March 14, 2019

PROJECTS

Le Processus D’ecriture
by Alex Borowitz

Super Speller
by Natissa Scott

It Helps to be in on the Joke
by Jillian Hovatter

After the Glow: Radium Girls
by Kasey Julian

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

We are excited for the publication of TheJUMP+’s spring issue 8.2, which includes three video compositions and one piece composed with Adobe Spark. The student authors who composed these projects not only display skilled use of technical and multimodal elements, but they engage in rhetorically meaningful ways with their subject matter, whether that be the writing process (Borowitz), the nature of trauma (Scott), user interaction and agency within the online game A Duck Has an Adventure (Hovatter), or the potential fatal power of corrupted large interest groups (Julian).

In the video Le Processus D’ecriture, Alex Borowitz takes viewers and listeners on a tour of the writing process through carefully-timed music in juxtaposition with various scenes and shots of writing tools, the composing body, and the composition environment. Borowitz reminds us that writing is both messy and organized, chaotic and careful.

Next, Natissa Scott explores various layers of and experiences with trauma through an eloquent spoken narrative combined with images of MRI scans from a knee injury, written words, and grainy footage of playing football. Full of symbolism and self-exploration, Scott’s video helps us examine our own–and others’–traumatic experiences in more depth.

Jillian Hovatter takes us into the online game A Duck Has an Adventure through her analysis and exploration of agency, presented with Adobe Spark. Wielding theory and humor, and composing tight interplay between written text and images, Hovatter asks us to consider and enact our own agency as we interact with her webtext.

Finally, issue 8.2 concludes with Kasey Julian’s video essay “After the Glow: Radium Girls.” Speaking through carefully composed combinations of images, sounds and silence, music, and written text, Julian shows us how unchecked power can lead to terrible injustice and tragedy—for the Radium Girls, in Flint, MI, and beyond.

In addition to the work of these students, we offer thoughtful responses from instructors Tim Lockridge (Borowitz), April Conway (Scott), Kristen Lillvis (Hovatter), and Karen Brehmer (Julian). TheJUMP+ Editorial Collective members also add meaningful commentary and response: Sergio Figueiredo and Kat Lambrecht (responding to Borowitz), Kendall Gerdes and Barbi Smyser-Fauble (responding to Scott), Simone Sessolo and Steve Holmes (responding to Hovatter), and Jason Helms and Adrienne Raw (responding to Julian).

We hope that you find much to ponder, watch, listen to, read, feel, discuss, share, and respond to in issue 8.2.

Justin Hodgson
Crystal VanKooten
Alison Witte