Defining Digital Composition

Hi, all,

Please skim through the following digital composition projects. For Monday, play around with each project for 2-3 minutes a piece (about 20-30 minutes total). Then respond to the following prompts: 

1. What is digital composition?

2. What makes them good?

These first five were made my undergraduates from around the country. They're featured in the Journal of Undergraduate Media Projects or JUMP. You could, if so inclined, submit to this journal:

1. In the Eyes of Another by Sara Martinez (a website project)

2. Let's Talk - Girl Talk by Christopher Austin (a video project about Pittsburgh's own mashup artist Girl Talk)

3. Face Change by David Hook, Jacob Philpott, Will Tangney and Katie Tiller (a web-based game)

4. Jason by Victoria Elliot (a "multimedia research essay")

5. Mystory by Cecilia Jones (another website project)

Here's a multimedia video presentation created by our friend and former Pitt grad Richard Miller:

This is How We Dream (Part 1)

This is How We Dream (Part 2) (both video projects)

Here's a video project made by a former student of mine, Zach Shapiro, from last semester:

Things We've Learned (a video project)

And finally, here's three works in process by me:

Refreshing Self-Reliance (a web-based text generator)

Feedback Loop (a website/video project)

Jeff and Jimmy: A Vietnam Story (a web archive project)

....

Making a composition digital expands the possibilities of an essay or idea tenfold. Instead of seeing just what is in common, I looked at how different the pieces were and the statement that there is more room to expand off of that. The videos all went about their topic differently, talking at the user with a computer screen present or moving in to the games and websites that let the user interact. 

I think a good digital composition is hard to narrow down and pinpoint particular aspects when the entire realm is so expansive. So in the domain of that particular work, the project should be well organized and easy to navigate or follow. Visual aspects also play a role in the project both organizationally and aesthetically. (Or I guess there could be sound so that doesn't count for this). Lastly, the point of the work has to come across. This can be challenging because you aren't able to spell out everything you put in the work and why you placed it there. Instead you have to use visual cues and sort of create a story (that you then translate to whatever form) but I think the works that went well initially had a plan for their message as opposed to just creating a video game (or other means of digitalization).