Multi – Museum – Modalities

In my day-job I teach media arts at a foundational level to English as an Additional Language learners. In doing so, I am constantly think in one way or another about ‘modes’ and how to use them effectively. There are two main reasons why I think this so relevant to my particular vocation. First, in media arts practices, the tradition goes that the narrative, theme, or concept should drive the medium of the work. Some tales might be best told as a film, others as animation, still others as a combination thereof. Even within the media themselves, we would work hard to consider genre and aesthetic choices based on the underpinnings of the narrative or concept. Maybe the size of the frame should change to show a switch in tone or change in perspective. What if the cuts were faster here and slower there to play with timing? By changing any one of these elements, how does the meaning of the message change and what references can viewers bring to this version of the story (The New London Group, 1996)? So media or ‘modes’ as a set of tools for showing or presenting information should be based on that information we wish to convey in addition to  what connotations we might expect viewers to bring to them.

Second, my learners require practice in both productive and receptive skills in English. If I taught by relying purely on text and multiple choice, I’d be neglecting the holistic way we use and understand language. Text is an important part of language learning, but so is learning to listen, to write, to shift tone, and to crack a joke. Therefore, considering the mode that information is presented in, and the mode that the learners are expected to complete an activity or assessment in, takes careful consideration of learner needs and available resources. The benefits of spending this much time and effort on mode are that learners tend to be more engaged since activities are never really the same time after time. I think that they are perhaps also hybridizing between modes when shifting from reading about a topic to speaking about a topic, but maybe also when they are creating new conventions when bringing in their first language to this process and changing the way English is understood, written and spoken (The New London Group, 1996). It’s as much a creative process as what I mentioned above about choosing an artistic medium and contains constant tensions that foster creativity in how ideas are communicated.

In the process of re-making my ‘What’s in your Bag?’ activity, I struggled to come up with a way to truly change the mode in the sense of redesigning it, not just changing it to a new mode just for the sake of it. I went back and forth on ideas like creating a verbal description that would unfold with a slowly rotating 3D image of the bag, through to (in a moment of desperation) just using single words and random sound effects. In the end I went back to the original assignment. What had been the point of it in the first place? I felt it was more than an introduction to us, maybe more like a bit of an ethnographic study of the objects that were important enough to us to carry around in our own environments. That brought me to the discussion questions that accompanied the task. I re-read the questions and stopped the one that asked us whether the bag would have looked the same 15 or 25 years ago and thought, well what if I was 15 or 25 years in the future and looking back on the bag? That’s when I decided to make a museum exhibit with an audio guide.

I know it contains a visual but hear me out. I repurposed the original image as a diagram with exhibit numbers indicating each object from 1-6. Then I researched how to create information cards for those long glass cases in museums that hold collections and sort of free-stand in the middle of the floor. It turns out that they are called group cases and their labels are rail labels. So already we have a change in mode from an image as a photograph , to an image with text as a reference tool (and we learned a new discourse!). The real change in mode comes with the accompanying audio guide. I tried to include the same information as in the original task, but completely reframed it from the point of view of the guide and for an audience of the future. I also tried to include gesture in the guide by incorporating suggested physical activities as small instructions at the end of each object’s stop on the tour. Given that you would be moving through a space on the tour, one might also consider that the guide with the diagram is spatial, though I think I should have made a floor plan with the numbers rather than re-using the photograph had that been my main purpose.

In creating this I’d hoped to reconsider the design of the task in a purposeful way and to incorporate more than one semiotic mode for consideration. Of course, according to The New London Group (1996), all meaning making is multimodal and so I would have achieved my end inevitably, anyway.

References

The New London Group.  (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review 66(1), 60-92.