Logorama from Marc Altshuler — Human Music on Vimeo.
» W 8/6 Independent Work Day
→ begin composing Project 2 (toward work-in-progress for Thurs. workshop class)
Instructions/Guide Below
Composing Work Wednesday 8/6 — Drafting Project
- Develop & refine/focus your ideas: topic = “mediated identity” (Prompt)
— digital subjectivity, your experience (personal dimension) of networked media ecology- Start by reflecting upon your “first-person” (direct) identity experience in Electracy:
mediated and performed how? (could this be presented/simulated in the project?)
additionally, the personal / experiential dimension of current network-media conditions (“information overload”? dromosphere franticity? always connected / networked, never solitary?)
and social activities (personality-image exchange? affiliation and shared knowledge/reference? “depth & breadth” of content? expanded personal expression and creativity? emotion / mood, especially through humor, play, sharing — “languages” and activities outside/between official institutions and roles?)
→ focus your the idea as theme/subject to perform/present
(rather than explain, argue, analyze) in multiple modes, through assemblage composition… - Start by reflecting upon your “first-person” (direct) identity experience in Electracy:
- Using WordPress as platform:
- Pages (4–6?), arranged by links/navigation
- –or– through Posts (8–10?) — organized by tags (recommended)
- — consider: using Tags/Categories after publishing entries allows for ease of creating/modifying posts (and tagging after).
- You’ll reformat your site (in-class Thurs) with a Home page and Entries page (resembling this model site)
- Alternatively:
- Collect/compile & create/edit media (“readymade” source material) to use
—from any of your “personal databases”; plus, media (images, video, audio, GIFs, etc.) you find as well as create
— test design/media applications
→ compose in multiple modes — document, represent, illustrate and demonstrate (simulate?), convey, evoke, express — considering purpose and effects (use techniques and logic of culture forms)
For instance, as discussed: distinct effects created by music, edited photos, GIFs, screen capture images/video, media both personal & found
→ Use combination of text and multiple media in various ways, applying insights from study (participatory culture & digital rhetoric) and experimenting with multimodal composing (Electracy)…
» Review recent class focus, readings, discussions:
- Apparatus Theory — Identity experience in Electracy?
- Articles by Rice, Brown, and Arroyo about new composing theory & praxis
- Videos (6) posted on course site past 2 weeks, including Logorama
- Entry about Modes (and composing with intuition/association-logic)
- 8/4 Class Discussion Notes (G. Doc)
- 8/5 in-class activity instructions G. Doc
- Exercise 3 Extended Instructions
+ Tips (techniques & software) in Comments - Articles by Rice, Brown, and Arroyo about new composing theory & praxis
» Discuss (optional/participation) questions & ideas
— about theory/method (assemblage expression) and/or software, design, platforms (multimodal composing) in comments below.
(ICYMI) Composition Logic (from theory & objects of study):
- leave yourself out (explicitly), in favor of expressing with database elements (“readymade” stories, characters, settings, concrete details).
The DJ or Film Director is responsible for arrangement — sequence; focalization & juxtaposition — while remaining absent, in terms of “voice” (articulation).
The goal (and method) is to “weave” an assemblage of heterogeneous details, voices, and stories/references from your Personal Databases, in style of “sampling” and re-purposing;
multimodal composing as new form of expression —
not to assert your opinion / interpretation (judgment-Orality, analysis-Literacy)
but to present (perform) the mood/atmosphere within which you are situated
(mediated identity, subject experience in network ecology).
I am going to pretty much only use the program ezvid for this project. It is very easy to use and is perfect for this multi-mode presentation as you can include as many video clips, songs, images or whatever in it as you want. In Project 1 I tried to embed my storify page into wordpress but with no sucess.
email reply to student’s Q
re: Using WordPress as platform (two options):
Pages (4–6?), arranged by links/navigation
–or– through Posts (8–10?) — organized by tags (recommended)
— consider: using Tags/Categories after publishing entries allows forease of creating/modifying posts (and tagging after).
You’ll reformat your site (in-class Thurs) with a Home page and Entries page (resembling this model site)
———
I realize that might look confusing, but I just mean you can compose using Posts (like blog entries & exercises) — which can be arranged by Tags — or Pages, which need links.
The site re-format keeps all your content, but switches to a Front Page view: navigating by Categories (e.g. Project 2, Blog, Exercise) and especially Tags is nice for more free-form arrangement. Like I mentioned, you can always add/delete Tags to posts after you compose them (nice for fast composing, and “assemblage” with more diverse posts than structured pages)
email reply to student’s Q
Just want to underscore that the project does not have to be a representation of your social networking activities (for instance).
The question of your personal experience — especially subjective dimensions — can be undertaken and presented/performed by the project in the way you describe: these videos and GIFs (and interfaces and game characters/actions etc) all inform your thinking and experience, “mediated identity” perhaps.
(as I’ve said, we don’t “think about” but think through media-culture, i.e. mediate experience & identity).
Consider the difference/implications for memory; and for how we understand ourselves and “perform” our identity (persona/personality) online — people know us through the videos we favorite/share, for instance.
If my identity in Orality is memory (stories); and in Literacy is my analytic mind (intelligence demonstrated); what happens in Electracy?
An important connection is what you mention: the media-culture “convey my experience of being networked/electracy,” definitely — we can convey with the same “objects” that inform and help us understand our identity.
» Experimental Work by Past Students
— Examples of several Approaches to Assemblage Composing (especially Arrangement/Layout) for various assignments:
Listed Here