Prelude to a reading.

Exigence of the encounter: how do I respond to what I encounter, “building in encounter-possibilities” (Sirc 15)?

Temporal Liner Notes:

Blog writing where “passion” or “love of” are not the motivating forces of the composition (though “interest” sparks the composing process). Experiments in new media composing is the motivation. I encounter texts through new media. I respond accordingly. These albums are albums I have encountered at some point in different ways, but I do not listen to this music today. I am not responding as fan or in appreciation of an aesthetic. I am responding in general to an idea or point I have encountered.

Escape

Some Enchanted Evening

Ridin’ The Storm Out

As a series of assignments:

• Pick a record you have listened to, once owned, or have some other relationship with that does not have to be based on taste.
• Using the year of the record’s release, research other events - personal, historical, public - also from that year.
• At the point of pattern formation (where you see a reoccurring idea, image, point, concept, word), juxtapose the album with the various moments your research produces.
• Write a series of temporal liner notes that show the pattern.

Liner notes may be composed in a blog space (daily entries lend themselves to shorter compositions joined by united theme) or on paper. Project could easily be divided into three sequenced tasks/assignments:

• Identification of albums and their importance
• Gathering of research material
• Overall juxtaposition and delivery of liner notes

Assignment informed by encounter. Pattern formation (McLuhan, Ulmer). Juxtaposition (McLuhan, Ulmer). Temporality (Gilyard). A writing “along the bias” (Brodkey). Noise over settled thesis (Davis). The creative or imaginary (Walker, Corder, Bishop). Popular culture as model for writing or “to recognize the greatness in our country’s popular materials” (Ray, Sirc). “Moving through moments in the hopes of finding an understanding” (Sirc). Imaginary in place of “the fit” as response (Vatz). Critique as textual response (Harris). Image/Text/Blog (Yancey, George).

Overall outcomes (in addition to what our class readings teach me):

• Exigence (what to respond to)
• Invention (how to respond)
• Research (gathering of material for response)
• Arrangement and organization (putting material together)
• Delivery (presenting material to an audience)

Another kind of musical project with similar inspiration:

The syllabus: 1020.doc

From this week’s readings:

The encounter. The gatherer. The designer.

The one who is totally involved

• Web surfer
• Mystorian
• Visual designer
• Blogger
• Virtual flaneur
• Writer

The one who makes writing social. Identity moved from tutorial (student to teacher), solipsistic (student unto herself), or mere just doing the work (student as nothing more than empty category of “student”: one who fulfills the task). A pedagogy of encounter as declaration of identity: alter ego assignment.
Four areas made social: A major idea that has influenced. Popular culture. Major. Personal story.

Encounter of four areas one already works with but not in relationship to one another produces identity already in existence: alter ego.

Encounter with method (research).

Encounter at the point of juxtaposition (McLuhan). The details or noise that one notices (Davis). The play with form/appropriation of form (Ray). Response of one area with the next (Harris). Moment of personal insight via pattern (Ulmer). Creative production (Walker, Corder, Brodkey, Barthes). Underlife - areas that are often not emphasized as dominant (R. Brooke). Meta awareness (Hartwell). Institutional (auto) biography (Miller, Gilyard). Circulation of ideas through various points of delivery (Latour, Trimbur). Rhetoric of hyperbole (Vitanza). Research that moves away from expert model (C. Brooke). Designed in wiki (George). Ideas/research collected (Sirc). Using popular media forms to compose in a new key (Yancey).

Encounter of theory to produce pedagogy (invention).

Encounter with exigence (Bitzer, Vatz): what do I ask students to do? Or in voice of student: what do I do?

Overall outcomes (in addition to what our class readings teach me):

• Exigence (what to respond to)
• Invention (how to respond)
• Research (gathering of material for response)
• Arrangement and organization (putting material together)
• Delivery (presenting material to an audience)

Encounter with (an almost) semester long series of 8010 readings as involvement (letting each idea be involved with the next for invention purposes).

Reinvolve. Reencounter. What else would come out of the mix?

Some key pedagogical features:

• Total involvement
• Pattern formation
• Expanded perception (categories blur)
• Extension of self (voice, but also thought)
• Playing R-O-L-E-S
• A time/space for crossing boundaries/barriers
• When two or more things are put into juxtaposition, the results are startling and effective (post, link, comment, response)
• Small world networks (the global village - a tough place to live because we are totally involved)
• Moving inward as an enclosed expert (centripetal); or moving outward as a networked agent (centrifugal)
• A different type of dwelling place (ethos as network).  Living mythically and in depth.

• How might a “thing” gather moments of concern?
• How can this gathering or circulation turn into writing?

Greil Marcus: Dead Elvis.

E.B. White. Here is New  York.

Images, ideas, places, things, people, moments, all travel. They circulate. One response: write with the metaphoric image, not against it.

A list of possible practices. Reading inspired.

• A Burroughs-inspired pedagogy (Vitanza): The Nova Technique: “The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts”
• Paralogy (Vitanza): Pedagogy on the margins (Davis discussed noise).
• A pedagogy that interpellates: Being John Malkovich,  Being Consumer, Being Student, Being Rebel, Being Anti-Consumer, etc. (Berlin).
• Ideology (Berlin): Identifying ideology in any situation. There is no “just a course/just teaching” moment.
• More Burroughs-inspired pedagogy: “For God’s sake don’t let that Coca-Cola thing out.”
• A pedagogy that lets itself laugh (Vitanza).
• Uncovering the codes (Berlin).
• Curative fiction (Vitanza).
• A pedagogy of paralogic rhetoric (hyperbole, dissoi logoi, etc) (Vitanza).
• Hamburger pedagogy (Berlin via Shor).
• The parallel of hamburger pedagogy (Berlin via Shor).
• Eccentric writing - all writing practices were once eccentric (Vitanza).
• Working around universal pedagogy - or the idea of it - (Berlin/Vitanza).