October 16-- Field Bibliography

Comstock, Michelle, and Mary E. Hocks. "Voice in the Cultural Soundscape: Sonic Literacy in Composition Studies." Computers and Composition (2006). Computers and Writing Online. 13 Oct. 2009 .

Comstock & Hocks discuss voice.

Also, like a fingerprint, each voice carries its own inflection, its own texture and grain. In writing, voice acts as a metaphor for how a persona created in the text "sounds," with elements of diction, tone, and style informing this written voice (Comstock & Hocks).

Back in the 70s, when Rich Little was on the variety show circuit, people were fascinated with the way that he could imitate voices or do impressions. Someone took "voiceprints" (and no, I do not know how that works) of Little and the celebrities that he was imitating. The "prints" were not at all similar, even though they sounded similar to an average listener. Of course, when I saw Little on The Muppet Show (season 2), I didn't think that he sounded much like anyone other than Rich Little. So it seems that voice is less quantifiable.

Hayhoe, George, F. "Inside Out/Outside In: Transcending the Boundaries that Divide the Academy and Industry: Volume I: The Historical and Contemporary Struggle for Professional Status." Power and Legitimacy in Technical Communication. Ed. Teresa Kynell-Hunt and Gerald Savage J. Vol. I. Baywood's Technical Communication Series. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 2003. 101-13.

Hayhoe, who has spent significant time working in both academe and industry. He taught for seven years, worked in industry for 11, then went back into teaching. He argues that there is "misunderstanding, distrust, and sometimes downright animosity that exists between those who teach technical communication and those who are technical communicators in industry" (101). One reason for this is the lack of professionalization of faculty when professional and technical writing began appearing in academic programs. Another is, despite professionalization of faculty in recent times, funding is not sufficient to allow programs to teach students using up to date technology and software. He offers ten steps for building bridges between industry and academy.

Mehlenbacher, Brad. Triangulating Communication Design: Emerging Models for Theory and Practice. SIGDOC'07: The 25th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication Proceedings. El Paso, TX: ACM, 87-94.

Mehlenbacher argues that science and non-science represent a dichotomy that "serves as a backdrop for current divisions between theory and practice," (87) even within the humanities. This division is happening between disciplines as well as within disciplines.

Miller, Paul, D. Rhythm Science. Mediawork. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Conceptual piece composed by Paul D. Miller, a DJ also known as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid. It explores the power of remix, and remediation. Miller's work is very unusual. It plays with the expectations of "text" and "book" to create a fascinating account of DJ Spooky's remix capabilities sampled with Miller's autobiography. The layout of the text is unconventional, playing with layered images and text. On every other set of facing pages, is a pull quote fused with an image. Despite this making me sound a bit too much like a soccer mom, this word collage style is one I am familiar with though scrapbooking. This kind of layered text and illustrated quotes often appears on scrappers pages.

Sound as mix and remix is important to Miller. He sees himself as drawing on the past and on voices that he hears around him to create a new message. The medium is, of course, part of the message, but the message is the message. It is, as he says, (and I paraphrase) hard to play the same piece twice for the same audience. Thus, the remix.

Snow, C.P. "The Two Cultures." The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. 1-22.

Snow's class essay outlines his argument that animosity exists between humanities scholars and scientists. This division can be traced back to the Oxford and Cambridge scholarship examinations, which require specialization to the degree that scholars must focus on humanities or sciences. While Snow published this in 1961, it still feels relevant. This division still exists. Today, though, the division is sharper because the scope of communication has changed to encompass electronic communication which utilizes technology. The "two cultures" distinction is apparent with some English departments with a division between literature scholars and people who study rhetoric and new media.

October 2-- Project Bibliography

Blair, Hugh, George Campbell, and Richard Whately. The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately: With Revised Bibliographies. Ed. James L. Golden and Edward P. J. Corbett. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.

This volume brings together excerpts the three most influential "Scottish Realists." Of particular interest are Campbell's seven appeals, which are very pragmatic. These appeals are: probability, plausibility, importance, proximity of time, connexion of place, relation of the actors or sufferers to the hearers or speaker, interest of the hearers or speaker in the consequence" (212). These texts were primarily intended to provide advice for ministers writing sermons.

Gee, James Paul. "New People in New Worlds: Networks, the New Capatilism and Schools." Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Ed. Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis. London: Routledge, 2000. 43-68.

Gee carefully avoids using Marxist terms, but his argument is that our schools do not adequately prepare students from minority and lower socio-economic groups in our schools because schools do not teach those students how to communicate in terms that will allow them to be successful. Rather than offering overt critique, Gee instead endeavors to explain how networks and distributed learning, "new capitalism," and schools fit together in terms of "multiliteracies." In "new capitalism" business becomes a "distributed system" and business market knowledge rather than products, because everyone has good products. The difference is in how each product is designed to fit the identity of the consumer (46-47). These industries are typically arranged with flattened hierarchies and value flexibility in workers. Gee claims that schools should be restructured to prepare workers for new capitalism and offers a "Bill of Rights" for children that he believes will prepare them for the new way that business is done.

Goffman, Erving. Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Although 30 years old, Goffman's work is still relevant. The first part of the book provides a brief overview of display, rituals, and photography and how they relate to each other. Typically, if subjects know they are being photographed, they will pose, arrange themselves in a way that they feel is attractive to a viewer, which functions as a ritualized display. The particular poses are often based on the sex of the models. The bulk of the work, though, is devoted to reproducing advertisements that illustrate his points about display and gender display.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. KeyWorks in Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 71-101.

Horkheimer and Adorno make the point that even though people "see through" the mechenations of the "Culture Industry," they still participate in it. Even though amusement has always existed, it did not become an industry until fairly recently. Ideology determines what amusements are available to the mass populace, and all amusements vary in only minor ways. This is similar to the way that transportation is offered in the United States. Ford and Chevrolet both offer a variety of superficially different options, but all are gasoline powered vehicles that are similar in size and shape. Even though other modes of transportation exist, our road system and laws are designed to accommodate cars and trucks, so these remain the most common.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006.

Jenkins discusses the relationship among "media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence" (2). He argues that media that used to be separated, such as music and cell phones are now converging as we become more saturated by media. He sees new media as being convergences of old ones.

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium is the Message." Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks. Ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner. Keyworks in Cultural Studies. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. 129-38.

While McLuhan's work has overtones of technological determinism, his work still makes a valid point: the "content" of one medium is always another medium, thereby making the “medium” and the “message” indistinguishable. Writing contains speech, speech contains thoughts, etc. He rejects that technology is, by its nature, value neutral.

September 18-- Project Bibliography

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Rather than seeing online and Internet resources as something new and unusual, Bolter and Grusin argue that new media is really an extension and recombination of older forms like painting, radio, television, and print.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Corrected Edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.

Derrida explores the distance that exists between the signifier the signified. He believes that the closer that the signifier is to the signified, the more accurate it is. For this reason, he privileges spoken language over written language because speech is closer to the original thought. By writing, the signifier goes through two states, into spoken words, then into written words.

Pacey, Arnold. Meaning in Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999.

Pacey argues that to understand technology, we also must "acknowledge and be ware of personal experience" (3). Further, people's "ideals and values in relation to technology" are affected by their "sense of purpose and meaning of life" (3). In other words, we do not interpret technology in a vacuum. Our response to technology is shaped by our values, experiences, and goals.

Williams, William Proctor, and Craig Abbott. An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies. Third. New York: Modern Langauge Association, 1999.

From un-standard spellings of compositors to revisions of proofs inserted by authors, Williams and Abbot argue that texts are altered every time they change form. The authors argue that study of "texts' composition, revision, physical embodiments, process of transmission, and manner of reception are central to a historical understanding of literature" (7). This work provide an overview of textual research, with chapters on "Analytical Bibliography," "Descriptive Bibliography," "A Text and Its Embodiments," "Textual Criticism," and "Editorial Procedure."

October 2-- Field Bibliography

Kosterlnick, Charles, and David D. Roberts. Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators. Allyn and Bacon Series in Technical Communication. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998.

The authors state that their purpose is to enable the readers to be able to create "sturdier, more reliable, and more comprehensive frameworks for thinking about and practicing design" (xviii).Reminding us that each document has a designer who creates it and a reader that makes meaning from it, they use rhetorical principles to ground their message.

Shankar, Tara Rosenberger. "Speaking on the Record: A Theory of Composition." Computers and Composition 23 (2006): 374-93.

Rosenberger calls for a new vocabulary with which to discuss oral forms of composition. Most of our current vocabulary about composing refers specifically to print literacy practices and thus show a "graphocentric bias" (375). She proposes the term "spriting" as a combination of "speaking" and "writing" to produce "talkuments" (376). While the new vocabulary may not catch on, she does open up the conversation about terminology for new media compositions that do seem to be something besides "stories" or "essays" but do not yet seem to have a more specific identity.

Shipka, Jody. "Sound Engineering: Toward a Theory of Multimodal Soundness." Computers and Composition 23 (2006): 355-73.

Shipka argues that texts can be composed, or "soundly engineered" from anything. She asserts a multimodal "activity-based" method of composition rather than the traditional thesis driven styles that are currently privileged in most composition classes (357). She requires her students to reflect on their rhetorical aims and the choices that they make in pursuit of those aims with their multimodal compositions.

Turing, Alan. "Computing Machenery and Intelligence." New Media Reader. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. 50-64.

Written in 1950, Turing's classic work still influences what we consider to be a "thinking" machine. He argued that a machine could be said to "think" if it could react to a human in a way that is indistinguishable from anther human, and then goes on to discuss various ideas of digital computers. The significance of this piece is in its historical value, since this article brought the possibility of artificial intelligence to the public and proposed a method of measuring it.

September 18th, Field Bibliography

Bernhardt, Stephen, A. "The Shape of Text to Come: The Texture of Print on Screens." College Composition and Communication 44.2 (1993): 151-75.

While dated, Bernhardt still makes a good point when he claims, "Changes in technology invariably trigger changes in the shape of text" (151). He lists nine "dimensions of variation" that help differentiate use of text onscreen and on paper. Onscreen texts tend to be: Situationally embedded; interactive; functionally mapped; modular; navigable; hierarchically embedded; spacious; graphically rich; and customizable and publishable. He believes that as texts change due the constraints of technology, we will develop new skills to process those new texts (173).

Kress, Gunter, and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Disourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001. In the past, communication was generally conducted in a single mode. People spoke to one another, or they communicated by writing and print. Later, radio provided a mode to communicate by sound at a distance, while television combined both sounds and pictures. Both radio and television, though, functioned because of written scripts. With computers, we are using more modes of communication our social transactions. They argue that "meaning is made in many different ways, always, in many modes and media which are co-present in a communicational ensemble" (111). This stands in contrast to the older idea that communication only happened with words. Sullivan, Patricia. "Practicing safe visual rhetoric on the World Wide Web." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 103-21. Changes in media technology change the way that people work. Much design advice or "guideline[s]"(104) are the result of trying to force websites into looking and acting like print. Such "safe" guidelines provide structure for designers, especially novices, but do continue to influence web design even after designers develop skills to be more creative in design. Because the web has "some of the characteristics of print, some of television, and some of film," new aesthetics must be established for the medium. For this reason, textual meaning on the internet is impossible to separate from the visual aspects. Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan, UT: Utah UP, 2004. The authors claim that this book "provides rationales for opening a writing classroom to new media in particular ways" (vii). Distinguishing this text are the exercises, assignments, and handouts as well as theory and advice. Wysocki, Anne Frances. "awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs." Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 55-62. Under what circumstances can we imagine submitting a piece of literary criticism on a piece of construction paper written in crayon? Wysocki argues that certain materials and designs are not available for certain uses. She argues that Kress's understanding of "image and word" as being "bound logically and respectively with time and space" limits the way that images and words can be understood. Wysocki, Anne Frances. "Impossibly Distinct: On Form/Content and Word/Image in Two Pieces of Computer-Based Interactive Multimedia." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 209-34. Wysocki argues that much advice for building content online assumes that, "content is separate from form, writing from the visual, information from design, word from image" (210). Using two interactive CDs that feature the work of Matisse, Wysocki compares how the experience of navigating the CDs shapes the user's experience with the content.

New Beginning

The class that I had created this blog for is over, but I think the content that is here already is pretty good, for the most part. So I've decided to revive the blog for keeping track of some of my readings in new media for my dissertation.

I am working on the idea of questioning how changing an artifact from one media to another changes its meaning. How does, for example, the Book of Kells change meaning from being in a museum-like setting to being on a CD that I can plug into my computer? How are each of these different from it being in the altar of a church? In preserving an artifact, it is necessary to protect it, but in protecting it and divorcing it from its intended use, how do we ultimately change its meaning?

I am working through some semiotics al la Gunter Kress, and will be looking at other fields as well: digital humanities, archival studies, and new media scholarship.