WRT: Writer Response Theory

Last spring, Holly Willis and the Institute for Multimedia Literacy hosted the 24/7 DIY Video Summit. (See the newly relaunched web-page here, complete with videos and much much more.) Here’s a project that invited you to DIY using the participants of that summit! Don’t just cite media critics, make them say what you want them to say with the video: The Media {Scholars} are the Messengers.

Add your own text here using Bubbleply.
See one version of the video with text here.

WRiTing on videos:
Back in 2007, Michael Wesch released the rabidly viral video “A Vision of Students Today.” In it, his 200 students sit in a giant lecture hall at Kansas State University, where Wesch teaches. The camera zooms as the students, one by one, hold up signs on paper or computer screens that make statements from a survey the students participated in. The statements describe their study habits and daily media consumption. “I will read 8 books” this year, says one sign, but “2300 web pages,” says another. As with Wesch’s other releases, the video has provoked quite a response. Perhaps more striking than the over 3 million views are the 60+ video responses posted on YouTube.

For Martin Luther King Day (2008) I added my own response, entitled “(Re)Visions of Students Today,” by remixing the film and replacing the signs with messages that commented on the racial makeup of these student representatives of “students today.” Now signs that once spoke on behalf of the students now spoke about the students, and more specifically, the students who were missing. The video prompted a response from Wesch on his blog and some coverage of our video tag war, one-sided though it may have been. Video remixing had proved a useful (and quite direct) channel for dialogue.

At 24/7, after meeting Wesch and challenging him to various kinds of conference duels (speed twittering, video mashing, etc.), I hatched the idea of turning the graffiti project into a tool for communication.

This project ties in to the Bob Dylan sign generator (designed by ten4), the church sign generator, the Next Candidate: You meme. (Some of these were discussed in the previous post about the Web 2.0 App generator)

How to: Now the video is online, add your own message. Bubbleply is probably the easiest tool for this right now (since the demise of Mojiti).

1. Just copy this URL
2. Insert it in BubblePly
3. Add Your messages to the sign

Or you can remix it yourself with Zamzar.

While I expect most of the messages will be either lewd or marriage proposals, students of the Web could use these blank pages to write messages about media using these media scholars.

Perhaps that is the role of the scholar in the age of Web 2.0: to offer themselves and their works as tools of creation, to offer their words for remixing, and to offer their images for defacing.

This material is released under a Creative Commons license.

Featured Scholars: Howard Rheingold, Beth Coleman, Lev Manovich, Michael Wesch, Liz Losh, Henry Jenkins, Alex Juhasz, Steve Anderson, Holly Willis, Mimi Ito, and myself.

Please post links to any videos you make in response in the comments (or in reply to the YouTube video).