Today’s Plan:
- Watch Project One Videos
- Affective Objet Heuristic
- Homework
Affective Object Heuristic
Today I want to continue our intellectual wandering. In preparation for today, I’ve asked you to read the Jenkins and the Ahmed. We are going to begin by focusing on the latter, developing a heuristic we can use to both interrogate the former and guide you through your own writing. In rhetoric and writing studies, heuristic is the term for a set of questions that can help spur invention.
We are going to engage in a close reading of the Ahmed to generate these questions. In aesthetics, there’s a long standing debate regarding whether creativity is an innate capacity or whether it can be taught. I’d say that it is potentially both. There are folks who have a natural ability to see new possibilities, to boldly go where none have gone before. But this is not the only way to think creativity: I also think about it as the ability to (re)invent, to see within an existing artwork possibilities for transformation or reapplication. That’s what we are going to work on today.
Homework
It is time to do some writing. I’d like you to draft the script for your Affective Object film. These films should be 3 minutes to 5 minutes in length. This means you need a script of 400 to 600 words.
I leave the content and organization of your script up to you, though I have one requirement. At some point, I want you script to use the term “affective object,” define it in a sentence or two, and use a direct quote from our readings that helps flush out that definition.
Other than that, you are on your own. But hopefully the questions we generated today, and the elements we identified in Kalman last Friday can help shape your writing. If you don’t know where to start, those questions should provide launching points. My guess is that you will write much more than 600 words: that’s ok. Have your scripts completed by Friday.
Additionally I’ll ask you to read the Schroeppel Bare Bones, chapters 6, 7, and 8. We are going to use those chapters to generate expectations for the next project. Bring the Schroeppel.
