321 Response
Brian Kelly
321 Critique
3:
-The first thing that really jumped out at me was in Stein’s piece how a writer should not include nouns or adjectives. Having been in many writing classes this has never once come up. You cannot use nouns because a poem is trying to convey an emotion and if you are truly are experiencing that emotion while reading a poem you do assign a name to it. Adjectives are a similar in that they are always attached to nouns and therefore because of that relationship become useless as well.
- For Stein’s piece, I can defiantly tell already how much it’s going to help me in regards to writing poetry. I made a note with the do’s and don’ts brought up to look over after writing or turning in a poem.
-Upon giving much thought into “The Future of Poetry” I was finally able to walk away with some opinions on what I had just read and watched after at first it made no sense. It is touching many different taboos in our culture and to ultimately create a very experimental manifesto.
2:
- In Stein’s piece one of the first things brought up is regarding how poetry and prose are not alike. After reading the 40 odd pages I still did not catch a distinct difference between the two. It seemed as though the author “beat around the bush” and the answer got lost in her answering other topics. This line especially I had no idea. “Nouns made poetry but in prose I no longer needed the help of nouns and in poetry did I need the help of nouns.”
-The second part that kind of bothered me is the two videos that were also on the website. I watched both of them and they made me feel like I was on drugs. The freaky cheerleaders are going to haunt my dreams tonight because of it. In spite of their weirdness and being completely out there, I didn’t understand how they applied to the purpose of the piece which still has some question marks for me.
1:
-My question for the class is I want to know what everyone else in the class thought about “The Future of Poetry.” I want to know if they interpreted it as a manifesto like I did.
Final Porfolio Reflection
Upon signing up for this class I had not even the slightest idea on what exactly this class was going to be about. All that I knew is that I needed to finish up an English requirement and that this was one of the few classes that were open. I tend to like to throw myself into situations that I don’t know much about due to the fact that I believe it broadens my world view and makes me a more well rounded person.
The first day of class was one of the more stressful first days of class that I have had in college. While talking about expectations for the class, I felt as though I was in well over my head and that the required amount of work for the class was going to be too much to handle. While looking at everyone else in the class I saw that every single person seemed to be in the same boat that I was, confused and overwhelmed. Thankfully I was able to convince myself that the workload was bearable and this was a class that I was going to be able to succeed in. After toughing out the semester I’m very happy that I did so seeing as I proved myself wrong in my initial assumptions.
Goal 1: To develop your reading and composing skills in multiple media
Even though technology and I don’t always get along, the internet and other technology advancements made possible by computers have made my life a lot easier as a student. Websites such as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, as well as a plethora of other sites have made gathering information and staying in touch with what’s going on in the world that much easier. Prior to going into this class I have always been very critical about different types of media being presented for me. I feel as though my previous reading skills already surpassed what was expected from the class and I was better off due to the way that other students looked at the information being provided to them. The reason for this is because I’m a Communication major and have been taught to look in depth at what the point that someone is trying to get across and if there are alternative motives to what they are presenting. This class has refined my previously learned skills into formats that I usually don’t look at such as educational websites created by teachers and students. While composing a scholarly piece of media I had no idea of the written portions that need to be included when say composing a video. I always felt as though a video should stand for itself and that it wasn’t required to have text to go along with it explaining why certain things were done in different fashions.
After initially finishing our video I thought the bulk of my work was done. However, upon doing peer reviews and getting feedback from Cheryl I realized that I was wrong in that assumption and that I had to do a heck of a lot more writing. After realizing why the writing needed to be there, it made it much easier to write to the audience I was trying to reach. Upon learning all that I did in this class, the part that I thought was going to be hardest to accomplish ended up being the easiest thing that I did.
Goal 2: To experience multimodal composition as a process that includes analysis, invention, drafting, and revision across modes, media, and genres of texts
The second goal I believe was grasped due to the going to class every day. This entire class was laid out as a process to ultimately accomplish our goal of completing the final project. The way that our group did it was by laying out deadlines and a concise game plan for what we wanted to accomplish. Even though the timeliness of our completion wasn’t always what we wanted it to be, at all times we knew what it was exactly that we needed to accomplish. Drafts were essential to our project turning out the way that it did. Had we just spent one or two days doing all the video shots or recording the song, it would have turned out completely different and nowhere near as polished as our final product. After spending weeks and weeks crafting the song we were able to analyze what we liked about the song, what needed to be changed, and what parts of the video shots we took that we were going to put in the video. I’m very thankful for all the class time we had to work on our project because if we did not, it would have turned our drastically different.
Goal 3: To use and interrogate traditional writing processes when composing in multiple media
For this class we did a lot of traditional writing using different mediums that I personally wasn’t used to. I tend to keep a journal of my everyday life and I have never done it electronically through the use of a blog. Also I wasn’t used to contacting and updating my status in the class through email with a teacher. In my entire college career I have exchanged maybe a total of five messages with my professors so having feedback on my work pretty much at all times was something I could get used to. While using traditional writing on new mediums one most consider adapting for the audience that they are reaching for. Using my journal example from earlier there is certain personal information that you might want to withhold considering that other people are allowed to read it if it’s online. Due to this class I can now better consciously think about the audience I’m trying to reach and form the message accordingly.
Goal 4: To reflect on your processes as readers and writers as you read, write about, and discuss the texts of the course: published work, peers’ writing, and your own
The one thing that I could say that I learned the most about in this class was reflection. If you did not reflect on the information learned and what to do with it, you would be left behind and your finished project would end up not turning out that well. The blog I think was an essential part of this reflection. Even though I thought we could have used it a lot more, it took a lot of time for me to write those blog posts due to the complexity of what I had to say. I really had to being knowledgeable of what I was writing and had to have a reason of why I had to say it. A lot of the reading I found to be a little tedious and a little over my head, which also may have been the reason it took me so long to reflect on it. Had it not been for the discussions in class about the text, I would not have been able to apply it in a way that would have helped me in the class. I understood the theories somewhat but didn’t always see how it applied to our class.
Goal 5: To become more practiced at using multimodal composition as a means of investigation, scholarship, and play
This part of the class for me was the most fun and frustrating part that I encountered in the class. Working back and forth from GarageBand on a Mac and Windows Moviemaker on a PC causes us to have a lot of issues that I previously didn’t think that we would have had. Upon investigating both GarageBand and Moviemaker, I was constantly surprised at how great both of the programs were and the remarkable things that you could do with the both of them. GarageBand especially was the one that I could get lost on for hours just making different sounds and changing different parts on the song that we came up with. Moviemaker is a program that constantly gave us trouble seeing as it always had a hard time finding the location of the videos that we had. Even as I write this a prepare to burn everything onto a disk, I got a feeling that the video isn’t going to work and I’m going to be up all night trying to tweak it and get it on a CD.
I’m very thankful to have worked on programs that are both practical to me and something that I will be using far into the future. It was a joy to be working on a program that I wanted to learn and had never previously had to the chance to work on. For the most part I would say that the majority of what I did was play even though I had certain rough patches in the process.
Goal 6: To understand that multimodal composition is both rhetorical and creative, and thus can be useful in many disciplines
Goal number six is one of those “aha” moments that I had when I realized that in order for something to be scholarly, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a three page paper with a thesis statement, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion typed up in Microsoft Word. It could be a variation of different types of media, but needs to have a clear purpose and scholarly backing. This is a field that schools have made advancements in, such as incorporating PowerPoint’s into class presentations, but in my opinion I don’t think that they have not gone far enough. There is so much great educational media online that can be used in classes, but are neglected by the scholarly world. However, this class used all of these new tools to its full advantage and it is the first such class that I have taken that I could say that about. All the videos and websites we looked at seemed in first appearance as being creative pieces of work that were done because of one’s interest in the given field. However, after learning many different tools on how to look at media, I ended up having a foundation that was more based on a scholarly pursuit as opposed to a creative piece of work.
Goal 7: To investigate the impact of digital technologies on reading and producing multimedia texts
The way that I interpret this goal is for students to have developed a deeper appreciation for things such as the internet and all of the useful tools that are available through the use of computers. My project of producing a song in GarageBand serves as proof of the impact of producing multimedia texts and its effects on the audience who views it. We attempted to teach what we learned in using GarageBand to an audience who has interest in the program along with the hopes to spark the same initial interest that our group had in the project. If our project gets through Kairos it will reach a mass audience, which is something that I did not expect in my wildest dreams. It is then and only then that the full impact of producing multimedia for our intended audience will be fully realized. If not only Cheryl, my classmates, some of my friends, my family, and maybe a random person will have seen our website and all of the hard work that went into our project. The full realization goal number seven in my opinion rides on getting published by Kairos.
Goal 8: To have fun and learn by wowing ourselves and each other
When all was said and done I can say that my group and I have surpassed our expectations for what we were able to accomplish together. To come as far as we have was a long process and it required numerous hours inside and outside of class to succeed. Thankfully for myself, I consider all the hard work that I put in worthwhile. The song, website, and fished product are something that I’m proud of to show off to my friends. If they asked me what I did, I would tell them I took a really great class where I was able to pursue my own interests, used a new type of media foreign to me for a final project, and all the while found out a lot about myself in the process.
Peer Review #3
Dear Andy and Lara,
First off I want to congratulate you guys on a job well done on a project which in my opinion was the not the easiest of topics to handle. The finished video was something that I honestly did not expect to see, as I thought it wouldn’t be as compelling and thought evoking as you guys ended up making it be. My favorite part was how progressive the slideshow was and it made me feel as though I wasn’t actually watching a slideshow and I like that.
In regards to creativity and conceptual core, I think that you guys have executed everything perfectly. Originally this was my second choice for groups if I didn’t end up in my music group. I really liked the idea because I really like Nietzsche and many of his outlooks on the world. However, why I decided to not end up doing this project is because I thought that it would be boring and something that had been done many times before. However, I ended up being VERY wrong in that initial assumption. Slideshows are often the most boring thing that are taught in almost every class and within about thirty seconds into a presentation my attention span goes out with the window. Slideshows aren’t the most original idea for this project but it was well done. I also really liked you thought of bringing Nietzsche’s work into a different type of medium that just isn’t his books. I believe that you guys helped modernize his work and bring it to people in a much more accessible medium.
Research and credibility is the only thing that I would call into question in this whole project. It is obvious to me that you guys spent a lot of time reading and finding text for your slideshow, but just because you read it doesn’t make you an expert on what exactly it is Nietzsche is trying to say. I would have liked to have seen you guys research what other authors had to say about his work and how they interpreted it. I do trust the way you guys look at it, it would just look much better if you had more credible people with their opinions on the work. I also know that the amount of interpretations of Nietzsche is limited, probably even more so when it comes to the specific text you guys refer to.
Form and content is the strong point of this project. As I said earlier when watching this video, it seemed as though I wasn’t just watching a slideshow, but something much stronger than that. The pictures that you guys decided to include fit perfectly to the theme you were trying to carry out. They were also not the type of pictures that I would have thought would have went with the topic. The transitions were extremely smooth and every time if went from text to a different picture, it made sense to me. You groups choice of text is what I think made the project what it was. You were able to choose text with deep meaning which made you think, but wasn’t over your head to the point where you had no idea what the heck you were getting at. Also awesome pick on the Muse song as it fit in very well. Some things that need to be changed in my opinion is the layout of your website. You could make it look a lot cleaner and instead of having everything dumped on one page made some tabs and buttons to click on for the different portions of the project. Also you need to credit the song to Muse in the video as well as make a permissions page for all the images that you used for the slideshow.
For your guy’s audience you’re trying to reach people who may have never heard. of Nietzsche as well as people who have read him and enjoy his work. Youtube I believe is as good of a medium as any to reach these people. As far as timeliness is concerned, I don’t think that Nietzsche is as popular as he once was but I can be wrong. The attempt of this project is to take a modern spin on what he believed in and to apply it to the world we live in now. It is my opinion that now is as good of a time as ever to listen closely what he has to say. Good job!!!
Peer Review #2
Dear Theo, Ashley, and Dan,
I really liked the way that your project turned out. It was an idea that was highly original as well as intuitive I feel like when in contrast to everyone else ideas for their project. Looking back on it I very much would have liked to work on this project myself and see how things may have gone in a different direction. In terms of creativity and conceptual core feel as though your group went above and beyond what was expected of us in this class. The concept of choosing your own TV is a medium that I believe that has not been done so far and it is something that will be done in the future by television broadcasting companies. It’s the interactive part of your project is what makes it so fun because you and only you get to choose from a wide variety of outcomes. In essence it takes away the screen that you’re watching the clips on, putting you in the situation. A lot of thought went into your idea and it shows.
As far as research goes I feel like you guys went about looking for all the right information and ended up with all the required information that you would need for a project such as this. However I would have liked a little more detail and a summary of each of the texts that you used. When you click on the pictures I feel like there should be some text on the bottom of the image explaining how and why you used it. When you have it all thrown in together its hard to make sense of which one is which and why exactly it is that you used them. Its kind of hard to put all the ideas together. However, you did more research than I would have thought would be required for a project such as this, so good job on that!
Form and content is going to be the bulk of what I’m going to be talking about. I’m going to start out with the things that I think need to be changed and then go into all the awesome stuff that’s in your project. Most of these are all grammatical errors so they make for an easy fix. In Kobro’s biography check out “at once” a few too many spaces. Also on Razor Blade the phrase “his insane” has one too many punctuation marks. One little thing that I noticed is that Dan has a biography about what he did and I think that everyone in your group needs to do the same so your audience knows what each of you guys did. The text once you start choosing your videos is extremely hard to read. I had much difficulty trying to figure out exactly your group was trying to say; see “turn him down.” Try an easier font so even the visually impaired can see it. In the video “If you team up” at the end you need to edit it a little bit better. You can see Theo laughing at the end and I don’t think you want it in there. Finally one last thing that I would have liked to see is if maybe there were a couple more options as far as choosing the story line is concerned. My favorite part of what you guys did was the way you included humor into everything that you guys did. It made looking deeply into your project very easy and enjoyable. I think the plot and story line that you created worked perfectly and was somewhat cheesy for a reason. Once again your group went above and beyond what I had expected from this project, good job.
The audience that you guys are trying to reach is pretty clear. They are people who like TV and maybe are fed up with the way that they usually watch it. Like previously said I would maybe change some off the ways your text is laid out for the visually impaired, who also might be checking out your project. As far as timeliness I think you guys are way ahead of the curve. It’s something that TV companies I believe will someday invest a lot of money into due to the amount of interaction that does not typically go along with watching TV. Fantastic job guys.
Music Project Revisions
Upon looking at everyone’s peer evaluations I was both extremely happy and a little bit nervous in the same very breath. It was very nerve wrecking to me to have people critque a song that a lot of work had gone and what people had actually thought of the almost finished project. I was happy as well because everyone reacted to our project very positively with not too many harsh comments. All of the ways that we could improve our project I saw as very constructive criticism. I realized that some more work needed to go into this project before we got a finished product, but having read the peer reviews it was much easier to prioritize what exactly needed to be done. The easiest way for me to say what we need to finish up is to just make bullet points…
-Give some background information about garage band and what’s so special about it. Also some history about the program and people/bands that have used it
-Put the lyircs on the same page as the video so they can watch the video and digest the lyrics at the same time.
-Put a little more of Christina in the video
-Need to get screenshots and video captures of us working on GarageBand
-Shots of us recording the music and holding hte mics
-I would like to include an entire new sections entitles what we learned and it would include all the new information we learned from this project.
-Maybe include text bubbles on the video with what we were doing
-Need more of a research aspect even though I’m not sure exactly what it should be
Music: Marketing in a New World
Brian Kelly
CFP
Dr. Cheryl E. Ball
Section: English 239
cball@ilstu.edu/ Stevenson 421g/ 438-3152
Music: Marketing in a New World
For the past fifteen years, the mp3 has been long regarded as the downfall of the music industry. However, only a decade before record labels and artists alike were in a panic because of the new medium for listening to music, the cassette tape. Music listeners could now easily borrow a friend of family member’s album or song and write a copy for themselves on a blank tape. This was seen as a big game changer and that the music industry would never be the same. Time would tell that this was not the case.
Now fast forward to today in which record sales have been for the most part on the decline for the past decade or so. A vast majority of the kids and adults that grew up using computers have since primarily been able get their music online both legally and illegally. The creation of P2P networks as well as torrent and hosting websites make the act of stealing music that much easier. Even though I believe that this has severely affected many musicians profit, it is not to say that we’re not living it an exciting time in music, seeing as it’s much easier to reach thousands of people; it now just requires you to be more creative.
The audience for this proposal is for Kairos and it would be categorized into the Praxis category. It has to do with new technology, new media, as well as new marketing schemes. I will be addressing the different ways that musicians are able to relate their product to large groups of people that are willing to fork over their hard earned money when it can easily be heard, listening to, or stolen at no cost. How are these musicians getting through to an audience that is supposedly not still there due to all the new means of getting music.
For the research I think it’s a time consuming project looking at lots of numbers and trends. Things that I plan on discussing as well as looking up are the effect of ITunes and other music sites that offer songs on an individual basis, websites like Myspace, LastFm, and PureVolume which allow free streaming of sometime whole catalogues of music, bands like Radiohead who released their album for free online and asked for donations, and finally DIY musicians who make music at their home, put in on the internet and are able to make a name for themselves. To sum up this project as a whole, I will be looking at the positive ways the internet has positively affected musicians and look at how they have been able to strive where others have failed. This project will be a video, with text and music going on in the background.
Possible Kairos Submission???
Upon looking back on all three of my previous ideas that I had submitted as possibilities for this project, I realized that all of them aren’t really anything that I could see myself doing for Kairos. When thinking about the things I love, one of my biggest passions is music. People have talked about the music business as whole and how it has been directly effected by the many new uses of technology. They say that this has led to the potential downfall and recent plummet of album sales over the past ten years and the buisness has not been the same.However, there have been several musicians that have thrived in this new era, such as bands like Radiohead, RX Bandits, Fallout Boy, among a bunch of other different bands. They were able to do this through experimental marketing and by using different sale and distribution methods. I would research the success of these business decisions and how they benefit from technology. This is the only idea that I’m 99 percent set on.
Upon trying to decide what topic selection works the best with regards to Kairos I’m not 100 percent sure which one I would classify it as. I believe that my project will be a video with some text to go along with it. Therefore I believe that it would be classified as Praxis, but then again I’m not too positive. I’m looking forward to starting my research….
Media Critiques
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gcs2u9SHmQ
-The first video that I watched was Divided Soul which was based off WOW the video game. Even though I have never played it, I know countless people who have wasted too many hours to count glued against their computer screen. This piece very much reminded me of a South Park episode as well as the WOW commercials in which they had several famous pop culture icons promote the game. I’m still quite not quite sure how original this piece is. It would be helpful if I was aware of the times of publication and to see if the WOW commercials and South Park episode were based off this. I really liked what the did with their video and I thought it told a funny, yet somewhat compelling story.
http://iml.usc.edu/laproject/pages/games.html
- The second type of media that I checked out was the game called “Hot Dog Chase.” I actually found this game to be very annoying and frustrating. It was very glitchy and the controls didn’t work how they should have.Most of all I hated the fact at how unoriginal it was. Hot Dog Chase is a dumbed down, awful remake at one of my favorite games; Pacman. It doesn’t even fulfill its purpose of being a fun, amusing game.
http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=sv3bw34ggo
-This is unbelievably enough the first video that came up when I was using my StumbleUpon on Firefox. This video talks about the importance of technology in our lives and the way we use it. Overall I think the video is pretty awesome. Visually it’s very compelling and the music and voice over is very soothing. They make a point in the clip that with all this media being thrown at us that we become very selective in what we choose to spend our time on. I very much agree with this point and it’s through these different outlets, whether it be YouTube or a music website like Pitchfork, that I sift through the garbage and ultimately find something that is worth my time. You definitely need to check this out!
Syllabus Response
Going into this class last Wednesday I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had signed up for this class to get rid of one of my requirements and didn’t even know what multimodal composition even slightly entailed. I know that this is a new class and is being taught due to the ever changing world of communication and technology. In fact even as I write this I needed to check to make sure I’m spelling “multimodal” correct and my spell check is still telling me that I dont know how to spell it right.
The coolest thing that I thought that we talked about in class is that we will be able to do our projects for the most part on whatever strikes up our interest. Too many times in college so far has the curriculum been so strictly based on certain subjects and do not fully allow a student’s creativity to take over. I’m looking forward to doing research on something that I enjoy and find out alot more in the process.
Overall I think that this class is going to be a lot of fun. I’m a huge fan of technology and computers so its going to be great for me to be in front of a screen all class period. As long as I stay on top of my assignments and put in the hard work that I’m capable of doing, I hopefully can expect to get an A in the class. However that is not to say that this class is going to be easy by any means. I’m expecting to have to spend quite a bit of time outside of class in the computer lab as well as more time tweaking projects late at night in my house. This is going to be a good semester!
Blog Layout
For the layout of my blog I choose the theme called “Dusk.” I opted to not have any widgets and keep things simple in the way in which they are laid out. The reason why I chose “Dusk” as my theme is because blue is my favorite color and I liked how the blacks and silvers contrasted with one another. A lot of the other possible themes stuck out too much and were too bright for my taste. As previously stated I like to keep things as simple as possible…
