Projects

Over the course of the semester, you will complete four projects – three solo (albeit with audience feedback) and one collaborative. We’ll cover each in more detail as we get to that point in the semester, but here are the broad strokes:

Soundscape Narrative

For the first project, you will arrange layers of sound to project a sense of place, and of things happening in that place. The genre of the narrative you convey is open: it could be documentary, fictional, even science-fictional. (The title you choose will help steer listeners’ expectations, and thus their perceptions.)

(h/t to Kelsey Cameron for this assignment.)

Visual Argument

The second project asks you to make a claim through the juxtaposition of images and text. As with the sound project, the context for your argument is open: you could be making a social commentary, calling for action, constructing a parody, riffing on a pun, explaining a concept, inviting someone inside, and so on. Whatever you choose, you should consider your audience and what they would find persuasive or interesting, and how you therefore wish to attract and direct their attention.

We’ll talk more about possible constraints in class.

Website Portfolio

For your third project, you will build a responsive website using basic html and css files (as opposed to a site manager like WordPress or Wix), along with any media assets you wish to embed. One relatively straightforward option for this unit is to stage and present the materials you produced earlier in the term; depending on your needs and interests, however, you can also develop this into a more sustainable and public-facing platform from which to manage your online identities.

Consolidation / Integration

Throughout the term, I will periodically ask you to write blog posts thinking about how to integrate – and extend – what you’ve learned about composing across digital media. For the fourth project, you’ll build on top of what you’ve already made and learned: a revision, extension, or combination of the modes and media you used in earlier units. The unit goals are (1) to integrate and consolidate the skills you’ve practiced across the semester; and (2) to assess your own skills as a digital media composer, to find ways you in particular might best contribute to a collaborative digital project (perhaps in the future). Collaborating on this project is optional, but encouraged.

Final Reflection

The last assignment for the semester is a reflective letter to me, articulating your learning in the class and illustrating your claims about learning by calling attention to features of your compositions or your process. The goal here is less a restatement of what you’ve already written than an opportunity to think synthetically, across units and into the future.

As the semester goes on, we’ll add detail to these assignments and link out to examples. Baseline and aspirational criteria for each project will be developed collaboratively in class.