After two weeks of preparatory/organizational work --involving sharing and discussing background materials in Anthropology and Media Studies, becoming familiar with this term's theme (which intersects McLuhan and Montagnards along the lines of Global Village Revisited), and establishing our workflow routines-- we are, as of today, officially under way.
It seems official today because we had our first direct interaction between participants in DMA this term and members of the Montagnard Dega community living in the Greensboro NC area. On the UNCSA end of the Skype call, we introduced ourselves and talked with two Montagnard Dega women, both of whom were engaging, kind, and delightfully honest and forthright. My friend and colleague of 15+ years, Andrew Young, did a masterful job of introducing the Montagnard Dega women to us, and facilitating our interaction with them.
We asked questions ranging from what they missed about their home culture in Vietnam, how it came to be that they settled in Greensboro NC. We also asked Andrew Young how he came to be interested in Montagnard Dega culture. In each instance the responses were enlightening and informative.
In the wake of this meeting I found myself energized and full of ideas. The responses to our questions seemed to hint at directions for us to explore that would be much different, and much more interesting, than writing reports about the history of the Montagnards, the music, etc. This is not to say these pursuits are uninteresting. They are in fact very interesting. Rather it is to say that in the context of an outside-in or autobiographical variant of anthropology, which we are inventing/reinventing in this course, we can include history and so forth much more meaningfully if these things have a personal/interpersonal entry point, and a trajectory more closely allied to social networking.
Here is a sample of the ideas that came to me (in email format, either email written to me, or in response to email I received) that resulted from our Skype-based videoconference:
First, a couple of links to wonderful resources were sent to me by Aaron Ross:
http://blog.ted.com/2010/10/20/meet-jr/
http://the99percent.com/articles/7008/JR-on-Art-Experimentation-and-Keeping-Your-Freedom
My response to Aaron:
Aaron, thanks so much for this share. We could do a copy-cat (okay, an homage :) to this guy's brilliant strategy and put images of Montagnards in our environment. You've probably seen the free software tools that allow an uploaded image to be gridded out in 8.5 X 11 for easy printing with a regular printer, so we would be able to do this basically cost-free. Lots to think about. Thanks again! Bob
A relay to Andrew Young:
Andrew, the student who asked about your path shared a couple of great links with me (see above). There are free software programs out there we could use to make giant posters using standard 8.5 X 11 paper, which would make it possible to do something like what is depicted in the video. These are the kinds of things that, as you mentioned, young artists bring to the table.
A further thought sent to Andrew Young:
A couple of years ago I worked with students on digital-storytelling projects. The Center for Digital Storytelling was my source for this.
Basically, their model is to bring in groups of folks for two-day work sessions, during which time they (the organization's staff) would help each person script and edit a short personal narrative, speak and record it, and make a short video (using still images or sometimes images and short clips) that would use their spoken-word audio recording as the video voiceover. Now that I think about it, the CDS process started with with the gathering and selecting images part, since they discovered these often sparked memories and storytelling. The heavy-lifting in the process swirled around writing and editing the story scripts. Their goal was to boil the narratives down to the bone.
When I did this with students I just adapted the model to my circumstances, spreading the work out over several weeks rather than doing a two-day intensive experience, and each person had to script, tell, and produce their own story.
I think it could be interesting to start with the photo project (get large images of Montagnards made and installed in the UNCSA environment). This would give a digital-skills angle to image work, and also would give a particular cast and rationale to the ethnographic field work students might do.
Then we could work on digital storytelling projects (which for me would cover audio and video skills). The images, and the digital stories, could then be self-published on your blog or wherever, and used to get some notice by the organizations and/or granting agencies you guys are in contact with and/or need to produce reportage for. Possibly UNCSA becomes a co-signer on a future grant application? Lots of possibilities up here in the blue sky.
Anyway, we could use the media lab classroom I teach in as the place to do the production aspect of the stories. The media lab space is deserted in the afternoons, and only my sections meet in the room in the mornings, so we'd pretty much have it available 9-5 every day. Weekends are also available. Voice and video recording could be done wherever by whomever.
I guess I'm thinking some of the Montagnards might enjoy and benefit from working directly with my students on projects such as these. Rather than standing around awkwardly wondering what to say when they meet, they could simply get down and do some work together. Sort of like cooking and eating a meal, only more extended in time and with a different focus.
We could talk about how this might play out --we could pair up a small group of students with a Montagnard to work on his or her story. We could also pair them one to one, and each person could help the other with their story, etc. --using whatever combination of email, skype, meetings in the media lab, etc., to carry the projects forward.
Here's an example of a digital story that is posted on the Center for Digital Storytelling website: http://www.storycenter.org/stories/index.php?cat=8
Re: meal+music event, the house across the street from my building is called Academic House (I might have pointed this out when you were here?), and it comprises a reasonable place to have a gathering (we have our faculty meetings there, etc.) and it also has a kitchen, a deck/porch (for possible music-playing and listening), and it's a space we control so it would be easy to schedule it. I spoke to the dean about looking for a space with a kitchen, and he suggested we just use the AH, so it's already approved. So we may have a solution to the 'where' question as regards the shared meal and music event.
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