English 303: Multimedia Writing

This webpage = http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sbaldwin/courses/engl303s05
Professor Sandy Baldwin
charles.baldwin at mail.wvu.edu / 293-3107x452
Office Hours: TR 1300-1420, STANS 139, and by appointment

Course Description

Study of communication and design issues in multimedia composition. Focuses on communication, creative expression, persuasion, interactivity, and rhetorical principles. Practice in composing multimedia documents such as online publications, interactive literary works and tutorials. ENGL 303 is part of the English Department's Technical Writing and Editing sequence.

Multimedia is broadly defined, including but not limited to text, image, audio, and animation. The course will focus on web-based multimedia. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to

• author and design web sites;
• write for the web with awareness of genres and audiences;
• understand the complexity of representation and expression using multimedia;
• analyze the social and material transformation of writing in multimedia environments.

Texts Available at the WVU Bookstore

• Leonard Koren, Wabi Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers

• Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
• The Non-Designer's Web Book, Ed. Robin Williams and John Tollett [highly recommended but not required]

Recommended further reading:

• Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information (Graphics Press)

• The New Media Reader, Ed. by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (MIT Press)
• Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O'Reilly)

Note: Web authoring and design will be taught through a series of online tutorials, listed in the syllabus. You will be provided with web accounts for storing web files and building sites. You will use a standard text editor to create your .html files and use WS-FTP to upload files. You may also need WinZip. If you're using a Mac, here's a free FTP client called Fugu.

Requirements

• 20% Project 1, due February 9. Write an account of an intense memory. Try to find some early experience, a moment of insight or vision - perhaps literally: an intense visual experience. This memory need not be a secret and need not be dramatic; it may be a problem or a conflict, but at the least it needs to be a moment of significance and self-consciousness. Follow the model of "flash fiction" or "indeterminacy" developed in the course. Minimum length of 500 words. Your project will be a web site version of the memory. The web memory must include at least three separate .html pages. Each page must be linked to the other pages of the memory using at least three different links per page. In all cases, link on words or images that are significant parts of the project, i.e. do not link using buttons or "next." Links must be part of the process process of meaning-making, using a logic of organization and juxtaposition. Finally, create a home page (index.html), including your name and mailto link, link to the course syllabus, and a link to your online memory. The class websites are here.

• 20% Project 2, due March 7. Create a web site built around a moment or event or scene in the "field" of popular culture, using images as the primary means of narrative. Choose something memorable/significant to you. The point is to situate yourself and your interest in relation to the moment/event - how are you (the writer) a part of the "field" with this scene? Use this project to figure out your relation to this scene. Use image narrative to create this relation. Text and other media can and should play a part in the web site, but the narrative / sequential logic should be that of image, collage, and other principles drawn from the course materials. The moment or event could be associated with a single figure or object, or with multiple characters/props/events. Think of how the moment/event is situated in terms of the conflict/problem of the story. The connections may be biographical, incidental, creative/phantasmic/dreamed, or otherwise. The web site must include at least ten diverse images and at least five separate pages. The web site must link to your home page.
• 20% Project 3, due April 18. Create a web site documenting a conflict or problem associated with your community (either where you grew up or Morgantown). Choose both a community and a conflict/problem that you identify with. The focus could be historical or current, but either way, the site must include an orientation towards yourself - and, by implication, must include the present and future of this conflict/problem. The site must reflect research into the conflict/problem. The site must convey the "mood" of the conflict/problem and the community, following wabi-sabi and other principles in the course materials. The web site must include at least seven pages, and make use of: text and image, tables, frames, at least two forms of navigation, and at least one use of javascript. The web site must link to your home page. Notes towards Project 3.
• 10% Projects Re-vision, due May 5. Revise the three projects. Firstly, return to what you've done in the individual projects. Revise with a new sense of possibility based on the entire course and based on seeing all your projects as a single, unified whole. Second, revise across the projects. Create links between the projects. Look for connections, whether thematic, imagistic, accidental, through and across the projects. Finally, create at least two new pages as an entryway into the revised projects. The new pages are a portal to the unified project. In all cases, think about images/text/other to foreground or bring out, ways to compose the mood / ambience of the project. Notes towards Projects Re-vision.
• 20%5 Wiki postings out of a possible 10, graded pass/fail. You choose the dates to post. The purpose of the Wiki postings is exposure to different genres and audiences of web writing. For each post: choose four web sites, each from a different category on the list. Spend some time at the sites. Write a review discussing the primary audience and how you know this, including how multimedia is used to confirm and direct communication to the audience. Think about types of content (text, visuals, etc.), types of interactivity, stated purpose of the site, etc. Review each site separately, writing at least 200 words per site. Post the four reviews as a single Wiki document. Posting dates are indicated in the syllabus by W. Remember: choose 5 out of 10. Note: the Wiki will also serve as a site for collective brainstorming and group journaling. You will post occasional writings and drafts to the Wiki. Here's a link for structured text, an easy-to-use formatting in creating pages on this site: Structured Text Cheat Sheet. Use it for creating your Wiki entries.
• 10% Participation.
• Attendance is required. You are allowed two unexcused absences. Additional unexcused absences will lower your overall grade by up to a full letter (A to B, and so on). The professor will determine what constitutes an excused absence.
• All work is due on the due date. Required work is due on the date indicated. No late work will be accepted.

Social Justice Statement

"West Virginia University is committed to social justice. I concur with that commitment and expect to maintain a positive learning environment based upon open communication, mutual respect, and nondiscrimination. Our University does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, disability, veteran status, religion, sexual orientation, color or national origin. Any suggestions as to how to further such a positive and open environment in this class will be appreciated and given serious consideration.

If you are a person with a disability and anticipate needing any type of accommodation in order to participate in this class. Please advise me and make appropriate arrangement with Disability Services (293-6700)."

Schedule

Jan 11

Introduction

Jan 13

Visit by Alan Sondheim, a writer, artist, and theorist of the internet. Read Sondheim's Online Life and Times and Writing Online (not all the links work in this one), and take a look at his projects from a summer residency at WVU. Also, look at the Overture to Multimedia from Wagner to Virtual Reality.

Jan 18

Required: read Jakob Nielson's How Users Read on the Web, read Response Times, read Be Succinct!, read The Foundations of Web Design (all three lessons, but not all the links work), read Basics of FTP.
Recommended: Jakob Nielson's Alertbox, read Web Writing that Works Guidelines, Web Style Guide.

Jan 20

Required: read Flashes on the Meridian, browse John Cage's Indeterminacy, read and try WebMonkey HTML basics, read and try View Source.
Recommended: browse Microfiction.net and Concepts.

Jan 25

Due: draft memory project posted to Wiki by class time. A memory glimpse: 500 words or less! Bring a hard copy to class as well.
Required: read and try Paragraphs Headlines Links Mailtos.
W

Jan 27

Required: browse Cool Home Pages, browse Elegant Hack, read and try Bold/Italics Font color Font size Preformatted text.
Recommended: Budugllydesign, Juxt Interactive, Jiong, Evolutionzone, k10k, Kakosa, RAM, Doug Sohn, Bau-Da, Concrete Blonde

Feb 1

Required: read Writing within a Genre, read Writing in a Genre (pdf), read and try Block quotes Line breaks Aligning text Ordered lists Unordered lists Definition lists.
Recommended: read Navigation

Feb 3

Required: read Information Architecture Tutorial, read Web Architecture 101
W

Feb 8

Due: Project 1, uploaded by 6pm. Required: read and try Webmonkey Graphics overview, browse Google Images, browse 10x10.
Recommended: check out HTML Background Color Selector, browse Barry's Clip Art, browse Poster Corner, browse WWII Posters, browse Testpilot Collective, browse Anatomy Images, browse Old Maps, browse Blueprints, browse Fuller images, browse Backgrounds.

Feb 10

Gimp graphic program tutorial. Color: Chart
Required: read and try Background image, Background color, Adding/aligning images, Image borders, Wrapping text.
Recommended: Scott McLoud's Home Page

Feb 15

Required: read Understanding Comics 1-3, read and try The basic table
Recommended: Scott McLoud's Home Page.

Feb 17

Required: read and try The not-so-basic table.
Recommended: browse Carl Comics, browse I Can't Stop Thinking!, browse Zot, browse Mark Martin, browse When I am King, browse Leviathan.
W

Feb 22

Required: read Understanding Comics 4-6, read and try Frames are a picnic.

Feb 24

Due: Draft entertainment project posted to Wiki by class time.
Recommended: browse Zombie and mummy, browse The Stream, browse Exploding Dog, browse Traced, browse Nonstop (long page design), browse Grafik Dynamo.

Mar 1

Required: read Understanding Comics 7-9, read and try Stylesheet tutorial.

Mar 3

Recommended: browse Stylesheet experiments 1, 2, and 3, browse The world of awe, browse Filmtext, browse Banja, browse The secret garden of mutabor, browse Cloudmakers/the beast.
W

Mar 8

Due: Project 2 uploaded by 6pm.
Required: read Mitchell's "Meta-Pictures" (E-Reserves), read and try Typography tutorial (both lessons).
Recommended: browse Adobe Fonts, browse Counterspace.

Mar 10

Required: browse Chank, browse Phantompower, browse Buro Destruct Fonts, browse miniml, browse Fontshop, browse House Industries, browse ITC Fonts.
W

Mar 15

No Class. Spring Break.

Mar 17

No Class. Spring Break.

Mar 22

Required: read Floch's "IBM and Apple’s Logo-centricism" (E-Reserves), watch Apple 1984 ad, read and try Thau's javascript tutorial.
Recommended: browse Javascript Hotscripts, browse Codebelly, browse Webmonkey Javascript Library.

Mar 24

Forms, javascript.
W

Mar 29

Required: read Wabi-Sabi, Introduction and Historical Considerations, read and try Animation tutorial.
Recommended: browse Emotion and Design.

Mar 31

Required: read Wabi-Sabi, The Wabi-Sabi Universe.
Organic Material in Donnie Darko, Modern vs. Organic Organic Look: Entropy 8, Browse E8
Tiling Patterns: K101, Squidfingers, plus Imageafter, Morgue Files
W

April 5

Required: read Web usability for children, Usability for seniors, How people with disabilities use the web.
Recommended: browse Accessibility Tester, read and try E-business tutorial.

April 7

More Wabi-Sabi. Required: read Usability testing NN vs. IE, read Contingency Design (pdf).
Recommended: browse 37 Signals, browse 37better Project, read 37 Signals Manifesto.
W

April 12

Due: Draft community project posted to Wiki by class time.
Required: browse Jux2, read Anatomy of Google, browse Google Zeitgeist, browse Google Options, adding search to your site Freefind.

April 14

Required: browse Audacity, browse Prelinger.
Recommended: browse I/O/D, browse 1:1, browse Browser Gestures, browse Netomat browse Riot, browse Shredder, browse Acid 8-pack loops, 5-0.
W

April 19

Class Cancelled. Required: read Hansen's Seeing with the Body. Access this from within the WVU network.

April 19

Attend lecture by Mark Hansen. 730p Rhododendron Room, Mountainlair.

April 21

Due: Project 3, uploaded by 6pm.
Required: browse Web site maps, browse Textarc, browse Neotrace, browse Word Count, browse Analog, browse Tracer.
W

April 26

Required: browse Cybergeography, Wikipedia, Historyflow, Blogdex.

April 28

Last Class.

May 5

Due: Project revisions uploaded by 6 pm.