A Stunningly Brief and Quick Look at the Visual Anthropology of Japan - Fall 2008

How do you compress 80 minutes of class time into less than a minute? Add toe, of course. Visual Anthropology of Japan, Fall 2008. Time flies when you are having fun... Thanks for a great semester, and stay tuned to VAOJ!

"Weekend in Japan" - Video Experiment

What is this? (Do you really want to read this "study guide"/spoiler?)

This short film summarizes a weekend in early April 2008 as experienced by the visual anthropologist. Beautiful spring time weather made cherry blossom viewing even more wonderful. Behind my house is a small stream lined with cherry trees. Up stream the neighborhood elderly people's association writes and displays senryu poetry among the cherry blossoms. Friday night I attended a deaf gathering at a bar in Osaka. The bar was dimly lit, making sign language a little challenging to see. However, we were doing OK when all of a sudden the disco balls started, showering us with rays of brilliant colors. All very beautiful, but once again it made signing a little difficult. But we adapted and continued with our fun. Sunday I was invited to a cherry blossom viewing party with deaf people, uniting my visual themes (key words) of cherry blossoms, deaf and sign language.

I experiment with ordered pairs and dichotomies. Traditional culture and modern practices; deaf and hearing; light and dark; sound and vision; self and other; humans and nature; stereotypes and reality - these things are not opposites or either/or. Rather they are mutually supporting, influencing and intermingling with each other; they are partial truths. The film is composed of sound and vision bites a la Bakhtin's architectonics. Sometimes things are smooth, sometimes they make sense, sometimes things are rough, sometimes things are utterly confusing. This is culture and life - at least for one visual anthropologist for one Weekend in Japan.

Comments and critiques, please. Special thanks to my VAOJ students who have already let me have it - very much appreciated...

Photobucket Experiment

As we discussed in class yesterday, Photobucket can be used when one wants to create a link directly to a photo. For example, click here and see what image you get...

You can insert a small thumbnail photo that will enlarge when clicked on like the one below:


You can also upload short videos (up to 5 minutes they say) and link them to your blog like I am doing here... There is also a remix function (available after you have logged in) where you can edit the video. I haven't played with it yet but it might be useful and/or fun.

Check out Photobucket to see what else you can do there.

Link to Photobucket
http://photobucket.com/

This is, of course, no endorsement. Please read their terms of service to make sure you want to actually use them. They do claim that the image remains the property of the person who uploads it. On the other hand, your images are out there and accessible to anyone, unless you change your photo album from a public to private setting. I am sure there must be other services that do similar things. If you have recommendations, please give them in a comment.

Video Experiment

This is my first attempt at creating a short video, uploading it to You Tube and putting it in this blog.