Seminar Notes: 2.8.08

Attendance: Tory, Becky, Brian, Mollie, Eric, Jeremy, Michelle, Maria, and Professor Forester

Introductions and Interests

Show and Tell:

• Geography/Maps–LA River Exhibit: http://deliriousla.net/lariver
  • Michelle knows the area personally; maps on the site make her see the river in a different way
  • 4 scenarios: Negligence, Restoration, Surrender, Green Streets: gives us scenarios of possibilities to act using map
  • Adding audio…would that help it? or hurt it? Having text: allows you to source the information, re-read the information; audio: people who have been there can guide you through the website [Michelle gave us some background on the site]
• Blogs–Built Environment Blog: http://builtenvironmentblog.blogspot.com
  • Click on highlighted words–>links you to another site or definition of the word
  • Blogs: one user/developer of the site, links to other people’s blogs
• Digital Storytelling–Design Hub: http://www.dhub.org/articles/96
  • “True Design”: a digital storytelling project; personal stories of working on design projects
  • [check out "Suzanne Boccalatte in True Design" and her stories about collection]
  • More personal; feel attachment to the viewer, to your audience; use of still pictures gives the creator more control over what they show the audience; good for conveying stories, maybe not all projects
• Photo journalism–Travel : http://www.transitionsabroad.com/listings/travel/travel_photography/my_vision_of_travel_photojournalism.shtml
  • Personal pictures; “a picture is worth a thousand words”…shows us emotion; text highlights information and gives you background, but the pictures are emphasized
• Manual Slideshow with short text–Second Story Interactive Studios: www.secondstory.com
  • “strive to expand the possibilities of multimedia”
  • fed a little bit of information at once; picture after picture with a very short blurb to give information; text can distract from the image
  • when do we use text? how do we use text? why do we use text?
• Video/Music/Speech–Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video: http://my.barack.obama.com/page/invite/yeswecanvideo
  • Barack Obama’s speech with artists singing the words over his speech; many different people “lip-synching” Barack’s speech while he talks; specific words are written in text, for example “HOPE”, “VOTE”
  • adds music, performance; little content, elements of the speech (distracting? shows support, inspirational)
  • Black and white: gives it a historic documentary feel, “remembering”, historical [color choice is important)
• Photography and Audio (Interview, personal story)--New Orleans: www.nola.com/katrina/graphics/ouryear/storm02.swf
  • having one large picture with text on top emphasizes the picture; video is very effective, link to story/article on the bottom
• More links (from Maria) [we did not look at these during the seminar]:

  • http://www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/example-pages/personal-reflection-examples.htm

    http://www.dhub.org/articles/966
    
    http://builtenvironmentblog.blogspot.com/
    
    http://www.podfeed.net/