iPad Invention: Reflections on "A Thrilla in ManiLA" by Geof Carter
    
INTRODUCTION:  
Hi my name is Geof Carter. Cheryl and Madeleine have invited me to talk about my “Thrilla 
in Manila” mashup from the January 2013 issue of Kairos. 
 
My work was largely produced largely on an iPad 2, and I think it’s the novelty of this 
medium, along with the significant revisions that I undertook, that has led to this invitation 
to reflect on my invention process. 
 
As I talk, I’ll be showing some behind-­the-scenes aspects of my filmmaking. Some 
of the scenes will include my daughter, Vivienne, who, in addition to being more photogenic 
than me, plays a role in my commentary. 
 
Note: The work you’re viewing has been produced both on an iPad and MacBook Pro.  
Below you can see the glow of my MacBook keyboard, and above you can see the 
rectangular iPad-sized glare of light coming into my otherwise dark basement window. 
 
CONTEXT:  
My desire to produce a work based on a premise of simplicity extends back to a piece I did 
for the 2008 Manifesto Issue of Kairos.  
 
That collection featured a movie I produced for the 2006 4C’s Conference in Chicago. It’s 
here where my story really begins.  
 
This early work was my attempt to put a Marcel Duchamp-­like spin on various images of a 
paper plate.   
 
What I wanted to show in "Plates.Pleats.Petals" effort was a simple, yet complex style of 
rhetorical invention with a ready-­made object. 
 
In my current “Thrilla” presentation, I wanted to explore boxing basics on a simple, video-­
editing platform—a platform that is as thin as a small stack of paper plates.  
 
In “Plates.Pleats.Petals,” I used a play-­of-­names strategy to make connections. For example, I used Geoff Sirc’s name to suggest a style of Circuitry. In my “Thrilla” presentation, I used Muhammad Ali’s signature to connect to MLA, a conference known for its study of language and poetry.  
 
Since MLA also considers issues connected to class and race, I decided to explore these 
themes as well. In 2007 I made my first trip to the MLA Conference in Philadelphia for job 
interviews. I was struck by the grittiness of the city and the broad appeal of the Rocky
Statue.

Later, as I began working in a hard-hit working class area of Michigan along the I-­75 corridor that extends from Saginaw to Flint and Detroit, I started thinking more about Philadelphia and the suppressed legacies of Chuck Wepner and Joe Frazier.

METHOD:  
Editing video on an iPad 2 presents a challenge. The iPad doesn’t allow one to import converted videos. As a result, everything has to be loaded into its editor through live capture.

I set up my iPad and MacBook facing each other to capture YouTube footage. For sound, I
set speakers behind the iPad, and later I manually adjusted the sound clip-by-­clip.

The advantage to all this prep work is that once everything is loaded, editing on a tablet like the iPad offers a very portable and intuitive experience.

I first adopted this method of composing for a 2011 Western States Conference presentation that I gave with Geoff Sirc and Sarah Arroyo. For it, I wanted to make a movie about nomadic musics.

With the birth of my daughter, I found that my work, too, was a nomadic one. As a new parent, I found it more and more difficult to work on even my portable MacBook.

The iPad was simply more adaptable to the rocking chair I often found myself in.

To be sure, my Western States movie—­“Expatriating Place from the Parisian Salons to the Sunset Strip”—is now very difficult to return to and edit. It survives in a suspended state on YouTube. I had to delete all the clips from my iPad to make way for my “Thrilla in Manila.”

And it’s with this in mind that I knew—even before I started making this video that would be featured in Seattle—that, if it did not find a place in an online journal like Kairos, it would eventually be deleted and consigned to YouTube. Published, yet perished.

DISPLAY:  
The first version of my movie clocked in at 22 minutes. It was impossible to export to
YouTube given the 12-minute time restriction. (For emergency, I used a digital camera to back-­up my efforts and exported the two segments to YouTube on my MacBook.)

At the Seattle MLA conference itself, I was able to display an uninterrupted version of my iPad film by using an adapter to plug into a 50-­inch monitor provided by the conference.

Cheryl visited our eight­‐person gallery, and I remember she was quite enthusiastic about our efforts. (If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Bonnie Kyburz’s “Screencube” where you can catch a glimpse of Cheryl.) Cheryl did, however, remind me that my earlier
“Plates.Pleats.Petals” effort had run nearly as long, and it needed to be significantly trimmed for the Manifesto Issue.

And it was with this in mind that—when I returned home from Seattle—I knew I was going to need to keep all my work on my iPad for the next year. For there is no getting around the fact that the multi-­stage review process that Kairos uses takes nearly a year from start ­to ­finish.
    
REVISION:  
And this brings me to another challenge about editing work on an iPad, especially with a curious 1-­year-old. Since there is no way to back-­up files and because imported video can be so easily deleted, I wasn’t sure if the work I did for Seattle would survive to publication.

Viv loves the iPad, and I love letting her explore it.

Despite my best efforts to keep tabs on her explorations, I would sometimes find her watching the Ali footage that I imported. Sometimes she even opened the iMovie Editor.

While Viv often seems to “know what she is doing” on the iPad—whether it’s watching videos of herself on YouTube or using Netflix to watch Curious George—I couldn’t help but wonder if she might unintentionally delete my project.

Indeed, the prospect had me thinking of a presentation that Sarah Arroyo—my writing partner on a number of video related projects—was preparing for the 2012 Computers and Writing Conference. Her “Choric Swipe,” which is featured in this Inventio piece (it's playing right now), looks at how the interface of the tablet is connected to the activity of erasure.

Arroyo writes that [QUOTE] “If we use erasing as a metaphor for what swiping is doing to writing, a dilemma emerges. If erasing is now creating through the gesture of the swipe, we are literally erasing the necessity of writing with a utensil or keyboard and making the bodily gesture the instigator of creative processes. Thought about in this manner, the swipe opens up potential for interacting with the physical world that has not yet been possible. On the tablet, the swipe literally unlocks the potential of the interactive world. Instead of erasing, it turns on. It creates. It instigates.” [END QUOTE]

And it’s this gesture—this Swipe—that makes me realize that whatever happens to my clips, other potentialities will be unlocked. Re-­composing(s) by way of and after the swipe.

RE-INVENTING M. ALI:    
And so, when Cheryl, Virginia Kuhn, Robert Leston and the editors at Kairos encouraged my
“Thrilla in ManiLA” revision, I was ready. I was ready to Swipe.

I did a number of versions both with and without title cards. The process of my multiple revisions can still be found on YouTube under the name SVSUGVCARTER.
There’s something about the impermanence of composing on the iPad itself that seems to welcome all these variations. Re-­vision was never more fluid.

Indeed, one final composing note: At the end of my movie, I wanted Brian Eno’s “Ascent” to play as Stallone mounted the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum. I wanted this music to cover over some existing audio and I also wanted to evoke a sense of Eno’s ambient space.

The problem with the iMovie version for the iPad that I was using at the time was that it required me to play the entire track throughout the project, even if I only wanted a snippet of audio at the end. Eventually, I was able to individually adjust the volumes of each of my video clips to create the illusion of Eno’s gradual “Ascent” at the end.

Despite composing limitations like this one, I’ll continue to do work on a tablet like the iPad. I hope this discussion of my invention process will spark other projects along these lines.