Sunday, August 24, 2008

Welcome to Designarchy

Design and anarchy are distant cousins of rhetorical style. In this course I propose they become less distant and more directly related to technologies that enable participatory anarchy. Let's participate. Let's design. Let's BE rhetorical.

4 comments:

Wendy said...

I am so excited by Moulthrop's article that I have had to leave it a page into it, walk away, think about it, come back and read the next page, etc.... I wish I had witnessed James Paul Gee address English teachers (my field the last 7 years) on the institutional shake-down coming because of video games and interactive media. I have expressed it to my administrators for years - that the curriculum is too dry for the students, and is pushing them further from our goal of their learning and creating; it is too DIFFERENT from their interactive world, and so they are retreating to a world that gives them a clear system of rewards. It is why I'm here in this program - I need to figure out how to address the federal teaching standards with what meets their needs and creates "a more useful and lasting form of communication" (to quote the Manifesto - it's true - too much manipulation by gimmicks). Very exciting. I loved the Archigram work too, and its amazing that their work has held up over several decades and is still quite original - and none of it is built? It is all ideas.

Cynthia Haynes said...

Cool! I love his article, too, obviously, or I wouldn't have assigned it! Glad it was useful for you!

Curtis said...

So, this question about boundaries between experience (play/recess) and reflection (learning/work) and where we allow them blur and at what level. Is it really possible to define a boundary at an organizational level, in a place such as a university? Or even in a small group, like a seminar? When boundaries are drawn within this dichotomy, I would argue that they must be intrinsic, individualistic. We must define for ourselves what we consider work and play. This of course means we will be required to consistently justify our boundaries to those who oversee (rule over) us.

nsnell said...

Speaking of boundaries: we all must reside in a space to have them and to have them is to delimit and define where it is that we are residing. Residing within- is time, space, acts of attention, and finally motive. The boundaries are set off however by: INTENT - which acts upon the space and the space the intent. Hence we've come to a dynamic relationship haven't we?

How does this make sense?
Within the university there are several spaces with determined boundaries that we reside within: our office is for work when our acts of attention are focused on pragmatic systems relative to our functions as students and grad assts and for play when used as social outlets offered via the computer at our desk or physical interpersonal interaction/relaxation.
Our classroom is for work when class is in session and we are attempting to engage with material in the traditional sense...I'll say it again : traditional sense...engaging(act of attention) with written and or oral information, with the INTENT of scholarly interrogation to further our understanding of certain subject matter(matter).

Now on to PLAY -with motive to learn - ODd coupling!..

And on further to REFLECTION - with motive to learn - traditional coupling

and further still to REFLECTION on PLAY - OdD coupling again

and these three within space situated within the University -

Tri-doable indeed

since space within the university as seen above has potentially double/triple/infinite capacity to accomodate different intents of purpose - since after all the university is a large/fluid/dynamic campus, no?
So what of boundaries within the relationship of three as Curtis asks -
1) Intrinisic divisions - well what IS the nature of these three? that needs to be defined first...
2) individualistic divisions/determinations - an insitution relies on a fortified front to maintain consistency and so a move toward individualistic d/ds would seem a futile effort.

and so...speaking of boundaries..I think we must first speak of renegotiating space/intent/motive/and the like...and then move on move forward or backward or sideways as long as its motion towards something different