Novel Experience & Expression » attunement

Resonance Assemblage

Gary Hink — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:15:51 +0000

M 07-Dec Due: Final Project — “Resonance Assemblage” (checkpoint)

Workshop / “Studio” class

“Stage 1″ Checkpoint instructions here.

W 09-Dec (no class)

Due: Final Project — (9pm finalized / online)

Overall guidelines here

[See post to watch Flash video]

“Stage 1″ Project Checkpoint due M 07-Dec (class time) — required

Note: must be online, “in progress,” by class time to avoid penalty
(late / point deduction from final project).

Content: 6-8 entries (”posts”) minimum (of 16-20 total).
— reminder: entries are fragments (100-200 words); see below for more.

“Research” is complete; definite/revised topic/issue; sources and “materials” selected.

List sources on “Materials” page:

Literary: 2 from Part II novels; (4 req’d total)*
Scholarly: 1 min. from research; (2 required total)
Culture: 2 min. (distinct from “Literary” sources; 4 min. total)
Multimedia: 2 min. (10 total, including 1 non-image e.g. video, audio, animation, etc.)

— * Note: any material from a novel is sufficient: quote, phrase, description, figure/image, character, setting, references/allusions, style/”voice” (?), narration technique (?)….

— Prospective materials: list any sources not used yet but anticipate including in entries; also might list any items seeking but not found thus far.

——–

Layout : Blog reformatted (see instructions below — click here).

Static home page created.

“Entries” page created.

Required Pages created (see below; content incomplete)

New title (creative / applicable, re: “critical expressionism” of your project)

New “theme” (blog template)

Categories and Tags (create, relative to topic)

All old entries categorized (and tagged? optional);
e.g. “research,” “response,” “reading journal”

Widgets: “Categories” and “Tag Cloud” (minimum / req’d)

——–

Required Pages:

Home
About
Entries (or “Posts”)
Materials
Poetics
Reflection

——–

Multimedia

— Be sure to embed at least one image and/or audio/video clip (even if you change/delete them later).
— Use from Web or your own (upload to Wordpress)

Instructions:
Embedding Images
Video Instructions (for YouTube; cf. Google, Vimeo, etc. on page)
Adding Audio Instructions
Google Maps

Note: We’ll want to troubleshoot practical issues about this during Monday’s workshop; please attend/arrive with specific technical questions/issues.

——–

Content

6-8 entries (”posts”) minimum.

— reminder: entries are fragments (100-200 words).

Flexible / hybrid poetics: might be single topic/vignette (for emphasis); or, juxtaposition of diverse elements, e.g. text and image from different paradigm levels.

Note: strongly discourage using images for “representation” (illustration, depiction, etc), as this is not expressive (but logical). Instead, use expressive images guided by intuition (associative and affective logic), without “obvious” (explicit, rational) connection…

Paradigm (one example from each dimension, for Monday):

Personal
Disciplinary (historical / scientific)
Cultural
Original Narrative

Interface: one example (from any of three paradigm dimensions)

Expressive Figure: one example (from any of three paradigm dimensions)

Manipulated image : one example

“Ready-made” or “Bricolage” Method of using images: “re-fashion” / “re-purpose” visually, by using any image program like Photoshop; including free software online:

Pixlr
Phoenix
Picnik
Wordle (?)

——–

Blog Format / Layout Instructions

Creating Pages

1) Dashboard -> Pages -> Add New
2) “Add New Page” -> Title / compose -> Publish

*3) Create a new page that will become your home/front page.
*4) Create a new page titled “Entries” or “Posts”

A) Convert blog to static home page.

1) Dashboard -> Settings -> Reading.
2) Front page displays -> choose “A static page.”
3) Select Front page (from drop-down menu).
4) Select Posts page (from drop-down menu).

B) New Theme & Title

Change Theme to one expressive of experience/affect.

1) Dashboard –> Appearance –> Themes

Change title: re-name your blog with an apt title for your project.

1) Dashboard -> Settings -> Blog Title & Tagline

C) Enable “Tag cloud” & “Categories” widget

1) Dashboard –> Appearance–> Widgets

* To tag and categorize entries

1) Dashboard -> Posts -> Edit Posts
2) Select post to Edit -> Add/type tags (right column) -> Click “Add” Button.
3) “Categories” -> Choose/create (right column)
*4) Click “Update” (right column) to save (not updated, otherwise).

Blogging (as) Experience

Gary Hink — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:47:59 +0000

(from syllabus)
Blog Entries
1 minimum per week, beginning week 2; (100-200 words. Credit/no credit assigned).
Every student will create and maintain a blog throughout the semester, preferably using Wordpress
Blog entries due Wednesday each week, starting week 2, unless otherwise noted (e.g. weeks 8 & 14).

Elaborating upon today’s class, specific suggestions for blogging below.
Note: more technical instructions for blogging coming soon (i.e. setup / “tech. support”) — need not create your blog until next week (over weekend?)

Also, optional / additional ideas:
as part of blogging, use Twitter, Facebook, or other social media (?).
More on this below — could be very interesting and unique approach!

Weekly entries are informal (ungraded); consider as “Reading Journal”: e.g. post associative links/images, pose questions, note observations, describe insights – particularly connections between texts within and those outside of class. An enjoyable and productive way of engaging our “objects of study,” this on-going work serves as “research” and material for the final project.

Specific suggestions for blogging:

On a general level of the course, blogging itself is precisely (an) experience and (your) expression. The benefit to our method (experiment) is both to practice and develop our engaging with literature, as well as generate ideas through the process — consider as analogy the creative moments that occur during “band practice,” (not just refining old songs but generating a creative impulse!). For progress in our experiment (semester), this practice involves “warming-up”: not just “tuning,” but ourselves becoming in tune or “attuned” to different frequencies.

One perspective is our scholarly examination of our “objects of study” (literature); at minimum, your “reading journal” entries might note a specific literary topic/issue, such as one we discuss that particular week. This strategy helps generate ideas specifically for assignments.

We are also interested in additional “frequencies”: observations and connections from your unique perspective, involving any relevant personal/experiential knowledge. Specifically, explore insights through associations or connections between our texts and any content/material “outside” of class–this very much includes your experience from the past and at present (e.g. other courses, activities, media). We’ll try to develop a “three-dimensional” or “360°” perspective on “experience and expression.”

In both cases, also very interesting and productive to present new questions that our reading generates (i.e. how /what you are considering, newly or differently, as a result of reading).

Finally, your blog is the “experience narrative” of this particular semester, with all of the unique events and culture contextualized during “fall 2009.” The “incidental” associations that occur might likely provide fruitful avenues to explore for our project. We’ll want to be especially attuned to any “surprising” (accidental?) connections, especially any triggered by “involuntary memory” (more on this last concept later).

Optional / additional ideas, for blogging:

I have considered the potential use of Twitter, as part of blogging, and it might be interesting/productive in two ways. First, because we don’t know when an insight will occur, it is often useful to review our own experience as a narrative — a stream of “tweets” (entries) creates this narrative, showing us our process of engaging material (all courses, media, etc.). Alternatively, there is a new trend of users “tweeting” in character, taking up a role from literature/culture and writing in this voice. This is of great interest for us as a strategy of imagining and expressing others’ experience, which we will attempt to do at the end of the term.

The opposite of Tweeting “in character,” and yet very much the “three-dimensional” perspective of the course, would be using Facebook as part of the process. Both our novels and our class are “social networks” themselves; a new perspective would be testing what occurs when you conduct our experiment (method/process) within your established social network, especially regarding feedback.

Anyone interested in either of these options should contact me, perhaps for additional prompts/suggestions and certainly for technical advice (and to discuss how to integrate into your weekly requirement of 200-word blog entries).