New Book Meet Book

Now that the winter term is waning, I'm soon to have much more time to really get cracking on my new book project. My last book project took an insanely long time (9 years) and an insanely short time (8 months!!!) to come into the world. With this project I'm hoping the timeline will be less " wibbly-wobbly, tiny-whiny" as The Doctor might say.
Right now the title of this project is All the world's a Screen: The Emergence of Internet Visuality. My plan is to analyze the historical emergence of images onto the Internet and the rise of moving images online, in conjunction with an analysis of shifts in Internet modes of access, software, and design aesthetics. And of course such a project would be no fun without a consideration of users online and their relationships with/in/as online image culture. And let's face it, online culture today=image culture=culture. Right?
Hopefully I have not bitten off more than I can chew. Thankfully I'm dusting off and rebooting some of my earlier work on online visuality in this project and I'm excited to go, go, go. Along for the ride this summer are Dmitri and Julia, my graduate student accomplices.

Hyperbole and a half makes me laugh...alot

Hyberbole and a Half is a webcomic I find utterly LOL, if I were the kind of person who used non-words like LOL.

1. The intentionally bad art is HI-larious, what with the kooky eyeballs of the heroine, which remind me of Admiral Ackbar, and the plethora of toothy grins in her draw-rings.
   
2. I relate to people who both resist adulthood and are grammar snobs. My peeps!
3. I also have a dog of the, um, mentally challenged variety who provides me with side-splitting laughs, total costernation, and the occasional dog-joy related injury in equal measure. Alot.
   

Everything Old is New Again

Hasbro's newly launched my3D goggles seem like they have 2 helpings of old/remediation mixed with one helping of new (handheld mobile media): The Stereoscope gets remediated as the Viewmaster, which gets remediated as my3D.
Mostly I am fond of them because they apparently make tropical fish swim into your eyeballs! I'd kind of be on board with that idea. I like the suggestion that 3D remains the domain of nature imagery and documentary, like travel films or Imax. But seriously, wouldn't that first fish have penetrated your brain cavity by now if you were wearing the my3D? I know the ad has a disclaimer that this is a visualization but wow, it is a good one.

Digital Media Theory Faire

Yesterday my students gave excellent presentations about what they learned in my digital media theory course. I was pleased to see a number of cats and toilets and cute animal photos made it in, as did video games, visual effects, Baudrillard, memes, Wikileaks, hypertext, music, surveillance, frightening surveillance-based pranks, Cleverbot, DJ-ing, remixing, a stop-motion minifig action movie, some performance art (with candle!), virtual identities, and even in-class freestyle hip-hop about new media!

Mostly I was happy to see that they appear to really be thinking about these things, which means I did something right. See, theory is your friend after all!
One student who couldn't make it to the Faire (yes I put an "E" in there), sent me this awesome LOLcatBORG. I love it.

I plan to put some time in here this summer

UM Computer and Video Game Archive
See The Chronicle of Higher Education Wired Campus article
Of course, I often plan to go here but don't make it that much. North Campus is like another planet...that's five miles away.

Ray Bradbury: you have invaded my brain

Every winter of my life I think of a television film I once saw on PBS that I can barely remember, yet it haunts me. It is an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's "All Summer in a Day," in which a young girl living on Mars misses the few hours of sunshine a year because her playmates have locked her indoors and then been too dazzled by the light to remember she is trapped away from it.
This is how winter feels to me, like someone turned the contrast down on my world. My only question now is why must winter keep going on so long?

Ricky Jay rocks my world

This past week's episode of The Simpsons was about magic and its guest stars included the inimitable Ricky Jay, who even threw some cards around in animated form.
I think Ricky Jay is most amazing: he is a historian of the finest caliber, a publisher of good things, a magician in an era when magic is hard to find and a talented actor too.
Plus my friend Anne adored him and his fireproof pigs and that goes a long way for vouching for someone's greatness in my book.

On my radar: Yes my master

Little Girl Pledges Sith

Images in my head these days

Welcome to My Optic Dome!

I guess one has to be a certain age to get that reference, right? After nearly two decades online, I've decided to put myself and my stuff out there a bit more. This delurking is nicely timed to coincide with the publication of my book How Television Invented New Media, which can be purchased here or from my publisher directly--the lovely and good folks at Rutgers University Press.

My plan for this space is to include a wide range of semi-academic musings, links, beloved virtual objects and other such frivolties for my own and your amusement. Think of it like a Museum of Sheila-tastic Technologies.

When I write I use my own voice, in the first person and my own experiences to illuminate that which fascinates me. Typically those objects and experiences fall under the rubric of visual and digital cultures, hence My Optic. Hopefully this optic, or perspective, will not be myopic but instead will illuminate what life is like here in my end of the universe. Just remember to always bring a towel, to spellcheck and proofread if you can and keep an eye out for your giant panda.