Basically, there’s a big tech/film/music event called South by Southwest every year in Austin, TX. Last year, I was chosen to speak during the Interactive (ie. tech) festival, and I’m trying to make it back there to give another presentation. SXSW chooses panels/talks by outsourcing opinion via the “Panel Picker,” which provides about 1/3 of the overall score (the rest of the score is formed by the panel judges & staff).

If you’ve seen me in the past at anime conventions, you know that I can dish out a good talk. My proposal for SXSW 2010 is “Lurk Moar: Why Internet Culture Matters.”

So, if you’re inclined to spare 57 seconds of your time, please go to my talk’s page (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3203) to 1) vote up, and 2) leave a positive comment. Signing up for the voting is super easy (name, email, password), and you receive practically no messages (if you’re concerned about that).

Thanks for your help!

Honestly, I just want to get this second episode online, because it’s taken more than a few months to do so already, so… bullet point time!

- The podcast has been officially named: DoAAA, or the Department of Alchemy Audio Archive. Fitting, since I’m probably always going to upload audio I record at conventions.
- Episode 2 features Chris Beverage from his Anime on DVD panel at Anime Boston 2009. Since there was no real industry panel on Sunday at the convention, Chris’s panel represents the pinnacle of industry discussion that happened inside the Hynes last May.
- I’m sick this week, so I didn’t want my crappy voice getting in the way of the equally-awful panel audio. Thus, I just use my laptop’s voice to host this episode.

Listen below, or use the direct download here.

No, really, I love Yutaka Yamamoto-san to death.

So, if you’re going down to Otakon this weekend, you might as well stop by a Department of Alchemy panel! As of about 10 minutes ago, one more of our panels has been added to the official schedule. Our new program looks like this:

The Impact of Evangelion – Saturday at 9:00 am in Panel 1

Anime & Manga Studies – Saturday at 11:30 am in Panel 1

The Problem with Otaku – Saturday at 7:00 pm in Panel 5

Without Watching the Anime: Opening and Ending Themes – Sunday at 10:15 am in Panel 3

I’ve received a lot of positive feedback from fans that attended my panels at Anime Expo 2009. Thanks again to everyone that attended!

If you didn’t get to attend, there may be more content available online in the near future. I was approached by Anime News Network, Patrick Macias, and a few other blogs/shows about interviews, so we’ll see where those go.

Also, the Anime Instrumentality Blog has published three articles covering the Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes panel. While the trilogy doesn’t cover every detail of the panel, and forgets one or two of the smaller points I wanted to stress (or just show an opening for humor), it’s definitely a thorough reproduction of the panel for those that couldn’t make it out to Los Angeles. The articles are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Once again, thank you everyone for attending the four panels on which I spoke at Anime Expo 2009. If you’ll be at Otakon next weekend, check out my panels there!

We at the Department of Alchemy (aka. Alex) would like to thank everyone who decided to come out for our/my panels this weekend at Anime Expo 2009. All two of our panels (as well as the two academic panels in which the Department participated) were thoroughly attended! The Problem with Otaku (photographed above) purportedly held more con-goers than the Crunchyroll panel in the previous one-hour time slot! Sorry that the panel had to be cut off; the presentation held a bit too much information. Also, after being featured in AnimeEXPOSURE (Anime Expo’s official newsletter) on Friday as a highlighted panel to attend, Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes featured a full panel room, with a line extending around the bend in the hallway! Rumor has it that about two dozen people were even turned away, since as we neared about 400 members in the audience the fire code seemed about to be breached (though we still had a good number of people lining the back wall and even sitting on the floor in front). Unfortunately, our camera equipment wasn’t working during the panel, so we couldn’t nab a cool snapshot.

For those who attended the OP/ED panel, the list of videos shown is listed below. Thanks again for coming to see us! Remember, we’ll be speaking again at Otakon in two weeks! Check out our three panels:

1) Without Watching the Anime: Opening and Ending Themes – Sunday at 10:15 am in Panel 3
2) The Impact of Evangelion – Saturday at 9:00 am in Panel 1
3) Anime & Manga Studies – Saturday at 11:30 am in Panel 1

So, on to that list:

- Astro Boy 1963, English & Japanese versions [opening]
- Space Battleship Yamato, Japanese [opening]
- Mazinger Z, Japanese & English [opening]
- Big O, Japanese [opening]
- Serial Experiments Lain, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey 1973, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey: Flash, Japanese [opening]
- RE: Cutie Honey, Japanese [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [ending]
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083, Japanese [opening]
- Lucky Star, Japanese [ending, episode 14]
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, Japanese [opening & opening during end of episode 26]
- Daicon 4, Japanese
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Japanese [opening & dancing to the opening in Akihabara]
- NANA, Japanese [ad promoting opening/ending music]
- Cowboy Bebop, English [opening]
- Gurren Lagann, Japanese [opening, episode 4 & 24]
- Macross: Do You Remember Love, Japanese [ending]
- One Piece, Japanese & English [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [opening]
- Nodame Cantabile, Japanese [opening]
- Eden of the East, Japanese [closing & opening]

But then off again to Anime Expo!

Sorry for the aberrant hiatus, everyone. Been really busy in the past few weeks with:

- Open Video Conference, where I spoke about the anime fandom’s balancing act of video culture and copyright law
- Web Ecology Project: We released a white paper full of quantitative analysis about how ideas move in the discourse regarding the Iranian Election on Twitter
- Hanging out in NYC with the crew from my Kyoto study abroad group (KCJS)

I really want/need to write articles this week, so I’ll try to get a lot of content up soon. But I have a lot on my plate right now, specifically fandom research in California and drawing up grant proposals for fandom research in Boston and Tokyo.

Good news is that come Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles, speaking at Anime Expo. I have four panels lined up, which are:

Anime and Manga in Academia
Saturday, July 04, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm – LP 2
Whether you have just begun studying anime and manga seriously or are already well into your studies, this panel will guide you on the path from fan to established Japanese popular culture scholar.

Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
Friday, July 03, 2009 10:30am to 11:20am – LP 3
Ever wanted to write a school paper on religion in Naruto? Read a book on Neon Genesis Evangelion? Or even get a college degree in otaku studies? Come meet the members of the Anime/Manga Research Circle!

The Problem with Otaku
Sunday, July 05, 2009 12:00pm to 12:50pm LP 2
From 1980s science fiction geeks, the concept of otaku has wholly transformed in Japan and America. We’ll examine the history and controversies of the most crucial part of the anime fandom: the fans.

Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes
Friday, July 03, 2009 6:00pm to 6:50pm LP 3
When we watch anime, we tend to ignore what begins and ends series. But these small clips matter too! We’ll discuss history and music, and show some of the most influential OPs & EDs out there.

The rest of my potential schedule looks like this:

Thursday
- Digital Manga Publishing Industry Panel & eManga Demonstration (will miss due to plane arrival)
- Kouga Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morikawa Guest Panel (may miss due to plane arrival)
- Morning Musume Guest Panel
- Imaishi & Nishigori Guest Panel
- Right Stuf & Nozomi Entertainment Industry Panel
- eigoMANGA Industry Panel
- Japan’s Hottest Doujin Videogames
- Gainax Focus Panel
- The Making of Gurren Lagann Documentary

Friday
- Introduction to Anime/Manga Studies
- Mizushima & Kuroda Guest Panel
- Gundam: The 30 Year Anniversary
- Manga as High Art
- VIZ Media Anime & Manga Panel
- Evangelion 1.0.1 Panel (won’t have time to see the movie due to…)
- Without Watching the Anime: OPs & EDs

Saturday
- The Indecent Otaku Comedy Hour
- Nightow & Nishimura Guest Panel
- Digital Distribution of Anime & Manga
- FUNimation Industry Panel
- Anime & Manga in Academia

Sunday
- Directors Panel [or] Breaking Into Anime Journalism [or] Convention Feedback Session
- Crunchyroll Panel [or] SPJA Board of Directors Panel
- The Problem with Otaku
- Production I.G.
- Closing Ceremonies

Also, I’m still scheduled to speak on a number of panels at Otakon, so if you’re not available to fly out to California this week, I’ll see you in Baltimore!

I’ve decided to flavor the blog with audio under the moniker Department of Alchemy Podcast. Occasionally, I’ll post audio from panels or discussions here, but don’t think of it as a regular podcast, à la Anime World Order.

This past weekend, I took my new audio recorder to Anime Boston 2009, and while I tried to record a number of panels, I had a few mishaps and some of them didn’t save. However, I did pick up a handful of them, so I’ll try to repair the audio a bit and upload them here.

First up is one of the five panels that I spoke at: Akiba Empire: The Otaku Influence. The convention’s booklet reads: “Otaku spending pumps over 4 billion dollars annually into Japan’s economy. Discover how nerdy anime fans went from basement dewllers to a powerful cultural, economic, and political force.” Please listen! Or download here.

More panels from AB will be posted shortly!

Aside:

I will now unabashedly plug a panel (not that I haven’t already) that I’ll be moderating in March at SXSW:

“Blackboards or Backchannels: (Social) Technology in the Classroom of Tomorrow”
Five students will come together to discuss technology in the classroom and the implications of technology to help improve (or utterly destroy) the social elements of education.

</digression>
One of the debates I’ve had over the past year in writing for this blog concerns the essence of note taking. I’ve written in the past about my aversion toward liveblogging and my affinity for accurate notes, however meticulous. Over the past few years, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my notes, when typed or written, culminate in roughly verbatim reproductions. I grasp at words. I ingest language and digest meaning.

My realization: pencil on paper no longer does the trick. As minute as my script has become, this semester I churn out two to three full-length, handwritten pages per class period. Yet I still snatch at my teachers’ dictations, trying to capture the entirety of every phrase. The readability of my notes thence suffers, as my pen dances from left margin to right, without lifting from the page even to spare the spaces between syllables, while I battle between lecture transcription and lecture absorption.

With a typing speed averaging around ninety to one hundred words a minute (thank you, middle school computer classes), I can speedily record my precise notes while assimilating the content. Only in the past year have I carried my laptop to class in order to take notes by means of keyboard. I could use excuses as reasons for the change (save trees, easier to share online, &c.), but it comes down to practicality. To take notes as detailed as I want, the convenience of the keyboard helps me to write quickly and succinctly, while also providing the opportunity to process the presented information more thoroughly. Of course, the keyboard has limitations, restricting the ability to scribble more than words. For example, my methodology is built around a complex system of arrows to point here and there to signify links of meaning and significance.

Forbes recently talked with David Karger, the leader of a project to develop a new system of note taking online:
The study found that “capture speed” was the main reason a worker might choose a Post-it note over a computer program, even those programs specifically designed for these sorts of jottings.
“Even seemingly minor difficulties or annoyances with tools could deter use of a tool,” the study said. It noted that one volunteer subject “would write notes on Post-its and stick them to his cellular phone to transfer into Outlook later rather than enter the data directly into his smart phone, even though the phone supported note synchronization.
“When asked why not enter the note digitally in the first place, he responded, ‘Starting in Outlook forces me to make a type assignment, assign a category, set a deadline, and more; that takes too much work!’ Similarly, paper notebooks were often chosen instead of laptops because they required no time to boot up.”
My opinion is that pen and paper now limit my “capture speed,” especially when I can simply bring up a TextEdit file (advocated by Diana Kimball) and type away.

Of course, note taking on my laptop does not replace the notepad. My desk is garnished with the multicolors of PostIt notes, while my desk houses a dozen different pocket-sized, portable notebooks. Sometimes I even find myself affixing stickies to my computer screen. It’s probably true that the most convenient upgrade to laptop technology would be constant operation without rebooting. For now, the keyboard provides a most efficient method to capture language, while still being able to call the records notes.

I’m putting together a panel on technology in the classroom for an infamous conference called South by Southwest. My presentation’s called “Blackboards or Backchannels: The Techno-Induced Classroom of Tomorrow.” This thing’s BIG. And I’m trying to make it bigger.

I’d love to show the audience the potential and capability of students connected. The Internet is a grandiose machine. So I’m extending a hand to fellow students and friends to get the word out.

If you’re willing to help, go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/1123, take five seconds to create an account, and vote on my panel idea. If you want to be more awesome, vote and then leave a comment, to get people talking.

This would be an awesome way to show that students, together, can break the system, be it a simple voting interface or the conventional, old-school methodology of education.

Visit the original Facebook note here and throw it around between your own group of friends.

Also, check out these other nibblets of amazing:

Christina Xu’s Behind the ROFLs: Next-Gen Conference Organizing While Broke

Tim Hwang’s The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008-10 and Obsolete?: A World After E-mail

When I was younger, I liked to brag a lot, until one day I realized I was gradually turning into “that kid,” which propelled me into a slow process of self-exoneration and forced-realization of the humble. But I’ll take a moment to plug two upcoming talks that I’m hosting at Connecticon in Hartford, CT, from 1-3 August, entitled “R-R-Remix! The Mashed Up Culture of Anime Fandom” and “State of the Otaku 2008.” I mention these because I have been reading through a book by one of my favorite beach-babe-turned-Harvard-professors, Chris Kelty, called Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software, for a Harvard Free Culture mini-group project, which will henceforth be known as 2B2P for short, or the Two Bits Processor Project for long. This post will be a reaction and modulation of/against/for Chapter 1, Geeks and Recursive Publics, of Part 1, The Internet. I apologize in advance for this article’s long, rambling nature. If you comment, it’ll help me to organize my thoughts for the future.

Free software… to hormone-crazed, socially-bungling Japanophiles? Where’s the segue? On one hand, I could say the Internet (the title of Part 1, hey hey, coincidence?, I think not!) and only be half right. On one foot, I could say geeks, and become a tad closer to the answer. Doing a handstand, though, if I uttered “recursive public,” I just hit the bullseye. And on the topic of recursive publics is where I will tie in my latter, Connecticon-bound presentation. I want to bring in the demographic of fans of Japanese animation (also known colloquially as otaku), unrelated to any matter in the book, as an experiment in modulation: instead of responding directly to Kelty’s content, in this post I will try to flesh out, squish, and redefine the idea of recursive publics while applying the concept to another relevant population of geeks.

To begin, let’s simplify this notion of recursive public. Kelty’s definition essentially boils down to a population that deals with a content through a form, yet the content and form are the same thing. To develop it slightly further, a recursive public works through the form to protect the content mediated by the form. Kelty uses the Internet as his example, being the form that geeks use and through which geeks mediate. Geeks want to foster the Internet by coding the Internet to their own specifications (bounded by the geek moral order). Very meta indeed. Putting a quote against my simplification, “A recursive public is a public that is constituted by a shared concern for maintaining the means of association through which they come together as a public” (Kelty 28).

Recursive publics are not limited to geeks or the Internet. Kelty does not provide examples of branches. One possible example: American Republicans and Democrats might be considered inclusive to the recursive public scene. Political subtleties aside, both parties exist as part of the government — the medium through which they operate and the content on which they focus their operations. Government also is the medium that allows the parties to “come into being in the first place” (28).

But there’s more to recursive publics, in fact another element entirely. Kelty discusses the concept of “layers,” regarding which he says geeks can identify and connect to create new structures to operate the form. He writes, “[Geeks] express ideas, but they also express infrastructures through which ideas can be expressed (and circulated) in new ways” (29). This second element ties in with the idea that recursive publics “argue through” their medium(s)” (29). Kelty highlights the combination of Napster and network connections to form a miniature scale of the Internet at large. The layering process then provides additional support for the population of the recursive public to develop and protect the medium.

Otaku are part of a recursive public. However, the demographic of anime and manga fans interacting with their medium fundamentally challenges Kelty’s notion of the recursive public. Why: the anime fandom’s medium is, obviously, animation. However, most anime fans do not have the technical expertise or sometimes even amateur aptitude to interact with the animated medium. For anime fans, it is easy to “express ideas” yet difficult to “express infrastructures” (29).

I’ll step away from that difficulty for a moment. First, I want to tackle the ideology of the recursive public. In a long-winded explanation, Kelty basically argues that recursive publics operate through a type of morality, one that structures the goals of the community. To reiterate, geeks of the recursive public participate in “writing and publishing and speaking and arguing” but also make software for “circulation, archiving, movement, and modifiability” of those forms of rhetorical communication. In total, arguments and the methods employed to sculpt those arguments evolve into a sense of morality which will govern future arguments and methods. It’s all very cyclical, but “the circularity is essential to the phenomenon. A public might be real and efficacious, but its reality lies in just this reflexivity by which an addressable object is conjured into being in order to enable the very discourse that gives it existence” (48).

To return to the otaku: these geeks too share a moral ideology based in the medium of animation. Examples include the cease of the distribution of fansubs (subtitles added to the original Japanese animation, distributed for foreign audiences) once an animated series is licensed by a US company, or doujinshi (comic book remixes of series) that do not copy the original series but build upon it [this latter topic is discussed in Chapter 1 of Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture]. This morality, then, continues on to affect what Kelty calls “changing relations of power and knowledge” (29). Japanese animation, particularly dealing with fans in the US, has challenged the current production market and copyright itself, particularly regarding Free Use. And although barely developed as that of the culture of free software, the power and authority in otaku culture continues to change, led by greats such as Toshio Okada and Takashi Murakami.

But I must return to and address the problem of the formulation of infrastructures when animation is the medium. Can a recursive public exist when a technical boundary is inherently set up in the public’s system? Let’s examine a possible route to the solution: topical and metatopical spaces. Kelty recognizes that geeks of free software do not congregate in topical spaces, meaning assembly in the physical arena, but instead “[knit] a plurality of spaces into one larger space of non-assembly” (39). Anime fans in the US, contrarily, began in so-called topical spaces (also known as mom’s basement), eventually immigrating to the Internet where the fandom now continues to thrive. Is it possible that because the culture of free software began online that its followers automatically shared the prowess necessary to participate fully in both argument and creation, and they shared such knowledge and capabilities between each other, while otaku might not possess these technical traits because they did not mature in the presence of the medium (layman’s terms: they weren’t animators, so should we expect them to animate?).

That’s certainly a pressing question to Toshio Okada, co-founder of Gainax (one of the original major Japanese animation production companies) and self-proclaimed Otaking. So pressing, in fact, that he has declared, “Otaku are dead.” What can he mean, when thousands of American anime fans are running around with their heads cut off at hundreds of conventions across the United States yearly. Just that: with their heads cut off, today’s fans have no direction.

In a public talk, recorded by Otaku2.com, Okada answered the following question:

You mentioned that there is a gap between fan generations, or yours and that of today. Can you elaborate on this?

Okada: I think there is a big difference that is clear in what is popular. Take manga, which is selling in the mainstream, and series popular with maniacs, which are not selling. “Clover and Honey” is a good example. Some people just buy it, some are fans and only a few are maniacs who really dive into the series, so it fails to move the masses. The manga becomes nothing but a topic of discussion among older men who compete on who read it more properly. When with others, these tangents don’t go well and a discussion never takes off. The media can’t talk about otaku as one anymore because we aren’t. There is no core literature or readership. I don’t think I can explain this well enought to convince you, but anyway.

Okada is famously known for his participation on the infamous otaku commentary, Otaku no Video, a major yet sardonic commentary on the state of otaku in Japan. As a producer, though, Okada exemplifies the paragon leader of the otaku recursive public: one who comments on and comments through the form. He sees, though, a major change in generations of otaku, which leads to his harsh declaration. Describing his own generation of anime fans, Okada said at MIT in 2003: “These were fans who were so passionate and enthusiastic about anime that they became vocal and informed critics.” Speaking of the modern anime fanatic, he stated, “Unfortunately… the latest generation of anime viewers in Japan are not true Otaku. They may be anime fans, but they lack the deep, passionate connection to the medium, and many of them seem to have taken up anime fandom because it’s cool or “fashionable.” Rather than being active critics of anime, they are content to be customers, or consumers.” Okada is right about many viewers even five years later, today, as teenagers attend anime conventions with nothing short of shoutouts to Naruto and Bleach. Still, there are some fans that put their critical eye to work to uphold the name of otaku, but cannot argue for anime through the infrastructure of animation. How should they be considered in a culture that began as a recursive public yet has in recent times reverted to a mere consumer culture? A younger Okada, seeing no good animation after the end of the original Gundam series way back when, participated in the creation of two original animated shorts, Daicon III and Diacon IV (the latter of which, if you watch it quickly, contains a homage to Star Wars of all things). The importance of these novelties remains the fact that the recursive public protects the content by arguing through the form. Okada’s message to young fans rings with Keltyism: “Just make your own anime, in English, by yourself.”

I’m not depressed. The phrase “All is not lost” is too drastic to use, yet it would encompass a little bit of the situation. But only a little, because the situation is improving. Paul “Otaking” Johnson recently published on YouTube a criticism of the online fansubbing community, a five-part video series which begins here. It’s just one example of the recursive public finally taking a stand once again. In an interview not too long ago, he stated, “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. My video was free and I got paid nothing, but it didn’t stop me researching translation theory for a year or hand drawing and animating the cut scenes just to grab people’s attention (they certainly wouldn’t stick around for my voice, that’s for sure!),” which exemplifies exactly what Okada wanted out of the new otaku generation. Other models include Makoto Shinkai, who animated his own story, Voices of a Distant Star and went on to produce a number of other anime, or even the father of Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, who copied Disney’s style to form the foundation of what would compose anime fandom today, who animated for entertainment yet still included his own acute commentary on post-war Japan.

Back to the issue, though: What happens when a fan simply can’t do this sort of high-caliber work?

Layers. The second element in Kelty’s concept. What does Japanese animation become when applied to new intrastructural models? Doujinshi. Anime music videos. Cosplay. Fansubs. Remixed comic books. Reworked animation set to music. Dressing up as characters. Subtitling original show material. All these examples are miniature structures of the animation scene at large, yet do not require the ultimate technical expertise vital to the production of genuine animation. But Kelty does not approach the potential for layers to avoid manifestation as the actual infrastructure (eg. Internet) and instead form new forms of the infrastructure. Unfortunately, for free software in relation to the Internet, no new form of the infrastructure exists, because there is only one Internet. For anime, though, animation exists as media with many offsets. Anime fans congregate in topical and metatopical spaces. Otaku participate as much as possible as the true nature of the recursive public has begun to resurface over the last decade. Hopefully as technology advances fans will be provided a more accessible platform to evolve the recursive public and resurrect the name of otaku.

Please comment on this second post in the Two Bits Processor Project, and please visit the blogs of my friends who are participating with me on this most excellent project:

Tim Hwang, blogging at The U.S. Bureau of Fabulous Bitches
Christina Xu, blogging at ComPromise
yours truly, blogging at DianaKimball.com
Mike Wolfe, blogging at Machinations
And me, Alex Leavitt, blogging here