Technical difficulties

The first thing you see when you enter my classroom, fixed to the wall on the left side by the greenboard, is a big black metal cabinet with an open front and a row of, depending on how you count, six control boards with various configurations of buttons, knobs and indicator lights. Underneath is a long, narrow equipment drawer containing a cobra-like gray cord lying in unruly coils, along with three remote-control devices. Instructions are scotch-taped to the control boards, along with various hand-scrawled notes: “Please Remember to Shut Down the Projector. Picture Mute is NOT Shutdown!” “Select Sound Source.” “Internet on Wall Behind You.” “Aux Power.” “Power Supply: Do not turn off.” “To Play a DVD, Turn Off the VCR.”

The third control board seems to be related to sound. There are 13 knobs on it, of differing shapes and sizes. Based on the labels it appears that you can control not only the volume, but also the exact tone and timbre of the sound. To the untrained eye the whole contraption looks like the instrument panel in a Boeing 747. Affixed to the wall to the right of the cabinet, conveniently located next to the clock, is a little gray box with a set of three retro-looking buttons arranged vertically, labeled, in descending order, Up, Down and STOP. Press the middle knob and a large movie screen descends, groaning, from the ceiling, and covers the greenboard. On the left of the cabinet is a dimmer switch. Slide this down and the lights go out slowly. I have mastered these two sets of controls.

The cabinet, though, is my worst nightmare.

When I read Russian literature, my head fills with visions and sounds: famous paintings; pieces of music; the sound of hoofbeats and gunshots; folk melodies; exotic mountainous landscapes so stunning that men provoke duels just so they can die in them; photographs and portraits of the authors; images of the great cities where the novels are set; scenes from movies and TV productions; mental pictures of those mysterious Russian things that translators neglect to put into English: troikas, samovars, tarantasses, droshkies, cuirasses, besedkas, podstakanchiki, carricks, fortochkas, sarafans, lapti, valenki, iconostases. The great thrill of multimedia is that it can bring these things to life. Just collect the images and sounds you need, create a PowerPoint, buy a little adapter for your laptop, attach it to the end of the cobra-cord, and you’re good to go. So I’m told.

In spite of the images and sounds in my head, I am a word person, like my authors. My primary arsenal consists of incantations, coaxing and persuasion. When dealing with machines, this makes for a bad match-up: human versus technology, rhetoric versus logic. And indeed, something always goes wrong. The projector won’t turn on. The image refuses to show up on the screen. Or it shows up, but halfway through the film clip everything goes blue and a malevolent little box shows up at the center: “no signal.”

I mumble at the bleeper, jab at the buttons. I fiddle with the wires. I bat the control panel. I pound the peripheral keys on my laptop, wishing the image into life. The little adaptor detaches from the wire. Which remote am I supposed to be using? Which of the buttons on the remote is for the DVD, and which is for the laptop? Which one is the Shut Down button and which one is the Picture Mute? What IS a Picture Mute?

The harder I try, the more stubbornly the system resists. Russian paranoia sets in. It’s intentional! It’s the Stuxnet Virus! Sabotage! Students shuffle papers, stifle giggles, tap pens, look politely at their watches. Finally an image pops up on the screen: Russian pop idol Boris Grebenshchikov looking out the window of a speeding train, mouth opening wide and closing again, eyes half closed, head nodding rhythmically, first left, then right. Life is a train ride. The train is on fire! Where is the train going? It’s a direct quote from our reading, the culmination of today’s class. My students stare at the screen. There is no sound.

Is there a little camera in the console sending a live feed to a monitoring center in the bowels of OIT, or CIT, or A&S Computing? It’s a remote, dark little chamber resembling one of those security offices at the mall. Along one wall is a dense bank of glittering, grainy gray TV monitors. Four or five people form a tight cluster in front of one of them, the one labeled Languages 320. They howl with laughter, spewing popcorn onto the floor, spilling their soda.