[xmca] Fwd: Digital Vygotsky-- En Espana

[Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

This note was passed along by Geoff Bowker
fyi
Duration: 2009-2011. Funding: Ministerioa de Ciencia e Innovacion
(Spain).The research project is with focus on socio-constructivist
approaches that, following Vygotsky, have maintained that the development of
higher mental functions is sociogenetic, thus arguing that cognitive
development is first the result of exposure to the social plane and then to
the psychological plane, a move that is semiotically mediated in social
interaction. This conception of human cognitive development offers insights
into the relations between mind development, education processes and
socio-cultural and technological implications. Due to its inherent
characteristics, language is the most pervasive modality for social
interaction, and thus for semiotic mediation. In our research we draw
attention to the material vehicles of language, focusing on the multimodal
forms that are becoming common place in Computer Mediated Communication. We
claim that acts of production, distribution and reception of cultural
objects form the very symbolic structure of cultural phenomena, and that
these performances are located in the materiality of informational
exchanges. Furthermore, we indicate that discursive practices and images
form the complex multimodal network of signifying practices that constructs
realities, rather than simply representing them, and that socially
constructed meaning or what we call "culture" takes place through the
negotiation of stories, images, and meanings, that is, through performative,
jointly-constructed agreements, power relations, and the authorisation and
legitimating of social positions. Finally, we claim that the study of art is
a powerful metacognitive tool, staging the kind of power-relations that
students can find in everyday life situations. This claim is further
enhanced with the use of multimodal forms of support. Thus, our final aim is
to work towards a new framework on multimodal social semiotics and its
implications for the study of Computer Mediated Communication and Humanities
Studies. A) This theoretical framework should focus on the following points:
1) a semiotic study of multimodal formats and their differences; 2)
historiographical discussions on the changing discursive patterns in
structural textuality -from intertextuality to intermediality- and how this
patterns can be found in previous aesthetic and representational responses
to changing technological patterns, particularly in the avant-gardes; 3)
reflections on the impact of popular culture on changing media patterns; 4)
reflections on aspects of globalization and technology; 4) studies on the
changing role of producer/author and consumer/receiver into a new blended
category of the collective networked co-user/participant, and the emergence
of social software; 5) research on the role of translation and re-mediation,
since digital texts, images, audio, video and cultural objects in general
undergo continuous medial alterations, appropriations and re-appropriations
(re-mediation) that find their way across their territorial point of origin
with everyone now appropriating and changing the culture of everyone else
through the increasingly interactive potential of networked computing; 6)
the development of interculturalism in a growing global informational world
where the degree of autonomy of each culture is significantly reduced; 7)
the influence of education in the creation of an intercultural conscience
tending towards cooperation; aspects of intercultural didactics,
interpersonal relations and also accessibility.B) The practical result of
the project is a new generation social software online environment, a
Website, bilingual English-Spanish first with possibility of including other
European languages if funding increases. Some materials will be translated
from George Landow?s websites. The translation process will take place using
a Wiki and we have requested separate funding for this, receiving it from
Universidad Complutense and Comunidad de Madrid. Papers presented at various
conferences and coming out from the project will be published in
peer-reviewed collected volumes in English and Spanish.PARTICIPANTS in the
project are: Brillenburg, Kiene (Utrecht U)
http://www2.let.uu.nl/solis/literatuurwetenschap/webpagekiene/~Kiene.Brillenburgpersonalfinall.htmChapple<http://www2.let.uu.nl/solis/literatuurwetenschap/webpagekiene/%7EKiene.Brillenburgpersonalfinall.htmChapple>,
Freda (U of Sheffield)
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/till/staff/profiles/chapple.htmlGarca Villalba,
Luis Javier (Complutense U Madrid)
http://www.criptored.upm.es/miembros/miembro_150.htmLandow, George (Brown U)
http://www.landow.com/Lpez Garca, Dmaso (Complutense U Madrid)
http://www.dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/extaut?codigo=46257Lpez-Varela,
Isabel (ONCE)http://www.fundaciononce.es/WFO/Ingles/default Ochiaga Plaza,
Terri (Complutense U Madrid)
http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/slq2.2/essays/terri_ochiagha.htmPrado Prez,
Jos Ramn (U Jaume I)http://www.clr.uji.es/Tortosa, Virgilio (U of Alicante)
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/FichaAutor.html?Ref=3759Ttsy de Zepetnek,
Steven (U of Halle-Wittenberg & National Sun Yat-sen U)
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/totosycv2) Three panels of four
presentations each on "Culture, Intermedialities, and Education"
http://www.acla.org/acla2009/?p=116 at the annual conference of the American
Comparative Literature Association, 26-29 March 2009, at Harvard University.
The panels are organized by Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (National Sun Yat-sen
U and U of Halle-Wittenberg), I-chun Wang (National Sun Yat-sen U), and
Asoncion Lopez-Varela Azcarate (Complutense U Madrid). Selected papers from
the panels and papers from other sources will be published in peer-reviewed
collected volumes.

take care,

geof
_______________________________________________
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca