When I’m reading or listening to our profession’s conversation
about digital media production, a particular statement sets me off. My roughed-up rendition of it goes,
“Don’t let the students put their grubby paws on the production platform (e.g.,
iMovie, Movie Maker) before they have written a good draft.” As elaborated in previous posts, Taking
Tech from Glitz to Deep Learning and Identity
Construction, I am aware of the dangers of the glitzy side of technology,
but to handle it by “Do Not Touch” tosses out too much of the generative
power. Classical rhetoric began with
the canon of “invention”; the dynamic features of digital media offer to fire
up that reservoir of imaginative resources. Let’s learn to use it.
As illustrated below, digital media programs can power up effectiveness
in “ideas,” “organization,” and “voice,” in the language of contemporary
rubrics and standards.
Composing with digital media, in my view, should not be
imprisoned in the linear structure of print before media, write-the-script
before opening the program with images, music, and technical effects. This position reminds me of the notion
that you start an essay with a thesis statement. Such directives seem to come from persons who don’t know
“writing to learn” and who haven’t experienced their voice-over forming and transforming
in the dynamic exchange among image, word, and other tech features.
The dialog among image, word, and tech features brings in
special effects that are not available in the prioritizing of word processing that
usually dominates composing in schools. I’m often pleasantly surprised at the inspiration that comes
from the verbal, visual, physical reverberations. For example, when putting images into iMovie on my iPad, I
decided to play with the montage feature. (Montage is defined
in Pinnacle’s Help Manual: “supplied motion graphics templates with spaces
provided for your own media. Think of using a Montage when you need an instant
title sequence or a dramatic transition.”)
I hadn’t planned
on using a montage but was curious about how it worked. So on a whim I dragged one onto the top
track to see what it would do. While
not expecting to keep it in the project, the spinning shift from slot 1 to slot
2 must have made an impression because this montage later paid off by whirling
in a brainstorm for the whole design.
This is how it happened. As noted in the previous post, in making this digital media
project we started by assembling ten images that came out of our working with
narrative theory and playing with stories. My set is shown in the previous blog & the categories
are:
1 Photo of self that you like &
2 Photo of self that you don’t particularly like
3 Community with which you identify
4 Community of aspiration but not membership
5 The stranger from the Kanu story with whom you are most
connected/identified
6 Representation of the mature masculine as developed in
Kanu (other stories)
7 Representation of the “daughter of the village” from the
Kanu story
8 Most important story you’ve heard
9 Landscape/seascape/skyscape of “destiny”
10 Image of obstacle/monster/villain
I told the students that this set was just for
starters. They’d probably need and
want to add images and would certainly need to reorganize them in making the
digital media production that showed and explained their own identity construction.
In composing
their projects, I told my students to imagine order coming out of disorder. Look at the array of
images and see which one might point to a state of confusion, chaos, nonsense,
misdirection, or false identity.
Then the sequencing of the images can show how the construction of
identity tended to the trouble. As
they pondered this, their voice-over would be composing to explain the movement
and the construction of identity.
In working on my production, the dynamic of word, image,
& tech made magic. Some
part of my mind held words from John Gardner on the purpose of art as ordering
chaos, and this apparently provided a foundation for my process of
composing. Then, surprisingly, it
seemed the whirling montage took the lead as I saw how it visualized the
meaning as identity formation because ordering chaos involves a spinning out of
control and then landing anew. What
images might go in slot 1 and slot 2?
In looking at the array of ten images, I found my focus
drawn to the two horseman:
My change of identity has involved coming to know “by feel”*
in addition to the other kinds of knowing, mostly cognitive, that are valued in
academic circles. The identity
construction extended to communities of practice in education, not only in horsemanship. And thus the dynamic of word, image,
& tech gave me the stuff for my production: the structure, the articulating
words, and the fire to do it.
The burst of composing, “invention,” also led to the subsequent
ordering of my draft. I imagined
how #8—important story (mom & L; Epam2) could follow; and being put in the
context of this production, I also gained a deeper understanding of that
“nonsense tale.”
Next, I began to see how the “stranger” (biting fly) and the
“monster” (baba yaga) played a role in my engagement with the two communities. Finally, the sunset (journey) initially
looked to be a good closing but when re-arranging the images on the storyline,
it provided a good visual and metaphor for the journey earlier in the
production; and the horseman image (#7) promised a better closing as it
provided the coherence of returning to the beginning.
A few sources on “feel”:
Damasio,
Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens:
Body & Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Mariner, 2000.
Desmond,
Leslie & Bill Dorrance. True Horsemanship through Feel (2nd
Ed). Lyons Press, 2007.
Gendlin,
Eugene. Experiencing & the Creation
of Meaning. Northwestern UP,1962/1997. See his notes at end that
summarize Hussrl and others
Focusing. (Second Edition). Bantam, 1978/1981.
Perl, Sondra. Felt Sense: Writing with the Body. Boynton-Cook, 2004.
Sheridan
Blau reviews Felt Sense:
Also
see Perl’s book: On Austrian Soil: Teaching Those I Was
Taught to Hate.
Albany, NY: State University
of New York, 2005.
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