Your primary task with this assignment is to experience an album in a musical genre completely outside your usual listening preferences. I want you to find an artist you’ve never heard of before that creates music in a genre you’re unfamiliar with. I also want you to experience an entire album: a collection of audio recordings organized by an artist in a particular way (read more about how Adele urged Spotify to make this easier here). As you did with assignment two, I want you to chronicle exactly how you find and listen to this new music. You might let the music find you (it’s unlikely that the recommender systems you use regularly will give you something outside your typical listening habits, but there are other ways things can find you, like scanning on Every Noise at Once) or perhaps you will find the film or show by looking into things that you are curious about (genre, technique, artist, etc.). If you decide to seek something out, you can use the experiences and techniques you identified in the first two assignments to assist in your search. For example, is there music that can make you feel the way a horror film makes you feel? I also want you to explain exactly how you listened to the music. Were you able to stream it as a complete album? Did you pay to download the album onto a device? Did someone loan you a CD? Was the full album on YouTube? Did you try to stream the album from the public library (I did!!)? Did you buy a physical album!?! From a record store?!
You will follow the same steps as you did in assignment one to chronicle and process your discovery and listening experience in a post for our course website. You can return to the prompt for assignment one if you’re fuzzy on the details. This part is hopefully starting to feel familiar.
After you have found the album, listened to it multiple times, and chronicled your discovery and listening experiences, I want you to think about the value of experiencing new music. Consider if you think it would be good for our culture if people did this more often and (if so) what sorts of adjustments to recommender systems could encourage this. In this last section, you’ll be brainstorming possibilities that you can revisit and develop more fully for your final project of the semester.
The Parts of This Assignment
Part 1: Chronicle and Process your Discovery and Listening Experiences
- Chronicle how you found the album or how it found you
- Describe HOW you listened (digital or analog, purchased or borrowed, etc.)
- Describe your listening experiences (at least one, you can do more!)
- Classify at least one listening experience (we’ll workshop this during class)
- Describe the features prompting that experience
- Try to determine the techniques used to create the features prompting that experience
- Brainstorm about adjustments to algorithmic recommender systems
Part 2: Create a Post on Course Website
- Title
- Featured Image (something you’ve created or something you’ve found)
- Complete media file details for featured image
- “caption” field should include an attribution statement (TASL guidance here)
- “alternative text” field should provide a summary of what is in the image
- “description” field should include the URL for the image file you downloaded
- Discovery and Listening Experience with any sources clearly cited (hyperlinks for online sources and in-text citations for print sources) with a list of works cited at the end.
- Thoughts on the experience of unfamiliar music and how algorithmic recommender systems could encourage this.
Part 3: Write a Project Reflection
After you submit your post, I will read it and prepare feedback for you (usually as a video of me reading your post aloud and sharing ideas for ways you might want to expand on the ideas for the final project). You will have one week from the time I have sent your feedback video to watch it and prepare a project reflection to submit through Canvas.
Part 4: Contribute to our Discovery Tool
During the first class meeting after this assignment is due, you will submit your experience to our course website and we will spend time in class discussing the experiences you identified and brainstorming how a system for classifying the experiences readers have with stories might be used to improve current recommender systems.
FAQs
- Do I have to share my post with the class? You can choose to share your post with classmates or share it only with me (set your post to “private” if you only want me to see it).
- Should I do research on what I’m reading? Only if you want to. You can process your reading experience without looking at what others have said about the text, but some students like getting the perspective of others. If you do look at secondary sources, please mention this in your reading experience section (even if you don’t wind up citing the sources)
- What if I don’t like what I pick? That’s okay! I don’t recommend picking something different. You can still describe your experiences, the features that prompted that experience, and try to identify the techniques prompting that experience. You can also think about the audience that might enjoy it more than you.
- So, this isn’t a typical “English paper”? No, it isn’t. There is no requirement to have a single argument or claim. You are not required to find peer-reviewed sources to support or contextualize what you want to say. There is no requirement to be original. I want you to let your interests guide you and share your experiences, questions, and theories with me (and your classmates!).
- Can you share an example of what a finished product is supposed to look like? Yes! The post I’m asking you to read before next class is my attempt to do this assignment. Yours does not need to look like mine, but I offer it as an example in case you find it useful.
- How will you grade this? After you submit this project, I will prepare feedback on your work (most often in video form, but I will ask what you prefer). I’ll ask you to read or watch my feedback and compose a project reflection that responds to my feedback, describes your experience completing the assignment, and assigns a grade to your work. The instructions for each project reflection are in Canvas; they will be due (via upload to Canvas) one week after you receive feedback from me on each assignment.
Reminders
- You may find it useful to compose in a document outside of OpenLab (Microsoft Word, a Google Doc, or something else).
- Assume that there will be spoilers—no need to alert readers to them.
- We’re not writing reviews, though people reading what we’re writing might decide to check something out that they might not have encountered otherwise.
- Include lots of direct quotation of lyrics and clips from the actual songs. If you’re saying that an album has a specific feature, make sure to give an example of that feature
- Write to a general audience—clarity is a priority!!
- Share your experience of the album! Give details.
- Share your best sense of how the creators of the album prompted an emotional response you had. If you want to research how others have explained their techniques, go for it. Do make sure to cite what you read.
