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Sincere: Sunukaddu

  By admin | December 9, 2010 - 7:51 am | , , , , , ,
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These articles, presentations, and videos attempt to introduce the world to Sunukaddu‘s people and practices. As I state in my bio:

“This past summer, I had the thrilling opportunity to work in Dakar, Senegal, with innovative non-governmental organization le Reseau Africain d’Education pour la Sante (RAES) program, Sunukaddu. To this teen workshop in multimedia health communication I brought a pedagogical model and method that positioned new media literacies (NMLs) and SEL skills as fundamental to meaningful learning, and asset appreciation as key to sustainability. Collaboratively as a Sunukaddu team, local staff and I generated: a daily schedule that reflected a scaffolded methodology for optimizing participatory learning; a programmatic schedule that introduced key communication characteristics, strategies, and platforms, as well as useful theory; full lesson plans that respected our theoretical, temporal, and curricular goals; and a sense of togetherness.”

I wrote about my experiences with Sunukaddu for eLearn Magazine (“Making Education (Double) Count: Boosting Student Learning via Social and Emotional Learning and New Media Literacy Skills“), Henry Jenkins’s heavily trafficked blog (“High Tech? Low Tech? No Tech?“), and the blog for Global Kids Online Leadership Program (“Sunukaddu, A Voice for Youth in Senegal“). I also presented my work at the National Communication Association’s 2010 convention in San Francisco (“Leveraging New Media Literacies & Social-Emotional Learning to enrich teen education in Senegal“) and at the Global Education Conference (“New Media Literacies: The core challenges of implementation and assessment in international contexts“), a free, online event that took place in multiple time zones and languages over five days, hosting 15,028 unique logins and presentations from 62 countries.

An presentation on Sunukaddu and bridge-building with Los Angeles-area high schools was videotaped and posted to the web (I speak, Pecha Kucha-style, from 1:04:30-1:08:30). Nonetheless, when it came to presenting Sunukaddu via video alone, despite the fact that Sunukaddu taught participants how to shoot and edit video!, my translation was less articulate.

My learning process with FinalCut Pro, Compressor, and Snapz proved challenging and riddled with potholes. What began as a single remix that used footage sampled liberally from students’ documentation of the program, students’ final projects, and colleagues’ own remixes became three, relatively straight-forward videos. These three were intended to function as an introduction to NMLs, a preview of Sunukaddu’s integration of NMLs with SEL, and a final synthesis.

Sunukaddu: Our Voice, version 1 (originally posted to class wiki October 21, 2010)

Sunukaddu: Our Voice, version 2 (originally posted to class wiki November 11, 2010)
PART 1: New Media Literacies

This is a short film produced by Vanessa Vartabedian of Project New Media Literacies. I have left it in its original form except for excising two interviews — one with Henry Jenkins, one with Lana Swartz — which I inserted into PART 3.


PART 2: Sunukaddu
I took Vee’s advice and utilized the girls’ singing as a soundtrack to introduce Sunukaddu concepts and stills. I hope that it makes sense, how one NML and one SEL skill are at play in each still I flash. At any rate, it’s a work in progress…


PART 3: New Media Literacies + Sunukaddu

This is the end of the first version of my remix. I think that this part is the strongest component of the original and can stand on its own. I also think it’s an uplifting way to end, with Shakira’s “Waka waka” song and the explanation of NML’s specific utility for all people. The fact that the map focuses on Africa while Henry is talking is simply a very happy coincidence, but one which I exploit.

Child’s play

  By admin | December 9, 2010 - 7:47 am | , , ,
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My passion about play led me to spontaneously film a one-minute segment on the streets of Dakar during the summer of 2010. The first half features three girls playing a jump rope-style game; during the second half,  I incorporate my inescapable, abiding interest in gender by asking my male coworker Adama about girls’ and boys’ games.

In terms of my digital portfolio, my personal interests inspired me, once again and just as unwittingly, to create multiple projects on the same theme: supporting children’s play. Both pieces argue for giving youths the tools to author their own destinies, as opposed to applying tools to them for purposes of surveillance or superficial measurement. The subject of meaningful play is embedded in both; whereas some adults believe that structured programs should be imposed upon youth, I believe (and quality research maintains) that youths’ most meaningful learning stems from their self-directed exploration.

Interpreting Stone

  By admin | December 9, 2010 - 7:43 am | ,
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Allucquere Rosanne Stone’s (1996) The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age is a significant addition to the historical record, shedding light on the development of such important early digital havens as Atari Labs and CommuniTree, as well as (unintentionally) demonstrating the ephemeral nature of the current and cutting-edge — when it comes to technology, new products on the market are, in a sense, already “old.”

Desire and technology in the workplace: Exploration, reification & transgression (originally presented to the class on September 30, 2010)

Demonstrating uncommon insight for her time, Stone (1996) expounds on the novel affordances offered by computers:

Computers are arenas for social experience and dramatic interaction, a type of media more like public theater, and their output is used for qualitative interaction, dialogue, and conversation. Inside the little box are other people” (p. 16).
“Ubiquitous technology, which is definitive of the virtual age, is far more subtle. It doesn’t tell us anything. It rearranges our thinking apparatus so that different thinking just is” (p. 168).

Stone (1996) also examines the concept of multiplicity. She claims:

“The nets are spaces of transformation, identity factories in which bodies are meaning machines and transgender — identity as performance, as play, as wrench in the smooth gears of social apparatus of the social apparatus of vision — is the ground state” (pp. 180-181).

Contemporary actor/performance artist Sarah Jones embodies multiplicity in her appropriation of diverse characters within a one-woman show. Her performance demonstrates corporeally what the Internet can deliver virtually.

Sarah Jones as One Woman Global Village

Designing like Barbara Kruger

  By admin | December 9, 2010 - 7:42 am | ,
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Freedom, regardless of gender and sexual orientation, is currently under review. Justices, lawmakers, and advocates are examining the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as well as weighing the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8. While less of a “headline-grabber,” sexual oppression in contexts of both war (e.g., prisoner-directed sexual violence, such as humiliation, rape, and forced marriage, in Iraq and the Congo, to name a few) and “peace” (e.g., civilian-directed sexual violence, such as harassment and rape, in every country on the planet) commands the attention of millions.

This piece attempts to initiate a dialogue on these subjects, using art as a lens to examine power.

Posturing (originally submitted to class wiki on September 16, 2010)

I chose this iconic image because, the more I looked at it, the more suspicious of it I became. While I’d formerly been swept away on a tide of joy and romance — Hooray! The war is over! — I began noticing signs of possible domination and artificiality. First, I looked at the couple’s hands. Check out the nurse’s left, clutching her leg/buttock. What is that about? While her right foot pop seems carefree, her squeeze suggests something else, something other than a passionate desire to hold her smooching sailor. The sailor’s left hand is bizarre also. He isn’t cradling her skull tenderly, he’s got her neck slung over his upper arm and his fist is aloft. Just as she avoided the opportunity to reach out and touch him, so too does he avoid a meaningful embrace. When we add this to the firm grip he’s got on her waist, the kiss seems more and more like a man-handle. He seized an object and had his way with it. But good.

In this sense, it evokes another famous image of a kiss — that of Gustav Klimt. The full portrait shows the woman’s feet dangling over the edge of a cliff.

However, the feet detail is usually cropped out.

Devoid of this context, the image is sweet and sensual, the stuff of postcard purveyors’ and corporate postermakers’ commercial dreams. But the original indicates that our lady is actually in peril, and so the power relationship is called into question. Is she a supplicant to an abusive sexual harasser? Is she a damsel in distress saved by a loving white knight? Then we could start to interrogate her neck position and facial expression. Is she demurely enjoying the kiss or merely tolerating this physical incursion?

With this informing my perspective, I began to question why the sailor would so insistently impose his kiss — and it’s a whopper, check out his mouth, he could swallow that nurse whole! We can see the smiling approval of the dark-suited sailor on the left. And the photographer’s camera could not have been subtle — this is 1945, afterall. The equipment did not blend.

Robert Doisneau’s famous image of a kiss has caught some flak for being posed.

I do not believe that the WWII photographer arranged his subjects as Doisneau had. However, I do wonder if there is an artificiality to the image all the same; I wonder if the sailor posed himself, specifically for a performance of gender. “See how manly I am! Yeah!!!” The buddy sees, and laughs, and approves. The camera sees, and by extension, the nation. Cries America: Hooray for heterosexuality! (We will ignore the sexual assault!)

So again, why so insistent, this machismo? The culture of the military is good enough an answer. But with the possibility of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” it makes me think about all of the homosexuals who, for years, have served in silence. What if this were a display of pre-emptive or reactive hetero-normative masculinity? That might explain the sailor’s urgency and pandering to voyeurs’ gaze. I purposely made this text ambiguous so that the owner of this interior monologue is unclear: Who has the boyfriend, the man or the woman? The X out of “boyfriend jealous” and line “nation relieved” can be read as a comment on Americans’ unease with homosexuality or our appreciation of this image because it seemed to signify that things were back to normal, that we were happy and released from the yoke of war, and could joyously celebrate with a swak to the kisser.

Designing like Shepard Fairey

  By admin | December 9, 2010 - 7:42 am |
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More than ever before, women around the world are pursuing autonomy, indicated by such social shifts as filing for divorces and engaging in politics. Even so, women’s full and unfettered participation in civil, industrial, and political spheres has yet to be achieved.

This piece uses Hillary Rodham Clinton — her maligned public persona, historic and unsuccessful bid for presidential candidacy, and status as Secretary of State — to explore feminism’s trajectory and speculate more broadly on female enfranchisement.

Getting Closer (originally posted to the wiki on September 16, 2010)


I transformed this image in several ways. First, I colored over the fuzzy backs of heads in the right and left foreground and painted in the negative space with an extension of Hillary’s shoulders and arms. I also matched the colors of the background woman’s blouse and extended those colors downwards, as if we could see her whole body. Then I chose one of the background gray colors and painted over the background in its entirety, making Hillary’s image punch out. I chose to frame her hair, as seen in the original, to give a halo effect.


Then I contemplated the image. The woman in the background, looking into the distance, and Hillary’s pensive gaze into the future, made me think about feminism. I used Fairey’s carnival-esque font and imposed the text “GETTING CLOSER.” The cramping of this text together and around the edges was intentional, an embodiment of “getting closer,” perhaps an expansion outwards from an inhospitable corner. Not only did Hillary’s campaign bring her closer to the female electorate, not only is Hillary closer to the foreground than her female companion, but WOMEN overall are getting closer to enjoying equal rights and fair compensation. Hillary’s success — and “failure” to secure the Democratic nomination — signify this march of progress towards an unattained terminus. Perhaps THAT is what Hillary is considering so soberly…

P.S. If you Google Image search “Hillary Clinton,” you will discover that the lion’s share of pix depict unflattering moments. Lot of Hillary hate out there…