So just a quick note to say that I’m here. ASL II was a wash, being 4.5 hours from my partner is not easy or sanity inducing  and that I’ve got a few posts up my sleeve. So look out for those. My friend Geoff has tagged me in an internet meme, so that will come up first.

For now I’m enjoying the holidays in Eastern Tennessee, reading a lot, sleeping even more and lets not get into how much food I’ve consumed. NYE will be in Manhattan after a short stop in DC for three days of work.

So, Merry Holidays and Happy New Year. And more to come.

Apparently, I can change the course of media overnight (be sure to leave your suggestions and tips in the appropriately places, I will take requests on a first come/highest tipper basis).

YouTube announced support for subtitles and captioning. See the announcement at TechCrunch.

Until the 2008 presidential campaign.

With YouTube debates during the primaries and video feeds and uploads of speeches and now the DNCC, I suddenly have the distinct feeling that I’m being systemically left out of the process. This is an unacceptable situation. (And the political teams that fill my inbox with video announcements that aren’t captioned or at least come with an easily discoverable transcript — which is the lesser solution, of course — are not endearing me to their causes.)

I’ve written before about the Open and Closed Project and the absolute necessity for video captioning on the web to embrace common, open-source standards — the same kind of standards that helped create the explosion in content of the so-called social web (a.k.a Web 2.0) over the last few years. Web standards allow for low overhead through cheap and easily deployable solutions. Unlike the web of the 1990s, we aren’t today reinventing the wheel with each new dot-com.

Web video captioning needs to be at a similar place, where captions are easily read and created regardless of what video player, computer platform or content creator one is using. (Google video has one of the larger collections of captioned video, in part because the ability turn on and off captioning is a Google video proprietary feature. For more on this, see ProudGeek’s post from last year.) 

Instead it’s stuck, we’re stuck in a 1996 web metaphor. If you remember the browser wars, each web browser had a different toolkit so what you could see and do with Navigator was not the same as you could see and do with Explorer. Largely, those kind of proprietary differences have been eliminated.

I was okay with the slow adoption of captioning and creation of captioning standards when it was just mindless entertainment. But now, it feels like it is affecting my enfranchisement as a voter and informed citizen — then we have serious problem.

And perhaps an illegal one.

At what point is a network or campaign violating the ADA (as well as campaign laws)  if a specific video piece is only available online and without captions?

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UPDATE: Apparently, I can change the course of media over night (be sure to leave your suggestions and tips in the appropriately places, I will take requests on a first come/highest tipper basis) — YouTube announced support for subtitles and captioning. More at TechCrunch.

Christopher Taylor Edwards: a story of storytelling

I am Christopher Edwards a self-taught graphic designer with training in interpretive exhibition design, video and performance, anthropology and  architecture history.

Childhood and education

I spent my childhood dreaming up alternate realties — made up families and friends, theories of time travel, giant planned cities of sand or Lego, and alternate personal timelines — while reading books on architecture history, studying drawing and buildings, and devouring mysteries and brain puzzles.

In college, I began by studying architecture and then switched to anthropology and architecture history. I attempted to create my own urban studies curriculum out of an anthropological view of western culture and the history of cities and buildings, supplemented with courses in urban sociology and government. Outside of the classroom, I was exploring alternative music cultures that were reclaiming disinvested urban spaces to establish communal cultures around music, design and personal expression.

Beginning in high school and continuing through the present day, I have been losing my hearing. This has created a slow and steady increase in my observational skills as I’ve observation has become an important tool for communication as well as occupying my time when hearing is most difficult. Recently, I’ve started to study American Sign Language a visual and spatial language that makes further use of these abilities.

At every step, I have been surrounded by books. I took my interest for the written word and developed an interest in the structure of graphic presentation and the printed word. I have been involved with journalism projects since I was a child when I wrote for the junior newspaper produced by the local library in my hometown. I have worked in journalism in high school and college as well as having a hand in the art direction for other printed collateral like posters and programs for school events. 

The beginnings of a career

I self-studied design and production for many years before I returned to school to study it full time. I was disappointed with the curriculum and found my true expression in time-based art and performance. I sought to map the body, the city and experience. I explored repetition, displacement and alternative narratives while highlighting HIV statistics, vacationing, sanitation engineering, the sketchbook and the individual. All my projects were interaction-based and as such were concerned with my relationship to an audience and, in many cases, how that audience interacted with me and each other.

Since finishing school, I’ve worked in publishing and graphic design, creating print pieces, web interfaces and storyboards for web animation. I have developed a wide range of freelance clients in publishing, print design and even, at one point, video editing, using the skills I developed as an undergrad: cutting on action, developing a narrative and visual rhythm.

A return to school

Not one to stay out of the classroom, in 2006, I returned to study interpretive exhibition design and planning. I developed a concept brief for an exhibition on the internment of Japanese-Americans. I was the designer on that project and co-collaborated with an enormously talented group of fellow students who took on roles as content developers, education planners and curators. I focused my efforts on creating an interactive story that would reach the target audience of middle schoolers. I co-developed a bubble plan and the concept brief, which I personally designed.

I concluded while studying exhibition design that design, architecture and storytelling intersect in ways that had always interested me but wasn’t apparent through my other studies. I have also recognized the influence of cultural theory and anthropology on my interest in the narrative of the built environment.

Environmental influence

In addition to my intellectual development, I’ve lived in a series of communities that have a strong sense of place — a 19th century Chicago suburb, an equally pedestrian oriented city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the inimitable San Francisco Bay Area and the quickly gentrifying District of Columbia. My previous experience observing and contributing to small commercial districts as well as political activism and historic preservation have given me useful data from which to comment on the experience of the social being — man, human, people, you and me — in time and space.

The result: an intellectual and occupational focal point

My intellectual and personal background focuses on information and experience in storytelling in time and space, in other words, the intersection of design and culture in physical spaces. Occupationally, my personal story is represented in experience design, architecture, film and design anthropology.

So the first question is easy, how did it end? It ended well. I haven’t gotten my final grades yet, but everything was pointing toward at least an A-.

I’m really glad I took the class. I learned a lot more than I thought capable. My teacher, Gabriel, and classmates were awesome. We really bonded by the end. I’m set to take ASLII this fall. And I have a million and one questions and comments for you all here as well. Mostly about my feelings of inadequacy (will I stop speaking in halting ASL? will I ever get proficient and fingerspelling? etc.) and thoughts on studying and practice. You can bill me for all of this later.

But first, an announcement of sorts after the jump. Followed by me in my ASL practicing glory.

After much thought and thinking about where we’d be the happiest — creatively, inspirationally — my partner and I decided to move to New York. He moved already and is living in Flatbush, Brooklyn and working in Manhattan. And I (with any luck) will be moving by November. As I negotiate the job hunt, I’ll be sure to post here. Also, my portfolio is getting a blog/social media makeover. If you are interested in my work or would like updates on my projects, be sure to check out my new site.

And now, video.

We were required to do videotaped assignments for each unit in Signing Naturally. As well as a final signed report on a Deaf cultural event. 

So here’s the full playlist of 6 videos. Watch, laugh or shriek in horror. My panic and self consciousness have learned/are learning to take it. (The whole playlist is here.)

Maybe it was my last post, or maybe it was several hours watching myself sign on a web cam or watching the documentary Through Deaf Eyes, but somehow yesterday the stage fright (mostly) went away. It was like everything just clicked. Or that I wasn’t embarrassed by my own mistakes (or myself). That all made for a pretty good Wednesday. And once I am able to relax, I learn a lot easier.

Being here at Gally is a really nice experience. In cultural theory there is something referred to as a “liminal” — a space that exists at the boundaries between two starkly defined opposites. (At least culturally starkly defined.) For example, LGBT people are often considered liminal, existing between defined male and female gender norms and expectations. College is also liminal, it exists between childhood and adulthood. In liminal periods, rules are often opposite or otherwise different than the before and afterward.

This is all a very rough definition. And a way to say that Gally right now for me, at least in this small summer context, a interesting safe space between wherever I’ve been on my hearing loss journey and wherever I am going. A place where I am surrounded by a variety of hearing abilities. And perhaps, I don’t feel quite so unusual. And don’t have to worry about expectations.

Through that liminal period, if only for a couple weeks. Despite the school work and the pace of learning, it has been incredibly relaxing. At the core, I just feel better about things.

We’ll see how long this positive attitude lasts, I may start enjoying it. I’ll let you know how I feel after a written midterm and an on-camera conversational midterm.

Monday was a whirl so I didn’t have time to put down my thoughts. Now — two five hour classes and a couple study sessions later – here are my thoughts on learning ASL so far anyway.

The Gally summer school is intentionally intensive. Both less and more so than I had hoped. Partially from my own doing. I will only be taking one two week session. It would not have been possible for me to miss 4 weeks of work, unfortunately. Also, to save costs, I’m not living on campus — I already live in DC and fairly close to Gally as it is – nor did I take an afternoon one credit course. So anyway, I’m not in the classroom as much as I probably should be. I’m poor and with an inflexible job is what that all means.

Not living on campus has made it a little more difficult to find study partners. I had hoped that there would be others that were from out of town that would need to experience DC and do so while abstaining from oral communication as an extended immersive activity. Perhaps, I’m not doing all I could to connect with the other students. The class itself adheres to a strict all ASL and no oral communication policy. This is great! That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Our professor is Deaf so we are learning from a native ASL speaker. So all will work out. I should have a good foundation when next week ends.

As for ASL, my manual dexterity is pretty low. I know this will improve with practice. My typing speed is high, and I don’t really remember how that happened. Eventually too, I will stop being self concious about my ASL and then the signs will flow more easily. My comprehension is pretty high, but I do have horrible stage fright. Just in general. I’ve never been good at languages in part because I hate making mistakes in front of others. So, this means more effort on practice. Yes?

One identity note, I realized in class that fingerspelling my whole name — Christopher — is kind of obnoxious. My full name as a marker of my adult identity has been a major point since I began using it as such at 18. But now as I face a new identity, or a modified identity, as a late-deafened adult. Perhaps it’s time to let go of some ideas from the past. Perhaps it’s smarter now to just be Chris. Don’t like the way that sounds, but it fingerspells pretty nicely.

More later. Thanks again for following along.