Another helpful e-mail from Sian:

So there you go! Land's work on crests....was Sian's work.

Following on from my previous post (about McEwan Hall entrance) here's a picture I took of an (old) University crest attached to a wall on Bristo Square. I'm not sure where this will come into my dissertation (if at all) however I'm adding it here as a reminder, and also because I like the photo. Actually, the ideal place for this would be within the Literature review when I'm talking about Ray Land's reflections on university crests. Perhaps I include the static image alongside the text. Or perhaps I develop it in some animated way. Or both.

Is this the thirds post I've made about the idea to develop or discuss a multimodal university crest within dissemination. This one came to me late last night. I was quite excited about it then, however not sure about it now. I wish I'd taken time to get up and write a few notes about it at the time: I did reflect that a truly committed scholar would have done so. Anyway, a day later, here's the idea, as much as I can remember it.

As per earlier posts I make the point that, in the multimodal university, the university crest is reimagined to have books alongside other modes or other digital resources.  But then in a truly digital multimodal university, perhaps the crest itself would exploit the potential of multimodality itself. It might not be static by animated and accompanied by sound. 

Actually, that raises a useful point. I could pick up on land's idea and say that the visual depiction of the book within medieval university crests reflects the privileging of the bound text, but actually the crests themselves are multimodal: they have a combination of words, image, design. Learning at the time was multimodal: oral, textual and visual - therefore its fitting that the crests do likewise.

Actually, maybe that's the approach I take. I could talk about the multimodal nature of the logos, but point out that of course the oral element is reflected in the crests themselves. This is something however in the digital multimodal university that could be realised. The multimodal university crest would include text* as well as images depicting a number of key modes of communication - but it needn't be static. It could use other modes - sound, animation. 

*reflecting some of the discussion within multimodal discourse (in particular Kress), perhaps the logo could be entirely visual. Maybe the visual image attains sufficient status in the academy that the logo is entirely visual.

Come to think of it, most of this wasn't what I thought of last night, but has been the product of some freewriting just now. Even if the original ideas wasn't that great in the cold light of day, I think I've come up with perhaps a couple of interesting points here.

I'm indebted to Marshall for making me aware of yesterday's Conference. In particular, Ray Land's presentation was directly relevant to my research as it touched on digital scholarship, the history of texts in Western universities, multimodality and other themes. Here are my frantically-typed-at-the-time notes:

I've e-mailed Marshall this evening to see whether I can get a copy of the full slides from his presentation.

Meanwhile, I've had a look at Ray Land's profile on the Durham University website and includes his publications list:

One of my tasks for this week will be to go back and reflect on some of the themes he touched on and consider how they might inform my lit review or research in general.