WORKSPACE
9/8/16
Summary of Fraser Article:
Fraser believes that the public sphere is a meaningful and growing place for people and political theory and that modern liberal ideas have flaws. The three things she finds problematic are, one, the idea that social equality is not necessary for political democracy. Two, single public spheres are more preferable and we should step away from competing publics. The third is the idea that discourse should be restricted and nonpublic ideas shouldn't be allowed. Fraser also states that none of these things would stand up to criticism. The author then goes on to talk about how the moderns think there should be only one sphere, however with inequalities that wouldn't be possible. Minority groups have found other outlets creating more spheres.
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9/12/16
Out of the Wire:
1. You always want to guide your interviewee to get to a deeper story. Ask them things about place and time
2. When editing make sure you follow regular speech i.e. if you cut out pieces make sure there are breathes at the end of sentences.
3. Always record room sounds, no talking, music, etc. just the regular sounds in the room so you have some blank space if you need during editing.
4. It's natural and okay to write too much information, it will be helpful when editing
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9/15/16
I find it very difficult to share about myself because more often than not the bad memories cloud the good ones. While I was writing I found that there wasn't much I remembered about my childhood. Of course I have memories, but it was really difficult to pick out smells or a favorite food, partially because it had been a while and partially because I rarely think about it. While choosing what to share I decided that this entire class journey is leading up to me wanting someone to share something that I'm sure is hard to talk about and I need to let myself be open about the good and the bad so this person feels comfortable enough to talk to me. It's not going to be something I accomplish over night so this poem was a great place to start even though I really didn't want to. The things that were most revealing I think were the statements about family conflict. It taught me to be independent fast and made me figure stuff out sooner than most kids had to. That is a huge part of who I am. I grew up fast and when I was younger I thought it was the worst thing ever, but today it may be some of the things that saved me.
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9/19/16
What is the easiest thing to talk about?
What surroundings make you the most comfortable when discussing your story?
Did you ever feel unsafe discussing things?
Would you rather discuss it straight through or is breaking it up better?
Is it better to ask questions that or general or slightly more specific?
How can someone best support you when you get really emotional?
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9/26/16
People are people, no matter what they've been through. Reading people's body language and voice will help to tell when someone has had enough or when they need to take a break. They're also there to tell you about their story and they volunteered to be here so don't be afraid to ask questions. Sana had said that she was never afraid to say anything because it would make the story not genuine and she didn't want that. Most likely the people we interview will be the same way. A good thing to hear from them was about not faking your story or taking out pieces because you don't want to feel badly. Our stories make us who we are and everyone is different. Some are good and some are awful circumstances that happened, but no matter what that's who we are and we should never feel guilty for that.
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Part two: The main comment after having my piece listened to was that it sounded a little muffled in headphones and after listening to it for the first time using headphones I greatly agree. My plan is to re-record it with proper recording equipment and hopefully that will fix it. I also may lower some of my sound effects' volume depending on how it sounds with a new recording.
10/13/16
Part 1: I'm the worst and forgot to read.
Part two: I was already very aware that I wanted to show the interviewee as more than just the devastation that they tell about. People are complex and it's important to show them as exactly that. You don't want pity reactions, you want empowering ones. Something that is going to make difference, more than just "wow that's sad what's going on". I want to show viewers that the person we talk to had a life before and has a life after.
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10/24/16
Sound can echo in a piece and it adds another layer to it adding more depth. Sound is metaphorizied as the deep sea because it travels and adds dimension. We need to think about sound in our video stories because it can make or break a piece. A piece with the storyline that all of ours will have is strong on it's own. Sound should enhance it, not take away from it and if we aren't careful it can do exactly that. I feel like sound is one of those things that can be over used and it becomes cheesy after a certain point. It is part of the piece itself in the way someone breathes or the silence we create during the interview. Pauses, breaths, and complete silence add an effect in so we may not need to reach out to other sources.
11/10/16
1. Most of the feedback received from classmates was spot on with with what we were trying to saying and the meaning of our message. When it comes to the stuff we need to change, it is all stuff my group and I had talked about. We knew for the second draft we needed to find music and put it in and we were back and forth with what we wanted to use. I'm still not sure we totally love the music we picked, but it's something to start us. Some comments were for adjusting the volume and we knew that was probably something that would need to happen. Overall the feedback was good because it justified the conversations we were having.
2. My outside viewer was a great help. She understood what we were trying to accomplish and also gave helpful feedback. She wasn't confused about anything, but talked about how maybe transitions could be used and how the music was a great start, but we definitely need to look at it more. She thought it was a good balance between story and what's being done about it today. She was very intrigued by the projects we are working on and gave lots of support for what we're trying to do.
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11/14/17
Part 1:
Oral history is a story told my mouth a vocals. It's not a plain text, but one you hear by ear. It think oral history has to be co-construced because even if it's your own life stories, unless you were a hermit you have memories with other people that shape who you are today, or the time of your story. To "map coherence" onto the "disorder of lived experience" is to make a timeline on someone's life. Life is messy and not everything comes when it should or happens the way it should. It shapes who we are and as people we naturally progress and digress in our life. Yes, we pass year after year, but that isn't to say that events or people from our past come to our present and we don't necessarily need to know how or why, but more the impact. To "map coherence" is to make sense of life. A struggle that everyone has, but particularly with oral storytelling because it has to make complete sense for an audience to understand.
As we work on the Quest for Refugee project all of us in class have faced these similar questions of how to preserve a life. These people are so much more than the crisis they went through and it's crucial that our audiences see that. To understand where they are now, we need to understand where they came from. Sometimes it's as simple as where they are from and sometimes it's much more complex than that. Getting a number of years into a few short minutes means that we have to cut some stuff, but you have to be careful what you cut and what it says when you cut.
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Part 2:
This project helps me think about multimodal writing because it possess everything that goes into that. It has audio, visual, text, music, sound effects, etc. It shows how much creativity can go into it and how different aspects tell different stories. It helps to think about public audiences because as I went through the final part of "The Olive Project" I realized that, though the timeline was consistent, it was hard to follow because you could pick so many paths. Something that may make sense to you because you're the author may not make sense to anyone else. Cool concepts are only good if they work out.
A person's life is the most precious thing they have. Everything that they did or happened to them makes them who they are. Representing that is a huge, huge, huge task. You gain control to make them appear a certain way to an audience and you never want to do anything that puts their name in vain. Life is precious and at the end of it all, the only thing left that people have are the memories of you. This project helps show the different emotions you can make people feel about a life and how you can still capture the beauty and chaos and make the person come out on top because ultimately that's what you want to do. They are the hero of their own story and they must been seen that way. This project helped confirm the concept that people are more than the bad things, but they are also the funny stories and memories. You can tell the dumb and not so great things they might have done, but at the end it's still about how the person ended up. If the purpose is to show their success then that's what it needs to do. Don't make them the villain if that's not your intention. All people have a dark side and I'm sure Olive did too, but did we see that? No. That's because we weren't supposed to. You can't change a person's story because you think it'll be more intriguing. A genuine story is much more entertaining and important then a fake one.
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11/17/16
1. The purpose of this article is to show that something isn't always what it appears to be and the way we try to convey something is key. It helps communicate this purpose by the way the webpage is set up. Listening to people talk about different meanings and metaphors is a new way of storytelling. It's much more meaningful when you have multiple people to back up what you're saying.
2. Some things I found from the second half to be the most interesting were "Ham Sandwich" and "Every Second Time." "Ham Sandwich" was interesting because it was an obscene metaphor and it grabbed my attention from the start. I wanted to know why he called it what and what the purpose of doing that was. That is what multimedia writing is partially about. How quickly can you get someone's attention, especially in pieces that can only be a few minutes long. The second piece caught my attention in the title. It reminded me initially of the saying "You can't make a first impression twice." Upon listening and reading it though, I discovered that it was talking about different approaches. It was interesting to hear that the term multimedia was a bad thing. In our generation we take in so many senses just when watching a movie. It then continues to say that every time he shows something to someone or a group of people the second time is always different from the first.
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