Well here it finally is, my RipMixFeed project. When making my project on photo-essays, I wished to include my own such work, but my project was already substantially over the allotted time and I didn’t have the time in my schedule to finish what I had started. But, I was intrigued with how the technology used to view different means of representation dictated what was possible. A photo-essay would look, and interact with the viewer, in a very different manner if it were in a magazine compared to being presented on a video, a webpage or a mobile phone. In my ETEC 565 course there were many predictions made about the exponential growth of mobile technologies and how these were to be the most frequently used forms of communication and technology to interact with newer digital texts. So, I wondered how a photo-essay made for a mobile phone might look compared to one made for magazines. Certainly, one can’t put as many images on a page and mobile technology doesn’t really invite prolonged reading, but mobile technology certainly has many affordances. I like that the viewer can take as much, or as little time, with each page as they wish. They can pause, summarize, make connections, predictions and inferences. It isn’t a full-frontal assault as are some newer multimodal texts which leave one trying to decode what are often different messages being conveyed simultaneously through several different modalities. I often find some of these texts overwhelming and unsettling. I love reading because it can be calming and relaxing. So, could such relaxing experiences be had with newer forms of digital text?
You can check out the prototype, which should be viewed on a IPhone 6/7 or 8 here:
https://xd.adobe.com/view/243dc7c5-934f-42de-5d8c-73b5ccea6762-520c/
I suspect the narrative for the “essay” is a familiar one. During my last week of school, it feels that it—particularly the marking– absolutely owns me. I hate it! Don’t get me wrong I love teaching, but these marathon marking sessions, right around report card time, frustrate me to no end. The fact is I don’t even recognize myself when I’m there. At this time of the year every thought in my head is not my own: I have students asking me questions, marking asking me questions (i.e. why is this only a “C+”), parents asking me questions, the admin asking me questions, my family asking me questions. My mind and my thoughts are not my own. People have fought wars over this kind of stuff: the freedom to think as they want!
Michael C.
