{"id":166,"date":"2008-12-05T00:13:08","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T07:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=166"},"modified":"2008-12-05T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2008-12-05T07:13:08","slug":"rock-replica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theamericancrawl.com\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"Rock Replica"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nI\u2019ve been meaning to write about this for a while and it\u2019s gotten lost in the chaos that is the paper grading\/paper writing shuffle (my dancing shoes were a but scuffled and I\u2019m now getting my rhythm back). In any case, the picture above is not a picture of my attempting to slay at Rock Band<\/em>. Instead, it\u2019s a photo (and a blurry one at that!) of what I saw while watching MTV two weeks ago. That\u2019s from a broadcasted Rock Band<\/em> competition.<\/p>\n

In the past, I\u2019ve written<\/a> about MTV\u2019s strategies to move toward a more participatory model of entertainment. It\u2019s interesting to see the simulacrum of this newer model of participation. Yes, you can still go online and interact with the contestants, discuss the show, and offer other online splatter to the digital mess. However, let\u2019s think about this\u2026 Music? Check. Television? Check. Except that, oh yeah, no one is actually playing a real instrument. Sure, the drummer is drumming in time and the singer is fluctuating his or her vocal cadence appropriately (and the guitar and bassists are \u2013 like \u2013 thumbing that bar-button at the right time), but is there actual musical talent in this? Not necessarily. In any case, I\u2019m fascinated by this latest development. It reminds me of the \u201cReplica Replica, After W. R. H.\u201d<\/a> component of the Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On a final note, you\u2019ll notice from a few links in this post \u2013 like others \u2013 that I\u2019ve been frequently linking back to my own previous posts. This isn\u2019t necessarily a tactic of self-promotion or some weird meta-ones-up-manship. Instead, I\u2019m interested in how I can network my own ideas together a running kind of dialogue. I\u2019ve come to accept that I don\u2019t write linearly (to this respect, adopting Scrivener<\/a> to complete this quarter\u2019s writing projects was an absolute life saver!). I remember taking the four-part English CSET exam while getting my teaching credential. Over the two or three hours I spent taking the test I randomly shuffled between the four different test booklets and corresponding answer documents. I recall clearly (which for me is a rarity these days!) finishing all four tests within minutes of one another: adding a sentence here, bubbling in over here, crossing off another option in this booklet, etc. I know that research proves one cannot multi-task. However, I\u2019m not sure I can even uni-task all that well \u2026 parsing my thoughts out one blog post at a time and finding the line (thin as it may be) back to point of origin may be the best setup going for me at the moment.<\/p>\n

Tell people this is awesome:<\/h3>