#multimodalmagic

[multimodalmagic]

[ASSIGNMENT] Multimodal Artifact Analysis Infographic

For this assignment, you will be using the vocabulary learned from Language of Multimodal Texts and the vocabulary and analysis tips from Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps Towards Rhetorical Analysis to analyze a multimodal artifact. Your analysis will be presented as an infographic series.

Your first assignment is to select a multimodal artifact to analyze. Advertisements in magazines, TV commercials, billboards, or even design packaging (cereal boxes) are all great options as it is usually easy to identify speaker and audience.

You will then draft at least 1000 words analyzing the rhetoric of your artifact. Consider all of the rhetorical situations that could be identified, using SOAPStone (Speaker, Occasion, Audience, Purpose, Subject, Tone), Aristotelian rhetoric (logos, ethos, pathos, kairos, telos), or the rhetorical triangle (writer, reader, purpose). Consider also analyzing the logic of the claims and unstated assumptions of the persuasion, the visual appeal, or even the word choice. Analysis requires you to not only identify the corresponding elements, but also make a value judgment on the efficacy of the author to persuade the audience.

Finally, you will create the infographic series with the free, online design tool, Canva. You can get inspiration from pop culture infographics, literary infographics, and more. Consider graphs, charts, "anatomy of" comics, exploded view blueprints, and other forms of data visualization. Also be deliberate in your use of fonts, color schemes, and layout.

-EB

[makeademic]

[RESOURCE] QR Code Book

If you are going to augment your zine with a QR Code, you can use it to link to a URL or text.

Try out Chris Fritton’s Why We Lose Our Hands letterpress-printed QR code and read more about it at http://tracejournal.net/trace-issues/issue3/01-royston.html

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] Wordpress Portfolios

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] War of the Worlds Transcript

Read along from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[ASSIGNMENT] Podcast Episode

For this assignment, you will record a podcast episode on our course series, Multimodal Magic. In your episode, you will feature your "magic" project, either via interview, narrative, discourse, or a combination of the three. Consider an audience of people looking to get involved in a cause. How can your podcast episode entertain, persuade, inform, etc.? What audio might you record for either ambience or diegetic sounds in the background? What sound effects might be most useful to incorporate? Consider what technology, setup, timing etc. you will need. Your episode should be anywhere between 5-15 minutes after editing, though you may record much more initially. If you are conducting an interview, prepare insightful questions ahead of time. If you are storytelling, write out the script including sound effects. If you are engaging in discourse, you should still have a list of talking points, and you may need to do much more post-process editing to remove awkward pauses, umms, etc. This will be available on Spotify, so consider what information is necessary for a public audience and what anonymity you wish to keep. In addition to the audio file, you will also need to design an episode social media square 800px by 800px in Canva, and will need to transcribe your podcast in a Tumblr post linked to your episode.

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[BLOG POST] NYT Playlist

I searched the NYT Playlist for “Little Mix” because they were a suggestion on Spotify from the music I listen to and I like their beat. The only entry was from November 23, 2018. I was unfamiliar with their song, Strip, and Jon Caraminica’s description was short yet linguistically evocative, “The British pop-R&B foursome Little Mix’s new body-positivity ode is loaded with faux-Beyoncéisms, smeared across a vogue-adjacent minimal house beat.” All of the songs on the playlist were new to me, but it was cool that many of the annotations traced the history of the genre, especially J Balvin’s ‘Reggaeton’ as the second pop-reggaeton crossover wave and Los Pleneros de la 21, ‘Camelia’ as a focus “on bomba and plena, the island’s historic musical forms” and even A$AP Rocky’s ‘Sundress’ as an “upbeat, psychedelic surf-rock [that] add[s] falsetto oohs and ahs to point it back toward the Beach Boys.” The annotation for CNCO featuring Meghan Trainor and Sean Paul, ‘Hey DJ (Remix)’ is hilarious, pointing at once to the absurdity of the collaboration, but also admitting, “why not? [since it] is amiable, feather-light and perfectly evanescent.” It’s also interesting to note how the writers selected songs that had kairotically relevant lyrics, like Anderson .Paak, ‘6 Summers’ about “a president who’s “tryin’ to start a war on the Twitter feed” and The 1975, ‘Sincerity Is Scary’ about “the ceaseless self-consciousness of a social-media universe [that] makes true connection ever more tricky.” The words “whispery,” “lullaby,” “coaxes,” “hushed,” and “evaporate” are all evocative terms to describe Billie Eilish’s music and vibes. Electronic music has always been odd to me, so this description “placing toy-piano tones against jittery drum-and-bass beats, swooping and sliding, racing and crunching, summoning blips and pizzicato and free-jazz saxophone and white-noise crashes” really explains the cacophany of Rrucculla, ‘Vestido de Párpados’ to me. Overall, this was a great introduction to a wide variety of the late 2018 music scene, lots of throwback, yet also experimentation with the definitions of “music.”

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[ACTIVITY] Annotated Magic Playlist

Create a playlist on Spotify with 8 or more songs that exemplify your idea of "magic." Then create annotations on a link Tumblr post with the titles of each song. Link to your playlist in your post. Design a playlist square icon on Canva and replace the automatically generated image on your playlist in Spotify. In order to brainstorm songs you might include, browse previously created playlists, use word associations, and connect to "magical" memories. You may also find it helpful to research a song's context, whether the lyrics represent an event in the songwriter's life, or was created specifically for a film. Pay careful attention to the order of the songs in your playlist. Are the songs ordered chronologically, thematically. etc.? In each annotation (~100 words), you may excerpt lyrics from the song. Also analyze the musical elements (instruments, vocalists, tempo, rhythm, melody, etc.) and explain how they connect to the idea of magic. Consider if any images, video clips, or hyperlinks might enhance your annotation as well.

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] 3D Printing with the Micro 3D Printer

Download and install the software

Connect USB to computer and power to outlet

Connect spool holder and load filament spool with filament over

Load filament end to small hole on the top of 3D printer head.

Select 3D Ink

Is there 3D ink in your printer? Yes

Set new 3D ink information by cheat code: P L A

What color is your filament? White

Please select spool size for insertion: Micro

Is this a new filament spool? Yes

Please select filament location: External

Select Open Model

Navigate in file explorer to .stl file and open

Resize and rotate model so it fits on printer bed

Select Print

Print Quality: Medium Quality

Fill Density: Low (Faster)

Click Print Button

Remove print from printer bed when finished!

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] Chris Fritton’s Why We Lose Our Hands QR Book

You can add QR codes to your zines to link to URLs or additional text (you could print the Qs in your zine and have the answers revealed in the QR code). There are free QR code generators online, which you can then download the image (JPG or PNG) and upload to your Canva design.

To read more about this book, check out Anne Royston’s Between Page and Screen, Hands: What it Means to be an Embodied Reader

-EB 

[multimodalmagic]

[ACTIVITY] Key Ring, Letters

For this activity, you will design a key ring named for yourself or a friend to 3D print. Add one shape besides the letters. Then combine all of the shapes together.

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[ACTIVITY] Prototype

As we read in Garnet Hertz' introduction “What is Critical Making? (Links to an external site.)”, critical making asks us to consider how or why we make, not just what we make. But in Hertz' view, a material object, or prototype, can also make an argument, perhaps even more impactfully than words alone. Simone Giertz encourages us to get rid of the pressure to make something perfect and jump in with enthusiasm. For this activity, you will design a prototype material 3D (printed or virtual) object that performs some rhetorical work. It could be a piece of swag to go with your zine and persuade people to join your cause. It could be a symbol of your project that you use in your video. It could be functional (playable instrument, turnable book pages) or aesthetic (keychain, bookmark), it just needs to relate in some way. Have fun with it!

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] 3D Printing

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

UF Students Make Magic with Creativity and Technology

UF students have been bringing magic to the people in their community through various projects by incorporating creativity and technology. Pictured above is UF GRiP (Generational Relief in Prosthetics), a volunteer organization that 3D-prints assistive devices (https://www.bme.ufl.edu/labs/grip/#)

Other projects include Capes for Shands Kids, Project Princess UF, and Dance Marathon.

How can you bring magic to someone’s day?

[multimodalmagic]

[ASSIGNMENT] ePortfolio (800 words)

For your final assignment, you will create an ePortfolio of what you have created and learned from this course. Your ePortfolio should consist of an introductory essay, the artifacts you made for this class, and reflective writing for each artifact. Your reflection should explain context, self-assessment (how have your skills developed over the semester?), and point to the evidence of your skills as well as challenges. Consider how you will organize your artifacts in sections (major assignments/activities, easiest>hardest, chronologically, etc.). Your ePortfolio should also demonstrate your ability to use interactive navigation like a main menu, images, and hyperlinks. The visual design of your site should reflect what you have learned from previous course readings and exercises. Your ePortfolio should be a mini-museum online so that visitors can see the work you did as well as your accompanying statements. We will learn how to use WordPress in class, but you are welcome to propose alternate ePortfolio hosting.

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[RESOURCE] YouTube Audio Library

Royalty-free music (some attribution required)

-EB

[multimodalmagic]

[ASSIGNMENT] Multimodal Video Project

For this assignment, you will film and edit a video about your magic project. This assignment combines the skills you have learned in Canva with the infographic and zine, and Audacity with the podcast. Consider how sound effects, music, ambient sound might enhance your project as it did the podcast. What infographics might you design to visualize data about your project? What other images or text might help your viewer? How will you capture footage? Will you conduct an interview, give us a behind-the-scenes tour, use stop-motion animation (potentially using your 3D prototype)? How does video, an inherently multimodal format, give you more space to explore your project? Will it be informative, persuasive, entertaining? There are iPads and cameras available for checkout from the libraries. We will be learning iMovie in the Architecture Lab, but you are welcome to use any video editing software you have available.

The time limits will depend on the video type. For example, a one-minute stop motion at 30 frames per second, will require quite a bit more work than a one-minute interview. 

-EB