Between "Logical Coherence" & "Transgressive Freedom":
Multimodal Composing

As part of our reading, writing, research, and inquiry projects, we occasionally pause to consider alternative forms of rhetoric and multiliteracies.

For example, students might remix or remediate the New York Times, and through that process of recontextualization, give the newspaper a new meaning.

In our 2013 WRD104 course, we encountered this interesting observation about the current state of reading in print — associated here with "logical coherence" — and reading digitally, which, according to Laurent Beccaria, Patrick Saint-Exupéry, John Cullen invites "transgressive freedom": 

Computer and tablet users have expectations that differ from those of newspaper readers. The principle of logical coherence doesn’t exist. A user may rummage around in an economics blog and then click on a link to a celebrity-gossip video. He’s faithless and unpredictable — this transgressive freedom is what he appreciates most. The thirst for participation in the community of anonymous commenters affects only a minority of people, but they dedicate a kind of mad energy to the pursuit. The digital world abolishes the border between journalists and citizens, between experts and witnesses.

Laurent Beccaria, Patrick Saint-Exupéry, John Cullen. "Content and Its Discontents." Harper's, October 2013.

This section of our project archive contains some examples of our explorations on that spectrum between logical coherence & transgressive freedom, remix, and recontextualization.

Exhibition notes: Burying the Lede:

Newspapers are still with us, but the public role of at least the printed version is greatly diminished. We have effectively left the era of the printed page in which newspapers covered the land like rain. Yet, as the world becomes increasingly virtual and digital, newspapers take on an expanded role in our imaginations.

This exhibition will focus on currently working artists whose engagement with the material and content of newspapers gives us a window on its changing status. All of the artists grew up with newspapers as quotidian objects. They are perhaps the last generation to do so. In a process that obliquely reflects earlier times, when the daily paper was passed from hand to hand, or news passed verbally from person to person, the task of curating this exhibition was passed from artist to artist.