Transduction Literacies

Jentery Sayers | University of Victoria | @jenterysayers"Making Writing in Third Spaces" | MLA 2015 | 10 January 2015

Follow Along?

Slidedeck online: jentery.github.io/transduction Source files: github.com/jentery/transduction/

Today

The Programmability of Tactile Media What Is Transduction Literacy? (with an example) Implications for Research and Writing Studies

But Wait...

Third Space = Maker Lab in the Humanities Research Labs Are Not Usually Associated with Writing But the Maker Lab Is in Many Ways Built on Writing

< code >Tactile< /code >

To What Effects?

MAKE Brand Hobbyism (see Hertz) "Withdrawn" Objects (see Bridle) Seeing Like a Machine (see Bridle again) Glitch Fetish (see Nakamura) YOU MUST CODE

With What Responses?

Glitches Are Actually Features (see Menkman) Media Are Executable Culture (see Galloway) Code Is Neither Cure Nor Source (see Chun) There's Resistance in the Materials (see Nowviskie)

Transduction Literacy

Knowledge of How This Material Becomes That One (see Fuller) Mediation over Media | Change instead of Still (see Vitanza and Kuhn) Resonates with Procedural Literacy (see Vee and Rieder) Tacit Knowledge + Trial and Error

and, both, at once

Analog and Digital Print and Electronic Bodies and Data Legible and Opaque Individuation and Network Remembering and Forgetting

An Example

"Circuit Bending Videogame Consolesas a Form of Applied Media Studies" Nina Belojevic, NANO (2014), Issue 5

Article Overview

An Inquiry into Platforms via an Evocative Object Supported by Media + Labor + Feminist Studies Research Claim: The Production of Game Consoles Largely Ignored Written in HTML, JPG, MP4, Circuits, and Hardware

Instances of Transduction

How Platform Attention Becomes Screen Attention How Embodied Labor There Becomes Play Here How Parts Become Commodity Becomes Waste How Material Becomes Immaterial Becomes Material --- Playable Glitch Foregrounds Unperceived Change ---

"Following Cynthia Selfe (2010), I would argue that it is crucial that we commit to expanding our disciplinary commitment to the theorizing, researching, and improvement of written discourse to include other representational systems and ways of making meaning." Shipka 2011

Expanding Writing

Technical Writing Is Not Just Documentation Critical Writing Is Not Just Reflection Creative Writing Is Not Just Individual Expression

Other Definitions

Technical Writing Is Historical Inquiry Critical Writing Is Actionable Practice Creative Writing Is Platform Design

Some Implications

Writing between Bits and Atoms From Process Reflection to Executable Culture From Read-and-Repeat Model to Evocation Point Digital Humanities to Writing Studies Example Projects @UVic: DHum 350, English 507, + Kits for Cultural History

Say to Students:

"What You Already Know Is Enough"

(See Henry)

Thank You

Jentery Sayers | U. of Victoria | @jenterysayers | MLA 2015

Special thanks to Bonnie Lenore Kyburz, Laurie Gries,Brian Harmon, and Byron Hawk