Composition: Conversations about Content & Form

This is a new project that I recently launched with my often-collaborator, Michael Sean Gallagher. Amongst other things, Michael and I share an interest in multimodality and more generally the different ways that knowledge can be constructed and conveyed within digital environments. From time-to-time we have discussed how the scholarly discussion of multimodality and digital scholarship is, more often than not, presented in the form of words on page or screen. ​

Whilst we understand the reasons behind this privileging of the linguistic form, at times it does seem to have the effect of undermining the arguments being put forward about the representational possibilities of the digital form (ideas that on occasion are being made within the same language-based articles).

We were interested therefore to create a space where content put forward within conventional language-based articles and book chapters, could be reimagined in digital, multimodal form. We are drawing here on ideas put forward at different times by Kathleen Fitzpatrick and others who have asked how the ‘remix’ or ‘mash up’ problematise conventional ideas around authorship and the dissemination of scholarly content.

Composition: Conversations about Content & Form is our attempt to offer a place where anyone with an interest in the ideas being described here can discuss or experiment with new, digital ways of presenting work was originally produced in linguistic form. The project  site outlines the different ways that he hope people might contribute to this exercise.