Digital Narrative
Journal #6
February 4, 2015
Modification, Linearity, and Function of Image
In Who Will Be the Inventors: Why Not Us, coauthors Bickmore and Christiansen explore the effects of developing more multimodal assignments for students. Reading this article as a student myself was enlightening. I see where they are coming from and why and how multimodality in classrooms is beneficial.
Diana George proposes that there is a neglect to address the confusion and difference between visual communication, visual rhetoric, and rhetoric. The issue of where and whether they belong in composition classrooms is neglected too. Kathleen Yancey says that literacy today is in the midst of a tectonic change because in schools the writing and composition that is synthesized is done so with diversity (Bickmore and Christiansen).
Linear texts are what society and students in the classroom are consciously aware of. However, due to the influx of multimodality, nonlinear texts are the norm. More implementation of nonlinear texts in composition classrooms can “rejuvenate our teaching and force us to reshape our notions of assessment.” We are encouraged to use new ways of student coherence: pattern making and weaving, associational logic, reiteration, and layering. Students’ assignments regulate what vision and influence their thinking processes; I believe it is imperative that students are exposed to multimodal assignments, classrooms, and ways of learning. Students adopt new ways of thinking, acting, and working with the uptake of a variety of semiotic resources and efforts to purposefully structure the delivery and reception of their work (Bickmore, Chistiansen).
Ted McCloud is an advocate of viewing comics as a valid form of literature. In his TED talk, The visual magic of comics, McCloud offers several ideas. He uses images of his family in his TED talk. This gives us an authentic visualization of these people – the people he’s describing and who are so significant. He uses pop culture references like that obnoxious kid from The Simpsons.
McCloud asks what the scientific mind does in the arts. He proposes that it tries to understand them and embrace all senses in the comics. All five senses are funneled through the single conduit of vision. Visioned has to represent sound, smell, movement. Comics strive for a balance between visible and invisible. Comics, image, can represent multiple senses through one - sight.
McCloud addresses time and sequence in comics because they are are temporal. This is the basic element of comics presented throughout histories in tapestries, hieroglyphics, reliefs on Egyptian bas-relief columns. Space does not equal time in comics. Spaciality is interrelated to all senses (McCloud). All of these historical examples have a single, unwavering line. Comics can abide by this or become nonlinear. This mode of comics may be some people’s first experience with nonlinear literature – how is that not art? This multimodal form of literature encourages children and students to think critically and objectively. Now that’s educational.
I began to think about my idea for a food blog as my main project in this class in terms of linearity, or lack thereof. Blogs don't need to have one beginning, and they certainly don’t need an end. They can start from anywhere. They are nonlinear. Maybe that's why we like them; rhetorically effective blogs are incredibly successful! It’s similar to picking up a book of short stories of poetry; there’s no commitment to finishing the book, and you don't necessarily need too much background information to begin reading anywhere you want. Readers can pop in for five or ten minutes with both modes. The format of a blog can show pictures of the end product, the technical steps and narration, and we arrive at the end again, a recipe may take 10 minutes to prepare or 3 hours, or 2 days. My point is that blogs are very nonlinear because their format and arrangement is so adjustable.
In Digital photography, communication, identity, memory, Jose Van Dijck explores the ways that digital photography and its editing affects how it we view our identities and memories. Photography is a “tool” for people and how we form and alter our own identities and communicate. Since the primary use of photography used to be biographical and autobiographical purposes; they preserved authentic truths (or, what were more authentic truths prior to digital image editing). The functions of newer, contemporary photography are communication and identity creation “at the expense of photography’s use as a tool for remembering.” Images become an increasingly “live” form of communication rather than storytelling. An example of this may be Snapchat.
I don’t use Snapchat, but I do use Instagram. On this social media platform, images are primarily used. Images are often edited. Instagram does a combination of both contemporary and traditional photography. Users document memories and experiences with pictures, while we present our identities to our followers. The choice of images and whether to edit images with filters or not is our shaping our identities. I'll be the first to admit that I choose my favorite pictures and apply filters that make myself and the food I look even more attractive. This is me creating my identity. I choose to post mostly pictures of food, because cooking is a large part of my life; this is the identity that I want to share with my followers. This can influence ourselves and the identity others see in us (Van Dijck).
Digital photography and image manipulation grants people more control. Pictures can be taken over and over again. Each of these images can be edited in seemingly infinite ways, infinite amount of times. The outcome of the image is in our control; we command what is seen. What used to be the memory of family preservation is now a means of self-preservation. Pictures nowadays “affirm personhood and personal bonds”. Young people invest more time than effort in sharing photos as experiences, not subjects, like older generations did (Van Dijck).
I really related to what Van Dijck says on page 61 regarding what young people today do with their pictures and what an older generation did with their pictures. Older generations rely on photos as a memory tool; they might have organized pictures in albums to tangibly share. Younger generations use their pictures primarily as a communication tool. Before I owned a camera phone or a digital camera, I collected pictures in a large photo album. When friends visited, I enthusiastically showed them the album full of pictures. When I started digitally taking pictures, I stopped printing pictures and keeping them in albums. I have actually experienced this transition personally. In middle school I used photos as a memory tool, to share past experiences with my friends. When I began taking digital pictures, my purpose and preference switched to social communication and evaluating my identity.
One example I’ve stumbled across is an image of Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vemeer. I became more familiar with this painting in a TED talk in which the speaker creates a story (and eventually wrote a novel) based on an analysis of the painting. Since then, it has been one of my favorite paintings. Coincidentally, one of my favorite book and movie trilogies is The Lord of the Rings. I happened upon this second image on Pinterest. It is hilarious to because I'm familiar with the original painting, and I know who Gollum is. If someone only knew one of these two things, they might see Gollum with the Pearl Earring and be horrified because they don't know that it's a manipulation of a Vemeer painting.
These example images I’ve provided above lead me briefly into our reading and video from Berger, Ways of Seeing. Meaning can be changed dramatically by focusing in on certain parts of a picture instead of viewing its totality. In Berger’s video, at the 15 minute mark, we’re introduced to Brueghel of the Road to Calvary. The entire scene has several small scenes: Jesus carrying the cross, Mary weeping, a crowd converigng, etc. An observer can view the painting in its totality, or focus on certain parts. The viewer can isolate and analyze individual parts, giving separate, different meaning. A contemporary application of this is the cropping of pictures when editing them, specifically selfies. People can crop other people out of pictures with more than one person in them if they want just themselves in it.
The texts we've read and watched in class are all tying together. I am getting ideas for our large class project. Because I want to do a food or cooking blog, these readings have reassured that I want to include photos. I am going to take special consideration into the arrangement of my photos.
Works Cited
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. 1975. Film.
Lutkewitte, Claire, Lisa Bickmore, and Ron Christiansen. "Who Will Be the Inventors: Why Not Us." Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Boston: Bedford/St Martin's, 2014. Print.
McCloud, Scott. The Visual Magic of Comics. TED, 2005. Film.
Singh, Kyli. "The Beginner’s Guide to Snapchat." Web. 5 Feb. 2015. <http://mashable.com/2014/08/04/snapchat-for-beginners/>.
Alyssa Causey