My Schedule
WRIT 5230: 9-9:50 MWF
WRIT 4260/5260:12-12:50 MWF
Office Hrs: MW 1-3 or by appointment 		banner
 October
"Something in October sets the Gypsy's blood astir."
- Bliss Carmen
starlarcPerformance: Stelarc October 21
Stelarc is an Australian performance artist whose works focus heavily on futurism and extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centered around his concept that the human body is obsolete. Until 2007 he held the position of Principal Research Fellow in the Performance Arts Digital Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in Nottingham, England. He is currently a visiting Professor in the School of Arts at Brunel University, West London. He has two daughters, one of whom (Astra Stelarc), has continued in his footsteps as an artist.		 For Monday...
...by 9:00 a.m.
Complete and post the Jello Exercise and send the URL in a message to the Webx discussion "jello URLs."

...Feedback on Two Pages
Visit two of the Personal Course Home Page projects in the Webx discussion "Personal Course Home Page URLs."

Keeping in mind that the final versions are due next Thursday, make suggestions on revising the pages in two respects:

1. Suggest improvements to the visual layout and presentation based on Williams and Tollett's chapters. Give specific page numbers for examples and advice for each suggestion.

2. Recommend ways of sharpening and improving the preamble (and the concept for the page generally). Focus first on the principles we covered on the 15th:

  • avoid list-like chains of topics and generic transitions
  • use "umbrella" ideas or scenes
  • first lines are vital
  • the shorter the better
  • the more concrete and specific the better
Color Tutorial
Complete the Poynter.org color tutorial "Color, Contrast, and Dimension."

Key Terms to Understand:

  • "dimension" achieved with color
  • Itten's Seven Contrasts of Color
  • hue
  • "complementary" colors
  • simultaneous contrast
  • saturation
  • proportion
 Quote
Most of us can still remember the sounds of drills grinding and rattling through cinderblock walls when crews first installed Ethernet cables in faculty office buildings. Did that racket signal the first breaching of what Gerald Graff has called the "systematic non-relation" among disciplines, which keeps the university from realizing its social and intellectual mission, or were we hearing only stop-gap dental work near the end of the century to keep the old university from losing its teeth altogether?"

Publication
My article, Cool
"Hacking the Cool: The Shape of Stories in the Space of New Media" appeared in the December 2007 issue of Computers and Composition.