2. DIGITAL MEDIA
PRINCIPLES, TOOLS, AND STRATEGIES
Vicki Callahan, University of Southern California,
School of Cinematic Arts, Division of Media Arts + Practice
vcallahan@cinema.usc.edu

3. The Possibilities of Digital Media
For Scholarship and Teaching
• Digital Humanities:
http://manifesto.humanities.ucla.edu/2009/05/29/the-digital-humanities-
manifesto-20/
• Multimedia Scholarship
http://cinema.usc.edu/imap/honorsInMultimediaScholarship.cfm
• “Electracy” (Gregory Ulmer)
https://heuretics.wordpress.com/electracy/
• “Print +” writing and culture (Peter Lunenfeld)
http://www.peterlunenfeld.com

4. Digital Media Facilitates/Enhances, but
Does not Guarantee
• Interdisiplinarity (Alan Liu, not an approach, but
a method, “a line of flight away” from established
and rigid systems of knowledge)
• Praxis, fluency across languages (Johanna
Drucker, practice not tools are key, new skills
across expressive, critical, informational registers)
brings new knowledge
• Collaboration (Roy Ascott’s Telematics) we know
more together than individually
• Storytelling and Storyworlds, new narrative
forms

6. UW-Milwaukee Partnership with “Kids Matter”
2008-2009 (hybrid class)

7. Collaborative Video
https://vimeo.com/75921699 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=2&v=kd2f-um25T0

8. Hacking Narratives
Collaborative Storytelling

9. History as a Possible World:
Ethno-fictions and Ethno-Performatives

10. Counter Narratives and Alternative Voices

11. The Benefits of Serious Play

12. Mapping South Los Angeles’s Past, Present, Future:
Stories for Connection and Community
USC Spring 2014: New Media For Social Change

13. Audio-Visions of Time:
The Past, Present, Future of South LA
Core Texts:
• Theresa Gaye Johnson, Spaces of
Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity
• bell hooks, “White Privilege” and
“Active Listening” in Writing
Beyond Race
• Ytasha L. Womack Afrofuturism:
The World of Black Sci-Fi and
Fantasy
Core Concepts from Johnson
• “spatial displacement”
• “spatial entitlement” (creating
new spaces through the arts)
Project 1: Sleepy Lagoon Murder, Jun Gi Min

14. The Project:
http://newmedia4socialchange.org/
• The Map
• 3 Projects
+ Past, through Posters
and Zines
+ Present: Active
Listening Audio-Visual
Essay
+ Future – Speculative
Fictions across media
Work done in collaboration
with West Adams
City of Four Angels, Thalia Ertman and Jennifer

15. Project 1: Poster and Zine History

16. Project 2: “Sonic Spatial Imaginaries”: Audio-
Visual Essays of Place Based on Active-Listening
• Begin by interviewing West
Adams students
• Project could then develop
further that interview or could
interview someone in
community
• Icebreaker questions:
1. What is your favorite part
about living in the
neighborhood?
2. What would you most like to
see changed in the
community?
“Tony B. Conscious,” Haley Madigan,
in collaboration with Jennifer M. and Darwin G.
http://newmedia4socialchange.org/?page_id=707

17. Project #3: Future Media Texts: Team Projects with
West Adams Prep
Project Prompt:
• Create a counter history,
alternative future, parallel
universe for critical look at
social issues or historical
forces and provide pathway to
an egalitarian future.
• Using Afrofuturist
experimentation as an
aesthetic point of inspiration,
imagine a future employing
the media platform of your
choice (video, zine, game, or
interactive experience).
http://newmedia4socialchange.org/?page_id=1038
Daniella Seguera and Jennifer M.

18. Storytelling: Classroom and Community Ethics,
A first principle of well-being for all – an ongoing process*
Working with Students
• Decide where material will
be viewed, can be
private/public or mix
• Teachable moment on
public/academic divides,
how do they want to
participate?
• Suggest Avatars
• Always offer privacy option
for work even if you or class
decide on public context
Working with Community
• Provide context for engagement for
both students + community
• Active Listening exercise (connect
to context, history, issues of
diversity)
• Documentary Release Forms are
essential (parental signatures as
needed); informed choice on
sharing story
• Protect Privacy (Names, Images)
• Encourage
Collaboration/Participatory
Projects
• Story Center Site:
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/
55368c08e4b0d419e1c011f7/t/55e92
424e4b0e50993544719/14413425003

19. SCALAR: Online Publishing Platform
http://scalar.usc.edu/nehvectors/vicki-callahan/index

20. The Digital and Public Scholarship
• Engaged and Public Scholarship has long tradition from
Hannah Arendt, Howard Zinn, Judith Butler, Cornell
West, bell hooks.
• What would it mean to have digital scholarship that is
not public?
• Does Digital Scholarship drift to engaged scholarship?
• Ethical Responsibility of Public Scholarship
• Censorship (institutional and self) of work from
public/engaged scholars

21. Media Commons
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org
Other Publications
• The New
Everyday
• [in]Transition
• #Alt-Academy
• Media Commons
Press

22. Tools for Public Scholarship
Examples of Scalar Possibilities on Index Page

23. • http://scalar.usc.edu/works/genevieve-carpio-
pedagogical-portfolio/index
• http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/arrested-gesture/index
• http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/art-and-healing/capoeira
• http://scalar.usc.edu/anvc/MEinMedia/index
• http://scalar.usc.edu/works/the-youtube-
economy/index
• http://scalar.usc.edu/works/material_philosophy/index
• http://scalar.usc.edu/works/university-safe-
spaces/concrete-safe-spaces
• http://scalar.usc.edu/works/bacall-star-image/index
Scalar examples
graduate students

24. More Tools
• We Video – free (or almost, without
watermark) online video, for one or
collaborative video, materials stored in cloud

25. Zotero Citation Tool: https://www.zotero.org/
• Collect and Store
sources in cloud. You
can also manually enter
print materials
• Add Word plug in for
greater use with
documents!

26. RealTime Board:
online collaborative multimedia whiteboard
LIMITED FREE ACCOUNT or Free Educator Account with unlimited collaborators/Premium

27. Other Essential Tools – all free
• Google Drive – great for storing text and media
files, docs. Have real time writing and
communication
• Slack – messaging designed for group work, links
with other apps like google drive and google
hangout
• Skype -- up to 10 people on video call, screen
sharing
• Storify – find, collect, share materials on web, can
arrange into story

28. Works Cited
• Ascott, Roy, and Edward A. Shanken. Telematic Embrace: Visionary
Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness by Roy Ascott. 1
edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Print.
• Drucker, Johanna. “Games and the Market in Digital Futures.”
Criticism 47.2 (2005): 241–247. Print.
• Liu, Alan. Local Transcendence: Essays on Postmodern Historicism
and the Database. Chicago: University OfChicago Press, 2008. Print.
• Lunenfeld, Peter. The Secret War Between Downloading and
Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine. The MIT
Press, 2011. Print.
• Ulmer, Gregory. Electronic Monuments. 1 edition. Minneapolis: Univ
Of Minnesota Press, 2005. Print.