Books… every day I find myself physically surrounded by endless numbers of these wonderful media. In discussing framing, Kress (2005) identifies “our long domination in the West of writing as the culturally most valued form of representation: and more, the long association of the mode of writing with the equally dominant, valued and powerful medium, namely the book.”  I confess that this intrinsic relationship was one that I had not actively questioned until the realization of potential offered through multimodality. The nature of the book is changing in order to embrace a transliterate generation.

Thomas (2007) provides example of this flux through “Flight Paths”  (Pullinger, 2007- )a networked book which encourages user-generated  input and feedback. This project incorporates sound, video and text. Seeing all of these elements together within a single [digital] chapter illustrates the infinite possibilities offered by the multimodal realm.

References

Kress, G (2005) Gains and losses: new forms of texts, knowledge and learning. Computers and Composition. 22(1), 5-22.

Pullinger, K. (2007 – ) “Flight Paths” at http://www.flightpaths.net/accessed 02.02.2013

Thomas, S et al (2007) Transliteracy: crossing divides. First Monday. 12(12). [web site]