Arranged Delirium

As a follow up to my last post which referenced the V Magazine size issue, here is a link to a recent interview with Crystal Renn (the plus-size model featured) which ran recently in the New YorkTimes. If you continue on and search a bit online, you’ll find a good amount of interesting commentary regarding the issue of body image and how it is represented to us via media.

I think we’re finally starting to see some of the lash-back against some of the more extreme photo editing that was so prevalent during the mid-2000’s. You know what I mean: the cover or story images that looked like some kind of 3D game characters rather than photos of real people. The New York Time ran a story relatively recently entitled Smile and Say ‘No Photoshop’ - if you can’t access it, do a search and you can get around the NYT required registration. In many ways, there’s nothing new to this - photographers have been re-touching images for decades - but digital technology has made this easier, faster, and more pervasive. And given the prevalence of our media immersion in the modern era, I’d say that makes things a bit different than it was a few decades ago. Check out the comments form the article too, as I think it helps us understand how many different ways there are of thinking about this. It’s a good discussion topic for class!

And as a continuation of the discussion regarding body image, take a look at these comparison shots from models.com and V Magazine’s Size Issue. You can find a ton of information on this story with a quick search online…

For those of you transitioning from old HTML knowledge to our work with XHTML in ITL 370 , you may find this Quick Primer on XHTML Markup to be a handy quick reference for translating what you already know into what we’ll be working with this term. Actually, I think its likely useful for folks learning it the first time too - at least as a reminder of some of the materials we’re going through here at the beginning of class…

As we begin Photoshop work in my New Media course, this MacWorld article outlining some of the application’s history is proving to be quite timely. I have a love/hate relationship with the software. I’ve been using it for nearly 20 years myself and it’s remarkably versatile and useful. But the pricing and availability of it at this point has me looking for alternatives for my classes. I suppose I love the software, but hate the Adobe business practices.

In any event, it’s always provided an excellent production platform for considering the various social and ethical implications for our current use of media. One of the more recent dramas has been the result of the image below. You can read all about it in the National Post article.

BTW, if you haven’t checked out Photoshop Disasters, you ought to give it a look. SOme of the commentary is pretty funny.

As our games course wraps up, I enjoyed this timely article at the Chronicle: 5 Teaching Tips —From Video Games. I’ve really come to appreciate how playing games can really teach problem-solving skills in ways that are inherently motivational for students. It reminded me of the early days of multimedia development when we could get students to pay attention to content merely because it was interesting to them. Then, that got me thinking about my own teaching and what elements are effective and which are less so…