Task 7: Mode-bending

This exercise was engaging with an unexpected process and surprising results/discoveries. Since the task emphasized an audio format, I did a simple line trace of my original image and chose to rethink my handbag objects in a more aural context. In some instances, without meaning to, this led me to a more personal and visceral expression of an idea and Postman’s notion of new technologies changing “the character of our symbols: the things we think with” (2011) resonated powerfully. Compared to the initial execution of this task, this version is messier, more intimate, abstract/confusing and less guarded. Much of this I would attribute to the change from purely writing to aural/multimodal.

After reading the New London Group’s manifesto and the idea that literacy pedagogy must now “account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies” (pg. 61, 1996), I was encouraged to explore parts of the task in my native language, something I have never done before. The medium of education and instruction has always been English throughout my life, so my innate (and unchallenged) assumption is that anything academic must be in English. Switching from writing to other modes opened up endless possibilities for exploring alternative expressions of my ideas – such as the sound of traffic. A simple idea with different representations depending on where in the world you are or which ‘lifeworld’ (The New London Group, pg. 70, 1996) you occupy.

Another example: when trying to depict the mouth freshener from ‘a taste of home,’ I did look up the Blue Ribbon jingle but found it too cheesy and commercial. It did not tally up with my feelings for this unique cultural item. So instead, I cut a short audio clip from an interesting YouTube video of a Pakistani man living in New York who ‘unboxes’ this quintessential Pakistani flavour and unexpectedly finds fifty Pakistani rupees inside. This would be worth about 19 cents in American currency, but his joy at the discovery is priceless.

This sound clip notably allowed me to think about identity and online presence at a metacognitive level, especially the idea that “meaning-makers remake themselves. They reconstruct and renegotiate their identities” (New London Group, pg. 76, 1996). Here is an elderly Pakistani man living in New York, with his own (popular) YouTube Channel, having difficulty reading English, ‘unboxing’ a distinctively Pakistani product that he seems utterly unfamiliar with. Added to this is the ‘intertextuality’ between my reading of this cultural artifact and his, which “draws attention to the increasingly complex ways in which meanings are constituted through relationships to other texts.. narratives, and other modes of meaning” (New London Group, pg. 82, 1996).

The new artifact still speaks my stories but in a different language than before, one which is perhaps less universal and more particular to me.

References:

Postman, N. (2011). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. Knopf Doubleday Publishing. (Original work published 1992)

Sabir New York. (2021, February 13). Pakistan pan masala | Pakistani gift | blue robbin pan masala [Video file]. YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vja83KLQXZs

The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.