Last day

So I'm sitting in the computer lab on the eve of the project's due date, and I'm wondering just what it is I've accomplished over these last several weeks.

I think about all the Spinuzzi, Gee, Circ, and Vielstemmig I turned to for inspiration and direction, but none of them seem to really capture what I have done, nor what we as a group have done. In the end, I am left with a number of snippits of text that speak to and with our project and my part in it, but a project that in no way comes from any one or two of these texts. It has become its own thing, whatever that might mean.

"Thus, genre is formed by the meeting of history - the past genres from which the present genre evolved - and addressivity - the changes language users make in response to events" (Spinuzzi 297).

Have we created a genre? I'm sure I can't say, but I can say we have created something new out of something old, something multivocal out of something thought to have fewer forms of expression. Poems are thought to have two distinct modes of expression - the text can be read or spoken aloud. We have added a distinct, rather unconventional third layer. This third layer becomes even more interesting when different styles from different artists are put next to each other; just as different poets use text in different ways, now their originality has an additional outlet, and the end result is something, I believe, even more representative of the unique perspective of the poeist.

"If we (finally) journey away from the linear norm of essayist prose, [...] where do we go" (Circ 114)?

Let's revisit the images I posted earlier. In order to fit the comic genre we are working within, my images had to become cells on a page. How does this change things? How do I structure text to fit within this box system instead of the typical linear format?

---

---

My answers to these questions came as the work progressed rather than as a part of some kind of design or pre-fabricated plan. In doing "what seemed right" what I found was that I often broke lines in different places than I did in the linear form, and sometimes I repeated key words at the end of one cell and the beginning of the next. Sometimes I felt I just needed the word to be in two places at once. Also, spoken text now came in "speech bubbles" instead of the usual quotation marks. I can't say I know exactly what all this accomplishes, but it sure was fun to create, and I think it makes for a much more powerful reading experience.

Serio-ludic, as I understand it, refers to a balance between work and play. If we as a group did nothing else, I think we managed to walk this line well. Considering the massive amount of work involved in the project, I think it is play and play alone that got us through. If it wasn't fun, it's likely I (or perhaps all of us) would have ended up looking very much like one of the dead people in Lydia's poeticomic (My severed head exists in the comic, by the way - and it links to something if you can find it.)

To close, I think I would like to quote a bit from the Vielstimmig piece:

"Multiple authorship still implies an Author: shifting ideas about coherence still imply coherence; changing media for writing still imply writing" (Vielstimmig 94).

After spending so much time on this project; after seeing something old of mine become something new, and investing such a large amount of time not only in my own words and images, but in the words and associated images of all those involved in this project, the idea that multiple authors somehow become an Author with a capital "A" makes perfect sense to me. My own work has been so greatly influenced by those I worked with that I can hardly claim sole ownership of it anymore. As distinct as each style is, both textually and visually, each seems to be part of a larger coherent whole, and while this kind of writing is certainly new and different, it is still writing. This, I believe, is what collaboration is supposed to produce.

---

---

Works Cited

Sirc, Geoffrey. "Box Logic." Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Ed. Anne Wysocki, et al. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2004. 111-146.

Spinuzzi, Clay. "Pseudotransactionality, Activity Theory, and Professional Writing Instruction." Teaching Communication Quarterly 5.3 (1996): 295-308.

Vielstimmig, Myka. "Petals on a Wet Black Bough: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay." Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Cynthia Selfe. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2000. 89-114.