film 20c

fall 2004

final project: wiki essay

due in sections, Dec. 2-3

length: 1400-1800 words

instructions

You will use the class wiki to produce an essay-project structured as a hypertext that addresses key concepts in the course readings. In your project, you will develop an argument that brings ideas from two different parts of the course. Your job is to connect an aspect of one of these ideas:

• [non]indexicality, which can include digital cinema's relationship to painting and animation [Mannovich]
• cyborgology as a way of understanding the relationship between organic and inorganic actors [Gray et al.]
• sociality of games [Jenkins, Ito]
• narrative, non-narrative, and game-centricism [pearce]
• intellectual property, free software, and or [Stallman, Cramer, Innella]

with one of these ideas:

• hypertextual structures and architectures, management of information [Bernstein et al., Berners-Lee, Bush]
• types of online/offline social relationships [Slater] or the producing meaning between rl & vr [Dibbell]
• racialized performance and identity tourism in online environments [Nakamura]
• thinking about thinking as a performance or game [Turing]
• structures of web communities and the organization of the web [Gibson et al.]

You must address in detail one reading from the first group and one from the second. Your analysis and linking of these two readings needs to play a central role in your overall argument.

Some examples of how you might do this (these are not fully developed arguments, and they are not the only examples):

• indexicality and the imitation game
• game centric theories and hypertext narrative
• cyborgology and racialized performance
• digital rights management and memex

You must also have a copy of your project in a text or word processing format, available upon request (such as if there are technical difficulties).

structure

Your essay will link together at least four internal pages and at least one external page. You must include:

• a "thesis" page that presents your argument and anchors your other linked pages; it will function like a hub
• a "meta" page that discusses how you have put your project together (your strategy in linking and how your linking strategy fits your argument}; this can be in the "discussion" portion of your wiki project (and it counts in your word count total)

The rest of your links can include these possibilities:

• connections to main points or key examples
• links to explanatory text (either your own or external material)
• self-referential links to other points in your project
• links to your meta page

For this project, you will need to abandon much of the conventional "five paragraph theme paper" approach. Your organization of your material will be less linear, but you still need to develop conceptual connections in your writing and through your links. You will also need think about how you will section your essay and how you will connect those sections.

collaborative projects

In the spirit of multiply authored wikis, you may collaborate with other students on this project. Each student will still be responsible for producing the same amount of material as a student working alone. In other words, if three students collaborate, the total project must be three times as large as a project by a single student. You could collaborate by linking different individually produced projects or by having different multiple authors of a section. You must explain how you collaborated in your "meta" section. All collaborating students will receive the same grade; that is, one grade will be given for the entire project.

Collaborative efforts must be approved by your TA.

assessment

In grading your projects, we will focus equally on the following three criteria:

· your ability to develop a clear argument and sustain it in a hypertext structure

· your understanding of the readings, including your ability to cite and discuss concepts

· your ability to use the hypertext structure to connect your own ideas and those in the readings you address

In addition these main elements, we will also evaluate based on grammar, syntax, etc.