Multimodal Dig

Items and Modes

Box of toothpicks: spatial, visual, aural (if ya shake it!)

Newspaper: spatial, visual, linguistic, gestural 

Packet of allergy relief pills: visual, spatial, linguistic

Dolla dolla bill (y’all): visual, spatial, linguistic

TIMBERMAN app (iPhone as medium): visual, spatial, linguistic, aural

Foxridge pen: visual, spatial, linguistic, aural

Water Bottle: visual, spatial, linguistic

Watch: visual, spatial, linguistic

Debit Card: visual, spatial, linguistic

YouTube app (iPhone as medium): visual, spatial, linguistic, aural, gestural (DING DING DING WE HAVE A WINNER)
Agenda: visual, spatial, linguistic

Textbook: visual, spatial, linguistic

Reflection

The only text I found that used all five modes was a highly interactive, open-ended iPhone app. Typically, the texts I found only communicated across visual, spatial, and linguistic modes. As a student, all of my items felt pretty typical and fairly similar. Communication through words and visual elements seem to predominate my everyday life. My box of toothpicks and the YouTube app were the most different. One being entirely physical and utterly wordless, while the other was a digital stream of code that interacts through pixels using every single mode. The information conveyed by the box of toothpicks is purely implicit. It is easy to pass over it and derive no information, or you can make any number of deductions about it. The box is made of plastic and is tinted with a translucent green. It’s designed to be practical and to catch the eye without distracting or demanding attention. It’s there when you need it and just a green box in your backpack when you don’t. The toothpicks convey something about the user, who apparently experiences such consternation with dangling food particles that toothpicks are necessary at a moment’s notice. Blah, blah, blah, you can practically take it anywhere. The YouTube app presents information very directly: words, video, gestures, sound. All of it is fairly evident without much need for thoughtful interpretation (just the way the liberal media likes it! dun Dun DUN!) (o.O) Jk LAWLS. Anyways, they are very different in my opinion, but maybe even bringing up toothpicks is a stretch.