Task

Choose a contemporary event from the last three months. Identify its organising discourse and create a counter or alternative sound based text using your knowledge of genre, multi-modality and the examples provided in previous weeks. The sound file should be produced with a care for quality and can use original voice using the UTS booths or equivalent as well as existing sound files. Your sound file must be accompanied by a written exegesis that explains the key purpose of the piece, identifies your imagined audience and tells us how the sounds you have chosen have produced an intervention within the organising discourses of the original text/event. The exegesis must also include a reflection upon your conceptual and technical process in producing the piece.

I have picked educational discourse for asylum seekers and refugees.

Sound Recording: 2-3 minutes

Exegesis Word limit: 1000 words

FURTHER ADVICE – Assessment 3 Unfolded!

1. Choose a contemporary event from the last three months

This is a key part of the assignment as we want to see you engaging in your contemporary world and we want to ensure the originality of your piece. What is a contemporary event? It could be the reportage of an ongoing political event e.g. the resignation of the Premier, the ongoing investigations into child abuse, global events in Russia or Nigeria or Egypt, Indigenous rights or transformation of laws etc. OR it could be a cultural happening like the rise of a particular fashion or take up of a style of communication or software. The main thing is that you be able to identify a major discourse in it.

What you need to show us to prove it is something that is a contemporary event from the last three months is a dated text. That is, you need a newspaper clipping, a dated radio transcript or downloaded magazine or blog entry that is from the last three months that is the textual record of the event you are going to work from.

2. Identify its organising discourse

• This you know how to do – you have been identifying discourse and its elements ALL semester so now its time to practice and ENJOY that skill! Having identified the key organising discourse of your text you also need to think of the different modes that make that discourse work, think back to Assessments 1 and 2 and reflect on the sound piece using the ideas covered throughout semester, such as identifying genre, multimodal analysis (visual cues, text types etc.) and affect.

3. Create a counter or alternative sound based text to the text you chose

Having identified the organising discourse of your text you have to create a sound text that will operate as a counter to the identified organising discourse thus creating an alternative understanding of the text you have chosen.

See EXAMPLE for further detail on this part of the assessment.

4. Write your 1000 word exegesis

An exegesis is simply a critical explanation of your sound file. You need to include in your 1000 words:

• an explanation of the key purpose of the sound file (sonic text), that is what you were trying to achieve and how it intervenes in the organizing discourse of your original text. This explanation should have both ideological/political elements and form elements. For example you may have been attempting to present a feminist sound file to intervene in a patriarchal discourse and you did this via using particular content, researched findings on alternate understandings of your text and you may also have identified that a key part of the patriarchal discourse was its use of scientific language and heavy newspaper heading font so you have chosen to call upon the senses in your piece, using emotional witnessing and lightly spoken words as a ‘counter’ form.

• Identify your imagined audience. Tell us who you are aiming this sound piece at. Adults? Specific ethnic community? Children? How does the piece tell us who the audience is?

• Provide an account of your conceptual and technical process in producing the piece. That is we need to know what pieces you took from where, what pieces were recorded and where and with whom, what parts were added later and using what technology. Don’t forget to REFERENCE where all your sounds came from and to include FIVE DIFFERENT ACADEMIC REFERENCES. For example if some of them came from Youtube clips make sure you reference the original Youtube clip. If you have used sound effects tell us where you sourced them and if you have used recorded voice credit the ‘actors’. Don’t forget to include all the references for your research in the usual way and they should include at least five academic sources that should include readings from the subject and specific researched sources for your specific topic.

AND DON’T FORGET THE CRITERIA ON WHICH THE OVERALL ASSESSMENT WILL BE MARKED:

Criteria

• Relevance of sound recording to selected audience

• Clarity of sound recording

• Imaginative use of sounds

• Relevance of referenced material

• Clarity of written purpose

• Depth of intellectual imagination displayed