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| by Anne Frances Wysocki, et al. |
I was trying to piece together Wysocki's definition before she directly stated it, and I kept noticing her references to the composer/writer's role in utilizing available materials. (For example, on page 7 she states that writing teachers “can bring to new media texts a humane and thoughtful attention to materiality, production, and consumption, which is currently missing”; in expounding what new media lacks, Wysocki seems to be indicating what to her definition is absolutely necessary: human thoughts manipulating and interpreting available means.) I also noticed a theme of visibility—in essence, that new media is writing's “material designs” (13) made visible. These themes seem to play prominently into Wysocki's ultimate definition of new media texts as “by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality” (15) in order to draw reader attention to the text's production.
I'm liking Wysocki's definition of new media largely because it speaks to my own concern about losing the human element in advanced technology. Wysocki foregrounds this concept, stating directly that she want new media to maintain a strong human agency, not to merely be technologically-composed products. Her definition—that new media is text specifically produced with an understanding and foregrounding of the material options available for production—makes human agency inextricably linked to what New Media, at heart, is. (I'm sorry, is anyone else finding themselves wanting to capitalize New Media—even though Wysocki doesn't? I must analyze this further...). By this reasoning, new media texts do not have to be digitally-produced, despite the sense many may have of new media as exclusively dependent on digital production.
I like this definition, because it makes even someone as technologically-remedial as myself capable of producing new media projects. (I could write with crayon on construction paper and it would fit Wysocki's notion of new media, provided that I produced that text intentionally, with a clear sense of the whys and hows of its purpose and audience effect.) That said, I don't think that just because Wysocki defines it that way, others would embrace my crayon-construction paper effort as new media, particularly if it were compared with the shiny video essay somebody else shot on their iphone, even if it covered the same subject as my crayon opus. (And no, I don't really know what I'd write about, or who for, that would best be served with crayons and construction paper. I'm still a new media fledgling.) Wysocki quotes Manovich's alternate definition of new media, which focuses it solidly outside of human intentionality, as “graphics, moving images, sounds, shapes, spaces, and texts that have become computable” (18).
Uh oh. My crayon opus ain't gonna cut it in Manovich's class.
So while I prefer Wysocki's vision of new media (a definition that “encourages us to stay alert to how and why we make these combinations of materials, not simply that we do it” [19]), I'm not sure it will carry the day as far as composition theory goes, given that digital technologies tend to whip us into a collective frenzy of the cool and computable. For too many people, just that we can (or, I suppose, at least they can) use advanced technology is enough to make it mandatory, without significant attention as to why. If a focus on how and why can help us maintain a solid connection to the kinds of rhetorical principles we try to teach regarding alphabetic writing, and if we can sustain a sense of human agency amidst all the shiny technology at our disposal, new media may yet maintain the “humane” vision Wysocki hopes for.
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”And New Media's heart grew ten sizes that day...” |
Hi Amanda,
ReplyDeleteLike you, I'm drawn to the idea the "new media" doesn't necessarily mean new technology, but instead an emphasis on the materiality and agency inherent in different types of texts / medias.
As you say, this ensures that human thought and insight isn't separated from technology such a definition also inspires us to consider multiple forms of media and communication in terms of rhetorical / material consciousness. How much compositional awareness goes into the production of a particular textual or iconic object. More importantly, how is that object read in terms of materiality / agency.
Good post that got me thinking.
"For too many people, just that we can (or, I suppose, at least they can) use advanced technology is enough to make it mandatory, without significant attention as to why."
ReplyDeleteThis is so perfectly worded, and it allows me to digress a bit:
There now exist jobs that are devoted entirely to social media. (I have a friend from undergrad who makes OBSCENE amounts of money simply tweeting and making goofy videos for Pancheros.) These people are paid to communicate professionally on the internet. Where are they taught the rhetorical skills--or the grammar or the importance of word choice--that helps them become successful? The composition classroom, of course!
I think my point was that so many people have jumped on the technology bandwagon that it is now unclear who should be responsible for teaching it. Or that what we are already doing in the composition classroom can transfer to any discourse community. Or that learning rhetorical strategies in essay writing can transfer. Something along those lines.