywhere. We do this on walls.’
3. A way of enacting political resistance;
4. A way of bringing different messages to people. Showing ‘other ways of seeing’ - i.e. other than the conventional;
5. A way to brighten up run down areas;
6. A way of changing the cultural landscape;
7. To make people laugh;
8. To gain attention for artists who have not yet made it in the mainstream artworld;
9. A way for mainstream artists to do something dufferent from what people are paying for;
10.It is a buzz, kudos even, to have your work recognised and talked about ‘on the street’ by groups slightly ‘on the edge’;
11. Artists who HAVE ‘made it’ conventionally, might want a different audience and a different ‘canvas’;
12. It is exciting, knowing that it has to be done surreptitiously avoiding ‘the eyes of the law’;

I now see street art very differently and as much more significant and profound than I used to do. I actually find it exciting now.

Went to an exhibition here. Which is in Barnsley of all places.

Why did we go? TT* is on ‘the board’ and the college had an end of course exhibition. There were some good paintings and photographs (TT bought two.)

I took pictures of sculptures. Here are some details:

(Click on the image to take you to my photostream to see bigger versions if you want.)

They are s’posed to be out of Biggles or something, I think.

I have nothing wise to say about this or anything else.

*NB It is almost exactly a year since TT wrote in his blog.

OK so here is an interesting thing. It is from here.

So it is an image; it is sewing - a patchwork; it is written text; it is poetry; it is a wall hanging; it is a picture in Flickr; it is on a blog. Very multi layered. It is a muliti modal text.

I joined this group on classroom displays about eighteen months ago and it only had about twelve pictures for a-a-a-a–ages. Now it has a healthy 268 - and a blog and some good discussions. A sign of the times, because Flickr now has in excess of two million members. It is hardly a surprise that teachers are using it to network.

It turns out there are so many groups for teachers on Flickr and quite a few of the groups have associated blogs.

This one (of course) appeals to me - the New York City Writing Project. If you look in the discussion forums you will see they meet in real space and are really getting to support each other in exciting work. Fab.

David farmer’s drama blog gives this useful link today to a FREE BOOK about blogging.

Like ‘Anon’, I have done two posts today.

By the way …. referring to my title of this post …. This is how Jennifer defines multimodality:

Jessica Shepherd had this piece in The Times Higher last week:

Dear Don… a little divine rejection
Jessica Shepherd
Published: 19 May 2006

Civility costs nothing. But try telling that to the editors of academic journals whose rejection letters appear to be getting ruder, more sarcastic and increasingly scathing, writes Jessica Shepherd.
A straw poll of bruised academics by The Times Higher has uncovered some the most offensive rejection slips sent by journals.

One lecturer expressed his outrage after receiving the following response - on Christmas Eve: “This text speaks in an overtly technical language as if convinced that any text can be made ‘academic’ by using difficult technical terms in a highly complex grammatical structure.”

Another candid response went as follows: “What all this might have to do with philosophy, let alone Martin Heidegger, remains unclear.”

Another rejection sent to an academic by a Chinese economics journal has now become academic folklore. It reads: “We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper it would be impossible for us to publish any work of a lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition and beg you a thousand times to overlook our short sight and timidity.”

One frustrated academic has even parodied the tone of rejection letters on her website. One reads: “Enclosed is our latest version, ie, re-re-re-revised version of our paper. Choke on it. We have again changed the damn thing from start to finish.”

Keith Dowding, who edits the Journal of Theoretical Politics, said: “Due to the pressures to publish, and to publish in top journals, academics, and in particular young ones, may send articles that are below standard to the top journals, even though they might be published in lower ranked journals.

Sometimes this means in top-ranked journals, referees can be somewhat rude about substandard work.”

One academic, whoJwished to remain anonymous, had this advice for rejection letter writers: “They should view their task as one of helping the writer to improve.JFrequently, the writerJof the academic paper receives an anonymous reader’s report and some of those are excoriating.

“A responsible editor will endeavour to tone down adverse criticism and rephrase in ways that can help the younger colleague to do better next time round.”

I had a crap thing happen to me last year . It was this:

I sent an article to a pretty well known Geography journal. I got a
prompt acknowledgement and a promise for a response in six weeks. Of
course, time rolled on and I did not hear. I sent an enquiry six
months later and heard about the lack of secretarial support etc. Almost
a year later I got a reply which consisted of a brief letter and several
scraps of torn paper. The journal editor had torn out extracts from
reviewers’ comments and had underlined ‘pertinent’ parts. (I can only
assume the missing bits of the reviews were too bad for my eyes). The
letter explained again that the journal currently had no secretarial
support and that the editor had experienced the ‘greatest of difficulty’
persuading anyone to read my work and it was being rejected for poor
structure and a naive approach.(I understood ‘naive’ to mean ’stupid’).
I was totally gutted by this response. Several months later I showed it
to a colleague who was appalled.
The paper is now published elsewhere and I was asked for only one
amendment.

I think this was a really terrible thing to have happened to me and it
felt like bullying in fact.

Anyway two things I think about this:

1. Do not send to journals outside your discipline. Just necause you think you understand it you do not know their secret rules.
2. There should be guidelines from BERA about how to do peer reviews. No one has ever told me how to do it. I have been asked to do it (and of course I do a LOT). But do I do it right? I dunno.

I am a bit fed up - as indeed I know many people are - that the Association of University Teachers remains in dispute with its employers (UCEA) over pay. We do not like withdrawing assessment - I.e. not marking work) as we do care about our students. (Personally I think we should refguse to co-operate with the RAE instead.)

I had heard that UCEA were awkward to deal with. This recording from the parliamentary committee reveals how dishonest their negotiators really are. In some ways it is quite comic hearing the ‘negotiators’ getting told off for their dirty tricks campaign. Also depressing however as unions still have to deal with these people.

Frankly our pay is a disgrace. In comparison to teachers’ pay (for example) and their conditions of service we are way behind. If I had stayed teaching in school and had no promotion at all, I would still be earning more than I am now. I was head of English; head of a Faculty and a ‘deputy site manager’.Since I left school teaching I have done a PhD , I work longer hours and get fewer holidays. Don’t get me wrong I love things about my job. (I also loved teaching in school and kind of accidentally ended up in a university…) Yes I have flexibility in time. No I don’t get sworn at by my students. But I have other stresses. I really think that I should get at least equal pay!!

That’s my rant. I will shut up now. Too much work to do anyway.

Update
It was all reported in the Times Higher today like this:

UCEA is sent to the headmaster for a severe ticking off

Phil Baty
Published: 26 May 2006

The news that the Universities and Colleges Employers’ Association had been called before the House of Commons’ Education Select Committee to face a dressing down over “misleading” statements it had made about the pay dispute was greeted with much Schadenfreude.
One Natfhe wag said: “Rumour has it that [Ucea chairman] Geoffrey Copland has been instructed to wait outside the select committee’s door with his trousers folded over his arm!

“He is already stuffing £3.5 billion down his underpants. Perhaps that explains where the money for pay has gone.”

During the tense 15-minute special session of the committee this week, it was like a naughty schoolboy had been dragged to the headmaster’s office for a caning - metaphorically speaking at least.

Barry Sheerman, select committee chair, was furious. After last week’s evidence session on the pay dispute, Ucea rushed out a press release claiming support from the influential committee of MPs.

Ucea claimed that the committee had “added its voice” to demands that the lecturers’ unions put a 12.6 per cent pay offer to a ballot of their members, and Dr Copland was reported to be “delighted” with the MPs’ backing.

Mr Sheerman said that this was a “total manipulation of the truth”.

He said: “We had tried not to get involved, and thought we were helping get the two sides together and move the damaging dispute on. So I was astonished to read the press release - astonished and hurt.”

Dr Copland “apologised unreservedly” and explained that the press release was “a mistake that happened in the flurry of activity after the meeting”.

Jocelyn Prudence, Ucea’s chief executive, took the blame for the release and for the comments attributed to Dr Copland, which he apparently did not even read.

Mr Sheerman accepted the apologies, but concluded: “Playing these sorts of games will not finish this dispute and your actions have made relations with the unions more difficult. Please do not ever do this sort of thing again. You cannot dally any longer… Please go away and get on with your job.”

dead rat

Originally uploaded by jasonaut.

Who am I to comment??

Look here.
There is a bit of a row going on about whether or not young people today have enough privacy and whether they SHOULD have more. Will it be dangerous to give them more? have they too much already?

The debate is elaborated upon here in Dana’s local press.

They quote an 18 year old like this:

Kristopher Tate, an 18-year-old Palo Alto resident who started a site where users share photos from around the world at www.zooomr.com, said the risk of exposing one’s personal information was worth the payoff for connecting with the like-minded.

“We’re willing to give up some of our privacy to connect with people easier,” Tate said. “The realization that people can find you online isn’t that threatening to this generation. But there’s a difference between giving up information like what’s on MySpace and the government listening to a phone conversation.”

And also Dana FROM HER BLOG like this:

“Teens today grow up in a state of constant surveillance where there is no privacy,” said Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, who studies youth culture and online communities. “So they can’t really have an idea of it being lost. The risk of the government or a corporation coming in and looking at their MySpace site is beyond their consideration.”

Why not keep an eye on Dana’s blog? She is using it as a space to air her ideas and she is getting plenty of feedback.
(Don’t you just love the word apophenia?)

Oh yes and just one more thing … dana hihlights here a debate about wikis….and questions the view that online encyclopedias are the only way ahead …as

the essential collection of knowledge, meant to replace school books and other refereed knowledge containers

I have to say I am with Dana on this one. What say you?

Pretty on the inside

Originally uploaded by nkristis.

SPAMera®

Originally uploaded by [ CK ].

Click on the picture of spam to see the fabbiest camera ever - with explanatory notes.

Looking It Over

Originally uploaded by jerry56.

This image is from Jerry who, with his wife Sheryl, took TT and I to Brooklyn Park Blossom festival a few weeks ago. I like seeing this sharing of technology in public places.
The photo shows two men looking at a digital photo on the camera, just after the shot had been taken. I like the intimacy - looking at a small image they lean in close. They are sharing a particular view. They are looking at an image of something, able to refer back immediately to the ‘reality’it represents simultaneously. They can look back and forth. Or maybe it was a fleeting mment captured and they look again at the things that were one way a moment ago, and now are not.
It interests me the way technology paves the way for new social opportunities. People talk about events as they are happening as well as after. I think it’s great!! I think people are drawn into experiencing things in additional ways - having conversations about things as they happen. And this makes us all more AWARE I think.

Digital cameras have the potential to make photography more democratic. If we want to, we can share the images taken of our subjects straight away. If we want we can ask them if the photo is OK - we can delete it at their request. (We don’t have to of course; but this is now possible.) So it is possible for photographers to immediately relinquish some of their power over the image if they wish.
This ability to look straight away at the image also allows us to review things as they are going on - so that we both participate in something, but also step outside it at the same time - we are all becoming researchers, collecting data. (So much bloody data.)

we still went out:

Sometimes you just have to GO WITH IT.

I am writing an MA unit today - on ‘Theories of multimodality’. Hmm. For THIS course.