Past online docs

Overall I was impressed with past students’ work and definitely looking forward to having a go myself. The community for my documentary a Jewish community, and the doc will serve to expand and diversify narratives of history. While the Holocaust and post-war migration is an important well documented historical event but there are many other rich oral histories within the Jewish tradition. I will use this documentary to give voice to some of those.              

• L’infantile Blogosphere has really neat structure for navigation and fab design as well which helps. The entry page has enough information to tease and to let the user know enough about the available links to follow their nose. It is uniform throughout and, importantly it always allows for a return to the main page and therefore is draws on fairly shallow navigation. I do have to admit though, I didn’t read even 50% of the content, my mood is a little ADD right now and I was looking for pics or vids or something- text is overwhelming! Also, having researched some of these topics (Singaporean Blogs eg Mr Brown) I am pretty familiar with the ideas.
• The concept for The Shared House 16/181 is cute and something I had considered for my own documentary, but then, possibly my share house is a little banal to deserve its own documentary! I given my mood, the video was a good form of information transfer. There was I guess two streams of navigation, through people or ‘members’ and through 5 categories across the top including ‘activities’ ‘problems and processes’ ‘community spirit’ and ‘visit us’… no not for real, just an invitation to visit a blog! I did feel a little claustrophobic with to much invading my space and text that was really strangely formatted- maybe it would look better in another browser. 
• I don’t know why Jenny Weight has listed this one as Indigenous Arts Unit, it’s clearly about 10 Pound Poms of which my own patriarchal linage is also strongly linked to. This was one of my favorite online docs, it wasn’t as crowed as the Share House (excuse my bad humour), in fact, as Dean has suggested, this author was definitely thinking ‘zen’ and negative space. But reading deeper than the design, the timeline down the side gives a really clear and logical guide but still allows me a choice. There’s not too much text, in fact, its is beautifully brief!
• In a Cultural Dilemma  I was annoyed by the use of a link called ‘next’, to me it suggests the author is hanging on to linear storytelling. I closed the page. 
• Finally for today, I liked Street Children’s attempts to use images as links, I tried similar things in the past and I do like it. I think maybe there needed to be better links back to the other children once you chose one, and I don’t know why the author set the interview to open in a new window, I think it should have been on the child’s page and it should feature!

Self Assessment for Transient Spaces

1. I know how to make a simple webpage

2. I understand writing for the web

3. I have an understanding of online technologies

4. I have learnt about the art of hyper-linking

5. I have created a relevent resource

6. My project creates or adds to a community

7. Class participation and collaboration

8. My blog contains relevant data/research

9 I have expanded my knowledge and critique of online environments

10 I have created a fully functioning simple website 

Zorba the Greek- Yolngu Style

Probably needs very little explanation, except maybe to mention that apparently they’ll be off to Greece to perform next year. A fab example of the creation of global communities and interactions through cyber space. I think this dance worked for audiences because it is brings together living traditional and contemporary culture, an unlikely fusion and a sense of humour. Humour is undoubtably a major element of much of the content which is seen and shared on the web.

    

Fishing on You Tube

I thought I would start having a look around online at the types of media available and found this documentary. It interested me in lots of ways, one was that I have actually sought out this type of information at the Dhanya Centre and elsewhere only to find that this unofficial distribution (by that I mean that I’m assuming it hasn’t been broadcast on TV through traditional production means) is the most informative resource I’ve seen. Although its not an online documentary in the sense that we’ve been talking about in Transient Spaces (a good example is Us Mob) it is an example of You Tube changing the producer/broadcaster=power dynamic. Unfortunately in my exploration this morning I also found a disgusting response to the National Apology. I won’t put the link in here because I don’t want to support such filth, but i suppose democracy isn’t all roses.

I was also interested for other reasons, more to do with my major research project. I noticed that towards the end an interview with Lee Joachim was 4 minutes of unedited talking. I think its fair to say that this technique is not typical of TV production but i wonder if it relates to a framework of fewer edits in Oral History recordings, with the producer receding into the background of decisions over content.

I was also interested in Lee’s discussion of consultation. Consultative methods are part of my research area and even though he’s talking about land management consultation, i think the risk of tokenism he’s referring to is very relevant.

Finally, I have my finger on the wire of a story about Bill Cooper (William in this doco at 4:20), so I was excited to see that archival materials obviously exist somewhere, and it will just been a matter of finding it!

First day back…

When you boil it down, blogging is really just jazzed up procrastination, isn’t it?. Sure I’ve had things I wanted to say and when in Nepal I certainly went to great lengths and tested every ounce of patience to publish posts with very unreliable and painfully slow internet connections. But back home with speedy broadband wired up in my bedroom, its a fear of the to-do list that usually inspires me.

Starting today, my first week back at school, I’ll be blogging responses to two courses, Transient Spaces: Participatory Media and the Honours research project.

For the moment I’m enthusiastic, which is a good start.

For transient spaces I’ll be producing an online documentary which I think I will use to explore photo-narrative technique. That means giving out cameras to participants and recording the narratives explanations about their photos. I’ll do some google-ing over the next week to find out more about the technique, but I had been hoping to do a work shop with Indigenous students in Weipa for Croc fest before the funding got pulled and the festival cancelled, which was very disappointing for all involved.

I have ideas around researching production practices which include Indigenous content production for my research project, but thats still definately under construction at this stage.   

For the moment I also have a blogging alter-ego at www.fostercarevictoria.wordpress.com where my collegues and I discuss current issues surrounding foster care which might be of interest. More about that another time maybe…