In today’s era of constant technological evolution, the ‘digital generation’ use various Internet platforms to seek information. With easy-to-use online tools, participatory cultures are able to produce creative work in emerging digital forms. These new forms of digital media are becoming the dominant way of writing and learning among the digital age. In a transitional time from a culture of print literacy to digital media literacy, young adults are focusing on electracy using imagery to deliver their message. Old approaches to writing are shifting resulting in the creation of new pedagogical tools that use imaging to express style of thought. These apparatuses should be used together, instead of as oppositions. Technology is only enhancing what we already know, so we need to embrace new composting techniques.
Throughout the curation of digital media on tumblr, I witnessed public pedagogy at work across different online platforms. The curation of group work has shown me how the ways and reach of speech are now greater. Through social media networks like tumblr, twitter, and facebook, they provide platforms for inventing, creating, and sharing endless amounts of informaiton. Peer-to-peer learning allows students to personalize content, so they have a better understanding of the material. By remixing and mashing up content, composers are required to draw on multiple modes of meaning-making resulting in a better understanding of the new form of expression.
The digital composition of mashups uses speed and rhythm as an effect. For example, the mashup of Game of Thrones theme with James Brown’s single, “It’s a man’s man’s man’s world,” uses speed and rhythm to create an effect. The concept dromosphere comes into play here because everything is connecting, including the speed of the digital network and experience. This composing technique is not created by simply going fast, but also by attending to the rhythms. By blending the two pieces, ‘the argument lies within the mashup rather than the explanation of the mashup.’ In turn, we learn from mashups for our own compositions. This multimodal media allows the composer to be free of the handcuffs of writing.
In addition to mashups, remixing allows for creativity by ‘rewriting culture.’ The second post was a remix transforming the 2001 press conference by US attorney general John Ashcroft on illegal immigration into a warning of alien invaders from outer space. It represents the importance of keeping rhetorical velocity in mind when composing. CNN most likely did not anticipate the content to be recomposed into a political remix challenging political and social power structures. The remix shows creative expression and allows for another way to interpret the content.
Maria Grbavac 