Multimedia Composition
Brook Mithani
The interdisciplinary, modular course of study is designed to last two years and is completed with a Master of Arts (M.A.). It is open to both composers with an interest in media as well as media artists and computer scientists with an interest in music.The final exam consists of a written master thesis and an artistic project.
Since 2010 there ist the opportunity for multimedia composers to follow an artistic doctorate's program, the Dr.Sc.Mus (Dr. scientiae musicae). This corresponds approximately to the American Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.).
Students conduct advanced inquiry into the cultural, theoretical, technical, and aesthetic issues surrounding music and multimedia production in close collaboration with faculty researchers strongly invested in real-time, interactive sonic and visual media, sound art, instrument design, and acoustic composition. The program welcomes students working from diverse influences and methods, expanding their creative practices and underlying technical knowledge to spur artistic innovation. In addition to faculty mentorship, students can collaborate with a broad array of professional performing ensembles and visiting artists presented on the Brown University campus.
During the first two years of the program students undertake the majority of their coursework, which involves writing and research in addition to creative practice. During this time they prepare their Masters project (a substantial performance, installation, or work in other formats) for presentation in the second year accompanied by an essay of thirty to fifty pages that describes the aesthetic concepts, historical background, and technical realization of the work.
In the third year students continue their coursework and must prepare for and pass their Qualifying Exams. This consists of three essays on topics that lead into their dissertation work and an oral exam on these essays. Once this is complete students develop a formal dissertation proposal in which serves as a clear and detailed outline of the areas of creative and scholarly research to be undertaken over the next two years.
Working on a multimodal or digital project? If you have questions about where to start, what tools to use or how to use them, how you can incorporate other media while complying with copyright, or anything else along the way, consider making an appointment for a Digital Design Studio consultation. Use the scheduler in the Librarian Profile box on the left side of this page for an appointment with a librarian who can discuss your project with you.
Multimodal composition is the act of creating texts that communicate to a specific audience (often employing digital rhetoric) using any of a range of modes or technologies. Because, as a student, you are situated in a "digital age" that requires adopting new technologies and communicating in new digital writing spaces, multimodal composition develops important, relevant skills for you both in college and beyond. This guide explores several issues that come into play when you build a multimodal project:
If you have questions about any of the topics above as you compose your multimodal project, feel free to contact a librarian for your help (our contact information is below) and we're happy to talk it through with you!
Digital literacy - "the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills" (American Library Association).
Information literacy - "the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning" (Association of College and Research Libraries).
When communicating in a digital environment, these methods of persuasion often come into play, as well as some other activities. These include developing a digital identity, building up social communities, and questioning ideologies and cultural formation (Eyman). As you develop your multimodal project, consider how how it contributes to these additional activities. Does participation in your project develop your own or others' digital identity? Is there an element of community or social interaction? Does the text in your project question issues that are relevant to that community?
Multimedia Design has become more and more prominent, and you are expected to use multimedia design when you write up a research report, when you present your findings about your research, or when you create a project. This is also called multimodal composing which means that you use more than one way of presenting information (words, images, sounds, animated text). Similar to any other assignment, you will need to pay attention to:
If your audience is an adult audience, your multimedia design will be very different from a design that would appeal to smaller kids. Consider the following questions before you start your multimodal composition:
These general questions will lead you to more specific questions. For example, you know that any text has a specific perspective and a value. That means that you want to find out what perspectives are part of the multimedia design, and what perspectives are left out.
Many times, a presentation is based on work that you have written up or a project that you have created When you learn that your major or your professor expect public presentations, you can focus on the following:
All Writing and Rhetoric courses have at least one multimodal component. This page will help you learn more about multimodality, and will include links to videos and how-to guides for using the various digital tools you might want to pursue for your multimodal project.
Video projects in Writing and Rhetoric courses take a number of forms. You might be asked to create an image essay, a mini-documentary, a product pitch or a public service announcement based on earlier writing you completed for the course. There are many affordances (and challenges) that come with video production. This page will provide links to resources and tutorials to help you become an expert multimodal video producer.
Graphic DesignYour multimodal project might be an exercise in visual argument, where you envision your composition as a visual remix or retelling of an original essay. There are a number of tools and resources available on the internet to help you develop this kind of project.
Multimedia composition is an emerging, innovative and inter-disciplinary domain that merges the art of musical creation with other artistic fields, often amplified in a digital and interactive dimension.
Multimedia composition weaves together music, the visual arts, artistic technologies and digital interactivity. The fruit of this alchemy is an avant-garde space dedicated to multi-sensoral experiences, which questions and updates our traditional approach to listening to music.
Fluid and dynamic by their very nature, multimedia works immerse the listener in highly responsive, ever-changing worlds. Beyond listening and the other senses, they captivate us, submerge us and sometimes even offer the listener the ability to influence how the experience unfolds. Each composition is perceived as a living entity, inviting us on a unique journey during each performance.
At the Haute cole de musique de Genve (HEM), multimedia composition is explored from a perspective that is both conceptual and practical, not least with themes from multi-disciplinarity, sound art and interactive media. Through the classes, exchanges and discussions on contemporary creativity, we put the emphasis on the new visual language and the possibilities afforded by the Internet and the new interfaces when it comes to composing new media. We strongly encourage internal collaborations with musicians at the HEM and the students of the HEAD. Our cutting-edge facilities include a black room (the Black Box) and fully-equipped studios that provide the perfect setting for creative work.
Digital Stories are multimedia movies that combine photographs, video, animation, sound, music, text, and often a narrative voice. Digital stories may be used as an expressive medium within the classroom to integrate subject matter with extant knowledge and skills from across the curriculum. Students can work individually or collaboratively to produce their own digital stories. Once completed, these stories are easily be uploaded to the internet and can be made available to an international audience, depending on the topic and purpose of the project.
Multimodal Literacy refers to meaning-making that occurs through the reading, viewing, understanding, responding to and producing and interacting with multimedia and digital texts. It may include oral and gestural modes of talking, listening and dramatising as well as writing, designing and producing such texts. The processing of modes, such as image, words, sound and movement within texts can occur simultaneously and is often cohesive and synchronous. Sometimes specific modes may dominate. For example, when processing screen-based texts the visual mode may dominate whereas the mode of sound may be dominant in podcasts.
Composing is not just about crafting traditional essays by typing into a word-processing program. Today writers compose by using a variety of platforms to produce different forms. We compose slide shows, videos, audio documentaries, brochures, Tweets, Web sites, and much more. If we want to be effective composers in our complex, global world, we have to learn how to compose using these different platforms, and we have to understand what such forms allow, disallow, and require. We need both technical skill and critical understanding.
All stories make a point. They follow the pattern of describing a desire, a need, or a problem that must be addressed by a central character (you). They follow the action the desire leads us to take, and then reveal realizations.
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