http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/opinion/06mathias.html

Chicago

THE time-chugging Web site Facebook.com first appeared during my freshman year as the exclusive domain of college students. This spring, Facebook opened its pearly gates, enabling myself and other members of the class of ’07 to graduate from our college networks into those of the real world.

In no time at all, the Web site has convinced its rapidly assembling adult population that it is a forum for genuine personal and professional connections. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has even declared his quest to chart a “social graph” of human relationships the way that cartographers once charted the world.

Just a warning: if you’re planning on following the corner of this map that’s been digitally doodled by my 659 Facebook friends, you are going to end up in the middle of nowhere. All the rhetoric about human connectivity misses the real reason this popular online study buddy has so distracted college students for the past four years.

Facebook did not become popular because it was a functional tool — after all, most college students live in close quarters with the majority of their Facebook friends and have no need for social networking. Instead, we log into the Web site because it’s entertaining to watch a constantly evolving narrative starring the other people in the library.

I’ve always thought of Facebook as online community theater. In costumes we customize in a backstage makeup room — the Edit Profile page, where we can add a few Favorite Books or touch up our About Me section — we deliver our lines on the very public stage of friends’ walls or photo albums. And because every time we join a network, post a link or make another friend it’s immediately made visible to others via the News Feed, every Facebook act is a soliloquy to our anonymous audience.

It’s all comedy: making one another laugh matters more than providing useful updates about ourselves, which is why entirely phony profiles were all the rage before the grown-ups signed in. One friend announced her status as In a Relationship with Chinese Food, whose profile picture was a carry-out box and whose personal information personified the cuisine of China.

We even make a joke out of how we know one another — claiming to have met in “Intro to Super Mario Re-enactments,” which I seriously doubt is a real course at Wesleyan, or to have lived together in a “spay and neuter clinic” instead of the dorm. Still, these humor bits often reveal more about our personalities and interests than any honest answers.

Facebook administrators have since exiled at least the flagrantly fake profiles, the Greta Garbos and the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butters, in an effort to have the site grow up from a farce into the serious social networking tool promised to its new adult users, who earnestly type in their actual personal information and precisely label everyone they know as former co-workers or current colleagues, family members or former lovers.

But does this more reverent incarnation of Facebook actually enrich adult relationships? What do these constellations of work colleagues and long-lost friends amount to? An online office mixer? A reunion with that one other guy from your high school who has a Facebook profile? Oh! You get to see pictures of your former college sweetheart’s family! (Only depressing possibilities are coming to mind for some reason.)

My generation has long been bizarrely comfortable with being looked at, and as performers on the Facebook stage, we upload pictures of ourselves cooking dinner for our parents or doing keg stands at last night’s party; we are reckless with our personal information. But there is one area of privacy that we won’t surrender: the secrecy of how and whom we search.

A friend of mine was recently in a panic over rumors of a hacker application that would allow Facebook users to see who’s been visiting their profiles. She’d spent the day ogling a love interest’s page and was horrified at the idea that he knew she’d been looking at him. But there’s no way Facebook would allow such a program to exist: the site is popular largely because it enables us to indulge our gazes anonymously. (We might feel invulnerable in the spotlight, but we don’t want to be caught sitting in someone else’s audience.) If our ability to privately search is ever jeopardized, Facebook will turn into a ghost town.

Facebook purports to be a place for human connectivity, but it’s made us more wary of real human confrontation. When I was in college, people always warned against the dangers of “Facebook stalking” at a library computer — the person whose profile you’re perusing might be right behind you. Dwelling online is a cowardly and utterly enjoyable alternative to real interaction.

So even though Facebook offers an elaborate menu of privacy settings, many of my friends admit that the only setting they use is the one that prevents people from seeing that they are Currently Logged In. Perhaps we fear that the Currently Logged In feature advertises to everyone else that we (too!) are Currently Bored, Lustful, Socially Unfulfilled or Generally Avoiding Real Life.

For young people, Facebook is yet another form of escapism; we can turn our lives into stage dramas and relationships into comedy routines. Make believe is not part of the postgraduate Facebook user’s agenda. As more and more older users try to turn Facebook into a legitimate social reference guide, younger people may follow suit and stop treating it as a circus ring. But let’s hope not.

Alice Mathias is a 2007 graduate of Dartmouth.

Digital Foundations LINK to Searching and Sampling Tips

Looking for the Esstenial Skills files online. . .not sure if they exist.

Essential Skills Book-Entire book online

The revised schedule:

Sept 10: Half-Breeds DUE, Intro Rounding Assignment, Photoshop Lessons

Sept 15: In class work on Lessons, Rounding Etc.

Sept 17: Rounding DUE, Intro Collage, Photoshop Lessons DUE

Sept 22: Essential Skills, Worktime

Sept 24: Essential Skills, worktime

Sept 29: Two Word Collage due, Essential skills time

Digital Drawing 5 pts

Half Breeds 5pts

Rounding 5pts

Two Word Collage 5pts

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Welcome to Digital Imaging at Chester College.  We will use this site as a resource and to direct us to lessons, interesting tidbits, shared links and upcoming events in our area.

VIA COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

The extraordinary Quay Brothers are two of the world’s most original filmmakers. Influenced by European writers, composers, and animators – particularly Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser, Kafka, Ladislaw Starewicz, Jan Švankmajer, Janáček, and Stravinsky – the Quays display a passion for detail, a breathtaking command of color and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement. Filmmaker Terry Gilliam deemed their classic film STREET OF CROCODILES, “one of the ten best animated films of all time”.

Their exquisite body of work includes many stop-action animation shorts, live action feature films, commercials, music videos, an award-winning collaboration with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, dance films, set designs for theater and opera and an animated dream sequence for Julie Taymor’s film FRIDA. They are currently in production on THE MASK, a film based on the short story by Stanislaw Lem.

Our program begins in April with a month-long retrospective series of their films. Screenings take place Mondays at 7:00 pm, April 6-27. Tickets on sale now!

The Quay Brothers join us in person on May 6 & 7 for three unique events honoring their achievements. See below for details about each of these exciting programs.

st Announced!
In conjunction its 2009 Award Celebration, The Coolidge presents DORMITORIUM: AN EXHIBITION OF FILM DÉCORS BY THE QUAY BROTHERS, a very special exhibit of the Quays original handmade and highly detailed sets used in their animated works.

The exhibit will be hosted in Boston from April 30 through May 21, at the gallery space of The Fourth Wall Project , 132 Brookline Avenue, Boston, MA 02215. Gallery Hours are 1:00 – 7:00 pm, Monday – Saturday.

Opening date to the public for the exhibition and opening reception is Thursday, April 30 from 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm.

A special reception with the Quay Brothers in attendance for press and Coolidge Award Event Gold Ticket holders will be held on Tues, May 5 from 7:30 until 9:30 pm.

DORMITORIUM exhibition is organized and originated by the Quay Brothers’ alma mater, the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.