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Previous Blackboard Items

This will be the home page and virtual blackboard for COMP 5250 for Spring 2003.

You'll of course want to take a look at the course syllabus and think of any questions you have.

On Tuesday, we'll talk about the first major project, Annotation of a Text.

I much prefer to give you tools rather than rules, but let's review the page Rules to Set You Free and think of them as "enabling restraints"

Today, we'll learn how to create links to open a Javascript window for our annotations.

Journal Entry #1. Who is the audience for your annotation project? Who will want or need to read the original text? What value might your annotations provide to them as you insert yourself between the reader and the text to provide supplemental information, insights, or images?

In class today, I'll ask you to create a set of folders like these on your Zip disk

The Annotation of a Text is due to be posted to the Web by Sunday, Feb. 2 at 6 p.m.

Today, during class, please post a draft (a.k.a., a "BETA version") of your main Annotation of a Text page to the Web and view it with a Web browser to make sure you'll be able to post the final version between now and Sunday at 6:00 p.m. Post the URL and your name in a message to our discussion board, in the discussion titled "Annotation URLs."

Some useful pages in the Dreamweaver book (Towers) for posting to be Web:

  • Creating a Local Site in Dreamweaver, pg. 28
  • Setting up a "Remote Site" in Dreamweaver, pg. 551
  • Transferring files using the Site Window, pg. 554-555

If you use FTP to transfer files from home or some other Dreamweaverless place, you might need UMD's step-by-step directions for using FTP.

This morning you'll spend most of the time working on your first project and, as needed, helping others. I will also interrupt you once for an individual conference outside.

The Annotation of a Text is now due to be posted to the Web by Sunday, Feb. 2 at 6 p.m.

Today, we'll talk about Landow's Chapter 1. See also his Victorian Web project at Brown University.

Note that I've added a search function above to the class Web site.

Today, you'll post the URL of your Annotation of a Text project in a message to our discussion board, in the discussion titled "Annotation URLs." Be sure to include your name in the message as well.

Introducing the next project, the Verbal as Visual Project.

Today, let's extend the rhizome we began in the discussion "Three Plateaus" on the discussion board:

Consider the following:

"The problem, too, Derrida recognizes, is that 'one cannot tamper" with the form of the book "without disturbing everything else'...in Western thought" (47)

Giving Western thought its due for a moment, aren't there some advantages to the arboreal structure of the book and the achievements of book culture which we will forfeit when we develop our ideas in plateaus and rhizomes?

We'll continue working with Photoshop using the file "historyrocks."

Journal Entry #2: Chunking and Labeling the Visual as Verbal
So far with the Verbal as Visual Project, we've been focusing on the very necessary business of deciding on a visual scheme or a conherent set of design elements (repeated colors, fonts, visual motifs) to unify and give character to our pages.

Now, we should think about the over-all organization of the project, which is essentially a set of screens or slides, rather than a continuous flow of words that carry us naturally from page to page.

Notice in our example Seven how the index page (the first, main, home page) allows us to choose among four "loops" (three series of screens that develop the three main characters of the film, and a fourth, one-screen loop that introduces the idea of the site and its designer). This system of organization is a natural choice for "remediating" a Hollywood film that, like so many Hollywood films, is dependent on strong actors/characters. This choice of organization actually suggests an analysis of what the appeal and meaning of the film is based on (that is, one actors/characters, as opposed to plot, dialogue, setting, etc.). Being an analysis or commentary on the original text, the Verbal as Visual Project is like a piece of literary criticism, which seeks to "reconstruct a work in the image of its meaning."

This example leads us to ask: what are the component parts your own original text for Visual as Verbal (not just textual parts, but the thematic or aesthetic components of its meaning or appeal.

It also raises the interesting question of your index page: how will you make these component pages, loops or choices available in a visual as well as verbal way?

Journal Entry #3
To answer some of the questions above, take a look at the online handout cognitive mapping from the Ideas Site. Consider then the differences in cognitive mapping suggested by the navigation menus of the following Web sites of English departments around the country. Copy down on a page in your journal the labels used in the navigation menus on the first, index pages of these site.

What differences do you notice in the ways the each of the menus (the words, the labels, the chunking) distill and "normalize" the same discipline with different emphases?

Journal Entry #3 (again)
To answer some of the questions above, take a look at the online handout cognitive mapping from the Ideas Site. Consider then the differences in cognitive mapping suggested by the navigation menus of the following Web sites of English departments around the country. Copy down on a page in your journal the labels used in the navigation menus on the first, index pages of these site.

What differences do you notice in the ways the each of the menus (the words, the labels, the chunking) distill and "normalize" the same discipline with different emphases?

What are the dialogical oppositions (dichomoties) that define these differences?

Text to Hypertext Project
Our next project is the Text to Hypertext.

Workshop Thursday
On Thursday we'll workshop the Verbal as Visual Projects. What should we look for in each others work, both to recognize accomplishment and to suggest constructive revisions? From your own experience working on this project, what are the central challenges and opportunities of this project? Share your ideas via Webx in the discussion titled, "Verbal as Visual Criteria"

Diachronic and Synchronic

Text to Hypertext Project
Any questions on the Text to Hypertext Project?

Journal Entry #4. Believing and Doubting Landow's Chapter 3

1. Take a look at Landow's Chapter 3 for

  • one idea or passage about hypertext that you have trouble agreeing with or understanding and
  • one passage or idea about hypertext that you felt yourself immediately agreeing with

2. Paraphrase those ideas in separate paragraphs in your journal. Why do you think you resist one idea and respond to the other?

3. In his book Writing Without Teachers, Peter Elbow considers the role of (dis)belief in the "intellectual enterprise," which I summarize on the page The Believing and Doubting Games. Take a look at this summary.

4. Finally, visit our Webx discussion "Three Plateaus" and post either

  • a new message in the discussion to begin a new thread, or
  • a reply to a relevant message in an existing thread

In that message, try either

  • playing the believing game with the idea from Landow you disagree with or resist (be sure to cite the page number) or
  • playing the doubting game with the idea that you resoonded positively to (citing the page number

5. Finally, reply to the message of one of your classmates.

Today, we'll learn to put a search engine on your site (atomz.com). Choose "search" and then "trial account."

Journal Entry # 5. The author function

Let's think about the "author function," first,

  • by listing some words from the chapter by which Landow distinguishes print authorship from digital/hypertext/networked authorship and then
  • by testing these differences by comparing the "author function" of two satirical forms: a Saturday Night Live skit vs. a Web site like Black People Love Us.

Today, we'll learn to use Javascript rollover images to add interactivity to a page.

Let's review the upcoming projects we were discussing before the break: the Essay from Discussion Project and the Interactive Text project.

Geoff Ryman's Internet novel 253 is an example of a literary hypertext. Click on the first link, "Why 253?" to see Ryman's introduction and try to explore for a few minutes. Try to monitor your own responses (emotional, cognitive, whatever) to the experience of Ryman's hypertext, especially as they may exemplify Landow's ideas from Chapter 5.

We'll deal with Landow's Chapter 5 partly by working in our Three Plateaus discussion.

Today, we'll continue with the in-class activity we started last week...

Three Ideas from Chapter 5
Remember we had reviewed three ideas from Landow's Chapter 5:

  • Landow's challenge to the notion that disorientation is always a bad thing, and his argument (following Morse Peckham among others) that disorientation and difficulty is fundamental to the workings of art (117-118)
  • Landow's call for understanding how hypertext indicates changes of direction and what that new direction will be (the digital equivalent to words like "in contrast," "nevertheless," and "on the other hand" in conventional, linear writing). These "changes of direction" are called tropes, which in essence means "moves" (123-24)
  • Landow's claim that two of the most characteristic tropes (moves) of hypertext are "appropriation" and "juxtaposition/catachresis" (171-172, 175, 177)

Experiencing an Artistic Hypertext
Geoff Ryman's Internet novel 253 is an example of a literary hypertext. Click on the first link, "Why 253?" to see Ryman's introduction and try to explore for a few minutes. Try to monitor your own responses (emotional, cognitive, whatever) to the experience of Ryman's hypertext, especially as they may exemplify Landow's ideas from Chapter 5.

Online Discussion (toward the Essay from Discussion Project)
How did Landow's analysis about the tropes or "moves" of hypertext stand up to your actual experience of Ryman's 253? Chart your answers in our Three Plateaus discussion. If possible and appropriate, add to an existing discussion by replying to the last (or most appropriate) message posted to that thread. If necessary, begin a new discussion simply by posting a new message, rather than replying.

Online Discussion (toward the Essay from Discussion Project)
Look for the most recent postings from your classmates in the Three Plateaus discussion, and respond to each.


An Ominous Sign

Thumbnail Exercise
We'll do an exercise in creating a "thumbnail image" from a larger original. The point here is to create the thumbnail image so that when the viewer clicks it for the larger, more complete version, something happens in terms of the effect/meaning.

  1. Select an original to use for this exercise from among the following images, or pick an image of your own.
  2. Experiment with selecting portions of the image to save as a separate image
  3. Mount the thumbnail on an HTML page, and make that image a link to the larger image file. You might also include a verbal label that sets up and the effect. For example, look at Geoff Ryman's "Journey Planner" from 253 and see what you get when you click the link for "Gulf War Syndrome."
  4. Save the page and images to your "exercises" folder and send me the URL by e-mail.

Sample images:

Reading for Thursday
For Thursday, please Read George Landow's Chapter 6 (pages 178-218). Take note of passages in Landow that might describe your own experiences conceiving and designing your Interactivity Project.

Rob Wittig, e-lit author and researcher, will speak at the Tweed Museum's Lecture Gallery on Tuesday, April 15 at 10 a.m. Visit Wittig's site to see examples of his work. His talk is entitled, "Creation at the Crossroads of Literature, Design and New Media."

Interactivity is a Matter of Perception
Keep in mind that "interactivity" isn't simply a matter of technical functionality, but is an experience perceived. Consider the trAce Writing Group's Noon Quilt and this electronic version of the Gettysburg Address. What meaning and effects are suggested by interactivity? How is interactivity suggested by the meaning and effects?

Problem Solving
Today, we'll do problem solving in class on our Interactivity Projects.

Next Tuesday, April 15 at 10 a.m.
Rob Wittig, e-lit author and researcher, will speak at the Tweed Museum's Lecture Gallery on Tuesday, April 15 at 10 a.m. Visit Wittig's site to see examples of his work. His talk is entitled, "Creation at the Crossroads of Literature, Design and New Media."

Mapping Your Interactive Rationale (in 4 steps) -- Journal Entry #4
1. On a sheet of paper, draw a cluster/map of your Interactivity Project, showing the "forking paths" of choices among the pages, and indicating the interactive effects on the individual pages.

2. Then try to sum up in a sentence or two at the bottom of the page the rationale for presenting this content interactively. What was the point, for instance, of Peter Norvig's presenting the Gettysburg Address interactively, or what effects or meaning did Geoff Ryman achieve by telling the story of the train ride interactively in 253? What's possible interactively that's not in a straight linear text?

3. Annotate your cluster/map with some "tag lines" (with page numbers) that point to ideas and passages from Landow's Chapter 6 on Hypertext narrative. Is Landow's sense of narrative and interactivity relevant to your project (as one would hope)?

4. Visit the Three Plateaus discussion to add to a thread, or to start a new thread, that shares and develops these connections or complications. Be sure to include page numbers from Landow whenever you mention him (as a help to youself and others when you come back to this discussion later for the Discussion into Essay Project).

Today at 10 a.m.
Rob Wittig, e-lit author and researcher, will speak at the Tweed Museum's Lecture Gallery on Tuesday, April 15 at 10 a.m. Visit Wittig's site to see examples of his work. His talk is entitled, "Creation at the Crossroads of Literature, Design and New Media."

Focusing and Shaping Your Essay
We're turning now to the Essay from Discussion assignment. This is a chance to consolidate and reflect on what we've done this semester, and the immediate goal is to focus and shape the essay.

Journal Entry # 5: Clustering on Ideas
1. Look at the "Three Plateaus" discussion browse through Landow, and think about each of your projects of this class.

2. On a blank sheet of paper, map in a big cluster the major ideas, insights, experiences, distinctions and connections from the semester. Choose and feature the items to the degree that they interested or were relevant to you personally.

With this cluster, you're fishing around trying to find a particular issue or question that you're interested in, or that's relevant to what you do (or will do). What has surprised you in the projects that we've worked on, the readings we've done, what we've discussed in "Three Plateaus"? In what topics have the readings and your practical experience spoken to each other?

3. As you cluster, look for emerging centers of gravities that might give focus and purpose to what you'll write about.

Remember that you will have more to say about something narrowly defined than something vaguely defined. Imagine writing an essay about everything: you'd have hardly anything to say.

4. Now look at your cluster. Write a focusing sentence down at the bottom.

5. Turn the page over and write a quick, very informal paragraph that grows out of that statement, builds on it. With this paragraph, you're just thinking on paper, stringing words together to see where they take you.

6. After you finish that paragraph, stop and "step back" mentally. Read it over, make notes and additions. Then write a new focusing statement beneath the paragraph. What you're looking for is a growing sense of narrowing down your essay's focus.

Shaping (discussion)
With your most recent focusing statement in mind, look through the "Three Plateaus" discussion. How do we get the spirit of a multi-perspective "rhizome" discussion into a single-authored, linear text (tree)?

The challenge is not only one of making your point, but figuring out how you want to write the essay. There are conventional and unconventional ways of recognizing multiple voices in a linear, single-authored print text. Here are a few possibilities to get our ideas started, moving from conventional to radical possibilities. Can you think of other examples of print documents that contain multiple voices?

  • use the traditional academic technique of quoting and citing the other voices (Landow, your classmates from the online discussion) who support your point.
  • adopt a narrative form: tell the story of your developing idea in which your classmates and Landow are basically characters.
  • present your point through a dialogue or multi-subject interview (and edited and perhaps partly fictionalized version of the Webx discussion). Be careful, though, that you don't put words or intentions in people's mouths, and that you remember that your purpose here is to make your point, rather than just to replicate a dialogue.
  • depart from a linear text in print altogether, break up the page typographically, etc.

Definition and Derivation of Political
French. politique (14th c. as adj) political; Latin. pol{imac}ticus; Greek.pertaining to citizens, civic, civil, political, citizen city, state

Monologue, Monologic, Dialogue, Dialogic

There are interesting distinctions among these ideas. Consider the following explanation by Stanton Wortham of an example of "dialogical" writing:

Novels are built around double-voiced discourse. Bakhtin offers the following simple illustration from Book 2, Chapter 12 of Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit:

It was a dinner to provoke an appetite, though he had not had one. The rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and sumptuously served; the choicest fruits, the most exquisite wines; marvels of workmanship in gold and silver, china and glass; innumerable things delicious to the senses of taste, smell, and sight were insinuated into its composition. O, what a wonderful man this Merdle, what a great man, what a master man, how blessedly and enviably endowed - in one word, what a rich man! (TDI, 304).

In Bakhtin's analysis, this passage begins with a "parodic stylization of high epic style." The first two sentences might echo the thoughts of Merdle himself - Merdle the self-satisfied businessman, who fancies himself as important as royalty. The italicized portion is "a chorus of his admirers in the form of the concealed speech of another." These words echo with the voice of Merdle's hypocritical admirers, who sing his praises only because they want to share his wealth and fame. Bakhtin calls the last seven words "authorial unmasking." Here Dickens replaces all the earlier praises with the single word "rich," and thus shows the irony of Merdle's view of himself and the hypocrisy of his sycophants.

The Doctor and the Guinea Pig
Today, you'll sign up for conferences on Thursday to discuss the drafts of your
Essay from Discussion projects. Since these are experiments, however, it's useful to have more than just my response.

So, I'll ask you to exchange papers and read what your classmate's come up with. We all know, of course, that this is a draft, that this is not a finished product but a work in progress. Still, since you can't hear the sound of your own voice, it's helpful to bounce some material off someone else.

Once you've read each others' work, I'll ask each of you to tell me--as someone who hasn't read the draft yet--what you think it's saying and how it's saying it.

Basically, you're serving as both a doctor--who's mercifully but rigorously examining the poor, shivering thing in its underwear--and a guinea pig, the first trial reader whose reactions will help the writer and me to decide what comes next in conference on Thursday.

Journal Entry #7: Preparing for Conference
Following up from reading and discussing your drafts, take a few minutes now to write down your ideas for the next draft of this project. What do you intend to do next? What do you want to talk about in conference? Bring this entry to conference on Thursday.

 

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