Life circumstances this week have made getting my thoughts onto the Tumblog a challenge!

Diversity

The high point of this week was the MOOC Hangout. The value of this experience was immense and I came away feeling that I had learned something new [use of Google +] and reinforced something already present [the sense of our class community].

This week was a chance to spend time looking at all of the digital artifacts that we created and it was amazing to note the diversity of presentation forms and user approaches – a little like a digital pic ‘n’ mix! From this collection it is easy to see what each platform showcases in terms of suitability for specific uses. It was reassuring to note that feedback I received showed that what I set out to depict was achieved.  Self – reflection on how I would do things differently next time is an important part of the feedback process though I think that the tight time-frame impacted on the final result. I am very impressed by the other artifacts and will definitely use some, if not all of the platforms in the future.

Areas that I dipped into this week included cultural narratives and the potentially varying ‘human’ capacity of one media over another. The former reminded me of Canadian photographer Jeff Wall’s piece The Storyteller, representing a social setting marginalised through exclusion from cultural technological transformation. The latter area continued reflection on the power of image vs text and how content / circumstance calls for one over the other.

]]> http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/17/overview-week-5/feed/ 0 http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/17/cultural-narrative/ http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/2013/02/17/cultural-narrative/#comments Sun, 17 Feb 2013 22:44:07 +0000 Nikki Bourke http://edc13.education.ed.ac.uk/nikkib/?p=263

The Storyteller / Jeff Wall

“The figura of the storyteller is an archaism, a social type which has lost its function as a result of the technological transformations of literacy. It has been relegated to the margins of modernity, and survives there as a relic of the imagination, a nostalgic archetype, an anthropological specimen, apparently dead…such ruined figures embody essential elements of historical memory, the memory of values excluded by capitalist progress and seemingly forgotten by everyone. This memory recovers its potential…parallels the process in which marginalised and oppressed groups re-appropriate and re-learn their own history. This process…and its impact is transforming standard criteria of literacy, creating openings for a newer concept of modernist culture.”

“The Storyteller” in Jeff Wall The Storyteller (Frankfurt am Main: Museum fur Moderne Kunst., 1992)p. 7

Wall’s snapshot captures the essence of the marginality stemming from technological transformation integral within an ever changing cultural landscape. Re-education and re-appropriation in order to access lost literacy runs parallel to the idea of the multimodal structure. Exploration and utilisation of new forms and modes helps to promote maximum literacy and understanding.

On the MOOC this week there was a very interesting forum thread titled ‘Are some media more ‘human’ than others?’ which considered among other things the power allocation of the binary text vs image. I like this marketing advertisement from Sky as it amalgamates both elements.