VLVC wk 4 - Multimodal Composition

Week 4: Multimodal Composition

Readings: 
1) Van Leeuwen, Theo. “A Multimodal Perspective on Composition.” Framing and Perspectives in Discourse. Ed. Titus Ensink and Cristoph Sauer. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2003.

2) Romano, Tom. Chapters One/Two: “Multigenre Stirrings” and “A Place to Start.” Blending Genre, Altering Style. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2000.

Thoughts as I go...
Holy Crap! When am I going to get time to read this?! Every time I start, I get interrupted and this is some heavy stuff to process! Yikes. But I was really looking forward to diving into Van Leeuwen and having some guidance as I read, so I will persevere! 

Whoa boy. My head is spinning. Not sure I really understand all that I read. I'm hoping having to apply it to a text will help. Now what to choose, what to choose...


Discussion Board Assignment: 

After reading Romano and van Leeuwen, please find and post an example of a multimodal text onto the Discussion Board. If possible, please try to choose a different genre/form than others have already posted. Limit your post to a single page (even if the full text is longer in nature).

Next, use van Leeuwen’s principles to deconstruct the manner in which the multimodal text has been composed. How is the designer attempting to influence readers’ reactions to the text?
The goal of this assignment is to get you thinking like a writer/designer/composer and help you “sample” a wide variety of forms and techniques you may want to employ in your own visual memoir (more information on this assignment can now be found in the corresponding folder). 

  Sorry so late everyone! I had to really mediate the two halves of my life this week, or rather, I should say three  - work, home, & school - with time for thinking/reading deeply losing out. 

The multimodal text I've decided to use is the music video "Mediate" by the Australian rock group INXS. "Mediate" is a song from their 1987 album KICK.The video comes immediately at the tail end of the hit song "Need You Tonight"segueing from one video into another. I chose this multimodal text because I wanted to pick something that also had sound, and because of the directive to try to find something different from what others chose (harder to do when you go last!) The video is an homage and inspired by Bob Dylan's famous video for Subterranean Homesick  Blues.

Here are a couple of stills form the video, please use the hyperlink above to see the video itself (or feel free to do a search on YouTube.)

  

Looking at the video using van Leeuwen's Principles of Modality definitely made me think about the visual in an entirely new way. Breaking down an image/text like this was a stretch for my brain who is much more likely to submerge itself into the experience and not analyze it. So here it goes, my deconstruction.

Intro: 

The video takes place in what looks like a construction site, or maybe quarry like space with dump trucks coming and going in the background. The figures are in the foreground, dressed like rock stars and not workers, and slightly set apart - which makes me wonder if they were on location or in front of a green screen. Each band member takes a turn flipping through cards that have words that illustrate the lyrics of the song, most of them rhyming with the word "ate." As the band member finished his turn he goes off somewhere in the middle ground so another can have his go. At the end, a lone saxophone player (Kirk Pengilly) enters from the left and plays out the song.

Information Value: 

The placement of the text varies only slightly through the progression of the video. It happens all on cue cards held by various band members at waist height, who come and go on screen. The song / text begins with the lead singer on the left hand side holding the cards at waist height. The song has also alternately been called "Meditate" and since the content of the words being shown is basically some thoughts to ponder, I wonder if the text is neither at the top nor at the bottom to demonstrate it's value as neither high, nor low - just some thoughts to meditate upon. The majority of the time the cards are held by someone positioned on the left side of the screen and the person that has already flipped cards, moves to the back. The first person, Michael Hutchence, moves to the right side of the screen.  Taking this in the context of the 'given' and the 'new', the text and thoughts on the cards is the given and the progression of the figure to the right as the progression and evolution of those thoughts to something new. Generally speaking, too, the figures move into the past (into the background) but also up higher on the screen giving more importance to the new thoughts that should come from having meditated on the meaning of the lyrics. One last thought about where the cards end up. After being said / read, the figure will fling the card so that it slips through the air (up mostly) and then lands on the ground (down). Could this not just be the obvious effect of gravity but also have added meaning? The flight through the air being these thoughts as ideal, but lofty and they are required to gain some grounding, landing then on the ground to rest and gain roots (which is distractingly very muddy.) Are they to evolve from the Ideal to the Real? INXS was known, like U2, for being socially conscious and activist minded. Was this their subconscious message?

Salience:

The cards with text have a high degree of contrast (crisp black text on a smooth white background) themselves, but also contrast against the heavily textured and colored back ground of figures and environment. The words are also originally situated on the left, giving them more weight (more importance?) as well as being pushed to the foreground.

Framing: 

The words are framed by the boundaries of the card they are written on, so separated from the environment, but I believe connected by the unity built into the sameness of the font and card. The disconnectedness of individual cards for individual words / thoughts builds more space into thinking of each of these items as its own special issue, but through their unity connects them as a train of thought worthy of consideration.

After the words have had a chance to settle from their flight, the figure that had been holding them is situated in the background and at the end is seen walking away, no longer a single person, but part of the group that is headed in the same direction. All through out the video, trucks have come and gone from this background, hauling dirt/rock/debris what-have-you. The transition from present to past to future invites the viewer to continue to think about the cause(s) presented by the group. 

Whew! This was a difficult assignment. Nick you weren't kidding when you said this was deep. I felt like I kept peeling back layers of an onion that kept adding layers and layers of meaning to something that before was just a nice piece of activist musical rhetoric. I could really use an infographic that lays all this out for me again. I'm so visual that I feel like I need to see this so I can fully comprehend it. I'm still not sure I am grasping it so that I could use it without taking my notes or the text with me as I look. Did anyone else feel this way? My Brain needs a massage - is this what firing new synapses feels like? I look forward to getting more comfortable with these principles and their use. 

  I forgot to add that I think the designer is trying to get us, the viewers, to think about these issues and then get to work by going out into the world to make change. 

Hope I covered everything now!

Responses from classmates - 

 (Amy Ruopp) - I love that you used this!  I actually fooled around with garage band to create a voice over for which I was going to use with my visual memoir while I created a smart build illustrating the progression of its development....  (if I have time maybe Ill go back and do that after all... Layers of an onion :)

You did well to deconstruct something so complex. Although it is not three dimensional literally, I feel like it is, maybe because of the added element of literal movement. Well done!