GIST

 Panelist Day 1!

 I'd like to know more about the life of the very accomplished Michelle Obama.

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 Our group's idea for teaching Conceiving Ada is to divide the class into small groups and assign certain scenes from the movie that we thought raised interesting ideas to each group and have them re create and film the scene from their own interpretation. "Re- create" would be used very loosely allowing students as much freedom as possible when making their own scene. We thought it a useful exercise when trying to understand a movie to actually try to make one yourself. This idea was inspired by Hayles' critique of critique and call for generating knowledge. Instead of critiquing the movie we would like students to generate their own little movies using themes and questions raised by the film.

Our group (vgaffney, izemmahi, and I) came up with several ideas for using Hayles's ideas to teach the movie Conceiving Ada. The first topic we discussed was posthuman scholarship. We thought that a “posthuman” mode of scholarship might look more like the depiction in the film of Emmy's obsession with Ada – scholars learning with technology and using new tools to alter the ways in which they learn. We then touched upon how the film encourages us to forget meaning by giving us a somewhat confusing narrative that requires us to ignore the smaller details in order to appreciate the larger, intellectually useful themes.

In discussing the film Conceiving Ada, our group initially had difficulty finding something coherent to focus on in the film and coming up with a way to teach it. As already noted by many of our classmates, we found the scientific/realistic inconsistencies and the questionable morals of the main character's choices off-putting and distracting. However, we eventually decided that it would be interesting to focus on the questions the film raised about what constitutes life or the self and the idea of a 'medium' in the film by looking at the relationships between the virtual/artificial and reality.

When teaching Conceiving Ada, one might want to consider the ways in which reading the information or "data streams" that are transfered and the most effective ways to draw those meanings from the movie. Focusing on specific scenes in the movie are rather futile as the movie challenges the ways in which typical narration is presented in film. In order to understand the movie, it is most effective to practice the distant reading Hayles described.

(I worked with Oak and shin1068111)

1. What was your response to the film?

- we agreed, none of us particularly liked it

- did not accurately describe computer science: there were too many strange Greek characters

- hard to follow, with a lot of what seemed like irrelevant information

2. What questions does the film raise for you?

- Are information waves real?

- How did Emmy conceive/ give birth to "Ada?"

- Did this accurately describe Ada's personality and her relationship with others? (specifically men)

- What condition/disease did Ada have?

3. How can you place it within the frame of this course? How does it illustrate-or-challenge some of the ideas we have been exploring?

So, due to a wonderful illness I have not been in class this week and managed to miss the discussion on Conceiving Ada. I watched the film and seemed to understand what happened, but never quite knew why. I get that the main character is trying to connect with Ada through vitual space, but I am not sure why there has to be a chronological narrative. If this woman can make a connection with a historical figure at a specific moment in time why can she not go back to that moment again? Why can she only connect with Ada at moments that happened chronologically after their last discussion?