The format for our interactions over the coming two weeks is a series of informal tutorials in Togethertube around a film festival, pieced together from interesting short films and classic clips on YouTube and elsewhere. All these engage in some way with themes emerging from the readings, and your brief is to tease these out a bit in discussion, extend the thinking and get familiar with some of the theory. So please do the readings early in the block, alongside your viewing of the movies.
How does the film festival work? We’ve sourced a collection of films and extracts which we’ve loosely clustered around the themes of ‘memory’, ‘machine sentience’ and ‘almost human’. There will be two ‘real time’ tutorials offered in Togethertube in weeks one and two, so that we can meet each other and watch/discuss a few of the films together. Then in week 3 we will have a Google hangout in which we’ll discuss the readings and ideas generated in more depth.
During the block, blog your thoughts, tweet them and get them feeding into your lifestream-blog.
Togethertube
Holding a couple of short meet-ups in real time gives us a chance to meet as a group, do some socialising and (text) chat about a few of the films. Togethertube adds a text chat facility to any YouTube or Vimeo movie, enabling us to watch and talk at the same time. Please go to Togethertube and sign up for an account – we will provide links here to the tutorials just before they run. We are offering two one-hour sessions in the hope that most people will be able to make at least one of them. Just enter the Togethertube room at the right time, log in and you are ready to go!
Google hangout
You will need a Google account to join the hangout in week 3, so please set one up if you don’t have one already. See the information in ‘Before semester starts‘ for how.