Project 3 — Composing & Design Guide

 

» The Project is a series of web pages (4 min­i­mum), a “screen self-portrait” using frag­ments arranged by links (associative/creative organization).

The con­tent — com­bi­na­tion of text and mul­ti­me­dia (pri­mar­ily) — should con­vey distinct/various dimen­sions of per­sonal dig­i­tal iden­tity expe­ri­ence. Use a vari­ety of mate­ri­als and ref­er­ences (“ready­made”) selected/sampled from all 4 “per­sonal data­bases”:

• Auto­bi­og­ra­phy (fam­ily his­tory, per­sonal experience)
• Dis­ci­pline (school, major, career field)
• Com­mu­nity (group mem­ber­ship, par­tic­i­pa­tion, social activity)
• Enter­tain­ment (pop cul­ture, mass media, digital/Web/Internet)
  • *note* these are not the 4 pages! (these are sources for mate­r­ial to com­pose the “portrait”)

» Mul­ti­modal design, dig­i­tal rhetoric applied:

• draw upon (“sam­ple from”) each data­base for mate­ri­als toward the “com­pos­ite sketch“
  — spe­cific ref­er­ences of per­sonal sig­nif­i­cance plus con­crete details (peo­ple, char­ac­ters, places, items) in media (images) and in language

  ** Use the dis­course unique / respec­tive to each, at the level of lan­guage and mode (for instance humor or play in enter­tain­ment: films, games, Web con­tent; phrases/references in fam­ily & social communication)
  — remem­ber: any / all of your per­sonal data­bases are avail­able to com­pose the “self-portrait” of your expe­ri­enc­ing net­worked media.

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Site Orga­ni­za­tion and Design Criteria

First, cre­ate new Site for Project:

• Wix​.com (rec­om­mended)
• Wee­bly
• Google Sites
• Word­Press pages
• (oth­ers? Jimdo? Moon­fruit?)

Arrange (structure/sequence) pages thoughtfully: 

• cre­ate & link mul­ti­ple pages for sections/fragments of por­trait, orga­nized & hyper­linked — required — to con­vey “Self-Portrait” experience.
• When using time-based media (audio / video clips): try to embed when­ever pos­si­ble (e.g., edited mp3, video, media-player clip).
• Revise & Edit “for publication”

  (i.e. copy-edit, “proof­read” for cor­rect prose; revise for effi­cient style — all text purposeful!)

  As Wix​.com states, “To stay orga­nized, make a sim­ple sketch of your desired web­site structure.”

Media Required: two types (min­i­mum), plus at least one original/created form

• Use unique effects or respec­tive tech­niques to com­pose in cre­ative & aes­thetic mode (Par­tic­i­pa­tory Cul­ture + Net­work Rhetoric)
• Images required, includ­ing at least one orig­i­nal or manip­u­lated (edited, “phở­to­shopped”; collage/composite; effects, etc)
             — sug­gested resource/tool: Pixlr​.com
  

• * Orig­i­nal Mul­ti­me­dia Form Required: can be edited/stylized, if not your own media (image/video/audio); you do not need to include media of yourself!
  

  → Use com­bi­na­tion of both your per­sonal media (images) and found material

• Other forms: audio (songs, ambi­ent sounds); video (media clips, found footage, screen record­ing); ani­ma­tion (GIFs), illus­tra­tions, ref­er­ence mate­ri­als (e.g. doc­u­ments, charts, graphs).
    —sug­gested resource: Inter­net Archive

• Pre­sent­ing your expe­ri­ence: use cul­tural forms and social lan­guages (mul­ti­ple), which con­vey aspects/dimensions of your expe­ri­enced dig­i­tal iden­tity (visual, ver­bal, and quan­ti­ta­tive in Rettberg’s terms)—both “invisible”/“visible” and “public”/“private.” (not your social media accounts)

  • Pur­pose­fully choose media forms / gen­res suit­able for this type of expres­sion, con­sid­er­ing our method &
    the project goals; select from your “per­sonal data­base” mate­ri­als (like in blog warm-up)
    — exam­ple cul­tural forms help­ful to model: com­edy (par­ody videos, memes); remix/mash-up (music); games
  • Expec­ta­tion for dig­i­tal author­ing: attempt to imple­ment the expres­sive tech­niques of this cul­tural form within your mul­ti­me­dia composition.
    • Aes­thetic author­ing: leave per­sonal mean­ing implicit within frag­ments; do not explain until Poet­ics doc­u­ment.
    • Try to per­form or com­pose the idea(s), the expe­ri­en­tial dimen­sions of dig­i­tal iden­tity: com­pos­ite effect, in por­trait (ele­ments do not need to relate or “make sense” obvi­ously; the rela­tion is you!) 

    • Include instances of inter­ac­tiv­ity & time-based media (dura­tion) effec­tively; attempt to evoke “mood of thought” for Screen­Self (net­worked identity). 

    • Pro­tip: Dis­perse frag­ments & media forms (hyper­text lay­out); care­fully con­sider function/effect of embed­ded objects (media play­ers, images), apply­ing thought­ful dig­i­tal rhetoric or “poet­ics of author­ing” (bal­anc­ing the “fre­quen­cies” or lev­els of each discourse).

• Use mul­ti­ple media, text/fragments, expres­sive for­mat­ting, and links within all pages.
• Employ a vari­ety of styles and modes, as “hybrid dis­course” (crit­i­cal + cre­ative modes). 

• Orga­nize any text as frag­ments—includ­ing quotes, ref­er­ences, story
  

  
  » Com­po­si­tion guide for Text/Writing:
  — styl­is­tic help for “dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling” composing (any pages; be sure to include at least one instance–but the entire project is not a story)

  • Anec­dote: “The anec­dote is an oral form orig­i­nally, and is use­ful for locat­ing sen­sory details of the home envi­ron­ment that evoke the atmos­phere of the place.” (p.90)
    “Although anec­dotes may be highly crafted, for our pur­poses they do not have to have any ‘point’ other than they they rep­re­sent a scene or sit­u­a­tion that remained in your mem­ory.” (p. 92)

  • Micro Nar­ra­tive
    “Sit­u­a­tion: estab­lish the key details of a sit­u­a­tion (the terms of a rela­tion­ship). The rela­tion­ship may be between or among peo­ple, or of a per­son with a place, thing, or event. You may or may not be directly involved with the scene, but it should be ‘non­fic­tion’ in that the scene is based on an actual mem­ory (with­out wor­ry­ing about the accu­racy of the mem­ory).” (p.92)
    “Image: locate and develop some fea­ture of the scene into an image that com­ments indi­rectly or fig­u­ra­tively on the scene, in a way that brings out your present under­stand­ing of the past sit­u­a­tion.” (p.93)
  • “The micro nar­ra­tive gives you some prac­tice with nar­ra­tive form itself […].The ‘micro’ dimen­sion enacts the haiku prin­ci­ple of brevity, and avoids ‘con­fes­sion’ since there is so lit­tle space for elaboration.
    It also helps break down blocks such as the false split (for our pur­poses) between truth and fiction.”
    “The micro is a very short story that evokes the feel­ing of the domes­tic scene; what counts is not nec­es­sar­ily any one incident…but the feel­ing sug­gested by the story as image.” (p.94)
    —All quotes from Inter­net Inven­tion (Gre­gory L. Ulmer, 2003)

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» Advanced Notes on Com­po­si­tion Logic  (poet­ics + praxis)

• you are leav­ing your­self out explic­itly, as author—not com­pos­ing in “first-person sin­gu­lar present-tense direct” aca­d­e­mic dis­course. Instead, com­pose a self-portrait as com­pos­ite fig­ure, express­ing your expe­ri­enced dig­i­tal iden­tity (in var­i­ous dimen­sions) using sam­pled “per­sonal data­base” ele­ments mean­ing­ful to you (“ready­made” ref­er­ences, sig­ni­fiers, ges­tures, sto­ries, char­ac­ters, set­tings, con­crete details). All these mate­ri­als evoke a mood and per­sonal con­nec­tion (affec­tive) that links and explores the sub­jec­tive dimen­sions of expe­ri­ence, not nec­es­sar­ily visible/legible by tech­nol­ogy (devices, media, interfaces). 

• One approach for com­pos­ing, via cul­ture form: con­sider the DJ, Film Direc­tor, or Game Designer is respon­si­ble for the arrange­ment—focal­iza­tion, jux­ta­po­si­tions, orga­ni­za­tion, poten­tial action—while remain­ing absent, in terms of voice (artic­u­la­tion). The com­po­si­tion per­forms its idea, even if not read­ily under­stood or meaningful. 
  Another way of under­stand­ing your “voice” in the com­pos­ite por­trait: think in terms of your “sig­na­ture,” “fin­ger­prints,” “ear” — your sen­si­bil­ity and per­spec­tive (“per­son­al­ity?”), used com­pose the project by select­ing, arrang­ing, and some­times mod­i­fy­ing all com­po­nents of the portrait.

• Expec­ta­tion for dig­i­tal author­ing, mul­ti­ple modes: attempt to imple­ment expres­sive effects, besides illus­trat­ing (i.e. don’t just document/show); for instance, abstract/evocative or sim­u­lat­ing effects, using the aes­thetic mode (in elec­tracy, play and per­sonal affect with media forms used).
  • Leave implicit; explain approach & ratio­nale in Poetics.