WAM: Info/Writ 303 fall 2009 ... section b

final project deadlines

johnoc — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:56:12 +0000

Upload the version of the final project you want me to grade by 5pm Wednesday, Dec 9.

Upload the final writing (the rationale/reflections plus your bibliography) to your blog by 5pm Wednesday, Dec 16 — you can of course upload it earlier if you want.

class thursday 11.19

johnoc — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:57:17 +0000

We will have a workshop day as scheduled and I’ll talk with each group about your projects.

until further notice…

johnoc — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 01:37:37 +0000

As I mentioned in the emails I sent out earlier tonight, keep up with the schedule as listed on this blog and be ready for the strike to end at any time.

final project groups

johnoc — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:40:38 +0000

group 1
Carmen
Max

group 2
Charlie
Stephanie
Matt A

group 3
Kristen
Katie

group 4
Daisy
Isaac

group 5
Matt S
Adam

group 6
Knycole
Tina
Yajiao

group 7
CJ
Zac

Final Project Theory List

johnoc — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:05:14 +0000

Genre Theroy:
Mikhail Bakhtin- “Speech Genres”
J. L. Austin- “How to Do Things with Words”

Theories of Place:
Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World- Ron Scollon and Suzie Wong Scollon

Chapter 1: Geosemiotics
Chapter 4: Visual Semiotics
Chapter 5: Interlude on Geosemiotics

Feminist Theory (and Composition):
Gayle Rubin: From the Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex”
Selections from Feminism and Composition:
“Forwarding a Feminist Agenda in Writing Studies”: Gail Hawisher
“Charting Our Ways in Feminism and Composition” Kirsch, Maor, Massey, Nickoson-Massey, Sheridan-Rabideau
“Feminism in Composition: Inclusion Metonymy, and Disruption” Ritchie and Boardman

(Video)Game theory:
(Select at least 3)

Articles from First Person
Janet Murray- “From Game-Story to Cyberdrama”
Markku Eskelinen- “Towards Computer Game Studies”
Espen Aarseth- “Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation”
Gonzalo Frasca- “Videogames of the Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and
Other Trivial Issues”
Natalie Jeremijenko- “If Things Can Talk, What Do They Say? If We Can Talk to Things, What
Do We Say? Using Voice Chips and Speech Recognition Chips to Explore Structures of
Participation in Sociotechnical Scripts”

or, if you can get it:

James Paul Gee: Part 1 from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Comic Theory
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics (the rest of the book)

New Media Theory I:
Marshall McCluhan- “Part I” from Understanding Media
Neil Postman- “Technopoly”

New Media Theory II:
Lev Manovich: “1. What Is New Media?” from The Language of New Media
Lev Manovich- “6. What Is Cinema?” from The Language of New Media
Anne Wysocki, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia Selfe, Geoffrey Sirc- “Writing New Media”
Theo Van Leeuwen- “Introducing Social Semiotics”
Adam Banks- “Race, Rhetoric, and Technology”

Visual Rhetoric:
Roland Barthes: “Rhetoric of the Image”
Gunther Kress- “Multimodality, Multimedia, and Genre”

Visual Rhetoric II
5 additional chapters from Elkins’ How To Use Your Eyes
Carolyn Handa (ed)- “Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World”
Robert Hariman and John Lucaites- “No Caption Needed”

Digital Democracy II
From Virtual Culture
Nessim Watson- “Why We Argue about Virtual Community: A Case Study of the Phish.Net Fan
Community”
Harris Breslow- “Civil Society, Political Economy, and the Internet”

new media and the final project

johnoc — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:00:04 +0000

So the final projects asks you to remediate new media theory. There is no one correct way to do this and you have many options in front of you. One possible approach would actually involve some remediation of the last project: you could think of this project as an examination, via new media remediation, of the role of new media, remediation and new media scholarship in (the or a) culture.

You were implicitly asked to do this with regards to academic discourse in the last project. Now you can address the question explicitly: how do people understand, produce, consume and resist new media — and new media theory — in some culture or subculture today?

You could use some subset of new media theory to investigate how people conceptualize and utilize new media in some aspect or aspect of their lives: political social networking, workplace, shopping, gaming, entertaining, scamming/spamming, hoaxing, etc.

The point is to tie some aspect from the scholarship to some real observed practice — either your own or that of other people. Further, you are asked to take advantages of the possibilities, and be aware of the limitations, of new media remediation not only in the presentation of your work, but also in the preliminary planning and investigative stages as well.

And don’t think it has to be boring to be serious. Have fun.

Final WAM Project: Remediating Theory

johnoc — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:28:05 +0000

For your final project in Writing Across Media, you will be creating a polished artifact utilizing the skills and techniques acquired over the course of the semester. While the requirements for this project are simple, the work that you do here should reflect your finest and most thoughtful work to date. First, you will read a small body of scholarship that focuses on a theory related to work we have done in WAM. Then, you will work to remediate that theory using several modalities–in other words, the tools and methods we have utilized this semester and others you might bring to the table. I’d like for you to explore the theory thoroughly and then demonstrate your understanding of the theory in a way other than the typical alphabetic text representation. Simply put, do what you’ve been doing all semester!

The amount of work you do here should be the equivalent of a ten page research paper, but of course, there need not be any traditional “pages.” I assume that most of you will choose to do a time-based project/presentation, if so, please limit it to 6-7 minutes. In your initial proposal, due on the 17th, you should tell me your plan for the project including all of the media/mediums you will use and how you plan on representing the theoretical ideas of your scholarship. The most important part of the proposal and the project will be a display of your ability to think deeply about both the theory you will be covering and the concepts that we have discussed this semester. Final written “artifacts” should be at least 1000 words.

Time line:

Assign project and choose theory: Tuesday 10
Project proposal (one per partnership) due on Tuesday the 17th (500 words)
Have reading nearly completed by the 21st
Final project due December 3rd, Presentations the 3rd and 8th

video project proposal

johnoc — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:08:13 +0000

Send me an email with a brief (~150+ words) proposal of your idea. I don’t expect it to be a full description of what the video will end up being, but just tell me your idea and what local subject you’ll focus on.

Be sure to cc all group members so I can respond to all of you at once. Send me this by 5pm Wednesday Oct 28.

video project groups

johnoc — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:49:35 +0000

group 1

Matt A
CJ
Tina
Colleen

group 2

Stephanie
Knycole
Carmen

group 3

Max
Jeff
Daisy

group 4

Yajiao
Greg
Isaac

group 5

Adam
Charlie
Matt S

group 6

Kristin
Zac
Katie

video analysis

johnoc — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:49:16 +0000

I can’t find the link to an original version of La Jetée dubbed with English narration. I’m embedding two primary versions here:

French narration without English subtitle

French audio with English subtitles (bear in mind that this is a video of screening of a 16mm version…)

Pick one and write 200-300 words analyzing the video. Remember that it was intended to be a standard movie, but there was a fire in the studio and only a small percentage of individual frames were salvageable from the ruined film.

And, because it coincides well with the course, here’s a version described as a “class project to redesign the sound”of the film. I’m not necessarily endorsing or rejecting the redesign of the film’s audio. Write 150-200 words analyzing two aspects of this remediation:

what is the effect of the English narration for you (if English is not your first language, you can also write about what you think the effect of the narration being in your native language would be)
what is the effect of the redesign of the audio track

Also, here is a part of the original English redub — but it doesn’t seem like this guy uploaded the whole film. I’m just including it so you can get a sense of how it sounds.