Project 1

 

Screen Self-Portrait (assem­blage)
“Ensem­ble Expe­ri­ence”: Net­worked Community?

 
Due: 27-Sep; 20 points
 
— sug­gested sites: Wix, Prezi, Word­Press (use pages + links), Google Sites. (oth­ers? Wee­bly? Yola?)
 
— Com­po­si­tion guide: Page
 
— related: see post on modes of infor­ma­tion (+ dig­i­tal rhetoric) here

 

---

 

• Chal­lenge: How to con­vey the lived dimen­sion of medi­ated expe­ri­ence — com­mu­nity, group, social par­tic­i­pa­tion in net­worked pub­lic sphere?
   

• Goal: Express your expe­ri­ence of being net­worked (com­mu­nity?) in the new media ecol­ogy, in terms of iden­tity and behav­ior.
   
• Task: Cre­ate a mul­ti­me­dia and mul­ti­modal com­po­si­tion, “assem­blage self-portrait”,
  using Word­Press (or another web­site) to accom­plish this goal; work in Elec­tracy appa­ra­tus, with respec­tive mode and cul­tural inter­face
  (rather than explain­ing crit­i­cally or pre­sent­ing objec­tive account as in an ana­lytic essay).
   
• Reflex­ive knowl­edge: implicit in project;
  state explic­itly in required Poet­ics dis­cus­sion. (see below)

 
 

---

 

Strat­egy 1:

1)     Apply­ing rhetor­i­cal knowl­edge from your research (expe­ri­ence + obser­va­tions), com­pose mul­ti­me­dia expres­sion of net­work iden­tity in the new media ecology:
• Using con­tem­po­rary cul­tural form as guide for com­pos­ing assem­blage,
  design a small-scale web­site (e.g. Word­Press, Wix, Prezi) using mul­ti­ple media and modes

 

• “The Inter­net as liv­ing monument…delivers or gives the con­sul­ta­tion as a col­lec­tive fig­ure.” (Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments p. 155); “the
  bor­ders of identity—of the group sub­ject (between indi­vid­ual and collective)—become writable.” (xviii)

 

→ Task: cre­ate a “screen self-portrait,” an aes­thetic fig­ure for your medi­ated expe­ri­ence of the net­worked pub­lic sphere and imagined/felt com­mu­nity.
Use modes other than Lit­er­acy (ratio­nal, crit­i­cal, ana­lytic argu­ment); cre­ate a com­pos­ite sketch using mate­ri­als from your per­sonal data­bases:
— auto­bi­og­ra­phy, school/career, com­mu­nity, pop cul­ture
(see com­pos­ing guide Page).

 

• In Elec­tracy, “the bor­ders of identity—of the group sub­ject (between indi­vid­ual and collective)—become writable.” (Elec­tronic Mon­u­ments p. 155)
   
  → Task: present spe­cific instance(s) of your idea/experience of iden­tity in Elec­tracy, for indi­vid­u­als within a medi­ated social net­work
  (remem­ber: rhetor­i­cal plat­form + media fea­tures)
   
  “Per­form” — doc­u­ment, dis­play, sim­u­late, express — this idea
  (like cul­tural forms such as mash-up songs, games, com­edy sketch, par­ody video, etc.)

   

• Apply all of your knowl­edge and insights gen­er­ated from research to address this task, decid­ing reflex­ively and pur­pose­fully; remem­ber­ing that iden­tity (sub­jec­tiv­ity) changes in each appa­ra­tus. This is the per­spec­tive of new media to apply and attempt, rather than defin­ing/explaining in “ratio­nal argu­ment,” (for instance, cause-and-effect case of “Face­book users”). Avoid gen­er­al­iz­ing or draw­ing broad con­clu­sions; instead, present rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples (sketches / snap­shots) in your com­pos­ite “self-portrait.“

 
 

Strat­egy 2 (from Ulmer):

 

• “Add to your site the doc­u­men­ta­tion of an exem­plary story from your com­mu­nity, about a per­son or event that your com­mu­nity iden­ti­fies with and tells about itself in its cel­e­bra­tions, fes­ti­vals, nam­ing practices…[and] memo­ri­als.” (Inter­net Inven­tion p. 191)
   
• While these instruc­tions sound rooted in Oral­ity appa­ra­tus, they can be adapted to Elec­tracy using your research both aca­d­e­mic (our read­ings) and empir­i­cal (direct expe­ri­ence) to under­stand and apply the rhetor­i­cal and medial sit­u­a­tion. The key prin­ci­ple is that the com­mu­nity must be spe­cific and actual, directly engaged rather than accessed indi­rectly (e.g. as stud­ied in school), even if it is vir­tual — in sense of “imag­ined” or “felt” dis­tinc­tion.
   
• Tip from Ulmer to this end: “notice how the com­mu­nity […] focal­izes the story”; “locate the inter­pel­la­tion, what the com­mu­nity thinks for us, and prior to us” (Inter­net Inven­tion p. 191–2).
  Although not (likely) appear­ing in the project, this prac­tice helps guide our view of the social net­work being expressed here:
  → “find the point of view that expresses the val­ues of the com­mu­nity” (192); encode this in your com­po­si­tion, rather than explain­ing (ana­lytic mode / argu­ment dis­course).
  Note: this item (story/event/reference) should be one that you’re aware of indi­rectly or directly; you might have par­tic­i­pated, or the story might not involve you at all (e.g. from the past).
  
   

 

 
 

 

Poet­ics page

 

300–400 words; aca­d­e­mic dis­course (ratio­nal, “crit­i­cal think­ing”; direct account, not mul­ti­modal)
*post on Project 1 page on your blog
 
• Describe the process of com­pos­ing, explic­itly stat­ing your method and ratio­nale; this includes the spe­cific lessons from “Relay” sources (3 min.), as well as the the­ory and instruc­tions from notes on read­ings (3 min.). Points should be pre­cise and con­cise (yet more descrip­tive than Inven­tory notes), iden­ti­fy­ing par­tic­u­lar items/aspects of your project with con­nec­tion to research and relays; most impor­tant is your ratio­nale, which explic­itly describes the inven­tive process and “hybrid dis­course” (mul­ti­modal) with regard to method and aims, espe­cially Appa­ra­tus The­ory.
   
• Method note: “The point to stress is that our exam­ples are relays: the poets and philoso­phers are to mys­tory as ped­a­gogy, what pro­fes­sional ath­letes are to phys­i­cal exer­cise. They are experts but what they are per­form­ing is pos­si­ble and nec­es­sary for every­one.” (Ulmer Inter­net Inven­tion p.69)