In short, composing an assemblage involves thinking and writing with your entire “three-dimensional” or “360°” perspective: personal / autobio.; career/discipline; community; entertainment / culture. (prompt: Try specifying and noticing which dimension emerges most prominent in your thinking and writing at first, through your entries.)

— “Praxis” (10-Jan entry)

 
 
“Assemblage Expression” Final Project

 
» Due:               Sat 24-Apr (11pm deadline)

» update:         Reflection page can be posted on Sunday (if necessary; penalty-free)

 
 
“Resource Directory”

• Assignment Page (updated)
   

• Tech Support (layout guide)
   

• Blog Discussion (new comments, useful to review)
   

• Strongly suggest reviewing all instructions and criteria.
  Deadline for email, to guarantee reply in time to revise/apply: Sat 24-Apr 6 pm.

 
 
Vaka (live)
 
 

» Tuning / Warm-up (checkpoint):

• emblem: selections finalized (one’s “ingredients” for “recipe”);
  “sketches” in progress (online) and/or finalized.

• tentative topic for project — Career or Community dimensions
• Praxis: more direct/explicit than last week, implicit in our review of Chapters 9-11.
  cf. Chp. 1-2, “General Project,” “Attunement,” “Stimmung” etc.; plus “Mystory” (Chp 3).

• examples below.

 
Due:          Extra Credit Response (optional Exercise)

 
 
W 21-Apr (last class)          “Studio” Praxis: poetics for final project (design)

» Soundcheck (checkpoint):

• emblem revised (if necessary); final version online
• topic (“target” concept) revised / finalized (post in brief blog entry)
• “raw materials” (sources) selected; refine during/after class
• poetics / “blueprint” for assemblage; refine during/after class.

 
» Blog Entry (optional / e.c.):

Spring term “Playlist” or “Mash-up” (multimedia suggested; perhaps also test Tagxedo?)

 
 
R 22-Apr          No Class—Complete Project 3

 
F 23-Apr          Due: Project 3 Progress checkpoint/update (website shows “work in progress” )

 
S 24-Apr          Update:    Due: Project 3 (11pm deadline)

 
 
 »  “What Happens When MONUMENTALITY becomes electrate?”

• from “Consultation (postponed)” → MEmorial (Electronic Monuments, 2005)
  • Example: Death Penalty—Personal Best
• MEmorials (page)
• “Florida Rushmore” — the MYSEUM

 
 
 »  What if historiography had been invented in the 20th century
—like avant-garde art—rather than in the 19th century? (Teletheory, 1989) → Mystory

• MYSTORIOGRAPHY
• Noon Star (Ulmer’s mystory)

• My Own Private Oklahoma (student’s mystory)

 

• Contrast (“how not to compose a mystory”)

 
 
Graduate Seminars
 

 
 
 
ghink: Novel Experience/Expression course (AML 2410-8974, Fall 2009)

• Task:
  Develop a new mode of academic discourse (thought + expression) to express the lived affect of someone else’s specific historical experience — as we imagine or intuit it, without judgment, while taking responsibility as producers (not passive consumers) of knowledge.

 
 » Problem  (for humanities “research” or “experiment”):

“People do not understand each other. The incomprehensible part of each of us makes up the entire basis of life.
Perhaps by reading these texts, we can work toward an effort of mediation on the incomprehensible. I do not say that we are going to understand the incomprehensible, but we have to accept it” (131).
— Hélène Cixous, “Poetry, Passion, and History” (1985)

Presentation: Group 4

 
Example: aporia visualization (not WideSite) — myOptica (ghink, 2008)

 
 
W 14-Apr          Strasser & Coverly, in the white darkness (2004)

Presentation: Group 1

 
Blog Entry — Workshop prep. (due by class-time Thurs.)

“Sketch” of emblem (wide image).    Tips / Notes
 
cf. Ulmer’s Emblem (pp. 271-5) & Noon Star (section of mystory)

 
 
R 15-Apr          “Studio”: Workshop (poetics & praxis)— Project 3 (part 1)

 
 
F 16-Apr          Mark Amerika, FILMTEXT 2.0   &   Jim Andrews, Nio (2001)

» Apparatus Theory:
• Ulmer

• ghink (pdf)

 
 
R 08-Apr          No Class     (away at conference — reporting “assemblage expression” developments)
 

 » Groups 4 & 1:      Prep. for presentations; blog discussion, over weekend. — Assignments

 
F 09-Apr         No Class     (away at conference — linking aesthetics & ethics)
 

» re-view elec. lit. by Coverley & Morrisey for Inventory — discuss online? (particpt. credit)
 
— suggested Relay reading for Inventory (scheduled for next Fri.):
• Mark Amerika, FILMTEXT 2.0
• Jim Andrews, Nio (2001)
• plus Logorama !

 
 
Sat 10-Apr        Due: Inventory Update

[ 6 new items, including media selection from personal database. ]

 
Sun 11-Apr         Due: Exercise 5 (“Automatic Emblems” & “Default Moods”) — Prompt
 

Due: 11-Apr (posted by 11pm); 500 words min.; 10 points
 
— Review Assignment criteria.

 
Part I: Exercise: “Automatic Emblems” (p.253)

~150 words (about 1/3 of total); image (1 minimum);
optional: edited/manipulated/composite (i.e. “photoshopped”) image
— counts as 100 words toward total!
 
Test the productive effect of the gap by composing a readymade word-thing of your own. Your selections should be made arbitrarily, but use something from one of your mystory discourses. Choose a material object from Family, Entertainment, or History, and assign to it a title of an important text in your Career discourse. Document the object with photograph & detailed descriptions of its features.

Part II: “Exercise: “Default Moods” (pp.290-1) — 300-350 words (min.)

Document or put into a narrative what you notice about the relationship between the behaviors you perform within a particular institution, your state of mind in this performance, and the official or stated purposes or objectives of that institution.
 
Notes: discussion can not repeat points from Exercise 4; choose one specific example to describe (follow prompt).
 

 » Groups 4 & 1: 

In brief comments over weekend, group members should
1. divide material (i.e. post what you would like/will cover)
2. specify points and rationale
3. collaborate in preparation: review, revise, refine specific points (i.e. discuss whether relevant, practical, sufficiently specific, etc)
4. discuss questions (answering = optional; Qs to pose during presentation are good preparation, too); can be conceptual and technical: “should we…?” and “how do we…?” varieties work best.

 
 
M 12-Apr — Group 4 presentation / review

• Amorelli Antonio*

• Amanda Kennedy
• Jenna Mescon
• Jenny Garcia
• Mary Williams

 

• Cover:
  Internet Invention Ch. 9 (tip: review Office & Noon Star); plus Assignment: “Wide Emblem”;
  Relay: Synecdoche, NY; and Chp. 11 Conclusion

W 14-Apr — Group 1 presentation / review

• Emilee Amihere*

• Carrie Holmes
• Julia Jacobo
• Maria Perez