In this research, Jim Ridolfo and Danielle Nicole DeVoss introduce the term ‘rhetorical velocity’, something that they have coined as the process of reduplication of media (in virtually any form) in today’s fast-paced and technologically advanced world. This ‘anticipation’ for ‘remixes’ of original work is something, they say, that creators of media must keep in mind throughout the entire process and production of their work. This can be in a physical, distributional, or digital sense, but the argument here is that it is necessary for any document. This “composing for strategic recomposition” is a relatively new phenomenon, due to the increased number of issues surrounding digital distribution, and for this reason I personally have a difficult time wrapping my head around what sorts of factors an author would have to keep in mind while composing his or her piece.
Something that comes into mind when I think of this process is when posters around a school reference something in pop culture while making a different point all together. Current song lyrics or celebrity cameos are common on signs and advertisements on college campuses and this is a way for the producer of the media to gain interest or pique their audience’s curiosity.
Ridolfo and DeVoss specifically use the word ‘remix’ to describe part of this phenomenon, and they want to get the idea across that it isn’t just “anchored and only related to music.” I find it interesting how remix sometimes toes the line of plagiarism, but never becomes immoral (unless done incorrectly). Originality can be hard to come by these days, since it seems as though no one is doing, saying, thinking, or writing anything that hasn’t previously been done. Remix of media (other than music) is actually itself a new culture that is emerging in unexpected areas of life, giving ideas and parts of old media to authors who can create something altogether new, exciting, and original. Lawrence Lessig said “Remix is how we as humans live and everyone within our society engages in this act of creativity.”
When composing my own documents with the idea of future reduplication, I suppose it is important to include facts and statistics in an organized manner that will allow for later usage in another piece, as well as my own educated opinions and hypotheses. While making choices about what to include and what to emphasize, I would have to keep in mind that the audience that would see my own opinions and words might be different than the audience that I am writing for, since reduplication or remixes of my pieces could take place. I think that the information that I compose would have to stay fairly un-biased and comprehensible while still being presented in an appropriate and accessible way.
One passage from the text says, “Our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old,” and this is something that I have found difficult with my own project. My first campaign piece was a school newsletter written towards parents and the general community in any given Pennsylvania public school district. A paper newsletter is, unfortunately, an outdated form of communication. Newsletters are much more often found in e-mail form, or maybe on a social media site representing the organization. With this in mind, it came to me that a physical newsletter (made of paper) that is mailed to homes or handed out in public gatherings of the community members is written completely differently than another form of media. If I were to rewrite the newsletter with the idea that it could be reduplicated, I am unsure how I would go about and what changes I would make. The concept of ‘rhetorical velocity’ helps me to understand the ways that information changes when the media or genre changes, but this is a very new and foreign perspective for me. I want my information to be spread, but the specificity of my document might make that difficult. Perhaps the solution is to change the document altogether if I want reduplication of my writing to be possible.
When reading the article by Ridolfo and DeVoss, I interpreted rhetorical velocity to be the way that the writer should structure and phrase their document while keeping in mind the possibility of reduplication, not the process of reduplication itself. I also have a difficult time thinking of how the author can adjust a composition to be easily remixed later, aside from the ones stated in the blog post, such as being more organized and concise. Using your own thoughts, ideas, phrases, and opinions is another good way to write with recomposition in mind. If you’re always citing another article, remixing by the third-party becomes more complicated by the need to back-track through the sources to find and properly cite the original article.
My first campaign piece was also a physical paper, but mine was a flyer which would ideally be handed out door-to-door. Looking back, creating something online may have been more accessible and eye-catching in the current world we live in. Rewriting a newsletter with the possibility of it being reduplicated, in my opinion, would not have much of an effect on the content of the letter. Redoing the document into an online format would obviously change the format and mode of distribution but I can’t imagine the content and the structure of the letter changing much.
My first campaign piece was also an outdated form of media, a brochure. My brochure was written with the targeted audience being college students with a scientific interest or background. The brochure would be handed out to them similar to the way your newsletter would be, an outdated process. If this were to be translated to a newer genre that is more suited for today’s day and age, “rhetorical velocity” is a consideration that could helpfully impact the efficaciousness of my campaign piece. Like you quoted in your post, remixing can give “ideas and parts of old media to authors who can create something altogether new, exciting, and original”. I think this could be applied to my campaign piece. Hybridizing technology and the brochure idea could combine an old media source with modern techniques, the end product would be a virtual brochure. Reading this article about rhetorical velocity gave some inspiration to do this. Incorporating animations, hyperlinks and other tools traditionally considered applicable only to modern genres to my brochure, in combination with the considerable difference in ease of use and production costs with a virtual brochure, could help our campaign considerably. Going along with this, I struggle considerably with condensing the length of my brochure. Converting this campaign piece to a digital piece could increase space available for text, while also offering alternative means to provide information (hyperlinks to videos, animations, etc.) to cut down content and not overwhelm the reader.