The
term I chose for project one is “circulation.” My artifacts include three
versions of The Beatles “Abbey Road”
album: one on vinyl, one as a CD, and one as a digital audio file from ITunes.
The purpose of my project is to better understand how a specific thing
continues to circulate throughout time. “Abbey Road” and countless other albums
are continuously being re-mastered to fit evolving forms of media as time
progresses to remain relevant and popular to each new generation of listeners,
thus still bringing in money.
Edbauer’s believes that we should think about rhetoric as “moving through ‘open networks’.” She reminds us that rhetoric is “created within publics that are continually shifting and evolving and is constructed through the influence of various factors within the social field and is similarly transformed by these changing factors.” My artifacts are a perfect example of rhetoric that adapts to the world around them.
The overall layout of the album, as Wysocki states, plays an important role in its success as well. The cover photo is iconic and a symbol for fans across the globe, prompting millions of people to set off on adventures to the City of Westminster in London just to recreate the picture. The colors and sights portrayed, such as the suits worn and the cars in the background, are vintage, which attract even more people as time passes (vintage equals valuable).
Gladwell makes the point that paper has a distinct set of “affordances,” or qualities, that permit specific kinds of uses, which keep computer technology from wiping it out. Similar to paper, hard copies of such classic albums are still in circulation today- and in great numbers, despite the ability we all have to instantly download every song to our phones or computers in seconds. Digital copies don’t require the same level of engagement vinyl and CDs do- you have to constantly stop and flip sides or eject. The level of audio quality is often assumed to be better because you can hear every crackle of the microphone- and the elegance of a hard copy is hard to come by.
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I think that your three artifacts are a great portrayal of circulation and I am also very interested to see how your project turns out.
ReplyDeleteI think that with your 3 artifacts all being based around the same thing, that it will be interesting to see how they all have a different influence.
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