Sunday 21 April 2013

Enter



In this essay I will explore Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical concept of ‘Rhizome’ to find new ways of understanding how music fans experience their favourite band in YouTube.
I will make an attempt at using ‘rhizome’ as a metaphor in the context of digital culture, in particular with regards to the concept of ‘assemblage’.



At the same time I will use my rhizomatic reflections to direct my interactions with the internet, as a ‘plateau’ towards a private insight of my engagement with digital technology and this course module.
This methodology, an experiment, has been trialled by a number of academics in an educational and pedagogical context (for a detailed overview refer to Inna Semetsky, 2004).

In particular I would like to use the example of Noel Gough (2004) who, as part of posthuman pedagogy, imagines 'teaching and learning as material-semiotic assemblages of sociotechnical relations embedded and performed by shifting connections and interactions among a variety of organic, technical, natural, and textual materials.'  (p. 255)

Throughout my online journey I will look at some of the literature focusing on participatory digital culture and how this can be read in the context of YouTube and rhizome.

I will build my essay using a multimodal approach, incorporating hyperlinks that reflect the multi-directional growth and diversity which cannot be traced back to its original root. This online journey of my music fanbase fact-finding will be presented in my own multi-dimensional personal assemblage, the outcome being this Google blog and its peripheral online artifacts.