MULTIMODALITY

thematic session
Mon. 14 Sep

multi- (prefix)
more than one; many.

mode- (root)
a way or manner in which something occurs or is experienced, expressed, or done.

Cutting through the word ‘multimodality’ with the categorising scissors of language leaves us with the prefix, multi, and the root-word, mode. A rudimentary definition can therefore be summed up as: many ways in which something is done. It is a mistake, perhaps, to categorise the components of the term ‘multimodality’, while the term itself seems to desire a form of plurality. Are there multimodal understandings of multimodality? And: what are the plural ramifications of thinking through multimodalities?

These are the main conceptual questions that are dealt with in the seminar ‘SCALE & MULTIMODALITY’ by Lendl Barcelos (guest-contributor) and Sami Hammana (core-tutor). Through the exploration of several texts pertaining to notions of: inter- and multi-scalar approaches, multiplicities, non-modernisms, chimerizations and, of course, multimodalities, the seminar aims to unpack and elucidate what this approach could mean for transdisciplinary collaborations.

PREPARATORY MATERIALS

0rphan Drift, 2019, ‘If AI Were Cephalopod’

Eames, Charles & Ray, 1977, ‘Powers of Ten™’

Latour, Bruno, 1991, ‘We’ve Never Been Modern’
1.1 ‘The Proliferation of Hybrids’
1.2 ‘Retying the Gordian Knot’



monoskop.org/images/e/e4/Latour_Bruno_We_Have_Never_Been_Modern.pdf

Berger, John, 1972, ‘Ways of Seeing’, 4 Episodes
youtu.be/0pDE4VX_9Kk


Catren, Gabriel, 2011, ‘On Philosophical Alchimery, or Why All Chimeric
Compositions Are Philosophical Stones’
1lib.eu/book/2884456/5f55eb

Couroux, Marc, 2014, ‘Preemptive Glossary for a Technosonic Control Society (with Lines of Flight)’
drive.google.com/file/d/1fz0bivGHgC2i2PlP-8VWSVg7rwMF9OOi/view

Deleuze, Gilles & Félix Guattari, 1991, ‘Percept, Affect, and Concept’
daughtersofchaos.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/perceptaffectconcept.pdf

Friedner, Michele & Stefan Helmreich, 2012, ‘Sound Studies Meets Deaf Studies’
anthropology.mit.edu/sites/default/files/documents/helmreich_friedner_sound_studies_deaf_studies.pdf

Haraway, Donna, 2015, ‘Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin’
environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol6/6.7.pdf

Swoyer, Chris, 1991, ‘Structural Representation & Surrogative Reasoning’
drive.google.com/file/d/0BzDp9qjQHenyaHRiV3lfRE1PVVU

SUGGESTED MATTERS [OPTIONAL]

[WILL BE READ IN CLASS]

[WILL BE READ IN CLASS]

PLAN
[10:00 - 11:00] Definition of MULTIMODALITY, elaboration of the idea
[11:00 - 12:00] Collective Reading [Latour]

[12:00 - 13:00] Lunch

[13:00 - 14:00] Group Discussion
[14:00 - 15:00] Collective Reading [Hecht]
[15:00 - 16:00] Workshop: AutoBioFiction

links to all resources in this pdf

Further contextualisation:
https://xenaudial.wordpress.com/2014/08/