GIST

An Ethnography: The ‘Talking Head’ Video as a Form of Text

This paper builds upon my last paper for this class ‘My Experiment’ which took the form of a glog-and-video combination that tested out how my own personal learning as well as the learning of my audience is affected by the medium through which I presented my paper. Conversations were sparked after I published this paper to the class’ Serendip site and this paper is part, my own ‘lived experience’ and observations of user behaviours and part analysis of processing and learning from the ‘talking head’ videos that have grown in popularity over the video-sharing website, YouTube.

English, as a subject, and I have ave a tenuous relationship at best: I usually don't 'understand' English, and English seems to enjoy grinding me into Julia-paste. As other similar classes, we are parting with a healthy respect for each other and a polite hat-tip, and quietly grateful for a break from each other. In this class, I’ve been learning about labels, about information, about other peoples’ points of view.

For our final project we chose to play "Mafia" as an exercise in communication. In this game the participants have to discuss with one another who they think is the mafia. It could be anything from a funny  look, to an intuition.  This also tied into our conversations about information. What constitutes information? We were curious with this game to see what our classmates would chose as information to decide who they were going to accuse. I found it interesting that the people who were more vocal about their accusations were also most likely to be accused by the majority.

Like Merlin, I created my Portfolio online.  Thanks, for the idea, Merlin :)

Here is the link to my portfolio: thegistofspreston.tumblr.com/

For our end of the year presentation, our group decided to play Mafia, a game in which a "town" of people, including townspeople, mafia members, and an inspector, must vote on which townsperson committed the last murder (full rules belo We wanted to play this game to see how people gather their information.  Because their eyes are closed during the "murder," the townspeople must base their decision on information they gather through the town meetings - how can one separate lies from real information?  It was interesting to watch the class play this game because the first person to get killed was the inspector - the member who actually knew who a mafia member was!  The mafia members were able to convince the rest of the group that the inspector was very su

Where were you when we began this process?

            My mind was a bit less broad and I think I had a better sense of the world.

Where are you now?

            I’m not terribly sure. The mind, like the universe, is ever expanding? That’s if there is a universe. That’s if I have a mind.

What’s been happening in between?

For our final performance, my group created an online chat room about sex robots in which each of us took on anonymous personas. We participated in the chat from separate locations, and only one member (the one who created the chat room) knew who each of us were. This was both a fun and frustrating process. First of all, it made me realize the inefficiency of technology. I thought that creating my screen name and logging in to the chat would take but a few minutes. I was wrong. I had to have at least three people help me create an account, download the correct program, and figure out how to connect to the chat. Technology was not working for me. Because I have a Mac, I had to download a specific type of AIM, which then didn't seem to work with other members.

Final self-evaluation

            When I found about the course, I was really interested in taking it because I have never taken a class dealt with gender issues. I figured the class would be even better because it also incorporated science and technology that I really enjoy studying. I was very curious how those subjects will be coordinated together as well.

For the first part of the class, gender, I was fascinated by all the new materials I was learning. I grew up in a homophobic society where gender diversity was not acknowledged, so I felt that I understood where gender diversity comes from and why it is important to acknowledge it for the first time of my life.

 My group decided to play the game mafia primarily because it is a fun and engaging way to get the class involved. Mafia is always a popular game which I find really interesting, particularly within the context of GIST’s section on information and noise, which was the section we drew from in our reasons for playing the game and our subsequent analyses of the process. The most interesting thing I noticed with my group was the specific reasons players gave when accusing people of being the mafia. As usual when playing this game, people made it silly and almost nonsensical by basing their accusations on arbitrary triggers, such as: “they’re quiet” or “they just have that look”.