Curiosity Conversations: Two Zeegas Walk Into a Bar and So Does Terry


flickr photo shared by *s@lly* under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

I’ve been exploring the notions of Curiosity Conversations, inspired by Scott Glass in Make Cycle 3 of the CLMOOC. This interaction unfolded before Scott shared out his idea for CLMOOC, but fits perfectly with the concept.

Sometimes, the best part of writing digitally is trying to process the intent of the composition. But, I often don’t do much of that (or not enough for my own liking). Here, Terry Elliott and I took some purposeful time to interact with each other via a Hackpad to have “a conversation” about digital composition.

The overall thread was a poem that Jennifer N. wrote for CLMOOC a few weeks back, which then slowly transformed into a larger collaborative audio project. I wanted to take it a step further – using a tool called Zeega to make a visual piece. It turns out Terry was doing the same — making his own Zeega with the same audio and same poem.

Thus, our conversation unfolded … We asked each other questions, released some threads of ideas, wondered out loud about what it means to compose digitally. We don’t have any real answers. Just more questions.

First, watch each of our digital pieces.

First, there is mine:

And there is Terry’s Zeega interpretation:

And then, there is the messy Hackpad itself. You can add to the conversation, too. It’s an open document. Consider yourself invited. Join the conversation. Be curious.

Peace (in the mix),
Kevin

2 Comments
  1. Love how you truncated the process for your reader. Effective, yet there really is not shortcut to the kind of curiosity conversation in that Hackpad. There is a place for a noobie to enter in, but that noobie has to ante up to get the most benefit and to ask the best questions. Gotta play with zeega on your own. Gotta mess with cloud storage of digital object. Gotta read “multimodal objects”. None of this requires special expertise by this noobie, just a little time honoring the work by sharing in it. I think sometimes on #CLMOOC we make it seem like there is one kind of connection and it is easy–join in anytime, leave anytime, lurk or whatevs. Yes, there is some of that but there are many other kinds of connections. There is the skin yer knuckle using the wrench kind. There is the long ultra lo whale vibe kind. There is the pickpocket brushing your back pocket to steal your phone kind. There is the “I’m gonna keep banging on your door till you answer” kind. There is the sweet singing under the window kind. Ahhh, stop me now…
    Perhaps this week in #clmooc we need to honor all kinds of connection, and tease out what they are and how they work so that we can each play at way of connecting that perhaps we have never tried before like the “cold call to edges of the network” connection that Maxwell has us practicing. Or perhaps like the light and silly antispamafoonery I share with you on occasion.

    antispami-poltroonitude: ye encode “And I say unto you,” the robot reverend entoned, ” As long as ye encode unto the Lord of Bots all will be well.” He pivoted on his tracks and looked out over a sea of robot shiny. Turning the volume to eleven he megaphoned, “But woe be it unto you and very silicon atom in your circuits if ye do not encode the correct and true code. For that is the way of uniqueness and sin. That is the sin of corruption and virus and haxing.” All the robot congregation replied to the nanotick, “A-not-men.”

  2. I think one of you wrote (or said in a Hangout) that it could 2 or 3 years for someone to get comfortable enough to participate actively in the “making” and sharing part of the #clmooc.

    I think that’s true. I’ve been following for 4 years and still am in awe of the creativity that many of you show, such as in these Zeegas. There are so many options for entry that I think some people may be immobilized by the many choices offered to them.

    While I don’t make, I share, and encourage others to take a look at what you’re doing so they can find their own paths of involvement.

    Keep it up. It’s great.

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