Multimodal Texts and Remediation

The first thing that should be mentioned this week is the difference between a medium and a mode.

Mode = means of communication
Medium = the means through which it is communicated

5 modes include - gestural, audio, spatial, linguistic and visual ("Multimodal Literacy").

One of the focuses of this week is multimodal texts. A text is multimodal when it uses more than one mode. For example, dance uses spatial, visual, gestural and sometimes audio.

Another of the focuses for this week is remediation. This means moving a work from medium to another. For example, a written story could be changed to one consisting wholly of images. This is an example of a straightforward representation, a type of remediation without irony or critique - just a representation of the work ("Multimodal Literacy").

For example, the start of my story has a young child who is lonely and sad because her mother won't let her interact with other children. She is hidden from the outside world. To depict this I chose this image of a sad looking child.



This photograph was uploaded to the site Pexels by Mateus Bertelli.

This remediation also altered the mode from the linguistic form of writing to the visual form of images. The effects that this has on the audience also changes. The emotion can be conveyed through writing but many people are more affected by the emotional impact of images. However, this also serves to shorten the story and it loses some of its original meaning. Because it is now in images, it is up to the viewer to interpret what the story tells. Everyone who reads it will have a different interpretation so a different version will exist in each viewer's mind. Words achieve a greater accuracy than pictures.

Straightforward representation isn't the only form of remediation. There is also enhancement, which seeks to pay homage to the original work while also improving it. Transformation refashions the work while maintaining the original feel or 'vibe' of it ("Multimodal Literacy").

Thanks for reading this week's blog entry!

Works Cited:


"Multimodal Literacy". Education.Vic.Gov.Au, 2020, https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/multimodal.

Databases

What is a database? It means a set of data inside a computer. This set of data is usually accessible via an interface, the means with which a human interacts with the data. For instance, a webpage serves as the messenger between data and a person, and vice versa.

Databases shape the way we see the world in the modern era. The dominance of the internet is a major part of this. The internet first appeared as a way to store information, then became a 'world wide web' where databases from allover the world became linked. This was similar to a spider's web, thus the name. Nowadays the internet has more independent sites than linked ones.

Databases can be transformed into a narrative. The way this was explained in class was a bag of marbles. In the bag they are jumbled and we have no way of knowing which ones are where. However, if we take them out of the bag and put them in a line they are now in a sequence. This is a good analogy for how raw data is transformed into a narrative. The process of this is called an algorithm.

In traditional narratives such as novels, algorithm-like behaviour isn't required from readers. However, in a digital art form (see the previous post for information about digital art), there is an algorithm. An example of this is video games. The raw data information is converted into something humans can interpret via an interface. In a video game such as the popular role-playing game Skyrim, the player's narrative is not limited by what is there. The narrative is non-linear. This is different to a novel where the narrative is limited by what is physically there.

As technology develops we as humans are able to do things that were not imaginable before. We can interact with other humans who live on the other side of the globe in less than a second with greater accuracy than ever before. The increasing developments of databases and technology have had a profound effect on humanity.

Digital Art and the Question of whether its reproduction diminishes its value

First of all, we should start with discussing what digital art is. When most people think of digital art they think of drawings done on a computer or another digital medium. However, there are many more forms of digital art. For instance, video games, hypertext and short films are all forms of digital art.

Unlike traditional art forms such as painting, digital art is easy to reproduce. While traditional art forms would have needed to be reproduced by hand, a long process where there will always be subtle differences from the original, it is generally trivial to copy digital art.

In his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin argues that being able to easily replicate works of art diminishes their value. This is because the copy lacks the unique nature of the original (3). The original is depreciated by being copied as it also loses its uniqueness (4).

This is an opinion with which I disagree. In my opinion, the reproduction of art makes it accessible not only to the elite but to the masses. In old times such as the medieval era art was commissioned by the rich and powerful, a privilege which the poor did not have. I do not believe that anything should be reserved for only the elite classes. Art has often been used as a means of communication to the masses in the modern era, for example in cartoons and comic strips in newspaper.

One form of art which is important to look upon is writing. Up until relatively recently in terms of human history the majority of people were illiterate. The invention of the printing press in 1440 allowed for much easier reproduction of written texts. This in turn allowed for the masses to become more educated and think for themselves. It was around this time that schisms in the church began to appear as people were able to read the bible by themselves rather than having it read to them. This meant that ordinary people could interpret the text on their own rather than a religious figure morphing it into whatever message they wanted.

In summary, the increasingly simple reproduction of art does not diminish its value, but rather allows art to be available to a wider audience. This means that ordinary people have the power to interpret art as they will, rather than having a member of the elite class interpret it for them, carrying their own message. This has led to increased freedom of the working class.

Works Cited:

Benjamin, W. (1969 [1936]). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Illuminations. Ed. H. Arendt. New York, 217-251.