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POST 1. Questions about this module's reading. Call your post : "my name_post 1"

(Reading n 1: Text 1.b "The Medium is the Message" and Text 1.c "Hot and Cold Media")

Text 1. b Confronts a hot literate culture (our classic Western Culture) versus a cold preliterate culture ("primitive" oral cultures) as a way of understanding the consequences of a printed-oriented culture and as a way of better understanding the Cold post-literarte culture ( The electric age, the age of Multimedia and the Web).

This implies that the Web Age or electric age behaves like an Oral Culture.

1. What is an oral culture for you?

2. How do you see the Electric Age behaving like an oral culture? Give me an example.

3. Compare on a paragraph a Hot medium with a Cold medium

POST 2. Self Reflection about the movie "La Jettee" (watch it on youtube). Call your post:"myname_post 2"

1. what would you say is the vision of technology in this movie?

2. Which is your favorite scene? Describe the emotional situation and the visual and audio material that creates it.

La Jettee, by Chris Marker, 1963. English version

The classic short that inspired Terry Gilliam's "12 Monkeys". It was produced in 1963! and it brought to Media the interesting subject (later exploited) of traveling through time.

Besides 12 Monkeys, other movies reinterpreted the generic theme of traveling through time ( Terminator, back to the Future...).

It was created out of still images, in Black and white. There is only one, very short, piece of live action.
it is one of the best examples I know of the power of Cold Media in action, since the lack of data, in this case, makes us get immerse in the story, leaving practical and technical details to us and helping focusing on the emotional aspect of the story.
The soundtrack is superb in its power of emotional evocation.

The original version is in French, were the narrator creates an incredible environment for the story. The French version is difficult to find and I understand you guys are used to English...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8

POST 1. Questions about this module's reading. Call your post : "myname_post 1"

(Reading n 2: Chapter 4,"The song of the Alphabet in the Cyberspace". from the book "Digital McLuhan, a guide to the Information Millennium", By Paul Levison.)

1. Explain how seeing differs from hearing in a psychological/ perceptive way.

2a. What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication.

2b.Give me 2 examples of media that qualify on each category.

3. Explain how speech differs from the written word ("the alphabet") according to Levinson.

POST 2. Self Reflection about the text. Call your post:"myname_post 2"

1.Tell me, in your words, how the Internet is an Acoustic medium. You can be creative with it, elaborate your own theory departing from McLuhan/Levinson thesis.

2. Choose your favorite answer from the rest of your peers and explain why you think is original/interesting/ well thought/well presented.

POST 3. Call your post:"myname_post 3"

Answer those questions after watching the "selected QuickTime and Powerpoint Midterm projects" at:
http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/mcluhan_students_midt.html

1. Choose the project that has successfully exemplified some concept that you didn't understand.
Explain what technique did the student use that helped you internalize the concept.

2a. Which is, in your opinion, the most useful project from a communicative point of view and why.

2b. Point out something in a project that has surprised you as successful.
(assembling technique, combination of an image with a piece of text, quality/meaning/ connotative quality of an image, originality of a display...)

2c. Point out something in a project that could have been improved and explain how would you make it better, if you were called for a consulting session.

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WORKING MATERIAL.
Those are links to pages in your help-site about Marshall McLuhan.

To familiarize yourself with McLuhan aphorisms:

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/mcluhanisms.htm

Presentation on Mc Luhan's terminology. The ideas are related to each other in a very "playful" style, typical of the author.
Think of a puzzle and trying to build families of words. Don't expect it to "make sense" in a traditional way.

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/mcluhan_words_retouched1/Mcluhan_words.htm>

To watch outstanding midterm presentations on Marshall Mcluhan

http://soma.sbcc.edu/users/ajarabo/intro_Multimedia/students_mcluhan_midt.html

QUESTIONS.
1. Do some search on the internet and find out what is an aphorism. Write down the link to your source.

2. Build yourself an aphorism. Something that comes from your own experience.

3. Write down 4 sentences that compile thoughts you have extracted from the digital material I have given you above.

4. Write down 2 words you had to look up in the dictionary from the text 1.a of your reader.

5. Concepts from that text you don't understand? Present it clear by but briefly.
Answer the post of some other student. May be you can help them understand (10 points for answering this one)

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Usually an aphorism is a concise statement containing a personal truth or observation cleverly and pithily written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphorism

1 : a concise statement of a principle
2 : a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment :

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aphorism

Aphorism is a brief saying embodying a moral, a concise statement of a principle or precept given in pointed words.

Example:
Hippocrates: Life is short, art is long, opportunity fleeting, experimenting dangerous, reasoning difficult.
Pope: Some praise at morning what they blame at night.
Emerson: Imitation is suicide
Franklin: Lost Time is never Found again.

Assignment

Compress an image for the web on 3 different sizes.

Find an image (digitize it with a scanner, download it from a digital camera or download a high-resolution image from the web). 
Make sure is set to 72dpi.

Scale or Crop the image into those 3 sizes. 
Save it as a jpeg or a gif. 
Attach them to this submission window before Sunday at midnight.

First image: 800X600 pixels. Name it: "myname_800X600.jpg"

Second image: 320X240 pixels. Name it: "myname_320X240.jpg"

Third image: 160X120 pixels. Name it: "myname_160X120.jpg"

Make a post answering the following questions: 
(include the numbers in your answers)

If you have to do some search, add the link to your source.

1. What are the extensions for the main compressed graphic formats? 
(this is a tricky question, since Macs and PCs store the extension names with different amount of characters)

2. What does JPG stand for and how does a jpg save file size compared with a non-compressed file format, like a Photoshop file (psd)?

3. What does GIF stand for and how does it save file size compared with a non-compressed file format, like a Photoshop file (psd)?

4. What types of images work best as a gif format and what is the maximum amount of colors a gif can carry?

5. Can you create a transparent gif whose content blends smoothly with any background?

6. How many values between white and black can an alpha channel store?