Our desktops are a repository for files and downloads and miscellaneous attachments that will someday be filed and organized. We don’t know when! The above screenshot shows my background image as a personalized space of imagery, files, notes, hard drives, etc. It is my other world, the one that is distinct and apart from the real one.
As we have discussed this semester, we live partly in the physical world and partly in the virtual. Our desktop is more than just the place where we keep our folders and files, it is a world we personalize and inhabit. The desktop is an extension of who we are. You can see this in the way that we organize our data, configure the desktop image, and use it as a launchpad to extend ourselves into our reach into cyberspace. This project will involve an online working session and broadcast from the desktop, beamed out over Facebook Live for approximately 5 – 10 minutes.
Using OBS, broadcast your desktop with your Webcam overlaid, and just go about the usual business of what you do every day: working in Photoshop, editing a video, writing a paper, chatting with friends, posting on Facebook. In this case, you are conducting your everyday virtual life on the desktop as a live broadcast, sharing your desktop space with your friends.
Before you do the project, watch the first 10 minutes of the Jon Cates video Bold3RRR (see research critique), to give you some ideas on what you might want to do. But in the end, just do what you want, what comes naturally as you live and produce in your virtual desktop space.
When you complete the Facebook Live video, be sure to post it to your timeline, embed it in an OSS post, and write a short description about the overall experience. What was it like to share your personal desktop space? Did you receive any reaction in Facebook? You might want to consider broadcasting your Facebook page so you can rebroadcast the chat interaction and your own image.