This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 12 Jul 2007, by Ole C Brudvik.
-
12 Jul 07
-
Ripping, mixing, and burning present a topological approach to composition in which one can articulate a process, replete with mechanisms, but do so without reducing writing to a discrete set of practices. That is, unlike invention, arrangement, and revision, ripping, mixing, and burning are not steps, not even recursive steps. Nor are they deterministic in their products in the sense that invention is where ideas are produced, arrangement is where those ideas are organized, and revision is where “correction” or clarification occurs. Instead, they describe the unfolding, the composition, of thought as it moves from a virtual, undecided state and becomes articulated in the conscious as language (an unfolding that includes the material, technological act of writing)..
-
Ulmer’s text extends on the theme of navigation by relating an anecdote regarding Albert Einstein. At the age of eight, Einstein received the gift of a magnetic compass. The memory of this gift was forever vivid for him, as “in retrospect [he] recognized the symbolic value of the compass gift since he of all people became the one to explain the physics of the electromagnetic field that caused the action of the needle” (Ulmer 2003, 21). This anecdote becomes a starting point for a project that arcs through the text, the production of a web site in which students investigate their own sources of creative energy and their relationship with institutions of what Ulmer terms the “popcycle” (essentially the primary ideological apparatuses of our society). Where the compass charts the currents of electromagnetic energy across the surface of the earth, Ulmer’s widesite charts affective currents in the intersection between the body, the conscious, and institutions. The widesite experiment, if successful, produces a tool for affective-proprioceptive attunement whereby the writer can navigate affective currents. The widesite operates as a compass, locating the pull of the popcycle, but like the compass, which does not require the user to go north but provides orientation for moving any direction, the widesite enhances the user’s cognition of cyberspace.
-
he first two are familiar approaches to autobiography or memoir. The final approach demonstrates how the example is not about my life, the material, but about the composition method and the mode of literacy/electracy to which it points. Only here can one grasp how a new media, rip/mix/burn, pedagogy can extend the teaching of cultural studies and post-process composition.
-
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.