Last weekend I went up to the Bronx for the first time in years. I made my way up to the Grand Concourse, a beautiful roadway that used to house largely Jews and other Eastern European immigrants in immense tudor style apartment buildings. I chose a stretch of the museum around a small park off the concourse. Initially i had difficulty finding the trees. The placards were small and on the ground and not particularly intuitive to find. Even though I had a map on my phone, I spent a good twenty minutes searching for the first tree.
I dialed in and selected the extension and on my rickety speaker phone, I heard the story of a boy who went to the high school across the street and his relationship with this tree he had passed. I heard other stories, stories of how their used to be few trees here, of local politicians and immigrants. I wanted the stories to be more personal about specific trees but they seemed to be sort of arbitrary. “I pass this tree on the way to work.”
I liked the premise of the interaction but I didn’t feel as moved as I wanted to feel. I felt like the phone in aspect didn’t make the most of the interactive capacity of mobile phone technology. Also, it made it less accessible to folks without mobile phones. I think tech savvy folks privileged to have these gadgets can take for granted that plenty of people still can not afford the luxury of a cell phone. I did, however, encounter non-ITP students moving through the exhibition. I also spoke to people in the park when they inquired as to what I was doing. My friend and I were listening to the narratives on speaker phone and I explained that each tree had a story and you could all in and listen. They certainly seemed inquisitive. The premise had a lot of potential but I think building in sound systems or selecting more complex, relevant narratives would have been more appealing. Granted, a sound system for each tree would have been immensely expensive but perhaps the costs could have been shuffled around by using less trees, for example.
Check out my videos from the Tree Museum:
In our second week of Comm Lab, we were asked to create a narrative video in 30 minutes with an additional 15 minutes of editing time. Below is what my group collectively created:
It is not very clear to me how to respond to Walter Ong’s “Orality and Literacy.” Should the response be analytical? Should it reflect the medium we are sharing it through?
My initial thoughts are as follows:
I disagree with the analysis that formulary writing is counterproductive, even in modern society with an (obvious) emphasis on the written word. Theoretically, I agree the argument that it allows the mind to be “freed …. for more original, more abstract thought.” (p. 23) However, I think this statement fails to acknowledge the value of [primary] oral cultures, even oral cultures today. It is indeed difficult for me to even imagine a culture untouched by the written word, entirely unaware of language on paper – beyond the sound of our voice, the nuances of speech, the importance of memory, and community as one’s sounding board. The privilege of literacy is an important concept to reflect on as we address issues of accessibility at ITP and in Ong’s own analysis, assessed through a lens ingrained in the privilege of literacy.
Reflecting on oral tradition and culture could prove to be of tremendous value in tech- and mobile- focused information sharing. Early in Ong’s piece, he notes the formulaic nature of early poetics in the oral tradition. Writing for technology is also very formulaic in structure. The specific mechanisms and formulations used in writing for technology tends to flow in easily scanned, digestible short pieces such as tweets, texts, and bulleted lists on blogs.
Rediscovering the lost “magic” of oral tradition would add tremendous value in modern communication methods. I think it would be interesting to hear the breadth of language and interactions captured in StoryCorps audio collection. The basic format of StoryCorps has one individual interview another subject who typically has an established relationship with the former: sibling, partner, etc. How would these histories change if this technology were accessible in areas where the literacy rate is abysmally sub par compared to first world standards? Ong left me with many questions about the current and future states of communications and modernity in relation to issues of accessibility and privilege.
This is where I will be posting my work for Comm Lab.
