Assemblage Expression

 
 
Project 3: Refashioning Culture through “Widesite” and “Emblem”

Due: 24-Apr; 1500 words, 35 points

 
Challenge:

How would a “product” (or concept) of “the television age” look if designed in the mode of electracy?
 
As active & responsible producers of information, how would we re-invent a particular concept in electracy from our Career or Community dimension?

 

 
Part I

• “Design a website version of your image of wide scope (a “widesite”).” (18)
• “Design an emblem that evokes the look and feel of your mystory.” (246)
   
  “The widesite in electracy performs [the] function…as a virtual ‘potential space’ that augments the basic trust or ontological security needed in order to be creative. The ability to read and write this space digitally has the potential to do for the emotional body what the ability to write concepts did for analytical reason.” (247)

 

 
Part II

Using your emblem as a guide for decision (intuition), take responsibility for “re-inventing” or “updating” an aspect of 20^th-century American culture—avoiding judgment (ideology or reason) in favor of expressing the affect (lived feeling) of the experience.

Topic should extract from the doxa (consensus) one specific issue to refashion, such as the construction of identity; collective memory and forgotten aspects; diversity and/or “dissensus”; stereotypes or beliefs from socio-cultural discourse.

The assemblage expression will include heterogeneous elements, both employing and critiquing American culture from entire paradigm: narratives (2 min.), “scholarly discourse” (2 sources), autobiography (family history), and images (digitally manipulated).

 
 

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— emblem (image + ~250 words; 10 points)
— concept remake (~500-600 words, 10 points)
— poetics page (~250 words, 5 points)
— reflection page (350-500 words, 5 points)
— materials page (bibliography of works cited in posts/comments)
— design / multimedia work (5 points)

 
 

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Detailed Requirements

 
 
Entries: (Parts I & II)

15-20 fragments (entries/posts)
         — *note: manipulated (or composite) image counts as an entry (4 maximum)
 
Use all features of Website format / Wordpress template
         — Tags/categories, links, widgets (Tag Cloud), expressive Theme, etc.
         — Multimedia (required)
 
Cite any source material used in Comment (particular entry); then list sources with bibliographic details on “Materials” page.

 
 
Required Pages:

Home (or Project Intro. page, if it is not your overall home page)
About (updated)
Entries (or “Posts”)
Materials
Poetics
Reflection

 
 
Sources:

Narratives: 2 (from Entertainment / Culture)
Scholarly: 2 min. (for Career or Community topic)
Multimedia: 10 minimum (images, audio, video; multimodal)
         — including original composite / manipulated images (2 min., including emblem)

 
 
 
Required Pages:

“Home” (or Front) page (distinct content as Project intro.)

 
“About” page

Updated, briefly introducing yourself and the purpose of this blog as “hosting” your project for course experiment. (public, on Web & Wordpress, after all…).

 
Materials page (required, in addition to comment citations)

This is essentially a “Bibliography,” the web analogue to an essay’s “Works Cited” page: provide source info. about the “materials” that appear within your project. Specifically: culture / entertainment sources; scholarly documents and info; media and references from pop culture. This section identifies the component materials that you’ve used to create the composite assemblage.

 
 
 
Poetics page (5 pts; ~250-300 words)

Two-fold purpose: as with previous projects, describe the process of composing, your method and rationale for employing the specific lessons from textbook and from our Relay sources; (precise & concise, directly addressing specific assignment & general course goals).
 
Additionally, and most importantly: considering your project as exemplar, produce a “guide for unconventional discourse” (new mode of thinking and expression). Ideally, someone else could emulate your poetics, wanting to compose a work of “assemblage expression”: an alternative form to the modes of judgment (belief and reason). More directly, describe your method of thinking and composing with entire paradigm, as an “active producer” responsible for re-inventing a particular concept using your emblem as your “compass.” (be specific, relative to your project).
Note that this second objective should be main focus, with simple poetics tasks (first instructions above) integrated within discussion as example (referencing specific decisions and elements of final work).

 
 
 

Reflection page (5 pts; 300-500 words)

1) Evaluate your project (briefly), from perspective of class topics/issues and terms:
new (or innovative) type of discourse generally? mode of aesthetics rather than judgment? (how so?) shortcomings at points, conventional in terms of literacy or judgment (belief or reason)?
Unique results of emblem and of refashioned concept? (specify; also, to what extent successfully composes with entire paradigm?)
Specific properties of “assemblage expression” project that demonstrates electracy? (review apparatus theory)

 

2) “Self-reflexive” knowledge, from composing and reading your project (most important).
Results of our experiment? (semester-long; consider)
New insights? Implications of your/our work?
(about humanities perspective; apparatus theory; heuretics methodology; electracy; discourse, aesthetic modes of thought & expression).

Prospective application or potential: of “assemblage expression” writing? — “attunement” and “Popcycle” perspectives for yourself?
Advantages or limitations of this type of work? Implications?
(recall the opposition between “TV age” : passive receivers/consumers and “Internet age” active & responsible producers; also consider working with entire paradigm)

 
— note: need not address all questions, and should not answer in “list” fashion; consider as many of these elements as you can address in reflexive fashion.