Week 5: Sound

As I was reading Cynthia Selfe's "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning:  Aurality and Multimodal Composing," I first thought of our technology literacy narrative projects and the studio review we did in class during Week 4.  As I was watching/listening to/reading my classmates' projects, I couldn't help but be more engaged by the projects that included sound.  Stephen's project on VoiceThread helped me to understand and relate to his story more because it was told through his own words/voice.  Soha's audio file not only included her story as told through her own personal experiences, but it contained background sounds, music, and noises that helped engage the listener and give them a better understanding of the narrative.  Marshall and Lauren S. shared projects that combined image, audio, and video.  There were several other students that included audio in their projects, as well.  Listening to these helped me to understand why Selfe puts such an emphasis on sound in her article; it communicates in a way that the written word cannot.

Selfe states, "I argue that a single-minded focus on print in composition classrooms ignores the importance of aurality and other composing modalities for making meaning and understanding the world" (618).  I think most students (including myself) don't have much experience in the classroom with multimodal composing (because, as Selfe explains, there is so much emphasis placed on print and alphabetic text), but the studio review we did in class helped me to truly see and understand the importance of utilizing other modes of communication in academia.  The projects utilized a number of modalities to tell stories in a way that couldn't have been communicated through text alone.  The audio and video components helped me gain a better understanding of each of my classmates' experiences and the world of technology that is unique to them.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't think scholars are advocating for less writing, but rather are seeking to implement writing alongside other multimodal components so the two can work together to increase a student's understanding of a topic or to help a student communicate a topic more fully.  As Selfe writes, "I suggest we need to pay attention to both writing and aurality, and other composing modalities, as well.  I hope to encourage teachers to develop an increasingly thoughtful understanding of a whole range of modalities...and then to provide students the opportunities of developing expertise with all available means of persuasion and expression" (618).  Sometimes a story/topic/narrative can't be effectively communicated through written text alone.  I certainly wouldn't have had such a good grasp on Lauren S.'s upbringing and background with technology without the photos of her and her father, the photos of her with old computer equipment, or the photos showing her love of taking something old or worn out and making it new.  Each of these contributed to her overall story, a story that wouldn't have been fully told without the use of multimodal composing in her project.

I'm looking forward to implementing audio, video, and visuals (along with written text) into my own literacy narrative utilizing Instagram.  

As a poet, I often participate in readings and regularly submit my work to journals and magazines in the hope of being published.  I've had the privilege to have my poetry appear in several journals, but I'm increasingly impressed with the way digital journals and magazines are implementing multimodality into their issues.  This summer, I had two poems picked up by Turk's Head Review.  The editor asked that I send him audio files of me reading the two poems to accompany the written text.  The poems can be read/heard here: 

http://turksheadreview.tumblr.com/page/2 

Did the audio files add anything to the experience?  I enjoyed listening to the other poets in the issue read their poetry.  Even though I don't know them and I can't see them, hearing them read their poetry seems to make the pieces mean more.  It helps me to understand the emotions they felt when writing that poem; the way they say the words communicates more than text on a page ever could.

Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes in On Multimodality:  New Media in Composition Studies seem to echo what Selfe is saying in her article: "In the process [of treating new media as new], the multiple rhetorical capabilities of media--sound, visuals, video, and other multimodal media--have been elided, and the rich histories of those capabilities with them" (3).  Students are trying to communicate through their work; how can we know the whole story if we can only read it on a sheet of paper or on a computer screen? 

thewheelhousereview.com