Process Reflection for Critical Photo Essay

                This piece was a really difficult beast to wrangle. I found myself starting the research with basic general searches leaping from one webpage to another linked or referenced page. It was a lot of fun discovering the history behind the cover, and I found that there were so many ways to look at the history of the book cover. There is the physical book cover and the aesthetic (younger) book cover.

What was so different about this piece versus any other research projects that I have ever done before is the fact that it was multimodal. How do I take all this information, and make it more than just an essay explaining the history, the aesthetics, etc? That is why images explain the aesthetics or looks of the old physical books tied in very well.

As for paths I didn’t take with this text: I didn’t discuss a lot of how the book itself function, I really just tried to focus on JUST the cover, which I found so difficult because there is so much to be said about books are constructed in a digital space.

I feel like I learned a lot about composing a research project in a digital place. I wrote a lot of this piece in Blogger instead of a word document because of formatting. I also discovered that I struggled with my argument because of the change in mode that I was writing in. Which intrigues me, why does the change in space affect how I am thinking? Does the incorporation of images make it harder for me to explain my argument when I feel that the images should have a larger part in “making” my point?

As of right now I have no good answer, but I’m going to play with images and arguments as I continue to write mutimodally (did I just make up a word?)

Reflection (not plural...because i want to be cool like the Bible):

Introductory Video:

This was my first time doing a video, I found myself writing out a script that I followed on my screen. I thought that filming myself was the easiest for the video-illiterate (funny that I use “illiterate” right?). I know that this reflection is way after the fact, but I thought that this was the easiest project that I have done to date.

A/V short video:

This was so difficult. I found myself “done” and almost completely redoing the project. Finding a way to incorporate writing, film, and audio into one smooth 3 minute or less concoction wasn’t easy. I found the audio the biggest struggle. I first recorded my voice over the video…and discovered how DULL I sound. I imagine that It would have sounded better with background music but Movie Maker didn’t like to help me with that…basically, I was stuck finding a better audio track. Then came the epiphany. Alan Jackson (aka my future husband) I felt that the song that I chose to trace my video got across the atmosphere and message of who we were. Conveniently, it also looked like the rhythm that people in the video were dancing to. (I love luck)

Infographic:

This was probably the most frustrating THING that I have ever created. I am a very hands on creative person—and creating a poster on the computer was more challenging for me. The colors and layout was so painful that I finally…gave up. (I know that is what you want to hear Professor…sorry). The topic I started with was “sheep”, and I discovered that despite the fact that I know so much…I didn’t want to overwhelm people. So I switched topic, and discovered that unless I wanted my life to be sucked into this “small” project, I needed to keep my points simple. So basically I struggled with: layout, the mode, the info, the color scheme---everything? Hopefully my Critical Photo Essay won’t make me want to pull my hair out like this did.

Texts talk to each other (I feel like these readings had so much going on!)

I agree that the value of texts are shifting, especially when it comes to how texts or “snip-its” are talking to each other. Just look at some of the classes in the Lit department this semester!

For example:

 Lit 438: Literature Unbound, taught by Professor Thomas is a course built around the connections between different materials across media. In the class we have talked about the connections between material like a film and a graphic novel and how they are talking to each other, and at the same time have their own “process”.  We connect the pieces through “action” “genre” and whatever other references they might have in common. The entire class is built around these “connections”.

Personally, I like the idea of re-inventing something by connecting it to another piece, or by making two different things “talk” to each other. A good example of this is a mash up.

I think that the most interesting part of the readings for today, and the class discussions is the concept of the Processes:

We tend to think about writing as a process—as an end goal to be achieved. We will have a masterpiece at the end. (when it’s done, it’s done---there is no fixing it or changing it. Etc) In that sense the writing always has a product. Professor Downs explained this best as the book becomes the fixed end goal of the piece.

However, todays reading are suggesting that we think about these things as a Process in the sense that there is no clear ending, there can be revised, adapted, and reworked into a continually changing text. The example that is woven in and out of Kole’s piece is Wikipedia, where the text can be changed by many people at any time (and in turn adapts what we think of authorship, but that was better discussed in the Johnson article).

The easiest way to understand Process is through the Sphinx. This sculpture was designed to be a “finished product”, but through the constant influences of time and weather on the Sphinx, it has adapted and changed, even after the understood “final” creation has been made.

Personally, I think a good way to explain the process is to look at memes:

The first image is a photograph of a child. This alone is its own text

The next “author” of the piece took the image and adapted it with words.

And then I took this meme and changed what it was saying to say something else. 

In other words, this text is constantly evolving.

Multimodality, Multimedia, and Genre by G. Kress

There are a few quotes in this piece that I feel follow the same train of inquiry that we have been touching this summer. I believe that the first portion of the argument that stood out to me is because it touched on Professor Downs argument on Thursday. Kress asks “what is it we want to mean, and what modes and genres are best realized for that meaning?”

                In class we were discussing clarity and how the mode that we use can influence how the meaning is transmitted and received to the reader (consumer?) of the message. Kress argues along the same train of thought when she uses the eighth-grade science class example in a multimodal examination (and might I say: this was severely painful to read). By comparing and contrasting two different students projects she was able to explain that within the genre the two girls’ “Scientificness is carried in distinctively different ways in the two cases” (blah-blah-blah…) (Kress 47).  Finally Kress gets to the point:

“The specificity is the same at one level: the affordance of the logic of time governs writing, and the affordance of the logic of space governs the image. Within that there is the possibility of generic variation. And generic variation of the ensembles, in each case, provides an overall difference of a significant kind” (47)

So basically, how we place text and images, even if we have the same material, can affect the overall message of the piece…? I feel like I am missing the depth of the argument.

She continues her argument of multimodality when Kress says “In the new communicational world there are now choices about what is to be represented should be represented: in what mode, in what genre, in what ensembles of modes and genres, and on what occasions” (49)

These statements are all true, and it occurs on a daily, and hourly basis b=depending on what industry that you are working for. I guess the push that I was looking for in Kress’s text didn't occur until the end, and then I felt as if we were back in class, and Madeline was saying “can we have anything concrete here?”

Essentially, Kress pushes her point out to the statement that all genres are mixed genre, but then “what is a “genre”, a pure genre; how and where does it occur; and how do we recognize it?” (52)

Well, I am going to put down my own definitions, and I am teaming up with Merriam-Webster.

Genre

1.       a particular type or category of literature or art

2.       a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content

Now, this is not the exhausted list of definitions on what a “genre” can be, but I will say that these definitions are forming my argument/ agreement with Kress that within this definition of genre, most every item we experience has multimodality. A typical novel for example, one might say has one mode, the writing, however, it has the image on the cover (with text), possibly an acknowledgment page, and an introduction from the author or editor. These are different modes that create the novel.

Really, you lost me at Kant…

Wysocki’s analysis on ads is helpful to an extent. She breaks everything down in her argument and tells us “exactly” how her argument “goes”.

For example, she says that there are two types on compositions “the first composition” my very own “imaginative constructions” and “the second composition” a construction of formed markings on paper”. The second constructions is so beautifully vague (beautiful as Kant defines beauty? Nope…). She goes on to describe the elements that go into graphic design, page layout, form of beauty, formal re-connection etc…………….. Personally, I am more interested in the composition of graphic design-page layout with content.

Page arrangement, aka how my eyes travel through the layout of a page to glean meaning, comes in a few design principles. As Wysocki says, “Graphic design…gets shaped to be an efficient process for disseminating entwirred information and desire” (151). Essentially her premise concludes that visual arrangement will “streamline the direction and speed of one’s sight to hone in on” the purpose of the piece (151). 

Her argument so far in the text makes sense, I even agree with her four categories that are involved in graphic design.

-contrast

-repetition

-alignment

-proximity

I have read before about how ads tend to be laid out in a “Z” format to direct the reader’s attention across the page and “take in” the necessary information in that time. Wysocki’s example in today’s reading does exactly that with the lines of text at top to the line of female backside to the bottom text located more to the right than the text at the top of the page.

This page examines the many types of way to make an image flow. One of the design principles is something that we have already discussed in class, The “F” pattern—designed for those skimmers out there. Essentially, that is how I find the Wysocki argument helpful. It broke down some design elements that this website emphasizes.

The effects of certain shapes and directions on a page has been analyzed on many levels to explain how our brain works, and would add more to Wysocki’s argument because I don’t just “believe” that “smooth, flat, and horizontal shapes give us a sense of stability and calm” (154).

All of these categories are fine and dandy, but Wysocki doesn’t just leave the argument at these principles. She goes into depth as to why she found the add offensive with Kant’s scale and definition of beauty.

Frankly, my dear… I just don’t care. Kant’s ideas on beauty and sublimity is a fun concept to work with, but I tip my hat to the creator of Wysocki’s example for using the female body to emphasize the ad. 

Images vs. words

McCloud’s chapters for today center on images, words, and how they function together. Word and picture combination today is a viral concept, comics embody what it means to show is to tell, and to tell is to show (161). Instead of keeping writing and images as two different objects opposite on the “art” pyramid, the combination of pictures and images becomes a balanced scale allowing artists and writers another venue “of self-expression” to explain/illustrate Why am I doing this? (162).

McCloud says “when pictures carry the weight of clarity in a scene, they free words to explore a wider area…on the other hand, if the words lock in the meaning of a sequence, then the pictures can really take off” (157-159). The writer and artist must find a balance that meets his steps to a creation of art, and are “ultimately left to the creator’s instincts” (161). There is twice as much in play when the artist is working with images and words versus one or the other. 

McCloud breaks down the six steps to the creation of the art, and how the reader comes into contact with the comic. I found the six steps very accurate, but rather “expected” especially when it came to the appropriate balance/procession of steps. I like how he lays out the step 1 through 6, explain the struggles, and then says that people should be a slow and steady purpose from end to beginning (183). I found this very true in my own progression of the A/V short video. I knew what medium, I knew “why am I doing this”, but I have been struggling with step 4, structure. I keep asking “what video should I include? What should I say, what is the best way to articulate my argument?” Composition has been so difficult for me. (and this project is due on Friday!). Playing with structure has been the most time consuming. I finished my project and discovered that my argument was being lost in how I was composing my video (and now I’m back to just my video, no audio).

The one frame that I felt had a larger point for comics is when he says “we all have something to say to the world. The real question is “will anyone listen” and unfortunately there’s no way to know that in advance” (178). This applies to everything and anything that an artist/writer of any form comes in contact with. Even though someone might be a better writer than Stephanie Meyer, who is going to say that someone will be listening? Woody Allen, the screenwriter, was one of many writers that was among the “listened to”, but there are many other screenwriters that aren’t discovered. (but I think that this point is probably a little off topic, so I’m going to leave it where it is.)

Here is a meme to distract you:

 

Two Thumbs up for McCloud

Hands down this has been my favorite reading for the semester. I believe that chapter three really spoke to the role images and text play online. McCloud’s says, “Every act committed to paper by the comics artist is aided and abetted by a silent accomplice” (68).  The silent accomplice is the consumer of the text, McCloud’s example on page 68 allows the reader to “kill off” the character in the text nowhere in the next panel does it depict the death of the character, but the gutter was left for us to assume what happened when no one was looking. The key point is that the reader/consumer of the piece has to be an active participate in the text. The creator makes “assumptions about their readers’ experiences” to find a balance between depicting too much and too little (McCloud 68).

Take this Montana Meme for example:

In the image the cartoon is a depicting a commentary on how Montana residents react to weather changes. However, I, the reader, am making that assumption based on the change in clothing and the text from one panel to the next. Nowhere does it say “This is how Montana residents cloth during weather”. The choice to use these two panels allows the reader to “aid and abet” to make meaning on an online meme, while not spelling out the purpose of the meme.

HEY! Another example, if you take the comic The Walking Dead the panels will take a similar leap from the example in McCloud’s piece on page 82. However, the graphic novel will also pause and “slow down” the image-gap/gutter-time to create an effect on the reader to the point that the image won’t change. Essentially, The Walking Dead does the reverse of Page 85 in McCloud. The artists create a purposeful effect with the pause times, and slowing down the panels so the readers’ intake of the scene is slower.

In another class, we are reading McCloud’s book. In that class we focused a lot of our time on chapter two. We discussed “What is it about a Graphic Novel that allows us to identify with the characters more than with the film?” McCloud responded to our inquiry to different texts by saying that we automatically identify with cartoons as a human race because “we assign identities and emotions where none exist” (33). For me, I got more out of the comic because I was making the meaning through abstract representation of language and images. 

What the digital world has done is blow the idea of "comics" into different formats with different applications, and yet as a consumer we still are forced to “aid and abed” the creator in “meaning making”.  I think that it is hammered home when McCloud points out how a comic says more about us then the text/medium: “who I am is irrelevant. I’m just a piece of you” (McCloud 37). The image and the words, the hybridity of the mode, is a part of the readers meaning making.