I. Opening

The scene: A guestroom-turned-office, mid-afternoon. One woman onscreen sits curled up on the bed in front of her laptop; both the video and screen recordings are played at approximately triple speed.

Video Recording 2.1 26 December 2016 (47:33-58:40)
Screen Recording 1.1 26 December 2016 (1:46:49-1:57:56)

Video 8: Metaphors Introduction

In this video clip, I demonstrate an invention strategy which has emerged as central to my webtext invention and design practices—using a metaphor to both epitomize my argument and structure the webtext's interface. During the recorded session, I was working on the web mockup for what would become "The Magpie’s Nest." The video captures the moment the magpie metaphor entered the design process as a crucial component of the webtext inscape. I had come up with several design concepts in an earlier initial drafting process but was not sure how to tie them all together conceptually. I also wanted to differentiate this project from the alphabetic version of the essay I had created as a parallel project, while bringing in my own personal aesthetic to push the boundaries of the argument. I needed some way of setting up the structure to maneuver across the creative spaces I’d set up, perhaps as some kind of mobile avatar figure around which to center the story. Finally, I hit upon the idea of the magpie, a design metaphor that addressed and symbolized the conceptual elements I wanted to communicate in a condensed way that matched my own visual and personal aesthetic. In some ways, this design turn was significant and unexpected, and it raised new questions even as it provided a possible design solution. At the end of the drafting session, I made the following note:

did NOT expect to go in this direction/end up with magpie—still need to let the idea settle and crystallize a bit in the back of my mind overnight, will come back tomorrow and start working on the pieces I’m more sure of (scrapbook for Provocations piece etc.)—slightly wondering if I’m crazy, but also have a lot of fun and excited to explore this idea/connect everything together as closely as possible

In this session, the metaphor conceptually entered the project but then took on a life of its own, suggesting new possibilities for design and limiting others, much like a terministic screen (Burke). The magpie plus the nest exerted a force on me as composer and became a conceptual lens for the initial argument, filtering it through in a new inventive light which I had not previously considered or anticipated. This conceptual resource became a powerful tool for invention and shaped the project significantly on a fundamental level. Once the metaphor entered the process, it had a long life and staying power as a prominent feature of the final draft. However, this was also an intuitive decision that I pursued without feedback from other composers or editors; thus, it posed many potential risks to the project. In short, this was a move suggested by the possibilities of digital web space and design, but it also conflicted with the linear, logical values of traditional academic writing and communication—namely, explicit clarity over implicit suggestion and verbal abstraction over visual embodiment and interaction. Thus, this phenomenon deserves closer, more critical attention both as a way of bringing intuitive processes to critical light and also to look more closely at the productive tensions at the intersections of design-as-argument and traditional academic argument.

In this chapter I look more closely at metaphors as influences on the webtext invention and design process. I examine how these metaphors suggest new design and argument possibilities that the composer had not previously considered, and how they function as resources that both facilitate and limit argument development. I analyze autoethnographic data and reflection narratives to examine the specific ways metaphors influence the webtext invention process. I view metaphors as a kind of nonhuman collaborator that influences a composer engaged in the conceptually and materially distributed process of invention. I suggest metaphors offer great possibility for breaking outside conceptual structures of print essays in adapting and inventing arguments for digital webtext environments, while also posing significant risks if not carefully considered in their selection and critically developed in their execution. This chapter provides further insight into a webtext invention process and strategy already practiced and valued in much prominent webtext scholarhip. Additionally, it draws greater attention to questions of user experience, embodied interaction, and affective associations that are raised in new ways with knowledge created via multimodal scholarship.