Multimodal Project on Multi-Modal Projects

A Multi-Modal Meditation on Multi-Modal Projects

Bobby Thym

Dr. Garrett

English 977

Introduction

A Roadmap to This Project

I took Dr. Cooper's DIY Rhetoric last semester and created a collage that explored the rhetoric of clothing. I took videos of my process thinking that I would produce a film based on my process of composing that collage. I really like the presentation tool Genially and thought that embedding the film into a slide would work. I think the deadlines of our classes help to focus our energies, but I wanted to also use this time to reconsider some ideas. When I recently provided a presentation on her essay“Negotiating Rhetorical Material, Methodological and Technical Difference: Evaluating Multimodal Desiign," I found myself curious about this topic and decided to read some of the essays she cited at the end of her essay. During my previous presentation, I mentioned a visual artist who taught a writing workshop Bard College's Institute of Writing and Thinking and Howard Finster, the folk artist whose painting was used for the Talking Heads“Little Creatures”album cover. I realized that the presentation slides could more effectively demonstrate what I was discussing.

I also ealized that I have revealed an interest in the relationship between the verbal and visual in other courses here at Murray State. I wrote a paper for Dr. Moore on Sherman Alexis’ The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. In this novel, Alexie’s protagonist likes to draw, play basketball and wants to get a better education. He makes a difficult decision to attend a white high school off of the reservation. The novel challenges many of the stereotypical scenes from narratives about high school and anecdotes where the outsider finds himself or herself in an orthodox setting. Since the novel is supposed to represent a real diary of an artist, it is full of rough draft drawings and final drafts. Alexie wrote a collection of short stories and poems in the 1990’s and the movie Smoke Signals is based on The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, a collection of his short stories.

He was involved in the making of that film, an art form that requires collaboration from many talented people. When he wrote The Absolutely True Diary, Alexie collaborated with Ellen Forney whom he believed understood his protagonist. As I read the essays that Shipka cited, I felt that many of the writers were approaching the topic from an abstract and theoretical level, and I wanted to look at the topic from a granular level. I do think that we English teacher should learn more about the rhetorical techniques of other art forms. I also feel that we teachers are frequently isolated and do not have the opportunity to talk with our colleagues. I created a list of questions based on my curiosity and sent them via e-mail to an art instructor who teaches in a nearby classroom. What you see in this presentation are his responses.

The Lincoln- Douglas Debates

from the chapter "The Typographic Mind" in Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Neil Postman then writes, "What kind of audience was this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accomodate themselves to seven hours of oratory?" I include this anecdote because the writers of "Re-situating and remediating the canons: A cultural- historical remappig of rhetorical activity" --- which includes Jody Shipka and Karen Lunsford-- argue that our definition of rhetoric needs to change. They make the point that many writers from McLuhan to Ong have pointed out: orality has been influenced bith by the emergence of literacy with the development of the printing press by also by the new inventions of the 20th C. We can nostaligically look back to a past where people had the time for relection, or we can consider how rhetoric needs to change. By the way, do you have the time to attend a debate like this? Why not?

"The first of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglass took place on August 21, 1858 in Ottowa, Illinois. Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for an hour; Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those the two men were accustomed. in fact, they had tangled several times before, and all of the encounters had been lengthier and more exhausting. For example, on October 24, 1854 in Peoria, Illinois, Douglas delivered a three hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement, would respond. When Lincoln's turn came, he reminded the audience that it was already 5 p.m., that he would probably require as much time as Douglas and that Douglas was scheduled for a rebuttal. He proposed that the audience go home, have dinner, and return, refreshed for four more hours of talk. The audience aimably agreed, and matters proceeded as Lincoln outlined.

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A Product of the 2005 Santa BarbaraConference: Writing Research in the Making

Mapping Literate Activity

Production

A New Definition of Rhetorical Activity is Needed

Production directs our attention to the tools, practices, and contents that shape the formation of a text.

The writers want to convey a "multidmensional modle."

The article "Re-situating and re-mediating the canons: A cultural-historical remapping of rhetorical activity" was composed by a number of writers who attended the2005 Santa Barbara on Research Writing. Their writing inspired the previous page on the Lincoln-Douglas debates to show how the audience for any presentation is not what it once was. They made the case that a new conception for rhetoric needs to be articulated and their use of the word "map" represents the complexity of the issue. In the infomation link below, I presented the classical canon, and in the pictures to the right and on the next page, I listed the new suggested elements.

Representation

Distribution

Distribution involves the way particular media, technologies and social practices disseminate a text and what a particular network signifies.

Representation involves the way a discourse is entextualized in talk, text, and mind.

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A New Map is Needed.

Reception

Socialization

Reception is actual reading/viewing/ hearing/ and response., how meaning is made, and for what ends.

Umberto Eco argues that primary indexicality, getting people's attention, is a significant act itself and forms the semiotic ground for any further communication.

Socialization is the making of people and the meaning of society in concrete history.

Activity

Ecology

Activity points to the more or less durable, goal-oriented, motivated projects that lead people to cooperation, indifference and conflict.

Ecology points to the biotic and natural world, which enables and constrains all the previous functions. and which may be a domain of rhetorical activity.

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A Recent Timeline of Digital Technology--less than a 100 years

1936: Alan Turing proposes "an universal computing machine."

1964: Marshall McLuhan publishes Understanding Media: The Extension of Man

1971: First microprocessor: Intel 4004

1971: First e-mail sent

1977: First Generation personal computer

1988: First Digital Camera

1981: World Wide Web publicably accessible.

1998 Google

2002 Zuckeberg launches facemash.com

2005: YouTube is launched

2007: iphone is released

2010: 4 billion cell phone subscribers (68 percent of the world population)

2017: a half of the world's population is connected to the internet

Computer as Kaleidoscope

Exceprts from Meredith Zoetewy and Juidth Stagger's essay “Beyond “Current-Traditional” Design: Assessing Rhetoric in New Media”

*The kaleidoscopic power of the computer allows us to tell stories that more truly reflect our turn-of-the-century sensibility. We no longer believe in a single reality, a single integrating view of the world or even the reliability of single angle of perception. * Print culture privileges the contained and controlled linear narrative that tacitly supports a conclusion based rationality. * New media writing affords students new opportunities to reassemble the world outside the linear constraints of the print paradigm and make things fit in new ways. * In our complex online environments, words, images, sound, color, shape, motion, features of the interface, grid structures, navigation systems, and devices, and connections between and among all of these temporarily and spatially are rhetorical and contribute to making meaning.

Thinking about W. G. Sebold's Austerlitz

A novel with photgraphs

Our visual arts teacher at Bard College's Institute of Writing and Thinking gave us an except from W.G. Sebold's novel Austerlitz, published in 2001. Sebold begins his narrative by describing a trip from England to Belgium in the 1960's. He walks into a park and finds himsef in Antwerp's Nocturama., full of lemurs, hedgehogs, pine martens and other animals. He writes: All I remember of the denizens of the Nocturama is that several of them had strikingly large eyes, and the fixed inquiring gaze found in certain painters and philsosophers who seek to penetrate the darkness which surrounds us purely by means of looking and thinking I believe that my mind also dwelt on the question of whether the electric light was turned on for the creatures of the Noctorama when real night fell and the zoo was closed to the public, so that as day dawned over their topsy turvey miniature universe they could fall asleep with some degree of assurance.

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Howard Finster and his Paradise Garden

Finster's "Baby Angel"

Finster's Paradise Garden

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Sherman Alexis' Evolution

From verbal art to a hybrid of image and language

Smoke Signals

Alexie's Short Stories

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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Protagonist as Artist:

A collaboration between writer and artist

A logical question to ask is "What would this novel be like if the drawings and illustrations were not there? For some of the rough drawings , Foley even changed the paper where it appeared that the young artist quickly ripped out a piece of legal paper or notebook paper to do a quick drawing. Also, "How much would the novel change if Alexie had hired a different visual artist?

The Rhetoric of Clothing

I had taken a Renaissance literature course with Dr. Jones who showed us a variety of portraits of Queen Elizabeth, and we discussed the symbolism of the objects and details of the clothing that expressed a powerful message about Tudor power. I was also interested in the history of English sumptuary laws that defined what people of a certain class could wear certain clothes.In the Elizabethen Era, there was a growing merchant class that could afford the clothing that the nobility and royalty could afford. Shakespeare’s The Tempest investigates the relationship between clothing and class. The images on the left were chose with the female gaze in mind; the images on the right were chose with the male gaze in mind.

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Process Reflection

.Like all papers and projects, I think I should have planned my time more carefully. I was filming my process in order to make a film; however, the making of the collage gobbled up most of my time. In my film, I mentioned an artist who was so kind and helpful while I was wandering the shopping aisles of Michael's. She suggested that I attach smell plastic bags with objects in the collage to mae it more three dimensional. For example, a bag with some plastic pearls nears the picture of Queen Elizabeth would have worked well. The production of the collage forced me to remember a modern British playwright named Joe Orton who ran afoul of the law for going into a library and producing his own collages with some of the books. He wrote a play called What the Butler Saw that contains messages that the MeToo Movement would comprehend.

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"Lost in Michaels: A Cinematic Adventure in Multimodel Compostion and the Rhetoric of Clothing"

Writer's Memo

Does Meta-Cognitive exercises provide a solution? Jeffrey Sommers thinks so.

Sommers writes that, "When Donald Murray (1982) recommends that writing teachers recruit students’ "other selves to assist in the development of their writing, he too is supporting the idea that students engage in the act of metacognition. " The Writer's Memo * Requiring students to write a memorandum to their teacher-reader answering specific questions about how the composed written draft can produce the written response from "the other self.” * The writers memo makes them better readers of their own drafts. The teacher can ask," What questions would you like for me to answer about your draft?”

An Interview with an Art Teacher: Sharing Information with Colleagues

Answer: I see parallels with this concept in the principle of unity which can be visual and/or conceptual. The beauty of the impressionist work is expressed in not only the subject but in the colors and brush work. In Munch's Scream, the chaotic marks and muted colors express the troubled mind of the artist. And with mediums such as film and graphic novels, we see the intersection of the realms of writing and art, and the creative must grapple with both language and visual form. Question: Do you ever deal with a mixture of media? Answer: Yes, both in instruction and in my own art. In visual arts, we explore mixed media and collage, often incorporating language. In digital art many students create book covers for books they are writing. Graphic design projects are another meeting of visual form and word which we explore.

Question: How would you desfine "rhetorical sensitivoty"? Answer: This is an interesting idea, which I have not thought of in this specific frame. although we do discuss the artist and audience relationship. In the arts, I would assume that 99% of the time the artist has an audience in mind to a greater or lesser extent, even if this is simething we consciously acknowledge. There is bound to be an influence on the creation of the artwork, possibly positive or negative. I think some works by "outsider artists" may be free to some extent from this relationship. James Hampton is an interesting naive artist, whose revelatory works were, to my understanding, created with no thought of anyone else seeing them. Question: Are you looking for unity of effect?

* Has the student satisfied the project assignment requirements and goals. * Craftsmanship: Does the project show evidence of skill, craftsmanship and required amount of time spent. * Creativity: Has the student transcended the project and created "artwork." Question: Do you feel that by nce these fundamental concepts are defining the parameters of the project, you might be limiting their choices? Answer: I don't think so. For a student, especially a beginning art student, framework and structure gives the art student discipline, restraint and focus are ingrained, then they can be "forgotten."

Question: Do you create a rubric and show it to your students beforehand? ( I sometimes feel that fewer directions provide greater freedom of choice.) Answer: I tend to use short, loose rubrics. I do have specific requirements for each project but hope the student will solve uniquely and creatively. For example, when we explore the principle of balance, the requirement might be to create three works that display symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance, and radial balance. The subject matter is left up to the students. Question: How do you evaluate students' works? Answer: My basic rubric:

Question: Do you create a rubric and show it to your students beforehand? ( I sometimes feel that fewer directions provide greater freedom of choice.) Answer: I tend to use short, loose rubrics. I do have specific requirements for each project but hope the student will solve uniquely and creatively. For example, when we explore the principle of balance, the requirement might be to create three works that display symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance, and radial balance. The subject matter is left up to the students. Question: How do you evaluate students' works? Answer: My basic rubric:

Question: Do you create a rubric and show it to your students beforehand? ( I sometimes feel that fewer directions provide greater freedom of choice.) Answer: I tend to use short, loose rubrics. I do have specific requirements for each project but hope the student will solve uniquely and creatively. For example, when we explore the principle of balance, the requirement might be to create three works that display symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance, and radial balance. The subject matter is left up to the students. Question: How do you evaluate students' works? Answer: My basic rubric:

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Concluding Thoughts

* I also think John Timbur's graphic design principles provide a direction for assessment. * When I hear Meredith Zoeteway and Julie Staggers' ideas about the the kaladescopic *Is the best way for English teachers to learn about how the different media work togther is for them to make multimdal projects themselves? * What exactly is "rhetorical sensistivity? * When Zoeteway and Staggers make this statement," We no longer believe in a single reality, a single integrating view of the world or even the reliability of single angle of perception," are they echoing the writers from the Santa Barbara conference?

* Many of the articles I read were written almost twenty years ago, and I do not see a proliferation of multi-modal projects. * One reason for this delay may be that literacy has been a dominant mode of expression with its rhetorical strategies for almost five hundred years, and change comes slowly. * Another reason may be that teachers are still confused on how to assess what constitutes a good :multimodal project. * I think that there are answers both at the macrolevel and microlevel. My interview with the Columbia State art teacher was one attempt to learn more about the basics of the visual arts. I plan to ask our music teacher similar questions.

Works Cited

Dietrich, Judith. “Explaining One’s Rhetorical Choices” College Composition and Communication, 29:2 1978 195-196 Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Methuen. 1987 Priar et al.”Re-situating and remediating the canons:A cultural-historical remapping of rhetorical activities.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy, 11:3, 2005 Sommers, James. “The Writer’s Memo: Collaboration, Response and Development” Writing and Response. NCTE, 1989. Zoeteway, Meredith and Julie Staggers. “Beyond “Current-Traditional” Design: Assessing Rhetoric in New Media” Issues in Writing Spring/ Summer 2003 13:2 p. 133-157.

A Picture of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas

Everyone knows the story of the first televised debate between Nixon and Kennedy. Since the media covers the candidates every day, do we even need a televised debate?

Bard College's Summer Workshops

Leon Botstein met Peter Elbow at a conference on “The Crisis of Authority in Education” at the Annenberg Center in the University of Southern California. Elbow, the author of Writing without Teachers and Writing with Power, argued for freeing students from their internal editor and developing writing practices that allowed students to put greater emphasis on invention, critical thinking, and discovering one’s own ideas. Inspired by Elbow’s boldness, Botstein invited Elbow to design the three-week, pre-semester Workshop in Language and Thinking, as it originally was called.

Queen Elizabeth portrait in the middle of the collage

• It is known as the "Armada Portrait.," and it was obviously painted after the English won their naval battle over Spain.
• The "cult of Elizabeth" occurred after this victory, and there was much deand for her image. These images contained a fair amount of symbolism and disseminated a propagandistic message.

You Tube Clips from the Movie

Real Indian: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=smoke+signals+real+indian

John Waynes' Teeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPnV2392Tck

Illustrator: Ellen Foley

CWebsite for Ellen Foley: https://ellenforney.com/

Ellen Forney is an author, artist, speaker, and mental health coach. Her work includes the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, & Me, the story of her diagnosis and struggle with bipolar disorder, and its companion book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life, a mental health guide and the basis for her coaching. Marbles has been translated into six foreign languages, and was selected for campus-wide book programs at the University of Washington and the University of California, Davis. Rock Steady was selected as a Best Graphic Medicine Publication by JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). For both books, Ellen was awarded the Media Partner Award from the Washington National Alliance for Mental Illness. Ellen curated “

Sumptuary Laws

One of the more amusing English sumptuary laws was passed in 1463 under King Edward IV. It required that “no Knight under the Estate of a Lord, Esquire, Gentleman, no none other Person” shall wear a gown, jacket, or coat “unless it be of such Length that the same may cover his privy Members and Buttocks.” (Source: Harvard Law Library)If you don't think the modern world includes such laws, cosider Tennessee's "anti-drag" law that was struck down.

Howard Finster Fair Use Added: 16 Jun, 2013 by yigruzeltil last edit: 16 Jun, 2013 by yigruzeltil max resolution: 1606x980px

Plan Your Trip to Paradise Garden

https://paradisegardenfoundation.org/

• Picture from the Explore Geaorgia website: https://www.exploregeorgia.org/summerville/arts-culture/cultural-trails-tours/paradise-garden

The Talking Heads are depicted alongside mountains, animals, and bell towers on the cover of their 1985 release Little Creatures. Lead singer David Byrne is Atlas, holding the globe, while the other band members are behind him. Graphic designer Tibor Kalman used a painting by Georgian folk artist Howard Finster as the basis of the album cover. Kalman designed several Talking Heads albums, but it was actually David Byrne’s idea to use the artwork of Howard Finsterize, and type of painting” [1]. (https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2017/07/05/album-cover-creatures/)

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The Classical Canon:

* Invention (inventio, heuresis) * Arrangement (dispositio, taxis) * Style (elecutio, lexis) * Memory (memoria, mneme) * Delivery (actio, hypokrisis) Fig. 1: A statue of Cicero

What is Cultural-Historical Activity Theory?

Cultural-Historical Activity Theory posits that human activities can be described and analyzed by considering the dynamics of motivation, societal structures and rules, and the means of doing activities. Theory, in its original form, has three key principles: the subject, or the person who carries out the activity; the object, or the objective; and the artifacts, or the tools used to achieve an object. Later, theorists added a plethora of new factors to this model. (See Lev Vygotsky)