Task: Considering what you have learned during this week, change the semiotic mode of the first task (What's in your bag) to a different one. Additionally, this task has to be delivered in audio form or, at least, not exclusively visual. Avoid simply recording yourself describing the image, instead, think about the original purpose of the task and redesign it, as entertained by the New London Group. Reflect on the potential benefits and challenges of engaging in mode-changing and describe your own redesign process.
Reflection
To mode-bend this assignment, I chose to mix the semiotic language of film with the oral experience of my daily household life. I chose to use available designs from a free library of video resources provided by the website I used, then redesign them by cutting them together in a new sequence and overlaying them with sound.
I chose to use both sound and image because it was difficult to represent my “backpack” assignment (which I had already altered to be “what’s at my kitchen table”) through sound alone. Drawing from the New London Group, who said “In some cultural contexts - in an aboriginal community or in a multimedia environment, for instance - the visual mode of representation may be much more powerful and closely related to language than “mere literacy”.” (1996) I chose to include an image slideshow. Adding images allowed me to offer the viewer more as well as make the three minutes more interesting than if they were only listening to the soundscape.
For the sound portion of the video, I spent a few days recording common sounds in my kitchen in the evening between 6pm and 9pm. I then arranged and overlapped them to create a new soundscape, indicative of a “normal” evening if you were sitting at my kitchen table.
The New London Group talked about the “conversationalization” of public language; as “private lives are being made more public as everything becomes a potential subject for media discussion”. I wanted to riff on this idea of the breakdown of public vs private spaces. The audio portion of my video is highly intimate, it’s a private glimpse into my own life and household. On the other hand, this is a direct juxtaposition to the images/video I chose to use, which are highly generic, public access video clips.
This brief video leverages Visual meanings as well as Audio meanings that are both very recognizable. The images are mostly simple, easy to recognize activities, such as painting, cooking, biking or walking through the forest. The audio is also recognizable (to the typical Western ear) as being the comforting and familiar sounds of a quiet evening at home.
I felt that the use of this audio created some tension with the images, because they don’t really make sense with each other. For someone unfamiliar with the assignment, the choice of these specific images don’t really relate to the audio overlay. It’s only if you know that I’m trying to represent aspects of myself and my life that the two come together to form a coherent meaning.
I did try to link the two by choosing clips that have a dreamy, desaturated feel to them.
Overall, I'm not hugely satisfied with this creation. It was my first time using any kind of audio mixing program and I ended up reverting to a very simplified option because I found the other programs too difficult to parse. I’m also not sure that the video and audio express as much as I hoped they would. A better choice would have been to take my video of “the mundane” in my own life, but I don’t have any experience with video editing either, so I chose to tackle one new thing at a time.
References
The New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. (Links to an external site.) Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.
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