Moving from production to reflection

With story-production complete, we move this week into the reflection part of the learning cycle via a final reflection assignment. Then, looking ahead to after this week, we will shift into discussion and critique mode as we focus on each other's stories.

Moving from design to production

We recently broke out the software -- Pixlr for image editing, Audacity for sound editing, and WeVideo for video editing. And Dr. Mitchell once again delivered the goods re: ideas and theory about sound. Looking ahead, we will revisit the notion of 'non-redundancy' in our storytelling -- for example, if a particular aspect of a story is effectively told in sound, then there may be no need to re-tell the same aspect in narration or imagery, etc.

Storyboarding and liner-notes

This week we transitioned into the realm of storyboarding in order to begin one of the the final steps of the design process for digital stories; namely, the 'mapping' and melding of the various types of media content (text, image, sound, and motion) into a coherently whole story. Storyboarding is particularly useful as a way to literally "see the big picture" of our stories.

Liner notes are sort of a transitional form between writing and storyboarding. By adding such notes to our 'stories in scenes' we pave the way to storyboarding.

Deepening and expanding our inquiries and our stories

Dr. Mitchell delivered a cool presentation on the narrative-research that informed his doctoral dissertation. The topic he explored involved tracing the deep disruptions and dislocations within communities that can be wrought by seemingly innocuous infrastructural developments such as interstate highways. The intertwining of personal and political storylines has deepening effect on the stories we listen to and tell, and this same intertwining also has the capacity expand storylines in an intersectional, horizontal way.

So this week as we build our stories deeper into personal narrative we also seek to build our stories out into social and historical contexts. Again it's the blend we are after.

Scripting and blogging

This week we listened to and discussed a slide presentation about the Digital Storytelling delivered by Dr. King. We also then worked on the first drafts of our story scripts, seeking to incorporate the insights of narrative inquiry and our knowledge of the Digital Storytelling genre into our work. We also created blogs to document our progress and share our work.

Digging into narrative inquiry

This week, week two, featured the introduction of narrative inquiry into our storymaking matrix. Dr. Mitchell delivered a slide presentation on the topic [link to powerpoint slides] and embedded on one of the slides is a video presentation on the same topic by Jean Clandinin. We also read and discussed a short chapter about narrative research by Clandinin and an article by Dr. Mitchell on Gottschalk and the Bamboula Rhythm. Narrative research is an interesting and powerful technique for unearthing and mining intersectional narrative strands that might otherwise remain invisible. 

Moving parts now in motion

We had a good first week putting the initial conditions in play all at once and together. Participation in seminar conversation was dynamic, and our experiments in storytelling were varied and insightful. As a result, there are already signs of emergent order taking shape within the complexity/chaos.

To borrow a bit of terminology from film (an appropriate borrowing given our focus on the short narrative film format of Digital Storytelling) we created a metaphoric version of an 'establishing shot' this week. "The establishing shot is one of the core shots in cinematography. Typically a wide shot, and the opener of a scene, it tells the audience where (and sometimes when) the next scene will occur." [link to full text of article]

We opened the lens wide in exploring the proposition that artists are people who "work from within." Our activities in this regard included watching a short video clip of Jackson Pollock to clarify that working from within does not mean being self-absorbed, sharing responses to a prompt about 'close calls,' recording stories-of-response to the idea of a set-of-four stories, and asking questions such as When we look within, what kinds of materials and scapacities do we find?

Among our notable 'finds' we identified were things such as memories, emotions, events, morals, genetic inheritances, evolution, creativity, imagination, ideas, values, motivations, themes, and contextual storylines. And we noted the capacity of stories to reveal the above items. As educational theorist Michael Apple once put it, it's likely more important to uncover material rather than cover it. And in this regard we also touched on the idea that stories often have a layered/vertical structure in which the peeling back of a topical level or layer sometimes reveals a resonant theme or surprising element of depth.

We also explored the question Why do stories matter? And here we uncovered things such as the idea that stories shape, inform, and inspire us, help us grow up or mature, and/or allow us to make connections between things and learn lessons. And in this regard we touched on some of the differences between oral and literate culture, with the common thread that storylines are often literally lifelines of learning that get passed from one generation to the next.

And finally we did some initial work to excavate the sense in which writing about our own stories involves reflection (e.g., remembering and recounting things that have happened) and reflexivity (e.g., noticing the internal dynamics involved in simultaneously being the researcher and the researched when we investigate the ground or sources of our own stories).

Looking ahead to week two, we will open the lens wide again to actively explore some of the contextual/theoretical aspects of personal narrative and storytelling by exploring narrative inquiry.

Initial Conditions

This occurred to me... What are the four stories in your life that most explain the person you are today? Put another way... What are four stories that, if left untold, would make it impossible for anyone else to understand you?

The full set of initial conditions for the FYS are

A starting point (above)
A course title (FYS: On Being an Artist)
A three-unit structure (Image, Sound, Movement)

A genre (Digital Storytelling)
A group of students
Two instructors

That's enough moving parts to generate edifying complexity... all we need to do is put the parts in play and pay attention to what the ecosystem needs... it's an instance of dynamic ecological design...