Museums used to be buildings that housed artefacts. The experts contextualised these objects by writing historically-accurate interpretations of their meaning. Visitors used to enter museums to absorb this. How often have you looked at objects in museums and thought that the meaning an object has to you is different to the one conveyed by the museum’s card, plaque, kiosk, etc.? New technology and ways of working mean that can change. Some museum managers are excited about the possibilities opened up by enabling visitors to share their own interpretations and are asking their staff to work in new ways. I did once hear one museum worker say “But that isn’t what…
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National Older People’s Day stories
Digital Stories available to watch again on BBC iPlayer until the middle of next week: “To celebrate National Older People’s Day and to change some outdated stereotypes on ageing, a collection of short stories written, recorded, edited and produced by people living in Wales.” This is a link for people reading this in the UK only, sorry, because iPlayer only works in the UK.
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EDSN
The European Digital Storytelling Network is now active and it looks as if the Copenhagen workshops have been going really well. Good luck to this new organisation.
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Bug eats VHS
Anyone who filmed home video from the 1980s -90s will is likely to have that footage in the VHS tape medium. I’ve just seen an item on a TV programme called Sunday Life which warned that fungus is attacking these old tapes. So now may be a good time to digitise these old recordings. The way I’ll probably do this is to make real-time recordings from VHS to miniDV and then use Firewire to ingest that footage onto my hard disk where I can import it into an editing package and then render it out as a DV PAL file. I should probably use an open standard like DIV-X in…
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The trouble with publishing your digital story on YouTube is
Publishing your digital story on YouTube is cheap, quick, easy and not without its dangers. So here’s how to avoid the pain. If it’s your own content you’re publishing and this is what you want to do, go for it. If you’re part of a digital storytelling project that helps others to make stories and you’re looking for a way of getting their stories out there, just be aware the embed code that’s on offer enables anyone to embed that video into a completely different website. Usually that will be someone’s on-topic blog; sometime though, the final destination is something much less desirable. It’s all about context, isn’t it? Benefits…
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New Wales Media Literacy blog
Wales Literacy Network launched a new blog at the annual Eisteddfod meet last night: http://walesmedialiteracy.org.uk/blog/ Other highlights of the night included an update about NIACE Cymru’s work by Essex Harvard; an insight into user testing and user participation in the Welsh youth TV programme Mosgito by its web executive producer Nia M. Davies and examples of clay animation and Welsh web terms standardisation.
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Avoid using other people’s stuff – number 7 of 7 DS no-nos
This is your story, so try to use your own images, story, words, original sentiments, music, style, philosophy, etc. as far as you can. The promotion of royalty-free content advocated by some digital storytelling trainers means that opportunities may be missed. Of course, sometimes you’ll find yourself working with people who have no access to their own materials. And teachers in class with young children may also find it easier to use images from the internet. If you do use your own personal materials though, you’ll not only avoid issues around intellectual property, but your story will also truly be your own. Written and first published by Gareth Morlais on…
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Tribute forms
“How can people participate without necessarily having to be centre stage?” That’s a question I’ve been asking myself ever since discussing digital storytelling with a colleague, Grahame Davies, last year. My experience of Digital Stories is that they’re usually personal. This aspect of ‘talking about myself’ raises a barrier in some people and cultures. This was an issue raised by some people I met in Japan earlier this year. Last night, on TV, I saw a piece of video that stands as a good example of a ‘tribute form’. Look at the first 55 seconds of the video clip on this page. It’s in Welsh. It features people who live…
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Pink fingertip syndrome
This is a new term I just had to invent. We launched a new Welsh-language mobile website yesterday (info). It was fast as anything when I browsed it alone, yet when I needed to show it to Siwan from the press office, it loaded ever so slowly. Why did this happen? Because of pink fingertip syndrome – I pressed the buttons differently when I was demonstrating and the server ‘knew’.
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Eisteddfod 2008
It’s the week of the National Eisteddfod which is back here in Cardiff for the first time in 30 years. Lots of buzz on the Maes. I met Gwion Llwyd of Sbarc! yesterday while watching Mr Huw play live. Sbarc! is a successful Digital Storytelling project based in Caernarfon, run by Rhian Cadwaladr. Gwion said they’re experimenting with some interesting new story forms and he’s also part of Rhyfeddod.com – a performing art group which is planning an autumn show where projected couplets written by different poets are triggered depending on where on a stage a person stands. They’re also working on a newly-funded slate-mining heritage project. Gwion’s fascinated by…