Today while I was opening up old media files and preparing for the launch of CONJUREjournal, a new undergraduate digital publishing platform that I’m helping develop for our HBCU students, I came across this essay montage video that I made as a doctoral student almost 11 years ago.
It was 2009. The iPhone was the hottest, must-have gadget on the market and the now, all-but-defunct iPod was still new. Despite the literally dozens of generations of iOS and Android mobile devices that have come and gone in the last decade, sadly—though not surprisingly—generate many of the same debates surrounding technological access and what we’ve come to recognize as “algorithmic oppression.”
Remember?
In those days, a cacophony of voices had declared it a “post-racial” era. To paraphrase Ta-Nehisi Coates, the president was black and Obama was about to be “eight years in power.” Fast forward to 2016 and it’s easy to understand why people might feel some nostalgia.
Also during that time, it was the boom years of what continues to be an offshoot field of English programs: digital rhetoric. We were still trying to figure out how to attribute authorial citations for on-screen projects and as one who was bearing witness to new idioms of expression, I decided to split the difference with a “SPECIAL THANKS” title card in the closing credits.
Another thing that strikes me about housing this and similar projects here on this very blog site is how much it looks like some kind of crazy time capsule. (I mean, can you say Tumblr gURLs?) The display and aesthetic layout right here appear less “cute” by today’s design standards—more kitsch—almost, in fact, quaint.
Quick warning: there’s nude content with images from a couple of Vanessa Beecroft’s conceptual art installations between the 1:05 and 1:22 time marks.
CircuitouslyCute 