I found this class to be a pleasant relief from many other English classes I have completed. I learned a great deal about digital media, and although I could appreciate it at an earlier time, I can now feel like a part of the online creative community. I realize now what I had been missing out on, despite the fact that I consider myself computer-saavy.

I had read many of the stories from this semester before, but removing thoughts from my brain and converting them into pixels turned out to be the most rewarding and challenging part of this course. It seemed many of the stories we read had a lot to do with relationships, often gone awry, and with conflict. This sort of literature makes me realize that good fiction writing takes problems and decisions in life that are often dragged out over days or months, and condenses them into thirty minutes worth of emotion and thought. Short fiction has long been my favorite medium; I've been reading short story collections from Huxley, Poe, Hemingway, Kafka since AP English, and recently some Dostoevsky. I wouldn't have minded some more classical literature, but since the course is geared towards progressive fiction, both in subject matter and in assignments, I think it went very well.

As some have also said, I believe that I am more inclined towards a class with a rigid structure. The podcasting and the open discussion were often very helpful when attempting to understand perspectives throughout the class. Some of my favorite discussions were for A&P, Story of an Hour, Hills Like White Elephants, and The Things They Carried. I found that the online chat within the classroom offered a more anonymous forum for thoughts and reflections. It must be the digital times we live in, but I feel like the class was more willing to contribute from this angle. Perhaps a synopsis of the themes of class literature would have been helpful during the onset of the course; I feel like we sometimes had trouble unifying our discussion because, personally, sometimes I did not know what aspects of a work to concentrate my analysis on.

This class has put me up to date with the time and alternative fiction. I have learned a lot, and thanks to everyone who helped along the way!

Table of Contents:
Cover Letter
Playlist
Revised Playlist
Playlist Reflections
Charcter Collage
Revised Character Collage
Poem Collage
Collage Reflections
Yellow Wallpaper Posts
Yellow Wallpaper Reflections
Video Project
Video Project Reflections
Comments
Comment Reflections

Cover Letter

Playlists:

Playlist: The Metamorphosis

Revised Playlist: The Metamorphosis

Playlist Reflections: Working with music was an interesting way to open up the semester. I felt that it was a limited medium, since we relied on the unaltered structure of songs created by other musicians to interpret our own feelings in regards to fiction. I found this to be a bit ambiguous, but it was still fun to learn and use the technology. I attacked Kafka's Metamorphosis with some of my favorite music, which I found easy to relate. The story itself has many interpretations, and is one of the least concrete in modern popular fiction. I am sad that we didn't study this in class, on a university level, since it was in our textbook. It's been years since I've had a group discussion of the story, but it remains one of my favorites.

Collages:

Character Collage: Old Man and the Sea

Revised Character Collage: Old Man and the Sea

Poem Collage: An Imperial Message

Collage Reflections: I enjoyed the collages, and GIMP proved to be pretty intuitive after a while. I enjoyed this assignment moreso than the playlist, because I felt that it really allowed us to create our own renderings rather than to rely on media that was already composed and produced. It felt less cliche than the playlist project. The feedback also greatly help with the revisions. For the Hemingway collage, I worked with the theme of Man vs. Nature, without as much emphasis on the vs, That conflict dominates Old Man and the Sea, and I felt that I could do an accurate job of representing it by paralleling images of the Old Fisherman with Hemingway himself. I used the Marlin to symobolize nature, and other touches includes the night sky, the sea as a home, and the glaring sun. All of these are daily aspects of a fisherman's life. My poem collage revolves around and intriguing Kafka story, An Imperial Message, and it represents futility and an existentialist perspective of hopes and dreams. The tiny people have many obstacles to overcome, which they never will, as symbolized by the story itself.

Yellow Wallpaper Posts:

Yellow Wallpaper 1

Yellow Wallpaper 2

Yellow Wallpaper Reflections: I felt that we beat this story to death. Although the portrayal of insanity due to overbearing male influence was interesting, I'm not sure it took the scrutiny that we devoted to it in class. I felt that many of us understood it fairly quickly as well. The wiki assignment was helpful since it enabled us to learn to modify and improve digital public texts, which will undoubtedly become a more popular medium in years to come.

Video Project: Time and Perception

Video Reflections: This assignment served as an effective cultivation of the skills we had learned this semester. I like that the subject was open-ended, and took advantage of it to publish something I wrote in my spare time. The entire process was very liberating and introspective, and I felt very proud and creative when I finished. I wanted to share it with my friends, but I still have not. I felt that this was ultimately the most expressive medium we worked with all semester, and it still boggles my mind that a movie is now as easy to make as a powerpoint presentation.

Final Podcast

Final Podcast Reflections: It was great to hear everyone recount which elements and themes they thought we most important from the collection of stories we examined throughout the semester. I thought everyone who participated communicated clearly and effectively, and now we have a great audio summary of the entire semester. Our themes of seclusion, death, and male domination sprouted a wide variety of perspectives and hopefully helped the class remember, if not further analyze, Story of an Hour and A Rose for Emily.

Comments
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/129#comment-153
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/236#comment-353
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/230#comment-401
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/241#comment-402
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/216#comment-403
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/247#comment-407
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/246#comment-408
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/67#comment-409
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/70#comment-410
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/150#comment-414
http://www.teachmix.com/itsfiction/?q=node/104#comment-416

Comment Reflections: I found the comment feature on the website to be a bit unwieldy. I had trouble figuring out where to check comments made on my own work, and often lost track of where my comments had gone. The process is definitely constructive, but I just had trouble navigating for some reason, and therefore didn't comment as much as I should have.

This video has a bit of Aldous Huxley, some history, and some of my own personal thoughts! Enjoy!
-Worth

Here's what I have so far.

Playlist: The Metamorphosis

Character Collage: Old Man and the Sea

Yellow Wallpaper 1

Yellow Wallpaper 2

I have revised this playlist in order to better fit the themes and elements of the story with the music and lyrics that represent them.

The Salesman Awakes: Pink Floyd – Breathe

Song Choice: Casual and easygoing, this classic song sets up the contrast which embodies the metamorphosis itself. Gregor remains in bed, questioning his self-worth and pondering the meaning of his life. What difference is he making? No one cares about him outside of his family. The clock is merely running down. Existentialism embodies this belief, the rejection of meaning and purpose. This is the calm before the storm. The calm tone of the song illustrates Gregor lying in bed, while the lyrics show the futility he sees within himself.

Gregor’s realization… “I am an insect.” : The Mars Volta - Inertiatic E.S.P.

Song Choice: The keyboards remind me of a far away siren in a crowded city before exploding with the lyric “Now, I’m lost!” A unique sense of panic and disorientation seeps from this song by the Mars Volta. It is based upon the experiences of a friend while he lay in a coma, surrounded by surrealist representations of his experience in life. Basically, this modern rock band is channeling the same disturbing and far out horror that Kafka had earlier in the 20th century. Tranformation, disfiguration, and despair are common elements of both the song and the story, and I think they mesh very well.

Gregor worries about losing his job: Radiohead - A Drunken Punchup At A Wedding

Song Choice: Once the shock has faded, Gregor turns his thoughts towards the well-being of himself and his family. He is unable to provide for them. This song is family oriented, and has a melancholy droll to it.

Forced back in room, family turns away: Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb (Guitar Solo)

Song Choice: This song was written about isolation, especially from a standpoint that the people who do the most to support you are often the furthest from your own interests. Comfortably Numb concerns the divide between the commercial rock circus and the audience that keeps it thriving. In this context, the song is meant to illustrate Gregor’s severance from his family as he is locked away for good. The guitar solo is especially powerful. I imagine a door slamming in Gregor’s face right as the solo kicks in.

Greta comes to feed Gregor: Incubus - Here In My Room (Introduction)

Song Choice: This song reflects a more somber mood than any other on the list. A slow point in the story chronicles the large insect’s time spent alone in his room. Gregor’s own emotional and social deprivation is realized as his sister, Greta, brings him a tray of food.

Greta’s violin/ Lurching into the living room: Pink Floyd -Pigs on the Wing (Pt. 1)

Song Choice: Human compassion separates us from the realm of animals. Yet, Gregor, who had formerly been human, is denied this empathy. When we turn our backs on those afflicted with some unspeakable tragedy, it not only dehumanizes them, but us as well. We are denying ourselves the ability to empathize, which chips away at our conception of ethics and morals. The soft tone of the song is also supposed to emulate the acoustic sound of Greta’s violin, a musical motif present throughout the story.

The apple attack:: Smashing Pumpkins - Tarantula

Song Choice: This is just an awesomely powerful riff, for a chaotic scene. The song itself is about conflict, and wanting to be anything except one’s self, which Gregor had been believing undeniably since even before the metamorphosis. Also, the title hints at creepy crawlies. Gregor is assaulted with apples by houseguests, and is mortally wounded. The rage and angst of the guitars in this song could potentially fuel a scene like this. Wait for the guitar solo, after Billy Corgan says “angeldust.”

Gregor’s death/discovery by the maid:: Incubus - The Warmth (Introduction)

Song Choice: The guitar reminds me of whales bellowing in the deep. “Don’t let the world bring you down” could be applied to any interpretation of the story, since it is unsure whether Kafka meant The Metamorphosis to be taken at face value or as a psychological mind warp. Anyways, I think the introduction is a beautiful but sad piece of music, and the rest of the song can be ignored, as long as you picture a desperate man in death while you listen to the rippling opening and ending of The Warmth.

This is my first blog post ever, on anything... so bear with me. I decided to examine a website I know of which is community based. At YTMND, users make collages of media, mostly in the for of video, image, and audio. Visit http://deanfighters.ytmnd.com/ to see the level of ridiculous mockery thrown back at Howard Dean after his "YAAAH!" speech. Use Internet Explorer first, then Firefox, and if neither of the above sync correctly, then I apologize.

After you have watched the video, think about how the internet and new technology have made the average person capable of publishing texts. These new collages of media are becoming a more effective way of reflecting one's opinions. Is society so saturated by media that the regurgitation of that media is considered art?