Project 3 : Learning through Investigating

For this project we had one week to investigate two terms from the book Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins.

The two terms I had were:
AFFINITIY SPACES-According to James Gee, a space where informal learning takes place, characterized by, among other things, the sharing of knowledge and expertise based on voluntary affiliations. I found this term interesting because it is a space you can move in and out of freely (no defined entry point), it's a space to engage participation, and it pushes participants closer to the works that inspire them. COLLABORATIVE AUTHORSHIP-Term coined in this book to refer to situations in which the central author of a franchise opens it to participation from other artists to shape it in ways consistent with its overall coherence but allowing new themes to emerge or new elements to be introduced. This term brought up questions of authorship and copyrights in my research (reading).

I chose to explore these terms through investigating how literary history can influence storytelling. The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland was the text (franchise) I used. The stories of Alice were of interest to me in this project because I found that after the Bible and Shakespeare it has been rewritten the most. This brings me to question collaborative authorship that is "un-authorized" bringing into question the legality of intellectual properties within media, and aspects of control. Alice also has a huge fan following that creates several affinity spaces online.

Investigation Details (see PDF):
-This first image study captures the original inspiration for Alice and the original illustrations. The next images show how Disney has appropriated Alice into one of their characters, then the next set of images show other representations of Alice.
-In my experience of researching the stories of Alice, I found that the original text has several expanded meanings offering studies in subtext around characters, themes, meaning. This interface is a solution (not what we were to create at this point). It invites the user to participate in writing while have access to all the context related to the story they are inspired by.
-This chart gets back to the investigating, it takes a look at mapping the major characters throughout the story.
-These last two investigations create a space to be built on as an affinity space.View these pages at %150 to get a feeling for the effect I was trying to create. When one approaches this site online, they are entering at no particular point. They are encouraged to move about the space, finding something new at every corner. These investigations layout the story in a linear and scanable format, a different approach to hypertext.
Project 3 : An Investigation