#netprov

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

The New Car!!

I signed up for the testing of the new Articial Intelligence integrated cars with facial recognition, and today I got the message that I was chosen to be one of the testers! The car is made by the famous Face-scan company, so I have high expectations of this!

Apparently it has mood detection, "face-key" so I don't need a physical key, driving-assistance, integrated home entertainment system, and more!

Really looking forward to testing out this car! I will update you guys as I go! 😊

[zipgrowth]

In One Tech-Filled Writing Class, The Class Clown Is the Professor

Students in Mark Marino’s Writing 340 class at the University of Southern California say the professor always walks into the classroom with a smile, and always begins by giving out carrots.

Specifically, he passes around a bag of baby carrots (the nibble-ready kind favored by toddlers) and encourages everyone to take one (along with a bottle of hand sanitizer). It’s one of the many unusual, often deadpan ways this professor approaches teaching by channeling the persona of the class clown.

“I like a classroom where things seem a little off-balance from the beginning,” he says. Throughout the semester, Marino works to encourage what he describes as “free-play,” using exercises that sound like they might happen in the writers’ room of a late-night comedy show rather than in a college classroom.

In one assignment, for instance, the students imagine they are part of a fictional sharing app called AirBnMe. Instead of renting another person’s house (as with AirBnb), people offer to sell hours of their lives (life-swapping). Among the experiences that have been for sale on the fictional service? Standing in line at the DMV and a “typical bro-style student picking up a student for a date.” Fellow students write reviews of what it might be like to experience those life-swapping hours.

“People might say, ‘I thought you were teaching writing,’” says Marino. “When I see students engaging with challenges like that with humor, the degrees of insight that I see in students shows an immense critical faculty.”

One of his teaching techniques, which he devised with Rob Wittig, an assistant professor of English and writing at the University of Minnesota at Duluth, involves students improvising narrative stories—taking turns writing a line at a time on Twitter. They call them netprovs, for networked improvisation, and often they take place in conjunction with writing classes at other colleges.

“There’s this thing that happens when you get 10, 20, or 50 people playing; things get really rich,” says Wittig.

Last semester the professors ran a netprov called Cooking With Anger.

Last semester the professors ran a netprov called Cooking With Anger. “We had an online forum where students would get a randomly-generated basket of ingredients—a father, a bus, an apple, a piece of lettuce. Then a packet of emotions—half pinch of jealousy or a quarter dollop of anger. And they would have to write a short story that used all of those ingredients,” says Marino.

“We like projects that are funny at the beginning,” says Wittig. “Then we see by the end if we can take it deep and turn it a little bit serious. It’s a swimming pool shape. You start out in the shallow end and by the end the bottom drops out.” He cites Garrison Keillor, longtime host of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion, as a master of that kind of humor through his monologues from the imaginary town of Lake Woebegone.

Marino stresses that his goal is not simply to use humor to entertain students, though he does admit he has his “teacherly bits” to help keep students’ attention while explaining semicolons or writing good introductions. He suspects more than half of all writing classes use that kind of humor, perhaps not always to the intended effect. “It could be similar to Dad jokes,” he quips. “English professors like to tell jokes—whether they’re funny or not is another question.”

But he’s more interested in encouraging students to use humor to take a deeper look at the world around them. And he argues that the practice has deep roots in academia: “In my mind the Socratic method with its deep roots in irony has a sense of humor to it or a sense of playfulness.”

English professors like to tell jokes—whether they’re funny or not is another question.

Mark Marino

One of Marino’s recent students, Genevieve Danenberg, made sure to stress the class isn’t all fun and games. “He has a reputation for being very critical and not exactly an easy A or B but someone who challenges you as a writer and helps you find your voice,” she says of Marino. She and the other students call him “coach,” at the professor’s urging. “Humor requires a lot of vulnerability,” she adds. “He has to bring himself down a few notches in order to help us not be so afraid.”

Danenberg, a 27-year-old senior majoring in film production, says the assignment she found most useful was a weekly blog requirement. Students were encouraged to write free-form on a topic of their choice and then review the posts of other students. She says the exercise pushed her to develop her voice.

She notes that she didn’t fully participate in all the netprovs and other collaborative projects, in part because she describes herself as less tech-savvy.

Marino notes that some psychologists have argued that the generation now in college has never been allowed to do free play, so he tries to give them those spaces. “They’ve always had structured time,” he says. “Even their playtime was playdates.”

Asked to describe a favorite moment from class, Danenberg remembers the weekend Marino led a group of students volunteering at a Habitat for Humanity house, and he wound up sitting in a wheelbarrow letting students push him around. “I have a picture I’ll send you, you gotta see it,” says the student.

It seems just the effect Marino is going for. As he puts it: “Rather than try to be a pompous teacher, maybe I can trade in my mortar-board for the fool’s cap for a little bit of time and hopefully reach a place that’s a little more honest and open to what students have to offer.”

In One Tech-Filled Writing Class, The Class Clown Is the Professor published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

[shitpostingperidot]

I am reading about the genre of interactive fiction known as netprov

Long story short I now have an excuse to write about @chloby-and-maks-adventures in an academic setting

[jaybushman]

Netprov_TV Fall '14

Check out this fun new Netprov launching soon for imaginary new TV shows:

We’re proud to announce the Fall 2014 season of NetprovTV!

1) We will live tweet a new, imaginary TV show every week between 19:00-19:30 Monday (7:00-7:30pm) US Central Daylight Time (8pm Eastern, 5pm Pacific) (00:00 midnight Mon/Tue GMT). The season begins Sept. 8th in the US. (Note: we here at NetprovTV headquarters will set our clocks back one hour on Nov. 2, 2014.)

2) At the top of the hour the Twitter account @NetprovTV will announce a randomly-generated Show Name and Episode Title.

3) For the next 1/2 hour netprov players around the world we create the show and its fan community by pretending to watch it and live tweet it using the hashtag #netprovtv. It’s really fun to play in the same room with other people!

4) The game is: to use the improv theater principle of agreement (always say “yes, and” rather than “no, but”) to create the consistent illusion of a plausible —albeit likely bizarre — TV show. We agree about the facts as they are invented; we can disagree extravagantly in our opinions. If we strive to be true-to-life in our reactions rather than funny, the funny will be sure to happen.

5) The dialogue, of course, may continue after the :30 minute mark, but the “show” we’re pretending to watch will be over.

I'm in!

[s-ounding-bored]

... netprov is a digital art form “that creates written stories that are networked, collaborative and improvised in real time.” It encompasses spontaneous and planned acts of fictional role-playing on social media, including a particular subset of creative Twitter bots and the occasional Internet hoax.

#TtW14 Panel Preview: Consensual Hallucination @ Cyborgology

[isahib-blog]

Netprov: Entering the Matrix and Learning Inception

Though I had never taken part of a netprov before, I was excited to go into it based on my extensive experience with improv, and social media as a whole. It was basically an assignment that may as well have read, “Earn marks for acting a fool on Twitter, aka what you do every day.” Just as long as it was under a character’s name. So being anonymous...it was actually better.

While I did not find it challenging to improvise Tweets on the spot or in the moment, I had moments where it was difficult to aptly read into and represent the character. There were many times where I had to adjust my phrasing to give off a better sense of Riley (my character). While I am a 4th year, more cynical male, the character I was portraying (for the Netprov) was a 1st year, more optimistic and cheery female. I find this interesting now because it is basically a clash between the very first two characteristics we learned about; I easily fulfill the second characteristic of improvising, but had to adjust it contextually to fit the first characteristic of being prose fiction and driving the fictional character’s narrative.

Throughout the netprov, and especially when writing the paper, I felt more of these contradictions between characteristics. I questioned if it was truly considered to be occurring in real time since we were addressing a past time (moving in, orientation week, etc.) Furthermore, even if it were to be considered to be occurring in real time because the Tweets were occurring in the present day (on a day to day basis), can this then contradict the improvised nature because I am still structuring the tweet to a degree? Improv is supposed to be in the moment, no real thought more than say 5 seconds, but I could spend minutes trying to accurately represent my character 🤔

Although I’m sure not all characteristics have to ring true or be 100% accurate for the netprov to be considered a netprov, reading so deeply into it on a point by point level seemed to take away from the immersion. However, there were many times during the roleplay where none of these technicalities really mattered. Even now, looking back at it as a whole, I feel as though it can aptly be considered a true netprov so long as those participating felt they portrayed a different character on social media, and did so in a more, “on the spot,” manner. Where one can state social media is to represent one’s self (identity) online, the netprov can completely go against this idea, as it is where one is on social media representing a fictional self (identity). From that perspective, it as though social media bred a sub section with the purpose to ignore or go against social media’s original purpose. 

This may as well be The Matrix or Inception or something. Neo? Leo(’s character)? That you?

[vicandtwisted]

Netprov

Summary: According to Roland Barthes, “readerly” text is straightforward and probably boring, and “writerly” text requires mental dialogue and co-writing to be understood, and this “understanding” effectively creates a new text. Writerly text reveals our highest potential. Googling answers doesn’t make us better people, and social media clickbait is robbing us of real emotion. 

However, social media is kind of a “writerly” experience; it’s collaborative, especially when you and a bunch of people you don’t know are live-tweeting an event that you create as you go along. But netprov is only a “writerly/riderly” text to those who come to it with the proper level of experience and the desire to learn. Otherwise it’s just another assignment. 

Comment: Apparently even reading can be sexualized. Thanks Barthes--let’s not tell the high school boys about this.

Question: Is there a way for the act of reading to be “writerly”?

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

What the F!+) is Mister Bergen ?

When my sister came into my room yesterday to tell me that I was a finalist in the Mister Bergen contest, I just laughed. When my mom congratulated me, I just ignored it, thinking she was in on the joke. But then my friends started texting me about it, and I didn’t find it funny anymore. So I went and checked for myself and lo and behold, there was my face on the first page of the website, on their Twitter and Instagram feed front and center. So my question is : WTF ? follow-up question : HOW ? I never applied 

[becomingarchitecture]

scenario writing free for all: a collaborative improv narrative game on Twitter, July 2015

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

First job scandal

1 week at my new job and I've gotten myself in quite a pickle. You know we're a high tech company, so there's all kinds of electronic things I have not yet gotten my head into. Well, as a newbie, you know you need some extra help and need to ask a few question now and then. Well, I had to ask my boss about something. I stood in front of the door ready to go in and ask for his time, but there was no handle on the door. I looked around, and found a kind of screen thing with a button on the end. I tried to press the button, it did not react at first, so I went again and pressed it. But in the very micro second I pressed, two options appeared, first option “Owner” and “colleague”. And since I did not register that at once, I automatically pressed as “owner”. Then the screen suddenly started to scan my entire face, for around 15 seconds. Then it started to beep a loud alarm sound and blinking red, so the securities came and all my other colleagues came over to see what happened.

So, there I stood, one week in my first job and now everybody knows me as the “alarm-girl” :-)

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

No need to worry, everybody chill

We have seen the tweets and messages, and don't worry, we are here to ease your minds and answer your questions. Of course we don't believe that looks are eveything, that's why part 2 of Face_scan and this contest, is to look thoroughly at the winners life and personality throught their social media accounts and online presence. By having access to that information, we are sure to pick someone amazing and talented and smart. Trust us !

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

The future of beauty competitions

To help us decide who the most beautiful person in Bergen is, we will do it entirely with the facial recognition program that scans your face and compares it to the standard of beauty and facial proportions.

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

With the new features of these glasses even big gamers had FACE_scan on their radar and requested this in popularity rising product. More increasingly the value of the company grew and bigger project were brought in. One of the biggest known poker players would even send e-mails asking for a pair since lie detection is an important skill to have when playing poker. Not soon after this became public rules and regulations forbid the use of such technology in official poker tournaments, leaving the poker player who requested the glasses disappointed. 

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

After all the success for the first two focal groups FACE_scan was even approached by federal agencies, requesting their technologies for their detectives and for general interrogation purposes. For this request FACE_scan had to adapt the functions of the glasses. A colleague took me to the lab and showed me that they had to recalibrate the facial recognition features to a wider spectrum in which for example eye twitching or a sped up breathing pattern could be detected by the glasses. Those functions would give the user the opportunity to identify liars on the spot and confront them. The technology behind the glasses kept improving. This look behind the scenes was unbelievably impressive. I even got to talk to some of the officers actively using the Ava 2.0.

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

Today is an exciting day - I AM STARTING MY NEW INTERNSHIP at FACE_scan in Bergen, Norway. This opportunity feels unreal to me, I had my interview last week and they got back to me last Friday already. I cannot believe it, I felt like the Skype interview went very well and I thought they could potentially not be interested in me since I am still studying in Germany and they had to settle for the online interview but I guess that was no problem for them at all. I've been beyond excited about this. It is a large company with one of the main focal points being on their high tech glasses, called Ava. The glasses can be used in different fields for face recognition and I'm going to be introduced to the various departments during my time with FACE_scan. 

[face-scan-bergen-blog]

#BoycottFACE_scan

FACE_scan has been fined due to a recent data leak, proving FACE_scan is not protecting its user data well enough. The company therefore had to make cuts and fired a lot of employees, including me. I just bought a pair of glasses that block facial recognition and you should too.