ABSTRACT

In English Composition as a Happening, Geoffrey Sirc wrote a counter-history of composition that entangled written composition with modern art. The distribution of sonic and digital practices through a wider ecology heightens the need for different kinds of listening practices to go along with digital pedagogies. Stuart Moulthrop's experimental pedagogies show that the digital always operates within wider ecologies of practice, extending digital texts into larger material practices of composition in general. Stuart's work in many ways responds to the call with a concrete set of sonic practices. Traditional approaches to metacognition could pull students away from embodied activities that promote curiosity, openness, engagement, and creativity. Composition and rhetoric scholars have been turning to sound artists for the embodied practices and rhetorical experiences. The one thing that most of the students share in common is that they have never been involved in any kind of experimental music making situation, not unlike a typical digital writing class.