I read this report with much interest. In particular, I was interested in the section “New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication�. One example of an emerging form of publication is the UO Channel. Aside from the very strong football video, the rest of the videos seemed to be little more than capturing what is happening on campus. This is clearly a new form of publication, but what makes it interesting? One trend that I see in many of these new forms is an emphasis on a group of users to the exclusion of an editor or an editorial team. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but I think it is a tension. When a category—the field, or a university—replaces an individual something is lost. What becomes of voice, style or humor? Although Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary is far from accurate, it is readable and enjoyable (for a good article on this, see Slate). Although a team created wiki or university created channel may be accurate and close to comprehensive, does that then make it funny or interesting? All this is to say that though an individual’s voice, style or sense of humor should not be the only measure of intellectual work, I think it is an important measure to keep in mind. It—in my opinion—will lead to the creation of interesting emerging forms of publication as opposed to merely new forms.

Interestingly, the co-teacher (Chris Carella) of the course Linda, Jamison and I are taking is the creator of the NMC virtual campus in SecondLife, including this machinima video about the campus.

Chris talked last Friday about the process of creating machinima, or video with avatars as characters and virtual spaces as backdrops. What he mentioned that was interesting difference between machinima and other types of video is cost: machinima requires no cameras, lighting, or physical space. All you need is ability (to create and capture 3-D spaces) and a computer with an Internet connection. In short, creating a machima movie can cost considerably less than an equal length movie with real actors, given that you have the ability to work with the 3-D environment. Here are some samples of machinima that Electric sheep company made, and links to more machinima video.