[Air-L] KISSING BOOTH (Hoping that got your attention!)

[Terri Senft]

Dear AoIRFolk:

 Greetings from the glamorous Renaissance Hotel, where we are gearing up to
run the Internet Kissing Booth installation today and tomorrow!

Here are some things worth knowing:



You can watch footage on camera here: www.stickam.com/kissingbooth

You can “blow a kiss” (AKA comment) using Twitter hash tag:  #ir12kiss

Our hours of operation will be:



Tues: 3:30pm -5:30pm; 6:00pm-8:00pm PST
Wed: 10:00pm-2:30pm; 4:30pm-6:00pm PST

(note: all times are three hours later for those on the U.S. east coast)



So, what is an Internet Kissing Booth?

Lots of you have asked what on earth this is all about, and it’s a fair
enough question. The idea for an Internet Kissing Booth originated over a
year ago while watching a colleague who had the misfortune of being upstaged
by a Twitter stream broadcast running behind her while she spoke.  That
episode got us thinking about similar episodes in our own lives:



--times we realized students were talking online backchannel during our
lectures;

 --times we ourselves were Tweeting at a conference to get new followers
rather than looking at a live conference presenter;

 --concerns many of us have about having our free-form in-class exchanges
recorded for podcasts;

 --the general anxiety nearly everyone experiences when asked to sit in
front of a camera for more than one minute, wondering what the rest of the
world is thinking about our image…



Since the conference theme this year is “performance,” we thought it would
be a good time to think through some of these issues, starting with our own
bodies. We set up the booth with a sign that says the following:



GET KISSED!  Here’s How:

1. Enter the booth.

 2. Face the camera.

 3. Set the egg timer for three minutes.

 4. Watch the Twitter feed on screen, and read the world’s comments about
your image. Your sound will be muted and you won’t be able to type
responses.

 5. Think about what it means to be watched (we’re usually the watchers!)

 6. Try to stay the entire three minutes.

 7. Leave the booth.

 8. Have a lollipop (on us.)

 9. Have a drink (you pay for that.)

 10. If you can, come talk with us at roundtable: “Performance & Presence,
Absence & Silence" (begins at 3:15 pm on Thursday)


What Can I Do From Afar?

To make this fun and interesting, we need everyone’s help. Even (especially)
if you aren’t at the conference, we are hoping you will be able to watch and
comment via Twitter (hashtag: #ir12kiss) when you have the time. We’ve asked
people to “blow a kiss” intentionally. We’re not interested in rudeness, but
in general comments and observations of what you seen on your screen.
Certainly,
this isn't meant to be some Skinnerian experiment in trolling, and if it
even seems to be getting weird or ugly, we’ll stop the project and talk
about that.

Mostly, we are interested in gauging peoples’ experiences as they watched
themselves being watched. And speaking of watching: I’ll run the
conversation at the roundtable on Stickam for you to see remotely, if people
are interested in that.



Okay, that is more than enough from me. Feel free to shoot any questions to
my gmail address: tsenft at gmail.com

And see you on the Twitter stream! #irkiss

Terri (the one with the good hair on camera)


-- 
Dr. Theresa M. Senft
Global Liberal Studies Program
School of Arts & Sciences
New York University
715 Broadway  NY NY 10003

www.terrisenft.net
www.livejournal.com/users/tsenft