The theme I felt to be most important in Task 7 was taking an available design and redesigning it to give it a new meaning that is our own. I was immediately drawn to Marwa’s Mode Bending task. She very creatively wrote a poem and used visuals to describe the items in her bag to express her unique being, daily life and culture. Her poem beautifully illustrates her experience, incorporating all five senses.

I struggled with this task myself and really wanted to force myself to represent the items in my bag in a creative way that, yes, used different modalities than task 1, but also in a way that redesigned the entire presentation of just translating what was visual and semiotic to audio form. I felt that Marwa followed a similar path and truly transformed her available design into something special that represented her in more ways than just what was in her bag. Thinking creatively can be challenging. However, when we do think creatively, I think the outcomes tend to produce a deeper representation of ourselves. It is to create something that is completely our own. If we all wrote a poem, they would all be very different and in many ways, they would be a deeper reflection of who we are; deeper than just a description of what is visual or what we see on the surface.

Marwa’s redesign brought me back to week 2 and week 3. While listening to her poem being read out loud, her accent made me think of the poem read by Christine de Luca and how the enunciation and dictation create meaning. If I read her poem, it would likely produce a different meaning. In her reflection, Marwa says that she is not a person with linguistic intelligence or poetically gifted, but I beg to differ. The way her poem was read, in her voice, in her accent, gave it beautiful meaning and I think that if it were read by someone else, that meaning and reflection of her would be lost. Her rhythm, voice (volume and tone) and enunciation were very soothing and combined with the music and sounds, I could close my eyes and paint a vivid picture.

Choosing poetry for this task also made me think of Task 3 and our experience with telling an unscripted story. Poetry is scripted (and can take a lot of time to script), however, it has structure, cadence, and rhyme which are components that help us remember the story. Ong (1982, p.34) describes this as “mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence”. So perhaps Marwa’s poem redesigns her bags contents, or the representation of her and her daily life, into something that would be appropriate for an oral culture!

References:

Ong, W. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London and New York: Taylor and Francis Group.