Welcome to the Graduate Student Videoconference Series  2000-1 !

All are invited to 'attend' and participate!
 
 

event #1 ....... Nov. 3	"The 1970's: Discussion of a 'fluid epistemological building code, a DNA underlying the construction of much of an epoch's cultural phenomena.'"
event #2 ....... Dec.1	"Liveness in mediated performance."
event #3 ....... April 19	"Roles of listener-sponsors in the Pacifica radio network."
event #4 ....... April 20	"Discussion and demonstration of virtual performance and archiving."

This series is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Folklore and Folklife of the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, USA), and is being supervised by a faculty member.  However, the series was initiated by and is being led by graduate students--in Folklore and in various other disciplines, at Penn and at numerous other universities. In each event, Penn graduate students will videoconference with a different partner.  These will be two-party videoconferences over ISDN lines (NOT over the Internet).  Each event will consist of at least one presentation from each end on a related topic. There will be two additional components to each event, making this quite an experiment on social and technological levels: 1) We at Penn will be simultaneously (with a 20-second delay) webcasting over the Internet, via Realplayer software, the combined audio and video of the videoconferenced conversation, so that people at up to 60 computers around the world will be able to observe the conversation and 2) communicate to the speakers by sending e-mail to them.  We are planning to pre-arrange at least three e-mail respondents for each event.  Special attention will be paid to structuring these events so that the videoconferencers will interact with the e-mailers. At present, we are discussing what the topics of the fall events will be, and who will be the videoconference partners and the e-mail respondents.  We are a pool of 24 graduate students, with a pool of 9 or so possible topics (please see below). This project is not topic-driven: it is being driven by a community that has formed around a common goal: to explore and practice a new medium of communication together. If you are a university undergraduate, faculty, or staff member-- or even if you are unaffiliated with academia-- you are also invited to join the list and comment occasionally, and to observe and interact with the live webcasts; however, you can not be on the series committee, which is composed only of graduate students. The decision-making process is generally being done by consensus: any member of the series committee can make or block a proposal.  If a proposal is not blocked by a committee member in a reasonable amount of time, it will pass and will be adopted by the group. Please join us!  We are communicating via an e-mail listserv:  To subscribe to this list, or for further information, please send an e-mail to the list manager. Please click here to see our writings relating to videoconferencing in general, and to this series in particular (including rationale behind it, and observations about the process). Thank you!   Below are lists of topics under consideration, and of committee members. *** possible topics: Issues in ethnomusicology (possibly relating to Caribbean music). Verbal arts (discussion about, demonstration of, instruction in). The concept of cultural translation. Folklore and interactive telecommunication -- How do people present themselves or their groups on websites?  What connections are there between websites and folk or popular forms of display, such as photo albums?  What social functions do such forms of display serve?  What problems exist in e-mail communication, and how do groups deal with them? The study of communities.  What are ways in which communities come into being?  How are they maintained and repaired?  How and why do they die? Members of a Philadelphia rainbow gatheringcommunity are developing a garden/kitchen near the Puppet House that was closed down by the authorities during last summer's Republican presidential convention.  One question is: how are members of this group relating with other people in the neighborhood? 2001: A Space Odyssey.  How does the reality of 2001 compare to the movie?  (Possibly for the spring semester.) Teaching with electronic media:  What works?  What problems are there, and how can they be compensated for? Performance via videoconference:  Are performers and audience members at the two or more sites "live" to each other?  Is it a single event?   *** committee members (as of 10/24/00): Elizabeth Dougherty Margaret Magat Eric Miller Rita Moonsammy Solimar Otero Siriporn (Ri) Phakdeephasook Steve Poizat-Newcomb Steven Reynolds Debra Lattanzi Shutika Tonya Taylor Folklore, U. of Pennsylvania Laura Lohman Music, U. of Pennsylvania Susan Kinnevy School of Social Work, U. of Pennsylvania Tim Field Wharton Business School, U. of Pennsylvania John F. E. Drover Folklore, Newfoundland Memorial U. Angelique van Berlo Music, York U. (Toronto) Gisele-Audrey Mills Ethnomusicology, U. of Maryland Andrew McGraw Ethnomusicology, Wesleyan U. Joanna Pecore U. of Maryland Toni Sant Performance Studies, NYU Barbara Hampton City U. of New York (CUNY) Mikkilynn Olmsted Folklore, Western Kentucky U. John J. Cash Folklore / School of Library Information Sciences, Indiana U. R. Neill Hadder Anthropology, U. of Texas G. Rabe Ethnomusicology, UCLA