Sunday, July 23, 2017

Week 7 of INTE5340: Learning With Digital Stories - Dialogue and Soliloquy

This week we are starting to wind down as we bring INTE5340 to a close. Can you believe it? Just one week left! And some of us have already finished the course and have posted their final reflections.


Just minutes ago, I posted my case study on Do Not Track. So, I'll start there, since it is still fresh in my mind. I thought Do Not Track went along great with this week's theme of "Dialogue and Soliloquy in the Digital Space." First let's define these two things. A soliloquy is classically thought of as a mechanism in literature and theater through which a character shares his/her own thoughts with the audience, usually in the form of a speech. A classic example of this is Shakespeare's use of soliloquies in Hamlet.

By Lafayette Photo, London [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Again, using literature as our backdrop, a dialogue is a conversation between 2 or more characters. While a soliloquy is one character speaking, a dialogue is two or more characters speaking with each other.

Odd Couple. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0). Karl Lender on Flickr.
How does this apply to the digital space? I think that a lot of digital storytelling is a combination of both soliloquy and dialogue. There is a component of the storyteller sharing her thoughts and sharing her story with others that parallels soliloquy in literature. But then there is also an ongoing, open-ended conversation online that parallels dialogue in theater. A good example of this is the blog as an interactive form of storytelling. While the soliloquy comes with the content presented by the blogger, a conversation is started in the comments section and continued on social media. And with the conversation may come edits or new entries to the blog.

Now let's go back to Do Not Track, which I mentioned earlier as being a good example of being both soliloquy and dialogue. The majority of the site's content is a sharing of information through the eyes of the storyteller, the filmmakers. The content is not merely meant to be consumed by the viewer. The viewer is an active participant in the documentary series. Within each episode, the viewer is given prompts to answer. The viewer is given choices in how to view the content through the sharing of her own personal information. So, soliloquy becomes a dialogue between storyteller and viewer. After viewing each episode, the viewer can click on a link to comments posted about each episode, continuing the dialogue outside of that given episode. The viewer is also given additional resources to read, watch or experience the content, again giving the viewer an active role in the telling, interpreting and  propagating of the story. And I think that is how I define soliloquy and dialogue in the digital space. It is the sharing of stories and ideas using media and inviting others to add to the story. The storytelling experience is interactive and allows for multiple voices to be heard, instead of from just one person or viewpoint. In the digital space, we experience both soliloquy and dialogue, and this gives us not only exposure to diverse viewpoints but also allows us to connect with people we may not otherwise be able to interact with. Dialogue in the digital space allows for conversations to be ongoing, and those conversations will continually change and evolve over time.

Ok, now let's get to this week's media work.

Daily Create Challenges

This week, I did 4 daily create challenges. One involved a little bit of coding, which was fun to play with. Another was an audio sound created using a number of layered sounds on iMovie and the addition of my own voice modified to sound scary. The last two challenges were graphics. 




Probably the most fun and challenging one for me was the creation of a horror sound. I first started with my voice and then thought of adding the sound of rain with thunder. Then I added the sound of footsteps with the sound of a heartbeat. I am happy with the final product because when I look back to when I first started this course, I don't think I would have thought of tackling this challenge in this way. Over time, I feel like I have become more creative. The audio clip was uploaded to SoundCloud and can be accessed below.




Assignments

This week, I tackled 3 assignments to round out the required 10 for the course. Since I was only missing a graphic assignment from my media scorecard, I made 2 graphic assignments and 1 social assignment that included graphics. Again, I am proud of the work I produced this week, especially since I've been feeling a resurgence of creativity this week. Last week, I felt like I was in a bit of a creative slump, especially with the daily create challenges. 


Understanding Comics - Part 1

Understanding Comics - Part 2 - Final Product






I feel like I'm really starting to get the hang of this digital media thing!


via GIPHY

Case Study

For my final case study, I chose Do Not Track. This went well with this week's theme.

Phew! One more week!

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