'Concept in 60' / 'Emotion in 60 seconds' / 'Audio cut-up'

Curatorial note from Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Three iterations of this “60 seconds” audiovisual assignment are featured here, all of which help students to try out audiovisual composing with low stakes. “Concept in 60” was developed by Scott Lloyd DeWitt, who co-runs the Digital Media and Composition Institute (DMAC) at the Ohio State University. This assignment, which DeWitt describes the origins and motivations for in “In Context,” asks students to compose a sixty-second video that illustrates a concept such as rigor, loss, or comfort. Trisha Campbell revised the assignment to focus on an emotional experience such as a first kiss, hunger, or how your grandmother makes you feel. Lauren Rae Hall’s version borrows from Campbell’s, then leads into a larger, Burroughs-inspired “Audio Cut-Up” project, which asks students to make a “cut-up” of sound, speech, and music to create a story, poem, song, or argument that evokes emotion. As Hall’s sequence demonstrates, the “60 seconds” assignment could be used alone or as an early iteration—not meant for revision, but instead for preparing students for deeper engagement with a composition platform and paradigm.