Throughout the semester you have been documenting your hacks on your own domains. As a finishing touch, you’ll create a final porfolio of all your work. This is an opportunity to frame your individual hacks within a larger narrative and documentary frame. The portfolio is both an act of curation and preservation. Curation, because you deliberately decide how to present your work. Preservation, because I’d like your portfolio to outlast our iteration of DIG 401 and be something that future students can explore. The portfolio also has a reflection element to it.
What do I mean by a larger narrative and documentary frame?
Think about each project you’ve done for this class as one dot. If you connect the dots, what kind of picture forms? In other words, in hindsight what themes and concerns recur throughout your semester’s work? What trajectory does your work take? How do these themes and concerns relate to our course themes and concerns? Play, critical design, hacking, hacktivism, wicked problems, remixing—and more.
Portfolio Guidelines
Your portfolio should take the form of a single page (not a post) on the Davidson Domains blog you’ve been using for DIG 401. The portfolio should include the following:
Title of Your Collected Works
Think of this as an album title, with each of your individual projects being single tracks on that album. What kind of evocative title could link all of your works together thematically or otherwise?
Collected Works Description
This is where you provide the “larger narrative and documentary frame” I describe above. Avoid nitty gritty details of any specific work. Instead talk broadly, in terms of themes and concerns. Write with confidence, as if you never had any doubts about the direction or feasibility of any of your projects.
Then, for each of the 5 pieces in your exhibit, provide the following:
Individual Piece Title
Colorful and Meaningful title. Don’t use “Hack 4: Remix”
Individual Description
Unlike the Collected Works description above, write the individual descriptions in an objective, third-person voice. This should be 4-5 sentences long. Include at least one sentence that clearly announces the project’s intention. For example, “This work explores the relationship between X and Y.” Or “This project uses X to raise questions about Y.” You get the idea.
Photograph or Video of the work in progress
Include at least one photo, animated GIF, or video that shows the development of the work. Please provide an image description for the media, as well as a caption.
Photograph or Video of the completed work.
Include at least one photo or video of the completed work. Include alt text for the media. Also clearly caption each image or video.
Flog Excerpt
Include 2-3 sentences from a relevant flog about the hack. Format the sentences as a block quote, and include a link back to the original flog post.
Private Reflection
In addition to the public portfolio of your work, you’ll also share with me a private reflection about your work this semester. It should be 400-500 words in which you zoom out and consider what you’ve learned this semester. What do you know now that you didn’t know on the first day of class in January? That knowledge might be disciplinary knowledge (knowledge pertaining to design, the history of hacking, the theories of play, etc.), it might be procedural knowledge (how to do certain things or perform certain ways), or it might be self-knowledge (thing you have discovered about yourself). Finally, on the first day of class I argued that making can be a way of knowing, distinct from reading or talking or whatever. Does your experience this semester support, challenge, or complicate that argument?
Submission
The final portfolio is due at the end of the exam period. For seniors that is Monday, May 12 by 5pm. For everyone else the deadline is Wednesday, May 14 by 5pm.
You’ll submit two things via Moodle:
- A direct link to your portfolio
- Your private reflection as a PDF, uploaded to Moodle.