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A MULTIMO
ODAL APPROACH FOR LEARNING

LENA REDM
MAN
Knowing with New Media
Lena Redman

Knowing with New


Media
A Multimodal Approach for Learning
Lena Redman
Monash University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-981-13-1360-8 ISBN 978-981-13-1361-5 (eBook)


https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1361-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018947627

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018


This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
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Cover credit: Compassionate Eye Foundation/Jasper White

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Singapore Pte Ltd.
The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
To the Creators of the future world.
Preface

Sleepwalking
The prognosis that many jobs will be automated in the near future is a
frequent keynote of many current scholarly debates. As futurist Martin
Ford (2015) writes: ‘Computers are getting dramatically better at per-
forming specialised, routine and predictable tasks, and it seems very
likely that they will soon be poised to outperform many of the people
now employed to do these things,’ (loc. 1333). Another proposition
that is often emphasised in the present-day academic, professional and
popular discourse is the inevitability of human/machine convergence.
‘Humans will be augmented with brain implants that dramatically
enhance intelligence’, writes Ford (loc. 3772).
While these two topics are distressing, what is truly astounding is the
speed with which they are advancing into all spheres of modern reality.
Ford’s analogy to illustrate this acceleration proposes imagining that a
penny was deposited in a hypothetical bank account in 1949, the year
when Norbert Wiener wrote his influential essay about the upcom-
ing digital expansion. According to Moore’s Law, which suggests that
the processing speed of a computer chip doubles every second year, the
hypothetical bank account increases with the same speed. Then, as Ford
theorises: ‘by 2015, our technological account would contain nearly £86
million. In addition, as things move forward from this point, that bal-
ance will continue to double’ (loc. 1186). This mind-boggling progres-
sion from a penny to £86 million in less time than the average human

vii
viii    Preface

life-span, which still doubles every two years, contains ample shock
value to arrest our busy daily routine with a puzzle—are we taking this
seriously enough? Are we not just sleepwalking into an all-encompass-
ing digital habitation, gradually abdicating our human primacy to the
supremacy of automation? If the enmeshing of humans and machines is
inevitable and moving faster and faster, would it be possible to direct the
course of history to mutually beneficial convergence rather than rivalry?
And what kind of a path would this be?
According to another futurist, Leonhard (2016), humanity still
has a chance to influence the digital invasion as ‘we are not yet at the
point where those [speed] doublings are so great that the results will
overwhelm our understanding and inhibit our capacity to act’ (p. 2).
Leonhard proposes raising awareness of the fact that we are living not
through an ordinary paradigm-shift but through ‘a Megashift that rep-
resents immediate and complex challenges and differs in nature to the
forces that have swept through society and business in the past’ (p. 32).
Leonhard argues that ‘The challenges we have experienced so far won’t
even register on the stress scale when compared with what’s to come…’
(p. 33). What is also critical for people to realise, Leonhard emphasises, is
the exponential speed with which this Megashift is progressing.
These two key points—the speed of the Megashift and the inevita-
bility of the human/machine convergence—indicate that in addressing
current challenges, people cannot afford to remain in the same position
and observe the unfolding of events from the same perspective as they
have in the past. The clashes of the sociocultural tectonic plates catalysed
by digitisation are so deep that to find a safe space to survive, humans
must re-evaluate how they see themselves in relation to their own tech-
nological creations and what they can do to remain themselves—that is,
humans. In other words, people must develop a high-level mindfulness
of what Leonhard defines as androrithms—human essences (p. 23)—and
differentiate them from algorithms—a code, a set of rules to be fol-
lowed in accomplishing a task. Androrithms, according to Leonhard,
are ‘largely unnoticed, unsaid, subconscious, ephemeral, and unobjecti-
fiable’. They can ‘appear to be clumsy, complicated, slow, risky, or inef-
ficient compared to nonbiological systems, computers, and robots’ (p.
23). Leonhard believes that ‘the idea of giving machines the ability to be
[enabling them with androrithms] might well qualify as a crime against
humanity’ (p. 18). How can we then classify the opposite side of the
Preface    ix

issue—the systematic reduction or even discarding of androrithms, ‘those


elusive traits that make us human,’ that, as Leonhard argues, ‘has already
started all around us’ (p 23)?
In the theme of this book, this discarding of androrithms is consid-
ered within the promotion of STEM education with the emphasis placed
on algorithm-based disciplines. As Governor Patrick McCrory of North
Carolina once put it, higher-education funding should not be ‘based
on butts in seats, but on how many of those butts can get jobs’ (Cohen
2016, The New York Times, retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.
com/2016/02/22/business/a-rising-call-to-promote-stem-education-
and-cut-liberal-arts-funding.html).
The argument presented in this book is compiled to oppose the
kinds of attitudes espoused by Governor McCrory’s. This book
defends young people from being viewed as a bunch of ‘butts in seats’
as well as a bunch of ‘butts’ doing their jobs. With regard to his fund-
ing of the General Education Board in 1912, John D. Rockefeller
wrote: ‘[…] we will organise our children into a little community and
teach them to do a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are
doing in an imperfect way’ (as cited in Rose 2016, p. 51). Stunningly,
the system of the contemporary schooling is still built on this foun-
dational principle, i.e., encouraging perfect responses and following
fixed instructions. This leads to conforming ‘to the central tenet of
scientific management: standardise everything around the [perfect]
average’ (p. 51). That is, using a highly optimised strategy of map-
ping individuals inside two-dimensional, uniformed frames. In other
words, borrowing from Governor McCrory’s terminology, the ‘butts’
are packaged algorithmically within standardised boxes to be trans-
ferred from a school supported by taxpayers to workplaces where the
money to pay taxes is made. In the production line, that is, school-
ing, that assembles and packages ‘butt’-automatons for well-paid jobs
to have better taxes in return, nonessential androrithmic data becomes
redundant. This attitude spreads across the political spectrum: as ‘US
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush told the audience that stu-
dents majoring in disciplines such as psychology [philosophy and lib-
eral arts] were headed for jobs at Chick-fil-A’ (Madsbjerg 2017, loc.
120). Similarly, as President Barack Obama once said: ‘[…] I prom-
ise you, folks can make a lot more potentially with skilled manufactur-
ing or the trades than they might with an art history degree’ (January,
2014, Observer, retrieved from: http://observer.com/2014/01/
x    Preface

president-obama-thinks-art-history-degree-is-kind-of-useless-doesnt-
want-you-to-e-mail-him-about-it/).
The views above can be described, drawing on McLuhan and Fiore
(1967), as ‘look[ing] at the present through a rear-view mirror. We
march backwards into the future’ (p. 75). McLuhan and Fiore write:
‘When faced with a totality of a new situation, we tend always to attach
ourselves to the objects, to the flavour of the most recent past’ (p. 74).
Making their statements, neither Bush nor Obama looked ahead through
the windscreen where they could see jobs such as line work at Chick-
fil-A, skilled manufacturing and trades being among the first to be
replaced by automation. Humanity faces an unprecedented need for psy-
chologists, philosophers, liberal arts practitioners, historians, social work-
ers and policy makers to rethink and restructure the whole worldview
of how we perceive ourselves in relation to self-identity, environments,
technology and other factors.
In fact, ‘riding their cars’, politicians not only cannot stop ‘looking
through a rear-view mirror’ but are also failing to notice the major shift
occurring inside cars, where driverless technology is making rapid strides.
Driverless cars can be taken as an analogy to demonstrate humans’
passing over their control to technology. McLuhan (1964) suggested
that every technological extension results in human numbness, or even
self-amputation, ‘as an immediate relief of strain on the central nervous
system […] Whatever threatens its function must be contained, localised,
or cut off, even to the total removal of the offending organ’ (loc. 675).
With respect to the invention of the car, by relieving themselves from
walking long distances, humans imposed a certain degree of numbness
on their cardiovascular system and leg muscles. As automation begins to
take over drivers’ seats, people continue to strive to make machines that
think like humans and will eventually feel like humans. Like sleepwalkers,
we gradually enable technologies with more and more agentic power,
numbing ourselves in the belief that the machines will always remain
neutral tools to help relieve strain on our nervous systems. Placing the
machines in our driver’s seats and ceding them more and more control
over us, what kinds of self-amputations are we to expect?
In such a manner, we can diagnose humans’ current condition as
experiencing a numbing ‘compression syndrome’. On one hand, we are
being pressed by exponentially spreading algorithms, and on the other,
we are being numbed through the imposed degradation of androrithms.
Preface    xi

The identification of the contemporary ‘compression syndrome’ is


a catalyst for this book to consider a contemporary human existence
between expanding technology and the oppressive powers that reg-
ulate society’s consciousness by cultivating automatons. In the text
of this book, automatons are referred to as either cheerful robot, who
happily comply with the programming they have received, or fearful
puppets, who cannot help but obey instructions from those pulling the
strings. Both groups have little agency to create their own reality, will-
ingly submitting themselves to the ruling social force and technologi-
cal intervention.
The Ripples pedagogy proposed in this book is premised on the
unique historical fact that the ownership of the means of knowledge pro-
duction has shifted from centralised institutions into the hands of indi-
vidual knowers. Thus, the knower is now enabled with the opportunity
to free him/herself from learning by prescribed standardised codes—al-
gorithms—and is empowered by technological means to discover,
integrate and assert their individual potential—androrithms—within col-
lective enterprises. The Ripples pedagogy represents a platform for the
knower to reconnect him/herself with natural, sociocultural environ-
ments, thus bolstering him/herself as an informed, confident and civil
agent in his/her exploration and formation of a mutually positive rela-
tionship with technology.

Melbourne, Australia Lena Redman

References
Cohen, P. (2016, February 21). The New York Times. Retrieved November 15,
2017 from: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/a-rising-call-
to-promote-stem-education-and-cut-liberal-arts-funding.html.
Ford, M. (2015). The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass
Unemployment [Kindle Version]. Oneworld. Retrieved from: Amazon.com.
Leonhard, G. (2016). Technology vs. Humanity: The Coming Clash Between Man
and Machine [Kindle Version]. Fast Future Publishing Ltd. Retrieved from:
Amazon.com.
Madsbjerg, C. (2017). Sensemaking: What Makes Human Intelligence Essential
in the Age of Algorithm [Kindle Version]. Hachette Book Group. Retrieved
from: Amazon.com.
xii    Preface

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man [Kindle


Version, 2013]. Berkeley, CA: Gingko Press.
McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The Medium is the Message. Berkeley, CA:
Ginko Press (2001).
Rose, T. (2016). The End of Average. HarperOne.
Acknowledgements

The Ripples theory proposes that an outcome of creative production is


the result of an individual and collective rippling within a sociocultural
milieu. Bringing together this book is a vivid example of such a perspec-
tive. Throughout the course of my doctoral studies, which laid the foun-
dation for this book and its further development, I must thank many
people. Among them is my daughter, Sasha Petrova, an editor at the
Conversation Media Group, to whom I owe more than I can express. I
am immensely grateful for her unflagging commitment to reading and
proof-reading the chapters of my doctoral thesis and her generous edito-
rial engagement with the text of this book.
I wish to thank the internationally recognised faculty of Education
at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia for becoming my alma
mater and providing me with the opportunity to pursue my postgrad-
uate research. I express my gratitude to Dr. Jill Brown, who went the
extra mile to support the completion of my doctoral thesis, contributing
her time and expertise with a conscientious and genuine commitment.
Likewise, I am very grateful to Associate Prof. Jane Southcott for her
intellectual guidance throughout the course of my doctoral study and
especially for her support at its completion. I am also grateful to Jane
for reading chapters of this book and sharing with me her expertise in
remodelling a thesis into a published book.
I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Scott Bulfin for his inter-
est and appreciation for the thesis’ conceptual development and being
my supervisor, trusting me enough to endure my frequent independent

xiii
xiv    Acknowledgements

explorations. I wish to thank Associate Prof Allie Clemans for acknowl-


edging and endorsing my ardent search for alternative ways of knowl-
edge-production. I am very grateful to Rosemary Viete, a student
support officer, for assisting me in becoming a teacher in Australia, and
later, for her kind help with my research.
I am thankful to my doctoral thesis examiners, Prof. David Forrest
and Dr. John Potter, for considering my thesis a considerable contribu-
tion to knowledge and bolstering my confidence in turning it into a pub-
lished book.
I am deeply appreciative to Palgrave Macmillan and especially to
senior editor Sara Crowley Vigneau for her careful guidance in the
preparation of this book publication. I am eminently grateful to an anon-
ymous external reviewer for his/her very positive conclusive comments.
Additionally, many thanks go to senior editorial assistant Connie Li for
her contribution to the production of the book and the cover’s designer.
I am also grateful to James Mathews for allowing me to use quotes and
images from his university assignment.
I am very much obliged to my family—my husband George; my son
Anton and, as mentioned above, especially my daughter Sasha—for their
patient reassurance and ongoing support. The completion of my Ph.D.
and publication of this book is truly an achievement that belongs to my
family.

Acknowledgements to the New Culture


Consistent with the Ripples pedagogy principle of creating knowledge
individually but with others, I would like to acknowledge my appreci-
ation for being a collegial particle in the collective synergy of wisdom.
In expressing my gratitude for being able to construct my own intellec-
tual project, I assert my indebtedness to the digital Ripplework culture,
whose endless resources have become so freely available to every individ-
ual knower, such as myself.
Through working on my doctoral study and then on this book, I
developed an immense appreciation for the cyber community of scholars,
authors and individual participants who not only shared their knowledge
with me but also allowed me to participate in their personal ripplework.
As a testimonial to this, below are two examples through which I
would like to demonstrate my gratitude to this cyber phenomenon.
Acknowledgements    xv

Joe Kincheloe’s YouTube interview with Henry Giroux on the


topic of Critical Pedagogy (December 2007, retrieved, July 2013,
from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvCs6XkT3-o) opened
new horizons for me to formulate a different outlook on the purpose
and nature of pedagogy. Following my swelling enthusiasm, I began
to explore the discourse that was brought to light for me through the
lens of Kincheloe and Giroux’s talk. My approach was similar to the one
that anyone in the present-day would undertake: downloading related
books and articles available on academic sites—free and from Kindle—
searching websites, watching YouTube videos and ‘friending’ Henry
Giroux on Facebook (Joe Kincheloe is unfortunately no longer with us,
although his Facebook page exists under the loving care of his wife Shirly
Steinberg). As a result of my passionate action and amidst the avalanche
of the material I read, listened to and watched, I came across the book
titled Students as Researchers: Creating Classrooms that Matter (1998)
compiled by Joe Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg (Eds.). This book
turned me into an ardent promoter of the individual student’s agency
in constructing their knowledge. This conversion paved the way for the
direction my doctoral study took, with its focus consolidating around the
critical point that the oppression in education exists, first of all, in the
form of the learner’s oppression: the oppression of Self. In addition, thank
you, Shirley for accepting my Facebook friend-request.
A few years later, after completing my Ph.D., I listened to Tara
Brabazon and Steve Redhead’s blog How Do I Change a Ph.D. into a
Book? (April 2017, retrieved May 2017, from: http://tarabrabazon.
libsyn.com/how-do-i-change-a-phd-into-a-book). Following Tara and
Steve’s advice closely, I worked on the monograph and remodelled
it into a book for publication. Again, thank you, Tara Brabazon, for
approving my Facebook friend request and allowing me to become part
of your exciting life, rippling with your warm-hearted radioactivity for
social change. I am also very sorry for the recent loss of your dear friend
and husband, Steve Redhead.
Providing me with a sense of belonging to a community of contempo-
rary, like-minded intellectuals, Facebook and Twitter networking played
a significant role in the development of my doctoral study. In times of
doubt, by various modes, it offered me encouragement and valuable
advice. People’s scholarly and personal endeavours, achievements and
activities continuously kindled my enthusiasm towards my own study.
This sustained engagement in the dynamic flow of people’s lives created
xvi    Acknowledgements

an awareness of personal significance and developed a sense of oneness


with those who would traditionally remain utterly detached.
In short, ‘the whole universe awaits me’ at a ‘gigantic playground’
(Flusser’s 1985, loc. 1533). ‘My imaginative powers allow me to play
with all theories […] And I myself can, just by pressing the appropriate
buttons, affect this future by adding my own bits of information’ (loc.
1526). Such a possibility is both exhilarating and alarming. For the first
time in human history, we have a unified playground where the buttons
to play and to affect the whole are available to everyone. This gigan-
tic playground can become either the last terminal or a new beginning
depending on how soon and in what ways we reinvent the rules of the
game.

References
Flusser, V. (1985). Into the Universe of Technical Images: Electronic Mediations
[Kindle Version, 2011]. N. A. Roth (Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
Retrieved from: Amazon.com.
FreireProject. (2007, December). Henry Girox: Figures in Critical Pedagogy
[Youtube video]. Retrieved July 2013 from: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UvCs6XkT3-o.
Tarabrabazon’s Podcast. (2017, April). How Do I Change a Ph.D. into a Book?
[Podcast]. Retrieved May 2017 from: http://tarabrabazon.libsyn.com/how-
do-i-change-a-phd-into-a-book.
Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Self 1
1.2 Human/Technology Enmeshment 2
1.3 Alienated Learning 3
1.4 Reconnected Learning 4
1.5 Chapter Overview 11
References 15

2 Paradigm Shift: From Far-Ends to Circularities 19


2.1 Puzzle-Solving Paradigm 19
2.2 Sputnik’s Effect on Liberal Education 22
2.3 Standardised Testing: Cultivating Fearful
Puppets and Cheerful Robots 26
2.4 The Math Myth 28
2.5 Divergence and Convergence 32
2.6 Individual Curiosity Conventional Wisdom
Ripple: Leonardo, Isaac, Albert and Steve 35
2.7 Convergence Points 45
2.8 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 49
2.8.1 Learning Task One: The Newtonian Knower 49
References 52

xvii
xviii    Contents

3 Mind-Cinema and Cinematic Writing 57


3.1 Mind-Movie Projector 57
3.2 Looping for Meaning 59
3.3 Narrative and Database Through the Process
of Layered Production 63
3.4 Overtonal Montage 65
3.5 Cinema Thinking and Sociological Imagination 66
3.6 Convergent Points 69
3.7 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 71
3.7.1 Learning Task Two: The Shower of Experiences 71
References 73

4 Writing a Subtext 75
4.1 Changing Actively and with Care 75
4.2 Recovering the ‘Atmosphere’ 77
4.3 Gestalt—An Interplay of All Modes 79
4.4 Cinematic Writing 80
4.5 Convergent Points 85
4.6 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 86
4.6.1 Learning Task Three: Making Your
Own Meaning 86
References 88

5 Culture of Webworking: Knowing with


an Endless Catalogue of Resources 91
5.1 Participatory Culture and Remix 91
5.2 Remix and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) 95
5.3 DIY and Multimodal Bricolage 97
5.4 Eclectic Personal Choices 99
5.5 The Methodology of Collecting and Reassembling 101
5.6 Cinematic Bricolage Mechanics 104
5.7 Convergent Points 106
5.8 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 109
5.8.1 Learning Task Four: The Unity
of the Mind and the World 109
References 113
Contents    xix

6 Complexity of the World: Circular Interconnectedness 117


6.1 Cinematic Bricolage in Ripples 117
6.2 Circularity of Self-Organisation 120
6.3 Developing the Ripplework 122
6.4 Epistemology of the Ripplework 123
6.5 Adaptation with Cinematic Bricolage 127
6.6 Feedback Loops 128
6.7 Ripplework Example 131
6.8 Role of the Teacher in the Ripples Pedagogy 133
6.9 Convergence Points 135
6.10 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 138
6.10.1 Learning Task Five: Piaget’s Equilibration 138
References 140

7 Cinematic Bricolage as Reconnected Learning 143


7.1 Nature and Nurture 143
7.2 Mental Grasps Within Cinematic Writing 145
7.3 Reconnecting the Self with the World Through Critical
Self-Reflection and Collaboration with Others 149
7.4 Reconnected Agency 153
7.5 Multimodality of Reconnection 157
7.6 Convergent Points 161
7.7 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 162
7.7.1 Learning Task Six: Agents of Knowing 162
References 163

8 DIY Creativity: Culture of Self-Sufficiency 167


8.1 Learning by Creating 167
8.2 DIY: The Path to Rippling 171
8.3 Creative Strategies 174
8.3.1 Codes and Matrices 175
8.3.2 Collisions of Incompatible Codes:
The Jester, Sage and Artist 176
8.3.3 Combinational, Exploratory and
Transformational Creativity 178
8.3.4 Metaphor as a Psychological Tool 180
xx    Contents

8.4 The Ripple Model Example 182


8.4.1 The Spider Web 182
8.4.2 Combinational Creativity—Deep Remixability 183
8.4.3 Exploratory Creativity—Bricolage 185
8.4.4 Transformational Creativity—Self-Design 187
8.5 Convergence Points 188
8.6 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 190
8.6.1 Learning Task Seven: The Jester, Sage
and Artist 190
References 192

9 Engine Room of Creative Software 195


9.1 Digital Tools ‘at Hand’ 195
9.2 Building Blocks of Digital Media 197
9.2.1 Numerical Representation 198
9.2.2 Automation 199
9.2.3 Modularity 202
9.2.4 Variability 203
9.2.5 Transcoding 204
9.3 Perception Parallels, Software Layers
and Reconnected Learning 206
9.4 Agency of Transcoding 209
9.5 Convergent Points 211
9.6 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 213
9.6.1 Learning Task Eight: Human Machine
Enmeshment 213
References 214

10 Assessment, Learning and Sociological Imagination:


From Word-Count to the Value of Learning 217
10.1 The Conflict Between the Word-Count
and Multimodal Representations 217
10.2 Feedback Loops Assessment 219
10.3 Reconnected Curriculum 224
10.4 The Probes 227
10.4.1 Probe One, The Tea Party 228
10.4.2 Probe Two, The Harlequin 231
Contents    xxi

10.5 Potemkin’s Village 232


10.6 The Struggle Not to Become an Automaton 234
10.7 Convergence Points 237
10.8 DOING KNOWING: The Ripples Pedagogy
in Practice 238
10.8.1 Learning Task Nine: The Potemkin Village 238
References 239

11 Probes’ Review Decoding Symbols


and Making-Meaning with Others 243
11.1 Looking Out for Messages: Crows 243
11.2 Figure-Ground Principle as Reconnection 246
11.3 Motion and Sound as Multimodal Codes 248
11.4 Internationale Strawberry Fields 250
11.5 Technology Rocks Potemkin Villages 253
11.6 Individually, Together with Others 255
11.7 ‘Here Comes the … Knowing’ 256
11.8 Convergence Points 259
References 260

12 Conclusion 263
References 271

Index 273
List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 The Recyculator. Author: J9 Stanton, Alice Springs, Australia


(Found-objects sculpture representing the recycling process
[Personal photograph]) 61
Fig. 4.1 Visualisation of cinematic writing 81
Fig. 5.1 Visualisation of remix and deep remixability—bricolage
outcomes 94
Fig. 6.1 Visualisation of gathering and processing data with the Ripples
model 130
Fig. 7.1 Ripples model 150
Fig. 8.1 The screenshots from James Mathew’s assessment task video
The Area Song 173
Fig. 8.2 Visualisation of the creative process stages in the ripples model 184
Fig. 9.1 Examples of visual interactivity that the teacher can demon-
strate using Adobe Illustrator when teaching about shapes 200
Fig. 9.2 Example of visual interactivity that the teacher can demonstrate
using Adobe Illustrator when teaching about perspective 201
Fig. 9.3 Fractal construction of a fern leaf using principle of modularity 202
Fig. 9.4 Unified projection of the production layers in Adobe Edge
Animate 207

xxiii
List of Tables

Table 3.1 Database and narrative elements in cinematic writing 64


Table 4.1 Overlapping representational modes in cinematic writing 84
Table 5.1 Cinematic Bricolage system of knowledge production 108

xxv
CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1   Self
This book is based on a doctoral study that sought to develop a method
of knowledge construction that could be appropriate to embrace the
complexity of the twenty-first century world. Boulton et al. (2015)
argue: ‘Complexity at its essence is not a model or method or metaphor,
it is a description of the way things are’ (p. 27). The perpetual techno-
logical changes of the modern era provoke even more complexity, ‘mess-
iness, variation, diversity and fluctuation’ (p. 26). In such conditions,
knowledge of the Self appears to be foundational to all other types of
knowledge. People must know the Self to address the turbulent circum-
stances and variety of content with which today’s technology bombards
our global village. Self-reflective knowledge opens one’s eyes to recognis-
ing the possibility of and constructing a path through the shifting sands
of what only recently appeared to be the bedrock of life. Seeing the path,
one gains confidence and resilience with which to meet the changeability
of existence. What they also discover is that their pathways are threads,
tightly interwoven into the fabric of their environment, circumstances
and the paths of others.
It is only through taking a walk and weaving the way for each new
step that people enter true communion with the physicality of their
surroundings. Through experiencing and reflecting, people develop a
conception of other minds and begin to act with appreciation of other
travellers both near, far and unknown. The Self and Others are the

© The Author(s) 2018 1


L. Redman, Knowing with New Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1361-5_1
2 L. REDMAN

dynamic forces that stitch through the fabric of reality, spin and clash in
the virtual tapestry of minds, continuously forging new patterns.
After spending the last few years studying the literature concerned
with new directions in education, I could not help noticing the recur-
ring pattern of the emphasis on the term ‘self’. For example, in rela-
tion to learning and knowledge production, such terms as: ‘self-taught’
(Thomas and Seely Brown 2011); ‘self-representational’, ‘self-reflex-
ive’, ‘self-authored’, ‘self-produced’ (Potter 2012); ‘self-creating’, ‘self-
transformative’, ‘self-governing’, ‘self-autonomous’, ‘self-generative’,
‘self-motivating’, ‘self-realising’, ‘self-monitoring’, ‘self-paced’ (Kalantzis
and Cope 2012; Cope and Kalantzis 2015); ‘self-regulative’, ‘self-
organising’ (Boulton et al. 2015), ‘self-blending’, ‘self-directed’, ‘self-
controlled’ (Bull 2017), and so on, are frequently encountered.
This orientation towards a self-prefix may suggest a scholarly consen-
sus that in searching for the new approaches to learning, the Self requires
a revised position in a number of ways. This also implies that the infor-
mal learning of everyday life has already taken care of this important
aspect of Self in a going-without-saying way, while in institutionalised
education, the Self keeps knocking at the door with little to show for it.
Formal education still alienates the Self from learning and ‘does not fully
engage the identity, interests and motivations of the learner’ (Kalantzis
and Cope 2012, p. 51).

1.2  Human/Technology Enmeshment
In the last twenty years, rapid advances in technology have caused a dra-
matic transformation in the dynamics of experiential structures. The tra-
ditionally constructed, carefully crafted practices and social categories
that survived for centuries have entered into the zone of turbulence,
and the traditional meanings of many practices have been challenged.
The practice of reflexive self-identity’s interpretation is one of those. It
has acquired new technological tools, a modified context and an altered
perspective. This situation exemplifies Marx’s premise, as interpreted by
Leontiev (1978), that through contact with the tools and objects of their
activities, people ‘test their resistance, act on them, acknowledging their
objective properties’ and change themselves.
Today, the learner is presented with digital tools as personalised means
of knowledge production in the context of everyday life learning. Like
breathing warm air on a frozen window, the screens of computers and
mobile devices ‘thaw’ portals and reveal a vision focused much further
1 INTRODUCTION 3

than the immediate surrounding. Providing people with facts, perspec-


tives, instructions for activities, and links to the networks of their personal
interests, the portals of new vision form personalised systems of con-
sciousness that reconnect individuals with their innate virtues. Advanced
opportunities excite new curiosity, foster new motivations and encourage
new participation in weaving new patterns of knowledge. Within the for-
mally organised system of education with a deliberately designed curric-
ulum and ‘centralised and hierarchical control of educational institutions
and the knowledge they distribute’ (Kalantzis and Cope 2012, p. 284),
the personalised conscious portal systems are rendered irrelevant.
This can be described in terms of Marx’s (1844) theory of alien-
ated labour, where he sees the product of labour being objectified—
‘labour’s realisation is its objectification’ (loc. 1250). In this way, learn-
ing realisations can also be seen as their objectification. That is, the
learner embodies the product of their learning into an output that is
exchanged for the grades they earn by passing their standardised tests.
The product of learning therefore becomes a commodity, whose produc-
tion is chiefly motivated by the need to be sold for the required points
that will determine the learner’s further progression. This concept can
be encapsulated into the notion, ‘pass and forget’. As Kincheloe and
Steinberg write (1998): ‘Once the test is over most students no longer
have any use for such information and quickly forget it’ (p. 5). The prod-
uct of learning will only be remembered if it has further practical applica-
tion in real life. Otherwise, the realisation of learning ‘appears as loss of
reality’ (Marx 1844, loc. 1250), decontextualised information that holds
no significance to the learner (Kincheloe and Steinberg 1998, p. 5). Such
learning, Girox (2011) asserts, ‘celebrates rote learning, memorisation,
and high-stakes testing, while it produces an atmosphere of student pas-
sivity and teacher routinisation’ (p. 10). Learning loses its intrinsic value
because the numerical appraisal is its ultimate aim. The learner becomes
more interested in generating an impressive numerical ‘account’ rather
than being the producer of personally authentic practical knowledge.

1.3  Alienated Learning
As a rule, in traditional education, the learner begins their project with
sources and materials constructed not from their immediate environ-
ment, daily interactions, or interests but from someone else’s abstrac-
tion of reality. These outside notions, sets of ideas, skills and techniques
reflect someone’s belief about what the learner should master in the
4 L. REDMAN

domain of knowledge. Thus, the situation of the learner’s estrangement


from their learning projects begins from being fed by someone else’s idea
of what the learner should know about the world they inhabit.
Marx (1844) states: ‘The worker can create nothing without nature,
without the sensuous external world. It is the material on which his
labour is manifested, in which it is active, from which and by means of
which it produces’ (loc. 1279). If we replace the word ‘worker’ with
the word ‘learner’, we can say that mainstream formal learning occurs
outside of being part of the sensuous external world. The experience of
being in the world is abstracted and embodied into artificially resourced
materials from which, and by means of which, the learner acquires their
knowledge.
Marx argues: ‘The direct relationship of labour to its produce is the
relationship of the worker to the objects of his production’ (loc. 1298).
Again, it can be said that the direct relationship of learning to its prod-
uct is the relationship of the learner to the objects of their learning. The
learner learns in order to pass a test with the goal of exchange the prod-
uct of their learning for grades. For standardised testing, the learner’s
personal interests, applied effort, curiosity, risk-taking, and innovative ten-
dencies, as well as the ability to construct their own knowledge, is not
only unnecessary but counterproductive. Within the confines of the tra-
ditional curriculum and standardised testing, the relationship between the
learner and their essential creative forces can be characterised as estranged.
Marx continues: ‘If then the product of labour is alienation, produc-
tion itself must be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activ-
ity of alienation’ (loc. 1312). In comparing this to formal education, it
can be said that the learner is in the position of alienating their learning
from their own self, similar to the worker described by Marx, who faces
‘the product of his activity as a stranger […] Its alien character emerges
clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists,
labour is shunned like the plague’ (loc. 1312). In contemporary edu-
cation, this can be compared to school breaks and holiday homework,
which is usually seen as a grievous misfortune.

1.4  Reconnected Learning
The digital revolution has brought about a change in position between
power-holding institutions, teachers and individual learners alike and lev-
elled them into the same category in terms of their possessing the means
1 INTRODUCTION 5

of knowledge-production. This is a historically unique circumstance that


has caused a shift in the agency of knowledge-production processes,
spreading it evenly between the three main actor-groups: society, teach-
ers and learners. In this regard, the task of digital literacy, as an educa-
tional discipline, must be oriented not only towards the development of
technological skills and the accumulation of a variety of attractive learn-
ing proficiencies but also to the historical-sociocultural alterations that
are at work at every junction of contemporary life. This leads to chal-
lenging the deeply ingrained attitude with which people have tradition-
ally viewed education: learning the existing symbolic systems of certain
disciplines and then expressing themselves strictly within the operational
modes of these systems.
This book proposes that by virtue of having the means and tools of
accessing data and constructing symbols, literally ‘at hand’, the learner
can now find ways of expressing him/herself in his/her own way. In
doing so, the learner can invent his/her own multidisciplinary, mul-
timodal and uniquely personal systems of knowing and sharing knowl-
edge. This can be termed as a reconnected learning, where the learner
reconnects the ways of learning with the ways of being.
In the context of reconnected learning, self-reflexivity gains signifi-
cant educational value. The process requires Self: an agent, the specific
continuity across time and space embedded in a particular complexity ‘of
shifting contexts’ as described by Giddens, as well as a method of con-
verting experience into embodied meaning. According to Maturana and
Varela (1998), ‘every reflection, including one of the foundations of
human knowledge, invariably takes place in language’ (p. 26). This book
proposes stepping ‘outside the box’ of verbal language and exploring the
reflection(s) conducted through verbal and other symbolic systems, or
modes of expression. Thus, self-agency is given an autonomous mode of
operation that is aligned with the agent’s individual abilities, skills and
interests.
In an attempt to grasp the complexity of the lived world, incorpo-
ration of a notion of typography as a movie projector (McLuhan’s 1962)
with bricolage as a research method (Lévi-Strauss 1962), gave rise to a
methodology of multimodal or cinematic bricolage. It has emerged from
enmeshing of collecting and interpreting data ‘by means of heterogene-
ous repertoire’, characterised by ‘tinkering’ with whatever resources are
available with the narration by overtonal montaging (Eisenstein 1949)
used in film production.
6 L. REDMAN

Compared to a craftsman, the bricoleur does not start his/her work by


obtaining the necessary materials and an appropriate set of tools and then
developing skills of the trade step by step. The bricoleur engages him/her-
self by deciphering messages hidden in the objects, activities or concepts,
or bricoles, that are inherent in his/her present environment or situation.
The process of decoding the messages leads to weaving a web of calculated
communication between other assorted elements that are also within reach
in the immediate surroundings. This process can present the bricoleur
with moments of great surprise and excitement at recognising ‘a dialog’
being developed between previously unrelated elements, or bricoles.
For example, iPhone and iPad were used for recording ‘grasps of
reality’—such as, for instance, sparks on the water and schools of tiny
fish darting under them—to be incorporated later into the text. It was
rather surprising to see how those seemingly discordant life-moments
found their integral ‘voice’ in the ensembles of multimodal composi-
tions. Samples from personal collections of photographs and old docu-
ments were scanned, fragments of the songs from the past were knitted
together with the symbolisations of the present life events. Personal
recordings from direct life-experiences were enmeshed with the elements
drawn from diverse internet resources: Kindle, YouTube, social media
sites, websites, blogs and so on. The data was synthesised and modelled
into the cinematic texts. This is a method in which alphabetic writing
was used as a ‘canvas’ into which other semiotic modes of expression—
images, sounds and motion—were integrated. In the study, it was identi-
fied as cinematic writing, that is writing with images, sounds and motions.
Cinematic writing is a multimodal form of expression in which informa-
tional and emotional weight is distributed between the modes of expres-
sion according to the individual intentions, tendencies, interests and
skills of the producer.
Due to categories such as ‘numerical representation’, ‘automation’,
‘modularity’ and ‘variability’, as identified by Manovich (2002), dig-
ital media catalysed what Manovich (2013) termed ‘new cultural logic
at work’, that is, a ‘deep remixability’ (p. 289). As a result, this deep
remixability of cinematic bricolage is conducive to endless hybridisation,
reflecting the specifics of the task and disposition of the producer of the
study by accommodating their ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills 1959).
The sociological imagination in this book is the thread that weaves indi-
vidual personalities into a fabric of broader natural, sociocultural, and
technological circularities: ripplework.
1 INTRODUCTION 7

The development of the Ripples model was inspired by the recogni-


tion of the present need to rethink contemporary education and a desire
to join a strong current of attuned voices calling for such a revision
(Buckingham 2007; Kolb 2011; Thomas and Brown 2011; Potter 2012;
Martinez and Stager 2013; Jewitt et al. 2016; Livingstone and Sefton-
Green 2016; Jefferson and Anderson 2017; Bull 2017; Gee 2017 and
many others). These pronounced calls for change are commonly asso-
ciated with the transformational potential of digital technologies that
influence dramatic changes in the world around us, while schools remain
largely unchanged (Jefferson and Anderson 2017). This is not to imply
that technology is ignored in schools but to suggest that in its ontology,
digital media cannot be perceived in linear terms, while education is still
largely structured in keeping with linear thinking.
Building on a vision of dynamic ripplework, the learning model pre-
sented in this text encompasses such operational dimensions as critical
self-reflection, multimodal communication, collaboration, distributed
agency and DIY creativity. The Ripples approach to learning adopts the
assumption of systemic-constructivist theory, which holds that ‘there is
little sense in thinking in a linear-casual way because everything is cir-
cularly connected; whatever happens manifests itself in utterly entangled
chains of effect’ (Poerksen 2004, loc. 2753). Framing digital technol-
ogies within the dominant linearity of traditional education therefore
creates a misalignment that becomes profoundly evident in the light of
‘cybernetics and other systems sciences’ that transform ‘our understand-
ing of living systems […] and we begin to pay attention to feedback
effects and processes of self-organisation’ (Stierlin 2004, loc. 2763).
Cinematic bricolage is framed within the process of digital representa-
tion considered through the lens of feedback loops and effects of self-
organisation. Through their study of the phenomenon of self-organisa-
tion, Maturana and Varela (1998) categorised living beings within their
environment as autonomous autopoietic unities. ‘A system is autono-
mous if it can specify its own laws, what is proper to it’ (p. 48). The
mechanism that makes living beings autonomous is autopoiesis (p. 48).
Autopoiesis, according to Maturana and Varela, is the recursive self-
reproduction of a living system through its own elements according to its
interaction with a larger circuitous system.
The mechanism of autopoiesis is examined in correlation with Piaget’s
(1950) concept of cognitive adaptation. Autopoietic unity resulting from
structural coupling, that is, recurrent interactions between a system and
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¶. 2. Some Rules and Circumstances to be observed in
Casting.

1. If the Letter be a small Body, it requires a Harder Shake than a


great Body does: Or if it be a thin Letter though of a greater Body,
especially small i, being a thin Letter its Tittle will hardly Come; So
that sometimes the Caster is forced to put a little Block-Tin into his
Mettal, which makes the Mettal Thinner, and consequently have a
freer flux to the Face of the Matrice.
2. He often examines the Registers of the Mold, by often Rubbing a
Cast Letter: For notwithstanding the Registers were carefully
Justified before, and hard screwed up; yet the constant thrusting of
both Registers against the sides of the Matrice, may and often do
force them more or less to drive backwards. Or a fall of one half or
both Halfs of the Mold, may drive them backwards or forwards:
Therefore he examins, as I said, how they Rub, whether too Thick or
too Thin. And if he see Cause, mends the Registers, as I shew’d §.
5. ¶. 2.
Or if the Matrice be Botcht, as I shew’d you §. 5. ¶. 3. then those
Botches (being only so many fine points rising out of the Body of the
Copper of the Matrice) may with so many reiterated pressures of the
Registers against them, flatten more and more, and press towards
the Body of the Matrice, and consequently make the Letter Thinner:
Which if it do, this must be mended in the Matrice by re-raising it to
its due Thickness.
3. He pretty often examins, as I shew’d in §. 5. ¶. 2. how the Letters
stand in Line: For when great Numbers are Cast with one Matrice,
partly by pressing the point of the Wyer against the Bottom-Sholder
of the Notch in the back-side of the Matrice, and partly by the
softness of the matter of his Matrice and hardness of the Iron-stool,
the Foot of the Matrice (if it wear not) may batter so much as to put
the Letter out of Line. This must be mended with a Botch, viz. by
knocking up the Foot of the Matrice, as I shew’d §. 5. ¶. 3.
A Workman will Cast about four thousand of these Letters ordinarily
in one day.

¶. 3. Of Breaking off Letters.

Breaking off is commonly Boys-work: It is only to Break the Break


from the Shanck of the Letter. All the care in it is, that he take up the
Letter by its Thickness, not its Body (unless its Thickness be equal to
its Body) with the fore-inger and Thumb of his right Hand as close to
the Break as he can, lest if when the Break be between the fore-
Finger and Thumb of his left hand, the force of Breaking off the
Break should bow the Shanck of the Letter.

¶. 4. Of Rubbing of Letters.

Rubbing of Letters is also most commonly Boys-work: But when they


do it, they provide Finger-stalls for the two fore-Fingers of the right-
Hand: For else the Skin of their Fingers would quickly rub off with the
sharp greet of the Stone. These Finger-stalls are made of old Ball-
Leather or Pelts that Printers have done with: Then having an heap
of one sort of Letters lying upon the Stone before them, with the left
hand they pick up the Letter to be Rub’d, and lay it down in the
Rubbing place with one of its sides upwards they clap the Balls of
the fore-Finger and middle-Finger upon the fore and hinder-ends of
the Letter, and Rubbing the Letter pretty lightly backwards about
eight or nine Inches, they bring it forwards again with an hard
pressing Rub upon the Stone; where the fore-Finger and Thumb of
the left-Hand is ready to receive it, and quickly turn the opposite side
of the Letter, to take such a Rub as the other side had.
But in Rubbing they are very careful that they press the Balls of their
Fingers equally hard on the Head and Foot of the Letter. For if the
Head and Foot be not equally prest on the Stone, either the Head or
Foot will drive-out when the Letters come to be Composed in the
Stick; So that without Rubbing over again they cannot be Drest.

¶. 5. Of Kerning of Letters.

Amongst the Italick-Letters many are to be Kern’d, some only on one


side, and some both sides. The Kern’d-Letters are such as have part
of their Face hanging over one side or both sides of their Shanck:
These cannot be Rub’d, because part of the Face would Rub away
when the whole side of the Shanck is toucht by the Stone: Therefore
they must be Kern’d, as Founders call it: Which to do, they provide a
small Stick bigger or less, according as the Body of the Letter that is
to be Kern’d. This Kerning-stick is somewhat more than an Handful
long, and it matters not whether it be square or round: But if it be
square the Edges of it must be pretty well rounded away, lest with
long usage and hard Cutting they Gall the Hand. The upper-side of
this Kerning-Stick is flatted away somewhat more than the length of
the Letter, and on that flat part is cut away a flat bottom with two
square sides like the Sides or Ledges of the Lining-stick to serve for
two Sholders. That side to be Kern’d and scrap’d, is laid upwards,
and its opposite side on the bottom of the Kerning-stick with the Foot
of the Letter against the bottom Sholder, and the side of the Letter
against the side Sholder of the Kerning-stick.
He also provides a Kerning-Knife: This is a pretty strong piece of a
broken Knife, about three Inches long, which he fits into a Wooden-
Handle: But first he breaks off the Back of the Knife towards the
Point, so as the whole edge lying in a straight line the piece broken
off from the back to the edge may leave an angle at the point of
about 45 Degrees, which irregular breaking (for so we must suppose
it) he either Grinds or Rubs off on a Grind-stone. Then he takes a
piece of a Broom-stick for his Handle, and splits one end of it about
two Inches long towards the other end, and the split part he either
Cuts or Rasps away about a Brevier deep round about that end of
the Handle. Then he puts about an Inch and an half of his broken
blade into the split or slit in the Handle, and ties a four or five
doubled Paper a little below the Rasped part of the Handle round
about it, to either a Pica or Long-Primmer thick of the slit end of the
Handle. This Paper is so ordered that all its sides round about shall
stand equally distant from all the Rasped part of the Handle: For
then setting the other end of the Handle in Clay, or otherwise
fastening it upright, when Mettal is poured in between the Rasped
part of the Handle and the Paper about it, that Mettal will make a
strong Ferril to the Handle of the Knife. The irregularities that may
happen in Casting this Ferril may be Rasped away to make it more
handy and Handsome.
Now to return again where I left off. Holding the Handle of the
Kerning-stick in his left hand, He lays the side of the Letter to be
Kern’d upwards with the Face of the Letter towards the end of the
Kerning-stick: the side of the Letter against the side Sholder of the
Kerning-stick, and the Foot of the Letter against the bottom Sholder
of the Kerning-stick, and laying the end of the Ball of his left-Hand
Thumb hard upon the Shanck of the Letter to keep its Side and Foot
steddy against the Sholders of the Kerning-stick, he with the
Kerning-Knife in his right-Hand cuts off about one quarter of the
Mettal between the Beard of the Shanck and the Face of the Letter.
Then turning his Knife so as the back of it may lean towards him, he
scrapes towards him with the edge of the Knife about half the length
of that upper-side, viz. about so much as his Thumb does not cover:
Then he turns the Face of the Letter against the lower Sholder of the
Kerning-stick, and scraping fromwards him with a stroak or two of his
Knife smoothens that end of the Letter also.
If the other side of the Letter be not to be Kern’d it was before Rub’d
on the Stone, as was shewed in the last ¶: But if it be to be Kern’d,
then he makes a little hole in his Kerning-stick, close to the lower
Sholder of it and full deep enough to receive all that part of the Face
of the Letter that hangs over the Shanck, that the Shanck of the
Letter may lie flat and solid on the bottom of the Kerning-stick, and
that so the Shanck of the Letter bow not when the weight of the hand
presses the edge of the Kerning-Knife hard upon it. Into this hole he
puts (as before said) so much of the Face of the Letter as hangs
over the side of the Shanck, and so scrapes the lower end of the
Letter and Kerns the upper end, as he did the former side of the
Letter.

¶. 6. Of Setting up, or Composing Letters.

I described in §. 5. ¶. 2. the Lining-stick, But now we are come to


Setting up, or Composing of Letters. The Founder must provide
many Composing-Sticks; five or six dozen at the least. These
Composing-sticks are indeed but long Lining-sticks, about seven or
eight and twenty Inches long Handle and all: Whereof the Handle is
about three Inches and an half long: But as the Lining-stick I
described was made of Brass: So these Composing-sticks are made
of Beech-Wood.
When the Boy Sets up Letters (for it is commonly Boys-Work) The
Caster Casts about an hundred Quadrats of the same Body about
half an Inch broad at least, let the Body be what it will, and of the
length of the whole Carriage, only by placing a flat Brass or Iron
Plate upon the Stool of the Mold close against the Carriage and
Body, to stop the Mettal from running farther.
The Boy (I say) takes the Composing-stick by the Handle in his left
hand, clasping it about with his four Fingers, and puts the Quadrat
first into the Composing-stick, and lays the Ball of his Thumb upon it,
and with the fore-Finger and Thumb of his right-Hand, assisted by
his middle-Finger to turn the Letter to a proper position, with its Nick
upwards towards the bottom side of the Composing-stick; while it is
coming to the Stick, he at the same time lifts up the Thumb of his
left-Hand, and with it receives and holds the Letter against the fore-
side of the Quadrat, and after it, all the Letters of the same sort, if the
Stick will hold them, If not he Sets them in so many Sticks as will
hold them: Observing to Set all the Nicks of them upwards, as
aforesaid. And as he Set a Quadrat at the beginning of the
Composing-stick, so he fills not his Stick so full, but that he may Set
another such Quadrat at the end of it.
¶. 7. Some Rules and Circumstances to be observed in Setting
up Letters.

1. If they Drive a little out at Head or Foot, so little as not to require


new Rubbing again, then he holds his Thumb harder against the
Head or Foot, so as to draw the Driving end inward: For else when
they come to Scraping, and Dressing the Hook of the Dressing-Hook
drawing Square, will endanger the middle or some other part of
Letters in the Stick to Spring out: And when they come into the
Dressing-block, the Knots of the Blocks drawing also square subject
them to the same inconvenience. And if they Drive out at the Head,
the Feet will more or less stand off one another: So that when the
Tooth of the Plow comes to Dress the Feet, it will more or less job
against every Letter, and be apt to make a bowing at the Feet, or at
least make a Bur on their sides at the Feet.
2. When Short-Letters are begun to be Set up in a Stick, the whole
Stick must be fill’d with Short-Letters: Because when they are
Dressing, the Short Letters must be Bearded on both sides the Body:
And should Short-Letters or Ascending or Descending or Long stand
together, the Short cannot be Bearded because the Stems of the
Ascending or Descending or Long-Letters reach upon the Body to
the Beard: So that the Short-Letters cannot be Bearded, unless the
Stems of the other Letters should be scraped off.
3. When Long-Letters are begun to be Set up in the Stick, none but
such must fill it, for the reason aforesaid.
4. If any Letters Kern’d on one side be to be Set up, and the Stems
of the same Letters reach not to the opposite Beard as s or f, in
Setting up these or such like Letters, every next Letter is turned with
its Nick downwards, that the Kern of each Letter may lie over the
Beard of its next. But then they must be all Set up again with a
Short-Letter between each, that they may be Bearded.
Plate 21.
As every Stick-full is set up, he sets them by upon the Racks, ready
for the Dresser to Dress, as shall be shewed in the next §.
The Racks are described in Plate 21. at A. They are made of Square
Deal Battens about seven Inches and an half long, as at a b a b a b,
and are at the ends b b b let into two upright Stiles, standing about
sixteen Inches and an half assunder, and the fore-ends of the Racks
mounting a little, that when Sticks of Letters is Set by on any two
parallel Racks, there may be no danger that the Letters in them shall
slide off forward; but their Feet rest against the Bottom-Ledges of the
Composing-sticks. They set by as many of these Sticks with Letter in
them, as will stand upon one another between every two Rails, and
then set another pile of Sticks with Letter in them before the first, till
the length of the Rail be also filled with Sticks of Letter before one
another. They set all the Sticks of Letters with their ends even to one
another with the Faces of the Letter forwards.
This Frame of Racks is always placed near the Dressing-Bench, that
it may stand convenient to the Letter-Dressers Hand.

§. 20. ¶. 1. Of Dressing of Letters.


THere be several Tools and Machines used to the Dressing of
Letters: And unless I should describe them to you first, you might
perhaps in my following discourse not well understand me:
Wherefore I shall begin with them: They are as follows.

1. The Dressing-Sticks.
2. The Bench, Blocks and its Appurtenances.
3. The Dressing-Hook.
4. The Dressing-Knife.
5. The Plow.
6. The Mallet.

Of each of these in order.


¶. 2. Of the Dressing-Sticks.

I need give no other Description of the Dressing-sticks, than I did in


the last §. and ¶. of the Composing-Sticks: Only they are made of
hard Wood, and of greater Substance, as well because hard Wood
will work smoother than soft Wood, as because greater Substance is
less Subject to warp or shake than smaller Substance is. And also
because hard Wood is less Subject to be penetrated by the
sharpness of the Bur of the Mettal on the Letters than the soft.

¶. 3. Of the Block-Grove, and its Appurtenances.

The Block-Grove is described in Plate 21. a b. The Groove in which


the Blocks are laid, two Inches deep, and seven Inches and an half
wide at one end, and seven Inches wide at the other end: One of the
Cheeks as c is three Inches and an half broad at one end, and three
Inches broad at the other end, and the other Cheek three Inches
broad the whole Length: The Length of these Cheeks are two and
twenty Inches.
Plate 22.
The Wedge e f is seven and twenty Inches and an half long, two
Inches broad at one end, and three Inches and an half broad at the
other end; And two Inches deep.
g g g g The Bench on which the Dressing-Blocks are placed, are
about sixteen Inches broad, and two Foot ten Inches high from the
Floor. The Bench hath its farther Side, and both ends, railed about
with slit-Deal about two Inches high, that the Hook, the Knife, and
Plow, &c. fall not off when the Workman is at Work.
The Blocks are described in Plate 21 at a b: They are made of hard
Wood. These Blocks are six and twenty Inches long, and each two
Inches square. They are Male and Female, a the Male, b the
Female: Through the whole Length of the Male-Block runs a Tongue
as at a b, and a Groove as at c d, for the Tongue of the Plow to run
in; This Tongue is about half an Inch thick, and stands out square
from the upper and under-sides of the Block. About three Inches
within the ends of the Block is placed a Knot as at c c: These Knots
are small square pieces of Box-wood, the one above, and the other
below the Tongue.
The Female Block is such another Block as the Male Block, only,
instead of a Tongue running through the length of it a Groove is
made to receive the Tongue of the Male-Block, and the Knots in this
Block are made at the contrary ends, that when the Face of a Stick
of Letter is placed on the Tongue the Knot in the Male-Block stops
the Stick of Letter from sliding forwards, while the other Knot in the
Female-Block at the other end, by the knocking of a Mallet on the
end of the Block forces the Letter between the Blocks forwards, and
so the whole Stick of Letters between these two Knots are screwzed
together, and by the Wedge e f in Plate 21 (also with the force of a
Mallet) Wedges the two Blocks and the Stick of Letter in them also
tight, and close between the sides of the two Blocks; that afterwards
the Plow may more certainly do its Office upon the Foot of the Letter;
as shall be shewed hereafter.1

¶. 3. Of the Dressing-Hook.
The Dressing-Hook is described in Plate 21 at c. This is a long
square Rod of Iron, about two Foot long and a Great-Primmer
square: Its end a is about a two-Lin’d-English thick, and hath a small
Return piece of Iron made square to the under-side of the Rod, that
when the whole Dressing-Hook is laid along a Stick of Letter, this
Return piece or Hook may, when the Rod is drawn with the Ball of
the Thumb, by the Knot on the upper-side of it at c, draw all the
Letter in the Stick tight and close up together, that the Stick of Letter
may be Scraped, as shall be shewed.

¶. 4. Of the Dressing-Knife.

The Dressing-Knife is delineated at d in Plate 21. It is only a short


piece of a Knife broken off about two Inches from the Sholder: But its
Edge is Basil’d away from the back to the point pretty suddenly to
make it the stronger: The Sprig or Pin of the Handle is commonly let
into an Hole drilled into a piece of the Tip of an Harts-horn, as in the
Figure and is fastned in with Rosen, as other Knives are into their
Handles.

¶. 5. Of the Plow.

The Plow is delineated in Plate 21 at e: It is almost a common Plain


(which I have already described in Vol. 1. Numb. 4. Plate 4. and §. 2
to 9.) only with this distinction, that through the length of the Sole
runs such a Tongue, as does through the Male-Block to slide tight
and yet easily through the Groove made on the top of the Male-
block: Its Blade makes an Angle of 60 Degrees with the Sole of it.

§. 21. ¶. 1. Of Dressing of Letters.


The Letter-Dresser hath (as I told you before) his Letter Set up in
Composing-sticks, with their Nicks upwards, and those Sticks set
upon the Racks: Therefore he takes one Stick off the Racks, and
placing the Handle of the Composing-stick in his left hand, he takes
the contrary end of the Dressing-stick in his right-hand, and laying
the Back of the Dressing-stick even upon or rather a little hanging
over the Back of the Composing-stick, that the Feet of the Letter may
fall within the Bottom-Ledge of the Dressing-stick; He at the same
time fits the Side-Ledge of the Dressing-stick against the farther end
of the Line of Letters in the Composing-stick: And holding then both
Sticks together, his left hand at the Handle-end of the Composing-
stick, and his right-Hand within about two Handfuls of the Handle-
end of the Dressing-stick, He turns his Hands, Sticks and all,
outward from his left hand, till the Composing-stick lies flat upon the
Dressing-stick, and consequently the Letters in the Composing-stick
is turned and laid upon the Dressing-stick.
Then he goes as near the Light as he can with the Letters in his
Dressing-stick, and examins what Letters Come not well either in the
Face or Shanck: So that then holding the Dressing-stick in his left
hand, and tilting the Bottom-Ledge a little downward, that the Feet of
the Letter may rest against the Bottom-Ledge, and laying the Ball of
his Thumb upon any certain Number of Letters between his Body
and the Letter to be Cast out, He with the Foot of a Space or some
thin Letter, lifts up the Letter to be Cast out, and lets it fall upon the
Dressing-Bench: and thus he does to all the Letters in that Stick that
are to be Thrown out.
Then taking again the Dressing-Stick in his left hand at or near the
handle of it, he takes the Dressing-Hook at the Knot, between the
fore-Finger and Thumb of his right-Hand, and laying the Hook over
the edge of the Quadrat at the farther end of the Dressing-stick, near
the bottom-Ledge of it, he slips his right-Hand to the Handle of the
Dressing-stick, and his left hand towards the middle of the Dressing-
stick, so as the end of the Ball of his Thumb may draw by the farther
end of the Knot on the Dressing-Hook the whole Dressing-Hook, and
the Hook at the end of it the whole Stick of Letter close together
towards him; While at the same time he with his Fingers clutched
about the Stick and Letter, and the Thumb-ball of his hand presses
the under flat of the Hooking-stick close against the Letter and
Dressing-stick, that the Letter in the Stick may lie fast and
manageable.
Then he takes the Handle of the Dressing-Knife in his right-Hand,
and inclining the back of it towards his Body, that its Basil-edge may
Cut or Scrap the smoother, He Scrapes twice or thrice upon so much
of the whole Line of Letters as lies between the outer-side of the
Dressing-Hook and the Face of the Letter.
But if twice or thrice Scraping, have not taken all the Bur or
irregularities off so much of the Letter as he Scraped upon, he
Scrapes yet longer and oftner till the whole number of Letters in the
Dressing-stick from end to end seems but one intire piece of Mettal.
Thus is that side of the fore-part (viz. that part towards the Face) of
the Shanck of the Body finisht.
To Scrape the other end of that side of the Letter, viz. that towards
the Feet; He turns the Handle of the Stick from him, and removing
the Dressing-Hook towards the Face of the Letter which is already
Scraped, he places his Thumb against the Knot of the Dressing-
Hook, and presses it hard from him, that the Hook of the Dressing-
Hook being now towards him, may force the whole Stick of Letter
forwards against the Side-Ledge of the Dressing-stick; that so the
whole Line in the Stick may lie again the faster and more
manageable: Then he Scrapes with the Dressing-Knife as before, till
the end of the Shanck of the Letter towards the Feet be also Drest.
Then he lays by his Dressing-Hook, and keeping his Dressing-stick
of Letter still in his left hand, he takes a second Dressing-stick, with
its Handle in his right-Hand, and lays the Side-Ledge of it against the
hither-side of the Quadrat at the hither end of the Dressing-stick, and
the bottom-Ledge of the second Stick hanging a little over the Feet
of the Letter, that they may be comprehended within the bottom-
Ledge of the second Dressing-stick; and so removing his left hand
towards the middle of both Dressing-sticks, and clasping them close
together, he turns both Hands outwards towards the left, till the
Letter in the first Dressing-stick lie upon the second Dressing-stick,
and then the Face of the Letter will lie outwards toward the right-
Hand, and the Nicks upwards. Then he uses the Dressing-Hook and
Dressing-Knife to Scrape this side the Line of Letter, as he did
before to the other side of the Line of Letter: So shall both sides be
Scraped and Drest.
Having thus Scraped both the sides, He takes the Handle of the
Dressing-stick into his left hand, as before, and takes the Male-block
into his right-Hand, and placing the Tongue of the Block against the
Face of the Letter in the Dressing-stick, he also places the Knot of
the Block against the farther side of the Quadrat at the farther end of
the Stick, and so placing his right-Hand underneath the middle of the
Dressing-stick and Block, he turns his Hand outwards towards the
left, as before, and transfers the Letter in the Dressing-stick to the
Male-Block: Yet he so holds and manages the Block that the Shanck
of the Letter may rest at once upon the side of the Block the Knot is
placed in, and the Face of the Letter upon the Tongue.
When his Stick of Letters is thus transfer’d to the Male-Block, He
claps the middle of the Male-Block into his left hand, tilting the Feet
of the Letter a little upwards, that the Face may rest upon the
Tongue, and then takes about the middle of the Female-Block in his
right-Hand, and lays it so upon the Male-Block, that the Tongue of
the Male-Block may fall into the Tongue of the Female-Block, and
that the Knot at the hither end of the Female Block may stand
against the hither-side of the Quadrat at the hither end of the Line of
Letters: So that when the Knot of the Male-Block is lightly drawn
towards the Knot of the Female-Block, or the Knot of the Female-
Block lightly thrust towards the Knot of the Male-Block, both Knots
shall squeeze the Letter close between them.
Then he grasps both Blocks with the Letter between them in both his
Hands, and lays them in the Block-Groove, with the Feet of the
Letter upwards, and the hither-side of the hither Block against the
hither Cheek of the Block-Groove. And putting the Wedge into the
vacant space between the Blocks and the further Cheek of the
Block-Groove, he lightly with his right-Hand thrusts up the Wedge to
force the Blocks close together, and pinch the Letter close between
the Blocks.
Then with the Balls of the Fingers of both his Hands, he Patts gently
upon the Feet of the Letter, to press all their Faces down upon the
Tongue; which having done, he takes the Mallet in his right-Hand,
and with it knocks gently upon the head of the Wedge to pinch the
Letter yet closer to the insides of the Blocks. Then he Knocks lightly
and successively upon the Knot-ends of both the Blocks, to force the
Letters yet closer together. And then again knocks now pretty hard
upon the head of the Wedge, and also pretty hard upon the Knot-
ends of the Blocks, to Lock the Letter tight and close up.
Then he places the Tongue of the Plow in the upper Groove of the
Block; And having the Tooth of the Iron fitted in the Plow, so as to fall
just upon the middle of the Feet of the Letter, he grasps the Plow in
his right-Hand, placing his Wrist-Ball against the Britch of it, and
guiding the fore-end with his left hand, slides the Plow gently along
the whole length of the Blocks; so as the Tooth of the Iron bears
upon the Feet of the Letter: And if it be a small Letter he Plows upon,
the Tooth of the Iron will have cut a Groove deep enough through the
length of the whole Block of Letters:
But if the Body of the Letter be great, he reiterates his Traverses two
three or four times according to the Bigness of the Body of the
Letter, till he have made a Groove about a Space deep in the Feet of
the Shancks of the whole Blocks of Letter, and have cut off all the
irregularities of the Break.
Then with a small piece of Buff or some other soft Leather, he rubs a
little upon the Feet of the Letter to smoothen them.
Then he unlocks the Blocks of Letter, by knocking with the Mallet
upon the small end of the Wedge, and first takes the Wedge from
between the Blocks and Cheeks, and lays it upon the farther Cheek,
and afterwards takes the Blocks with Letter in it near both ends of
the Blocks between the Fingers and Thumbs of both his Hands, and
turns the hithermost Block upon the hithermost Cheek, and with his
Fingers and Thumbs again lifts off the upper Block, leaving the Letter
on the undermost Block with its Face against the Tongue.
Then taking the Block with Letter in it in his left hand, he places the
Knot-end from him, and takes the Handle of the Dressing-stick in his
right-Hand, and lays the Side-Ledge of it against the hither-side of
the Quadrat at the hither end, and the Bottom-ledge against the Feet
of the Letter, he grasps the Handle of the Dressing-stick Block and
all in his left hand, and lays his right-Hand Thumb along the under-
side of the Dressing-stick about the middle, and with the Fingers of
the same Hand grasps the Block, and turning his Hands, Block, and
Dressing-stick to the right, transfers the Letter in the Block upon the
Dressing-stick.
Then grasping the Dressing-stick by the Handle with his left hand, he
with his right-Hand takes the Dressing-Hook by the Knot, and lays
the inside of the Hook of it against the farther side of the Quadrat at
the farther end of the Stick, and drawing the Hook and Letter in the
Dressing-stick with his left Thumb by the Knot close up toward him,
he resting the Stick upon the Dressing-bench that he may Scrape
the harder upon the Beard with the Edge of the Dressing-Knife,
Scrapes off the Beard as near the Face as he dares for fear of
spoiling it, and about a Thick Space deep at least into the Shanck.
If the Bottom and Top are both to be Bearded, He transfers the Letter
into another Dressing-stick, as hath been shewed, and Beards it also
as before.

¶. 2. Some Rules and Circumstances to be observed in


Dressing of Letters.

1. The Letter-Dresser ought to be furnisht with three or four sorts of


Dressing-sticks, which differ nothing from one another save in the
Height of their Ledges. The Ledges of one pair no higher than a
Scaboard. This pair of Sticks may serve to Dress, Pearl, Nomparel,
and Brevier. Another pair whose Ledges may be a Nomparel high.
And this pair of Dressing-sticks will serve to Dress Brevier, Long-
Primmer, and Pica: Another pair whose Ledges may be a Long-
Primmer high: And these Dressing-sticks may serve to Dress Pica,
English, Great-Primmer, and Double-Pica. And if you will another
pair of DresDressing-sticks, whose Ledges may be an English High:
And these Dressing-sticks may serve to Dress all big Bodyed
Letters, even to the Greatest.
2. As he ought to be furnisht with several sorts of Dressing-sticks as
aforesaid: So ought he also to be furnisht with several Blocks, whose
Knots are to correspond with the Sizes of the Ledges of the
Dressing-sticks, for the Dressing of several Bodies as aforesaid.
3. He ought to be furnisht with three or four Dressing-Hooks, whose
Hooks ought to be of the several Depths aforesaid, to fit and suit with
the several Bodyed-Letters.
4. He must have two Dressing-Knives, one to lie before the Blocks to
Scrape and Beard the Letter in the Sticks, and the other behind the
Dressing-blocks to use when occasion serves to Scrape off a small
Bur, the Tooth of the Plow may have left upon the Feet of the Letter.
And though one Dressing-Knife may serve to both these uses: Yet
when Work-men are in a Train of Work they begrutch the very
turning the Body about, or stepping one step forward or backward;
accounting that it puts them out of their Train, and hinders their
riddance of Work.
5. For every Body of Letter he is to have a particular Plow, and the
Tooth of the Iron of each Plow is to be made exactly to a set bigness,
the measure of which bigness is to be taken from the size of the
Break that is to be Plowed away. For Example, If it be a Pearl Body
to be Plowed, the breadth of the Tooth ought not to be above a thin
Scaboard: Because the Break of that Body cannot be bigger, for
Reasons I have given before; But the Tooth must be full broad
enough, and rather broader than the Break, lest any of the
irregularity of the Break should be left upon the Foot of the Letter.
And so for every Body he fits the Tooth of the Iron, full broad enough
and a little broader than the size of the Break. This is one reason
why for every particular Body he ought to have a particular Plow.
Another reason is.
The Tooth of this Plow must be exactly set to a punctual distance
from the Tongue of the Plow: For if they should often shift Irons to
the several Stocks of the Plow, they would create themselves by
shifting more trouble than the price of a Stock would compensate.
A Fount of Letter being new Cast and Drest, the Boy Papers up each
sort in a Cartridge by it self, and puts about an hundred Pounds
weight, viz. a Porters Burthen into a Basket to be sent to the Master-
Printers.
The Steel-Punches being now Cut, the Molds made, the Matrices
Sunk, the Letters Cast, and Drest, the application of these Letters
falls now to the task of the Compositer; whose Trade shall be (God
willing) the Subject of the next Exercises.

FINIS.
Transcriber’s Notes.
1. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
2. Silently corrected typographical errors.
3. Page 70. “§. 19.” changed to “¶. 19.”.
4. The paragraph symbol “¶” has been standardised as “¶.”.
5. The section symbol “§” has been standardised as “§.”.
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