The New London Group (1996) made a salient distinction between different forms of design and linguistic modes. Notably, they discussed linguistics, visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and multimodal approaches. The diagram they provide highlights some of the distinctions and some of the overlap between different forms of design. What stood out to me was gestural and spatial design. This is because I tend to be a hyper-sensitive person, which means that I pay extra attention to small details that the majority of people do not, in a very short time span (i.e., 2-3 seconds). A lot of the details are gestural and spatial, like body language, tone, and expression. For this reason, I decided that I would try to complete this assignment by combining different modes, with the exception of audio. In this very informal video, I try to demonstrate to you why I keep certain items in my bag without speaking and while also keeping the video under 1 minute. I found this task difficult at first, it took like 5-6 takes to get all the items of my bag in the video, without accidently speaking. You will also notice that I have much fewer items in my bag since the first assignment. I pondered why they might be and concluded it is due to the fact that I often remove/add different items to/from my bag, and do not do a full “restock” until I need it. I have not been venturing out the past couple weeks, so this is probably why there are significantly less items. I also did not have cash in my bag, that’s because I spent my cash to tip my hairstylist a couple weeks ago…which is also why I haven’t been carrying around my hair (beard) comb, I chopped my hair!
The New London Group (1996) outlines that each of the multimodals discussed earlier have something very meaningful to add to a conversation or context. This highlights that the different modes of representation is beyond audio, hence it does not need to include language at all at times.
Speaking of language and writing, when working through this week’s readings about information overload, I couldn’t help but notice some of the relevance this has in scholarship. When I first started my undergraduate degree in 2013, finding literature on a particular topic took some time, especially if the literature you are seeking is specific. But today, I generally do not have any problems finding articles that are relevant to my research. It’s almost too easy and makes me question the reliability and validity of more recent research.
You can watch my video here:
