Wafa did a series of interviews with her friends asking them what the Internet means to them, how it plays into their everyday lives, how they think about it. She produced a five-page (single-spaced) write-up of their responses to her interviews.
Jennifer: It seems like they [the friends interviewed] got attached to the Internet really fast once they started using it. They talk about how they feel like they have status b/c they have their own computers now.
Wafa: Especially b/c they're in a college environment. They all loved the Internet. One of them said they've become so dependent on the Internet.
Evan: Efficiency is the key. I think so, too. Imagine if we had snail mail still and no email. And contact, too. Sometimes you don't want to talk on the phone.
Wafa: One of them said, I think people don't know how to express themselves in real life. Please get out of there [your room] and be more social. Virtual reality...seems so unrealistic.
Jennifer: So that person seems more afraid of the Internet.
Wafa: That person is always on the Internet but it's always for something productive, for school She never really chats. She doesn't spend hours on Facebook. Versus other people who take their laptops anywhere, everywhere and do a million things with them.
Evan: All in all, we're all dependent on the Internet, whether we like it or not.
Jennifer: My thesis advisor refuses to have a computer or an email account. She doesn't have voice mail either. You have to see her face-to-face.
Wafa: One person said they had a roommate who was so anti-social in real life but was in chatrooms, Facebook and MySpace all the time. She would never talk.
Evan: I like the idea of interviewing people to see how different people are connected or want to disconnect.
Jennifer: The interviews are good but she could have done more than transcribing it.
Wafa: Looking back, that's so true.
Jennifer: You have so much to say explaining it to us, so it could have used analysis.
Wafa: I was afraid b/c I didn't want to write so much.
Jennifer: That way you could have used the quotations to explain the text.
Allie wrote a piece "Dictionary/Encyclopedia of the Code of Kodwo Eshun's More Brilliant Than Sun" in which she attempts to explain Eshun's words and terms and themes.
Gail: I'm going to comment on this piece b/c it's clear that none of the students in this room read the Eshun or understood it [Jennifer interjects: "I read half of it. There were only two essays I didn't read."]. I really love this piece b/c Allie is trying to do what Eshun was doing: talk about techno music, the merging of man + machine, and what new type of music is emerging with new technologies, using unusual language that is meant to defamiliarize what seems so familiar to so many people: dance music, breakbeats, rhythmic jazz, etc. I love that Allie delves into the meanings of the words that Eshun has made up, the leaps of logic that he is making, and really tries to get at his meaning, at the story he is telling in such unusual language.
Evan drew a diagram that explains the explains the Data Thief as a vehicle between the past, present and future, in technological music. He explains that the Data Thief is a technology, it can even be thought of a turntable. Eshun says that "a turntable can become a subjectivity engine where it can create its own sound through a series of manipulated objects." There is a space between the archive [of music] and the time is this new plane where data "moves through the explosive space where technology unites us..." This is about music as commonality, music as a common space between us.
Gail: So to me this piece is about trying to explain this shadowy figure which is the heart of the documentary we saw, The Last Angel of History. It's about how this figure can be thought of as technology (a turntable) and this technology is a movement - a movement of music through time - and it is the movement of the music that is the interesting part, even more interesting than the music itself. It's how sampling makes music move from the past into the present to evoke the future.
Wafa: The movement isn't just past-present-future, you can also move future-present-past, it can go both ways, any way.
Jennifer: And the present version makes you rethink the past.
Wafa: It's like real life. You go through things through the past, present and you think about the future.
Gail: You're saying memory works - how we experience time - we experience all times at once.
Wafa: We don't realize that we do.
Jennifer: But it's a specific cultural history too.
Gail: And this type of music was invented by a specific culture and constantly refers to the music from that specific culture's history and timeline.
Jennifer: I think it was really cool.
Waldrep wrote a short story or series of musings called "Worlds." It's a vivid description of time playing World of Warcraft combined with his real-world experiences. It ends with "Continue? Yes or No".
Wafa: I think it's written well.
Evan: I think you'd be confused if you didn't know what he was talking about.
Jennifer: It's an interesting way to bring to life playing one of these games.
Wafa: I really like how he started it. Waking up somewhere.
Jennifer: Is that how WoW is?
Evan: Yeah, when you log on, you just find yourself somewhere you were last time. It's like he's living this life.
Wafa: When you read it, it's like you're experiencing it. All the details really really helped.
Brighitte wrote a script, "A Glimpse At War: Inspired by 'Generation Kill - Iraq' on YouTube."
Jennifer, Wafa, and Evan did a read-through of the script.
Wafa: This is so much fun. But there should have been an introduction.
Evan: A treatment.
Jennifer: Andrew Smith talks to actual soldiers about war, and about how it's like a video game. And then Angela Smith, a college professor, talks to college students about the same thing. They're the same generation - the students and the soldiers.
Evan: I like how she's creative. She's able to turn this documentary-type clip into an actual scene.
Wafa: I like how she had description of the scenes....
Evan: The establishing scenes...
Wafa: ...because it helps you visualize what's going on. But she could go much further than this. This could be really, really cool. She should hire us as actors and we'll do it.
Gail: I guess I'm more interested in where she comes down on this issue of Generation Kill.
Jennifer: It sort of sounds like she agrees - that soldiers are desensitized to war.
Gail: But the college students aren't desensitized to war - and aren't all soldiers desensitized to war?
Jennifer: But they're the same. The soldiers are getting money to go to college after they come back from war. We're not different populations.
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