viz.

Image Credit:  Screenshot from Radical Software

H/T:  Chris Micklethwait

As Noel prepares to lead a Best Practices for Digital Images workshop here at UT, the rest of us in the Visual Rhetoric group hope to make some of this work public here on viz. for others to use.  One website that presents some interesting work done in the 1970s that theorizes the use and creation of digital/video media is Radical Software.

Radical Software was created, according to its website, out of the work of a group called the Raindance Foundation which hoped to be “an alternative media think tank; a source of ideas, publications, videotapes and energy providing a theoretical basis for implementing communication tools in the project of social change.”  A part of this work involved publishing a magazine called Radical Software that discussed in various ways the power of technology (principally video) to transmit diverse and alternative messages.  What the creators of this website have done is to scan all of the issues of Radical Software  (published between 1970 and 1974) as PDFs and make them available to the public for searching and browsing.

Image Credit:  Radical Software

What really struck me in looking over the website is the relevance that some of their theorizing might have for individuals working in education and digital humanities today.  Their last issue on “Video and Kids” features a number of individuals reflecting on the ways in which they’ve used video in the classroom not only to teach students material but also to show children ways of producing their own work.  This is something that the Internet itself has further democratized as the tools required now for digital interaction have become cheaper and the knowledge to use them is ready to hand.  What also intrigued me is that Radical Software from the first viewed their work as open-source and encouraged readers to copy freely from it.  This more open attitude seems to mirror the kind of work done today by publications like Kairos, which not only offer space for more creative kinds of scholarship but also lower the wall preventing the public from accessing it.

I found it fairly easy to navigate the site and browse between issues, although having each article be its own separate PDF on themakes it harder to read through an entire issue.  (Luckily, they do have full issues in PDF, but they're available only by clicking on the cover of the issue and not visible under the contents section, which makes this feature harder to find.)  The search itself is also easy to use, although it appears that the articles haven’t been associated with likely keywords:  while a search on “education” yields 155 results, “pedagogy” finds none.  If there were any improvement that could be made to this site, this would be helpful, but the website appears to be designed—like the magazine itself once was—for easy access by others.  I hope anyone interested in the evolution of digital literacy and the use of technology will find this a useful resource.