Texts in e-Tech and e-crit

Of course, the e-crit is a pun (see O'Gorman, E-Crit, U Toronto Press) on Derrida's ecriture [literally writing, but also that which mediates between message and reader, and how that ecrit has its own initiatives and visual non-phonetic non-logocentric paths] and on electronic critique. The question for us, how to appreciate the history of graphic design as a way to understand media-forms [oral, literate, electronic] historically and in terms of scholarly critical work. How will writing proceed as electronic forms now inflect even non-electronic forms? If scholarship must respond to, apprehend, and shape electronic forms, then what lessons does the history of graphic design offer us? What warnings? What clues? What paths to follow? Finally, if the issue is about the mediation [not some mistaken and over-simplified notion of sender/receiver], then how does design function over time, in the historical context, and with what specific elements? More importantly, Drucker/McVarish ask us to look in detail at concrete instances in an historical context -- it is that work that will make up the core of any study of texts and technology. Please comment and not sure where the conversation has shifted now -- to the webcourses site? offline? in person? or to other classes and concerns?

Drucker in context

Good e-vening, whatever time it is, I wanted to give you a very brief context on Johanna Drucker and on why we might include this history of graphic design textbook in our T&T course. First, Drucker has taught at Yale, University of Virginia, and a few other Universities; and, she is about to start at UCLA. She was an endowed Chair at UVa and worked closely with Jerome McGann there McGann, as some of you know, is a leader in digital humanities as well as literary studies [not just in one period, but multiple], and one of his many books is on the required reading list for T&T's exam list. Drucker began her illustrious career as an artist's book printer and designer. Her work is considered important in that area, and then she went on to start publishing histories of artists' books and visual poetry. She became the most important scholar in that area, and then started working more generally on information arts, and started to make the connection between artists' books and experiments in printing to new media. Her Chair at UVa was in New Media Studies. Her new position at UCLA is in Library Science. This year she is at Stanford U. I suspect from her new position she will begin to publish about digital archiving and the connection with book arts.

Why include a book artist and art historian in our course? The reason should be clear. She makes the historical lineage from the artists books and graphic design through electronic design. We live in an era when information, knowledge, and even trivial communication depends on graphic design for its expressive meaning not merely as ornamentation.

When I first came to UCF to design the doctoral program, we really did not have the pieces of the puzzle because T&T is such a new field with an emerging set of concerns and a history that is unfolding as we try to write its history.

We had the history of T&T as it relates to modes of communication (Ong, Havelock, and others), but we did not have the specific critical history to place the text. So, one could become easily confused that there was an unproblematic and simple relationship between neutral design and textual message. One could imagine that a message should limit the design to a supposedly clear unobstructed view of a given-pre-designed message. We need to remind ourselves regularly that there are problems with that argument, and that we cannot step outside history to produce a pure undesigned message.

Drucker/McVarish present a specific and detailed description of how design is not simply ornamental to messages.

The best response will be equally specific, detailed, concrete, and aware of the design as an expressive message.

If the work is as strong as module 1's then we might want to talk about publishing the results.

A Student Project to Look over

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~da344953/

This is a student website from my undergraduate course on Digital Rhetoric.

It is the undergraduate version of module 1, and also speaks to other issues.

Enjoy

Module 2

All good suggestions.

Please modify the module. Make your presentation follow the design of a magazine/newsletter -- WIRED a fine model or a newsletter. If you are familiar with McLuhan, then you might want to take a look at some of his experimental works like The Medium is The Massage that borrows from print advertising to discuss the networked world and how it will change the sensorium as well as rhetoric [the art of effective communication]. I know at least one of you is familiar with McLuhan, but if you are not, then please take a look at his work.

Instead of focusing on one chapter, please focus on one issue that strikes you as significant in the social history of graphic design. It can be something concrete like the use of writing tools or mechanisms or something more abstract like identity or time or space/place.

You might focus more on some chapters than others, but it is the themes and details that run through the entire history that I am interested in examining.

OK?

[btw, I was waiting for everyone to respond with an email to me about module 1 before I started to respond back in a trickle ... but now I think I might have left a few hanging waiting for everyone. So, write me again [if I haven't talked w/ you on email about module 1] or write me for the first time.]

Module Two Proposal

Please look at this sample of a potential way to post the work collaboratively, but with everyone doing their own work.

Paul Czech has suggested a newspaper format.

http://www.paulczech.com/t&tTimes/

What I would like now is to collect your ideas about what you can contribute (e.g., a 1250 word article on the ideas to focus on from module 2; an equivalent comic strip on the ideas to address in module 2; an equivalent advertisement; a video; or something else).

I would like to appoint Paul Czech as the technical editor, but we also need an editor and compiler of the issue -- looking for volunteers. Also, if you have some hidden talents, then let us know.

This is meant to be a way to graphically [or electronically] express complicated ideas about texts and technology in history.

OK, Go Slow Media

I only heard comments from three of you about the video blog idea. Those three were thrilled, and recommended that the rest of the class do all the difficult technical work [hahaha -- just half-joking]. They were scared. So, we'll wait -- but I do want to investigate electronic forms of representation [electronic representation in terms of Ong's schema]. I'm less concerned with technical skills, but wonder if we can begin to think of the writing as analogous to this second-orality. To consider the presentation of your work in terms of a change in the way we communicate? We no longer live in a culture dominated by print-based sensorium [print used as Ong uses it].

Only one of you has sent me a brief line or two on your intention in assignment one and what you accomplished, but nothing fancy needed -- just a sense that you thought about presentation [in terms of Ong and grammatology] as much as the content.

What I looked for in the projects was three columns [or the mention of three systems]. Beyond that I looked for a level of detail and nuance that would quickly and easily give the user a sense of what each of those three systems entail in terms of production, consumtion, and even in terms of identity formation. What I looked for in the time-line was a sense that you fully and completely appreciated key moments in the development of these systems and in the overlap of the systems. So, even now we have many oral cultural traditions thriving: learning to cook, praying or talking-in-tongues, singing, and more. Obviously, the dominant forms inflect [infect] everything, and I wanted the time-lines to express this intermingling as well as the development of each of the three systems.

Beyond that I want you to express the information using aspects from each of the systems -- well, especially the electronic system.

As you can surely witness yourselves, your classmates have set the bar very high. We should collect this work in a public place and allow other T&T students to study it and cite it -- certainly it would be useful for undergraduates and even K-12 students.

More soon. Why is it that the blog, email, etc. leads back to the epistlery or e-pistle?

Thanks

I've had a chance to look over all of the projects. I studied some of the projects during the day on Thursday multiple times. Amazing work. You should study each other's projects carefully. The level of design in some of the projects is remarkable, and the projects offer a copious summary of Ong's work and much more above and beyond the assignment's requirements. Individual evaluations will follow in email -- perhaps you can write to me with your self-evaluation -- not saying good or bad, but talking about what you intended and what you accomplished. In the meantime, please look through these remarkable projects. Thanks.

Those of you who are teaching now might think about how we could use these projects to appeal to students who very well might live most of the time in an electronic-orality. We might also think about how these projects could teach my colleagues who really have no idea of our doctoral program's focus, or why we should study technological change in terms of literacy, communication, or identity formation. You have gone far in answering that question in pithy and delightful ways. Congratulations.

Adam Fields - Assignment One (Ong)

Hello all, 

Here are the links to my timeline and charts.  I've confirmed that everything works in both Firefox and Safari, but let me know if you have another browser and I'll make the necessary arrangements.

Adam Fields - Ong Timeline

Adam Fields -  Ong Chart

I had loftier designs on the timeline (but couldn't learn the html to execute them), but I'm happy with how it turned out.

Maggie Cotto: Ong Module 1

Hi everyone,

All files are in pdf format. To view the timeline: right click> rotate clockwise> view at 150%. The chart and works cited pages should be straightforward. Thanks to John B., Sonia and Paul.

http://macotto.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/ongtimeline.pdf

http://macotto.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/ongmodule1mc.pdf

http://macotto.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/ongworkscited2.pdf

John Lamothe's Module 1

Here's my timeline and chart. Thanks to Paul and Sonia for the tremendous help.

The links should be live with the timeline. The video clips of McLuhan and Derrida are especially interesting in my opinion.

I posted the chart as both a Photoshop JPEG. Please let me know if there are problems viewing it in a larger format.

John L.