#material repurposing

This week, I chose to read and focus on the last three articles (Wysocki, Sheppard, and Ball). I definitely based this decision off of what the titles suggested, choosing to spend the most time considering ideas and arguments that would benefit my progression as a scholar more so than as an instructor (primarily because I am currently not involved in teaching). Wysocki’s “awaywithwords” was immediately interesting to me because of the design choice she made in the title itself and I was curious to see what she meant by “Unavailabe Designs.” I read Sheppard’s article because I found the direction of looking beyond skill in rhetorical work intriguing and wanted to learn more about his experience creating a multimodal website about the environment for children. Finally, Ball’s article stuck out to me via title as well, seeing as throughout every creative writing class I have taken, we were told to “show, not tell” and was curious to see how this could be applied to multimodal productions that usually tend to rely on the visual anyway. 

The arguments produced in each article intersect with what we’ve read in class because they strongly urge for the use of multimodal literacy in scholarly work, as well as attempting to guide the reader through ways to best accomplish this. Wysocki’s discussion of material, most notably when she says, “that it is always worth asking how our materials have acquired the constraints they. Have and hence why, often, certain materials and designs are not considered available for certain uses” (303), harkens back to our conversation about multimodal pieces being more than just technology. This is significant for me and what I am planning, as my final project is a physical piece. Not quite construction paper and crayon, but it uses material that would not be associated with what I am trying to do. (I’m being vague on purpose.) The Sheppard article falls neatly into the concept of collaboration that we have talked about, in which the use of rhetorical devices when making his website often conflicted with his own ideas and the reception of the audience, or between him and the scientists he was working worth. The collaboration process for multimodal texts works between both the creator/author and the audience, as the both change and interpret the text based on their preconceived ideas. Ball also works with items mentioned in class, mostly in regard to thinking beyond just text as the only form of scholarship. I specifically liked how detailed the author went into the “Digital Miltiliteracies” text and how she showed us the different rhetorical devices and concepts instead of just telling us what they were. While working outside of the academic box has its risks, Ball explains the benefits and necessities to doing so fairly well.