Week 3
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“The text contains many instances of repeated words and meaningless words such as “I was like”, “yeah”, and “I guess”. They are signs that I have forgotten what I was going to say and trying to fill the pauses with something. Written storytelling can be modified and refined to eliminate these instances and convey more cohesive meanings. While it may “destroy” the memory, it can also “restore” the memory (Ong, 2002, pg. 15). In addition, it mediates the progression of thoughts by providing time and space and fosters the development of “higher psychological functions” (Haas, 2013, pg.14) by encouraging “abstractness and precision” (Haas, 2013, pg. 12).”- Helen Zhang
Helen brought up an important point referenced above in this week’s task that I also had trouble with when oral storytelling and that is, the difficulty in trying to remember what you were saying in the absence of a written reference point in the story (Zhang, 2022). I found myself making similar “mistakes” to Helen in my dictation as I am not used to telling stories in a correct grammatical and sensible fashion when I am speaking (Zhang, 2022). Usually my oral stories are comprised of telling my friends and family what happened the day before and therefore include a lot of informal speech, idioms, pauses, trailing off, forgetting what I’m saying, jumping around to different parts of the story in a nonlinear fashion, etc. I wonder how important memory is in regards to oral storytelling as mentioned by Helen Zhang (2022) alongside Ong (2002). Maybe we depend on written text for memories and to free up our short-term memories leading to a lack of continuity or sensible progression in our oral stories. It may also be down to our culture of relying on physical reference points for memories and mental activities as mentioned in the following:
Vygotsky (1966) also saw psychological tools working culturally and historically over time. Casting lots,
finger counting, and tying knots as an aid to memory are all ways in which humans historically used
materially based objects in the world to support mental activities that have since become internalized:
decision-making, arithmetic, and recollection, respectively. (Haas, 2013, p. 15)
I think that at least in my instance oral storytelling might be related to practice and comfort both with the storyteller and the listener. The more we tell stories orally (and listen to them), the easier it may become in the same fashion as the way we write stories more accurately may be down to practicing “telling” stories in this way as well. I think Gnanadesikan (2011) makes another interesting point when she mentions the staying power of writing and how reading something written may stay in our memories longer in comparison to listening to spoken text in the following:
Writing represents language, but it outlasts the spoken word. The oldest examples of writing have lasted
over five thousand years. Others will last only until I press my computers delete key. But all have the
potential to outlast the words I speak, or the words I put together in my head. (p.3)
Therefore I think that as Helen mentioned, stories that are written seem to be more streamlined and make much more sense without the mistakes made when oral storytelling (Zhang, 2022). I believe both a lack of practice and our cultural emphasis on writing things down to aid or substitute our memory are both strong components in the lack of progression in oral storytelling in the western culture.
References
Gnanadesikan, A. E., & Wiley Online Library. (2009;2011). The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet
(1. Aufl.;1; ed.). Wiley-Blackwell, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444304671.ch1
Haas, C. (2013). The Technology Question. Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy (pp. 3-
23). Taylor & Francis, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203811238
Ong, W. J., Hartley, J., & Ebooks Corporation. (2012;2002;2013;). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of
the word (30th anniversary; 3rd ed.). Routledge.
Zhang, H. (2022, June 4). Task 3 voice to text task – Helen. Text Technologies: The Changing Spaces of
Reading and Writing Helen’s exploration. https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540helenzhang/2022/06/04/task-
3-voice-to-text-task-helen/
Week 4
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“Mechanized forms of writing allow for flexibility as you can always go back and correct or change content without the reader ever knowing (that is unless you are tracking changes). Writing by hand does not provide that flexibility. The forms of mechanized writing highlighted by Bolter (2001), all require some contemplation by the writer. Errors would be indelibly included in the stone or parchment. There is something unique and real about tracking such “errors” that perhaps provides insight into what the author was thinking.”- Sam Charles
I chose this section of Sam Charles’ work this week to link to. I found it interesting that although he mentioned the strength of having the affordance of flexibility when writing on computers or mechanized writing to change/delete content, he considered writing by hand inflexible in this sense (Charles, 2022). Although I do agree I find it more difficult to edit, erase or cross out certain words and phrases when writing by hand (and it may appear less pleasing to the eye) rather than simply pressing ‘delete’ or ‘backspace’, it is something that can certainly be done, albeit not as conveniently.
This notion of hiding mistakes led me to ponder, when teaching or raising children we often encourage children to make mistakes as we stress that this helps them to visualize where they went wrong and how to learn from these mistakes. If we were to simply erase them before anyone were to see, or prevent ourselves from seeing them again, how can we see our progression and growth in terms of learning from our mistakes in writing for example? Would this then encourage a culture of seeking perfectionism similar to that of how social media may influence the way people strive to look perfect with filters and body alterations?
I agree with Sam’s point about how visualizing errors or mistakes in ancient scrolls or prehistoric cave markings/art could provide insight into the thoughts of the author (Charles, 2022). According to Schmandt-Besserat & Erard (2007), Paleolithic symbols were used to communicate meanings and important ideas and thoughts to others concerning their beliefs (p.8). That being said, if there were mistakes or unfinished work, perhaps the meaning transmitted to the audience was altered. I further that mistakes made in writing/symbols add insight into the humanistic nature of making mistakes and that conveying thoughts by any medium may afford certain benefits and also certain drawbacks. No medium will ever be able to completely convey the exact tone, visualization, intent, etc. that was originally sparked in its entirety as the human mind in which it was born.
References
Charles, S. (2022, June 7). Task 4: Manual scripts (and potato printing). ETEC 540 Workspace.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/samcharles5402022s/2022/06/07/4-4-task-4-manual-scripts-and-potato-
printing/
Schmandt-Besserat, D. & Erard, M. (2007). Origins and Forms of Writing. In Bazerman, C. (Ed.). Handbook
of research on writing: History, society, school, individual, text. (pp. 7-26). Routledge, https://doi-
org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/10.4324/9781410616470
Week 6
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“…emojis and minimal wording could accurately and interactively retell an entire movie in a matter of minutes.”-Katherine Kelly
This week I chose to link to Katherine Kelly’s emoji story task. She represented the plot of her media choice (book) using emojis laid out in the actual shape of a leaf which corresponded to an important visual element in the story she was describing, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This therefore gave an additional clue via this added visual representation as to what the plot of her story was about. I really enjoyed the way she presented her plot via a very simple emoji combination and how she thought outside the box for presenting it with solely ordered images in contrast to my own work where I still used the conventions of writing by dividing my plot into short sentences with punctuation.
When I created my own emoji plot I feared that others wouldn’t understand my plot as easily in the absence of conjunctions and punctuation and having viewed Katherine’s presentation I now realize that that was not necessarily the case. Katherine mentioned in her task that in the Bolter (2001) article it is stated that images can bypass written work altogether, and I agree having viewed her plot in her chosen presentation style (Bolter, 2001, as cited in Kelly, 2022). This difference in presentation style allowed me to see that using solely visual representations in different ways can create meaning in the same way as traditional texts as I mentioned in my own reflection Bolter (2001) echoes this view when explaining, “…images now replace the meaning once held sacred in written words” (p.56). Contrary to my initial beliefs when completing this task, I can now conclude that a simplistic presentation of images, free from most conventions of traditional writing (other than order of which they appear) can actually be easily understood by the audience without any further adjustments or add-ons.
References
Bolter, J. D. (2001). The breakout of the visual. Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the
remediation of print (pp. 47-76). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110
Kelly, K. (2022, June 18). Task 6: Emoji story. ETEC 540: Text Technologies.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/katherineetec540/2022/06/18/task-6-emoji-story/
Week 7
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“ASMR is a great example of using a multimodal pattern of meaning making as proposed by the New London Group. This type of video relies heavily on the audio-visual components to create a relaxing space. Many ASMR videos also have a strong linguistic component of soothing narration. Then, due to the focus on materials (and their proximity to the viewer) ASMR lends well to gestural and spatial meaning-making as well.”-Sage Capogreco
This week we learned about the different ways in which changing the actual presentation mode of information can change the message of what is being presented as the classic quote from Marshall McLuhan reads, “The medium is the message” (1966). I chose to link to Sage’s remake of her original What’s in my Bag? task for this week’s reflection as she chose a different way of presenting her information than that of my own which I found interesting.
Sage chose to use audio, video and gestural modes to showcase the items in her bag similar to some of the methods I used in my own representations (Capogreco, 2022). By doing so, she thereby created a multimodal representation of her information in line with The New London Group’s notion of meaning making through multimodal design (The New London Group, 1996). However, Sage added a unique twist on normal audio recordings by using an ASMR technique throughout her video.
Although Sage described briefly what ASMR was, I still didn’t really understand the crux of it and therefore researched it a bit more to get to a deeper understanding of what it was and its intended purpose or outcome. According to Wikipedia, ASMR is: “Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), sometimes auto sensory meridian response, is a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia” (“ASMR,” 2022). This type of sensation can be induced by audio visual means through listening/watching people whispering (about anything), watching people partaking or performing everyday tasks, people grooming you, etc. (“ASMR,” 2022).
I thought this was an interesting angle to choose to present the task in a new semiotic fashion and enjoyed learning about this type of popular video style or genre of audio-visual content. Sage presented the content of Task 1 in a different way than the original task, therefore appealing to a wider audience of learners who may be more auditory learners or visual learners (Capogreco, 2022). Sage also challenged the idea of how presenting content in a particular way depends on what the intended outcome of presenting that information is. For example, if the intended outcome is to present information in a way to help people relax and improve their mood, then this would be of benefit however, if the intended outcome is meant to be the same from the creator of the original visual task which was, “to prompt the viewer to begin to construct a narrative about the person as they view them, and then refine that narrative based on the contents of the bag” (Brown, 2018), then this may actually hinder the intended outcome. I say this because the intended outcome of ASMR videos is to create a sort of meditative trance or even to induce sleep and boost moods and not to actually concentrate on the words being spoken or the visuals being presented as such (Smejka & Wiggs, 2022). As the instructions for Task 7 were to change the original purpose or outcome of the original task, I think Sage did a good job at showcasing this in a way that was quite different to my own thereby allowing for another perspective or lens from which to see this particular task.
References
ASMR. (2022, July 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASMR
Brown, E. (2018). Ellie Brown Photography and Artworks Ellie Brown Photography and Artworks. Retrieved
July 12, 2019, from Ellie Brown Photography and Artworks website:http://www.elliebrown.com/
Capogreco, S. (2022, July 3). Task 7 – Mode bending: ASMR redesign. ETEC 540 Webpage.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sagecapogreco/2022/07/03/task-7-mode-bending-asmr-
redesign/
McLuhan, M. (1966). Understanding media; the extensions of man. New York :Signet Books
Smejka, T., & Wiggs, L. (2022). The effects of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos on
arousal and mood in adults with and without depression and insomnia. Journal of Affective
Disorders, 301, 60-67. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.12.015
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard
Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
Week 8
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https://kelcievouk.wixsite.com/my-site/post/task-8-golden-record-curation-assignment
“I do think the Golden Record is very indicative of its time because all the people who worked on this record were white men. They did do their best to include ethnic music and brought in an ethnographer (also a white, American man), so the record does include people of colour, which is amazing. However, with hindsight, it still reads as very “American” to me.”- Kelcie Vouk
I chose this section of Kelcie’s text to link to this week. She brought up a point that resonated with me being that, the record itself seemed to have a disproportionate North American influence compared to that of the other countries and cultures featured on the record (Vouk, 2022). I realized this when sifting through the song choices in order to select my own curation of ten songs from the given twenty-seven. I found I knew more songs than I thought I would because there were about four that were from North America which, when considering the vast languages, countries and cultures around the world this seemed excessive when curating a record to show the diversity of life on Earth to an audience of extra-terrestrial beings (I found it hard excluding all the different countries when trying to narrow my selection down to solely ten!).
It is true that English is the most spoken language around the world according to Berlitz (2021), and perhaps that was the original thought behind including more musical tracks from Canada and the USA where English is the primary spoken (or in this case sung) language as demonstrated on three of the included tracks. Or, perhaps it is just the bias of the producers of the record itself who were English speakers and maybe couldn’t see past this bias when curating the record. Either way, it was not something I wanted to repeat in my own curation and helped me to become more aware of this potential bias to include ‘familiar’ sounds while disregarding the premise of The Golden Record which was to create a record showcasing the diversity of our planet.
According to Trancozo Treviño (2020), “There are nearly 7,000 languages and dialects in the world, yet only 7% are reflected in published online material”. This notion reminded me that having a disproportionate amount of North American sounds and songs is a reflection of this lack of representation to those that were not included on a record of this magnitude but also a reflection of the societal bias in disregarding these languages and dialects in other published media. The consequences of which can be described in terms of lack of representation in regards to language on the internet for example as described in the following, “This reduces linguistic diversity online to a handful of tongues, making it harder for those that speak one of the excluded languages of the internet.” (Trancozo Treviño, 2020). That being said having a disproportionate amount of songs from one geographic area can also be seen as exclusionary in nature even if the audience is extra-terrestrial beings.
We’ve seen that lack of representation can also result in power struggles and a disregard for the importance of other cultures whether it be lack of musical representation, language representation of historical representation as echoed in the following, “what counts as legitimate knowledge is the result of complex power relations, struggles, and compromises among identifiable class, race, gender, and religious groups.” (Apple, 1992).
Thankfully through reflecting on past societal biases in representations of cultures and sexes in the media through this task as Kelcie pointed out, we can begin to correct these biases (Vouk, 2022). Dr. Smith Rumsey brings our attention to the fact that some underrepresented groups who have found their history and contributions underrepresented in the media, in this instance the internet, have also taken it upon themselves to try and fix this gap such as Carter Woodson (Brown University, 2017, 26:50). Carter is an African American scholar who has begun to upload and include important cultural documents and artefacts to preserve the African American culture and reclaim their digital presence through this newfound representation to current and future audiences. (Brown University, 2017, 26:50). Perhaps by continuing to reflect and take action against underrespresented and marginalized groups, we may even curate a new more representative Golden Record for the next launch.
References
Apple, M. W. (1992). The text and cultural politics. Educational Researcher, 21(7), 4-19.
Berlitz. (2021, September 2). The most spoken languages in the world. https://www.berlitz.com/blog/most-
spoken-languages-world
Brown University. (2017, July 11). Digital Memory: What Can We Afford to Lose? [Video].
https://youtu.be/FBrahqg9ZMc
Trancozo Treviño, M. (2020, April 14). The many languages missing from the internet. Retrieved
from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200414-the-many-lanuages-still-missing-from-the- internet
Vouk, K. (2022, July 5). Task 8: Golden Record curation assignment. Education.Technology.Research
ETECetera…https://kelcievouk.wixsite.com/my-site/post/task-8-golden-record-curation-assignment
Week 9
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“The three songs that were seemingly the least popular choices which were only chosen twice are Track 8: Men’s House Song, Track 17: Well-Tempered Cavalier, and Track 27: String Quartet No. 13 in B Flat. I, like most people, did not include any of these songs on my list. My reason was that I was looking for only one song from each continent and there was another song I liked better from these songs’ continent of origin, but I am curious to know what my classmate’s reasons are. Did these songs simply fall through the cracks or are they more or less disliked?”- Erin Duchesne
This week I chose Erin Duchesne’s work to link to. She too was curious in examining the outliers of the data in this week’s examination of The Golden Record self-curation quiz. Her reasoning started off as similar to that of my own reasoning for not choosing these particular outlier song choices which was that we both decided to choose other songs to represent the continents to which these songs came from to include on our own curations of the record (Duchesne, 2022). However, Erin explained she chose alternate song choices from Europe and Oceania based on liking them better than the other songs from those continents (Duchesne, 2022). It’s hard to determine exactly what she meant by that as liking can be interpreted in many ways from liking the sound to liking the instruments or perhaps liking the emotions evoked when listening to a particular song as well, etc.
I differed from Erin in the sense that I excluded these outliers for different reasons. I excluded The Well-Tempered Clavier by Bach because after listening to the Twenty-Thousand-Hertz podcast I found that the alternate Bach song Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 had the potential for a more diverse reach being that it is also a mathematically significant composition (Taylor, 2019, 8:45). Therefore it made it a more inviting choice over the other European songs to both reach other beings in our universe that may have different anatomies or hearing capabilities as well as including a German composer and song choice to represent the continent of Europe, showcasing cultural diversity on our planet alongside mathematical significance in tandem. As for excluding the Papa New Guinea track- Men’s House Song, I personally excluded it in favour of having been more familiar with the aboriginal Australian music having lived there and therefore chose Morning Star and Devil Bird instead.
Erin questioned why others decided not to choose these outliers as well (Duchesne, 2022). This also linked to my own reflection this week as we were asked to reflect on whether or not we could find the answers to these null questions within this particular data set. I explained in my own reflection that null choices, “…cannot be reflected in this particular data set because the data is only grouped on ‘choice of songs included’ and not the reasoning behind the unchosen songs. Any conclusions drawn can only be from those of the question asked.”
Finally, Erin’s reflection brought up another important outlier which was that our fellow classmate, Selene. She brought up the point that her data didn’t seem to fit into her community as grouped on Palladio (Duchesne, 2022). This is something I noticed as well but did not include in my initial reflection as I thought perhaps it was a mistake and would be corrected before the submission date of this assignment. Having seen that it was not and having looked at the data again, I see that Selene in fact chose all 27 songs from The Golden Record and therefore she appeared as the most connected in this network graph with her node appearing much larger and having much more connections to the other nodes on the Palladio map.
References
Duchesne, E. (2022, July 13). Task 9: Network assignment using Golden Record curation quiz data. Erin
Duchesne ETEC540. https://blogs.ubc.ca/erinduchesneetec540/task-9-network-assignment-using-
golden-record-curation-quiz-data/
Taylor, D. (Host). (2019). Voyager golden record [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty thousand
hertz. Defacto Sound. https://www.20k.org/episodes/voyagergoldenrecord