This week’s mission required us to rework an extract from Plato’s Phaedrus:
The first step in this process was to modernise the original text. I did this in OneNote, working up my translation alongside the original:
This process of reworking and reinterpreting helped me to fully grasp the nuances of the original which, at first pass, felt a little impenetrable in places. Once this was done, I opted to use eMaze; if I’m truly honest, the rationale behind the choice of tool was that it was one of the first results in the list of sites which was returned when I Googled ‘presentation tools’. Our Moodle site was down and I couldn’t access the lists of recommended tools, so I opted for expediency.
This is the resulting presentation:
The aim was to suggest connections and parallels between Plato’s text and the internet. One of the things I was keen to try and achieve was to allow the images and the videos in the gallery to serve to critique Socrates’ criticisms of writing; I also hoped that the reader would be encouraged to play in the gaps between the text and the ‘paintings’ and develop their own response both to Socrates’ arguments and to the artefacts within the multimedia gallery.
My experience of creating the presentation was enjoyable; I knew that I could let the images and the videos do some of the work for me. I was crafting somethi
ng academic but the crafting was more immersive and less pressured than writing alone; it was more more creative. I could exploit and revel in the gaps. I didn’t have to worry about creating a closed text, I was, instead, laying out the start of a discourse: I was inviting the reader into the spaces and they were going to have to do some of the work in creating meaning:
Hi Helen,
That’s really interesting. I can see the possibilities of emaze, I might have to have a shot with it for developing some of my course resources. I had a bit of trouble reading some of the text though, maybe something to do with embedding in wordpress?? Can you give me an example of what kinds of playing in the gaps might occur?
Thanks,
Velda
Hi Velda,
Yes: I was disappointed with how it looks when embedded too: it works much better in full screen.
In terms of the playing in the gaps, there is an exercise in interpretation to be done between the modernised Phaedrus text and the images/videos I’ve placed next to it. One of the most provocative is the inclusion of the multimodal essay about 4Chan. Stig, on the forums, interpreted its inclusion as a way of illustrating a descent into banality and nonsense (https://www.moodle.is.ed.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=10874). However, I see it as a way of exploring what the net is beyond the increasing structures and strictures (and ownerships) which bound it.
I like introducing spaces like these into digital writing. The interpretive gaps which can be opened up within multimedia texts are intriguing.
Best,
Helen
Hi Helen,
Thanks I’ve got a better sense of what you mean now.
Best,
Velda