Writing for Digital Media

Our next project for Writing for Digital Media is creating a location based narrative. We are tasked with finding a physical place and using the digital world to construct a story about that place that visitors would not know without the media component. With that project as a basis for our class discusses, our Austin Kleon prompt for this week asked us to draw a map of our typical week. During my typical week, the only places I travel to are different buildings on UPJ’s campus. In particular, I frequent four buildings, Biddle Hall, Blackington Hall, the Student Union and of course my on-campus townhouse.On the weekends, I might drive to Walmart, which is less than three minutes away, to go grocery shopping. For the most part, I live and travel within a one mile radius of my townhouse. I am not surprised by how little or how far I travel during a typically week because I don’t really have much else to do but go to class or shopping. In May of this year, I studied abroa

        I spent this week making a picture collage out of trash and writing poems using movie and television quotes. As you can probably guess, we have continued the theme of remixing into this week’s classes. The Austin Kleon prompt for this week asked me to make a picture collage out of my trash or someone else’s trash. Lucky for me, my roommate and I share the same trash can in our bedroom, so I incorporated both of our trash items in my collage.         The first item I dug out of the garbage can was an empty manila Amazon shipping envelop. Once I saw the Amazon logo, an arrow in the shape of a smile, I immediately thought that I could cut it out and make it the stem of a flower. With the image of a flower in my head, I picked out pieces of out trash that would make pedals and leaves. In the end, I had a pile of trash that included a green Mist Twist soda bottle, a clear plastic Aquafina bottle, a red tag off of Vans shoes, and an orange Combo wrapper.                   In o

          The Austin Kleon prompt I chose to complete this week instructed me to black out words on a page of Moby Dick until I was left with a poem. This prompt directly relates to our discussions in my Writing for Digital Media class because this week we have focused on remixing forms of media to create something new. Specifically, the prompt asked me to complete a selective remix because I had to remove words from the page to a create a poem using no original content.           While completing this prompt, I remembered a time when I made poems by doing the exact opposite. In my high school English class, I sat in the back of the classroom next the the metal heater. One day after I took my seat, I noticed a collection of magnetic words clinging to the heater next to me. The words were from a magnetic poetry set my teacher had, but I don't know how they ended up on the heater. While my teacher lectured about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , I sat and stared at the cluster o

                 Anybody who knows anything about me, knows that I am a huge fan of Stevie Nicks. I have a poster of her lyrics hanging in my dorm room, been to one of her concerts, and got the lyrics to one of her songs tattooed on my inner bicep. I have been listening to her music for as long as I can remember. My mom plays Stevie Nicks’ music all the time, so I grew up listening to it softly being played through our house’s speaker system. My mom sings to her cassette tapes as she drives and the music has helped connect my mother and me.        As I got older, I started to read more about her life and came to know her as more than just a musician that sang beautiful songs. I admire her as writer, who turns her personal pain into poems set to music. She struggled through loss, addiction, and the pressures of fame. She is feminist icon who served as a pioneer for women in rock and roll and has influenced some of today’s musical artists. I am a fan of both the music and the person

            Over past two weeks in my Writing for Digital Media class, we have been talking about collaboration. We are exploring how other people can bring value to a project and add to a digital narrative. With the theme of collaboration in mind, I chose the prompt “Make a Mixtape” from Austin Kelon’s book Steal like an Artist Journal . I use the music app, Spotify, every day and enjoy creating playlists. When I create my playlists, I often feel like I am missing something because I only know so many songs. So, I decided to complete Austin Kelon’s prompt with another person. I chose to have them consciously participate and for it to become a partnership. By having a partner in this project, we could discuss together songs to put on the mixtape, as opposed to randomly asking someone for a song suggestion. I ended up bringing my best friend, Emily, into to the project to help me pick a theme and select songs for the mixtape.     After a discussion, we decided to make the mixtape

            Every time I clean my room, I have to come face to face with the reality that I am a pack rat. I tend to attach sentimental value to objects and keep them for years and years. I keep ticket stubs from concerts, movies, and sports events, museum guide pamphlets, paper wristbands, receipts and any other scrap of paper I receive at an event. I still have all my cross country sneakers from high school because I ran over 400 miles on each pair and can’t bring myself to throw them away. Their worn out bottoms with no tread, frayed laces, and mud stains are a symbol of every mile ran and how much hard work it took. I also have all my birthday cards going back at least five years, letters from my high school boyfriend, napkin notes my mom packed in my lunch box, and notes written on scraps of paper from my friends in high school. All of this stuff is kept in shoe boxes under my bed, in my closet, or posted all over my bedroom walls. I hoard all of these seemingly insignificant thi