ENG-R210: Introduction to Digital Rhetoric asks students to consider their relationships to technology and the ways in which the tenets of digital culture impacts their writing, making, thinking, and being. As such, the course is designed to get students to take stock of a range of medial practices (as well as mediation itself) and to develop multimedia authoring skills that will help them become effective and affective creators and communicators in a techno-saturated era. Further, this course draws upon concepts, terminology, and methodologies situated at the intersections of rhetoric and technology, media studies and art, aesthetics and computationality, with the goal being to develop not only technical abilities, but intellectual capacities for talking about those abilities and the decisions and processes that go into knowing, doing, and making in digital environments.
COURSE ASSIGNMENT – DIGITAL REMIX
You are to create a digital remix (in audio or audio/video formats) that responds in a meaningful way to the guiding inquiry of this course: What is (y)our relationship with technology? As per our in class discussions (and your own negotiated parameters), these projects need to utilize at least 3 different media elements (source material/found object), be 2-10 minutes in length, address the guiding inquiry, and be made available online.
Beyond those criteria, I would encourage you to think about the discussions in class so far as well as the course readings, and try to either extend (or intervene) into our orientations to this inquiry. As different authors have allowed us to discuss this relationship in positive and negative ways, to frame the matter ranging from technologies as tools to human-technology assemblages, the style, tone, and focus of these pieces can really run the gamut. But, as per our discussion of detournement and its relational value to rhetorical invention and digital media, I would encourage you to find ways to work in counter distinction to your source materials or to employ them as relays to some other kind of orientation.
These projects must:
– be made available online (via Canvas or other repository)
– utilize 3 different media elements
– be 2-10 minutes in length
– offer a response to the critical inquiry in this course
These projects will be graded in relation to the evaluative criteria we establish as a class. While these criteria are yet to be fully established, they will likely draw upon the Kuhn+2 model we learned about from Cheryl Ball’s article. Once we have agreed upon the criteria, I will add them to CANVAS.