NIXEDMEDIA™

For my first portfolio, titled “Portfolio 01: Play,” I was given the task of working with the theme of self-exploration. Having this theme presented a lot of opportunities to promote aspects of myself that I normally wouldn’t include elsewhere, such as the works I create for my art courses or for fun. These aspects range from the influences that I believe have shaped who I am today to things like my interests and quirks. While making this portfolio, I had a lot of freedom over the direction of my projects and, as a result, there were a number of times when I found myself uncertain of the final products that form its contents. However, throughout the process of creating and discussions with my peers, I feel like I became more confident in my approach with each piece. Now, I think I’m better prepared to use that freedom to create more and more interesting pieces.

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“Linguistic Mode Workshop” is my informal writing from an in-class activity and a workshop for the Linguistic Mode project. During the activity, I wrote down some words that I would use to describe myself and ones that I think other people would use to describe me to start to getting ideas of who I am. This activity ultimately played a part in inspiring my Linguistic Mode composition, which was a typographic poster of my name with characteristics of my community and myself. The first set of notes from the workshop are my responses to questions that dealt with any concerns I had about the composition, the kind of response I hoped to receive from my audience, and anything I wanted to gain from the workshop. The second set of notes are suggestions I received from my peers on how to improve the piece, which reinforced some thoughts I had on possible changes. View Linguistic Mode Workshop.

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“Theorizing the Linguistic Mode: What is Literacy?” is my response to Fisher’s “Toward a Theory of Black Literate Lives” which focuses on the communal efforts made by African Americans to learn and teach each other how to read and write in the 19th century. Before I started writing this piece, I looked at an example that was provided of a previous student’s work. I enjoyed the way that they seamlessly incorporated connections between the text and their own life, and I wanted to emulate that in my own response. However, when I started writing, I over-thought the process which led to a lot of doubts about whether I was conveying my ideas in a coherent manner. After starting two drafts that went nowhere, I took a break. When I came back, my ideas flowed more naturally and I was able to begin cultivating this informative-mixed-with-personal-experience style. View Theorizing the Linguistic Mode: What is Literacy?

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“Theorizing the Gestural Mode: Gesturing + Society” is my response to Bodo Winter’s “Why Study Gesture?” which addresses criticisms toward gestures, the commonality of gesturing, and gesture studies and its relevance in other fields. In my response, I utilize the informative-mixed-with-personal-experience style that I began using in “Theorizing the Linguistic Mode: What is Literacy?” I second-guessed myself far less with this response, and I think that was due to a mix of confidence built up from previous workshop critiques and having more experiences that directly related to the reading (e.g., the example Winter gave of gesturing while on the phone, which I do a lot). In the last paragraph, I begin to map out some potential options for my Gestural Mode composition, which range from a recording my typical gestures and expressions, recording my gestures while drawing, and recording a skit. View Theorizing the Gestural Mode: Gesture + Society.

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“All in Your Head” is the title of my Gestural Mode composition, which is a comic strip that centers on self-consciousness. In the comic, a person notices that they are mirroring the posture of the people sitting beside them and, becoming self-conscious about it, change their own posture. The comic is named “All in Your Head” because, often times, the things that people (myself included) become self-conscious about are not even noticed by others, which is shown in the lack of reaction from the other people shown in the comic. I knew that this was the topic I wanted to cover with the gestural mode because mirroring other people’s gestures is something that I recently started to notice I do. Making this piece not only allowed me to address my self-consciousness in a light-hearted manner but also gave me the opportunity to create a comic, which I definitely want to do more often. View All in Your Head.

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“Gestural Mode Workshop,” is my informal writing from an in-class workshop for the Gestural Mode project. During this workshop, I received a lot of positive feedback on my “All in Your Head” comic, as well as some great suggestions on how to improve upon it. Similar to the “Linguistic Mode Workshop,” the first set of notes are my responses to questions that dealt with any concerns I had about the composition, the kind of response I hoped to receive from my audience, which matched my intended purpose, and anything I wanted to gain from the workshop. The second set of notes are the suggestions I received from my peers, which were in-depth and helped me recognize and fix the issues my composition had. View Gestural Mode Workshop.