Task 6 – An emoji story

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I chose to use my iPhone text app to type out my emoji story. I then sent it to my daughter (almost 13) to test it out. I took a screenshot and added it above. I relied on symbols to convey the basic message of title, characters and a basic plot summary. I started with the title purposely as I felt it gave a good clue as to which movie I had chosen. As I thought of these story elements and searched for appropriate emojis to use, most of the general concepts I was trying to convey in a single symbol were available to me in this particular app.

I had a look at emojikeyboard.io and tried to re-create the story using this application instead. Most of the icons I used in my emoji story (that I feel gave good clues as to what I had chosen) were NOT available in it. For this reason I think using my iPhone texting app made this task easy. The tools we have for use at our disposal are often the key to success!

I was struck by this quote from the Bolter reading this week – ‘the main point is that the relationship between word and image is becoming increasingly unstable, and this instability is especially apparent in popular American magazines, newspapers, and various forms of graphic advertisements’ (p. 49). In ETEC 542, which I took last semester, we examined how our own cultural exposures and biases influence our interpretation of most things we encounter, and text would be no exception. I think most people who lived in a Western culture, like myself, would be able to figure out my movie title based on my symbols, but people who live elsewhere in different cultures would not. What I feel Bolter is hinting at is that as our exposure to ideas and knowledge grows in our current times, we become aware of the fact that our interpretation of image and text can become quite subjective depending on our personal experience. So while in my mind the emoji for a particular hand gesture, let’s say, has a clear meaning for me in my cultural context, it could mean something very different in another part of the world.

 

Reference

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110