Here is the relevant page from the syllabus as to my new goals and their logistics:
The "advance" in this "advanced composition" course is not incremental, but is exponential. It will require a certain--and perhaps even "new to you"--spirit--a certain intellectual, artistic, "compositional," and aesthetic, largesse. What exactly this "advance" means will largely, if not entirely, be up to you---in, on, through, your own terms; your own mediations. Each Tuesday, we will go somewhere, or do/read something, or watch something, or discuss something, or encounter/experience something--(you get the picture). Please bring some sort of notebook with you. As we are where we will be, and or as we do what we will do, you will take note as to the signs at play. You will look beyond the surface, even though the surface is not beside the point. We will take our time. We will "be there." On Thursdays, we will discuss, as a group, sign clusters--what signs relate to what other signs and what might (or might not) take precedent--aesthetically, politically--over what; or in relation to what, and so forth. We will not try to reach consensus. We will worry and wrestle. And our definitions may expand or reconfigure, or not. On Mondays please submit a "remediation" of the previous "Tuesday"--of where you have been, what we have seen or discussed, what you have read--. You will distill Tuesday to its (of course original) insight or insights, and/or to insights related to "Tuesday" or that "extend from" "Tuesday." You will remediate those insights in a way other than their original mediation. For example, if we read a book, you shouldn't convey your insights via the written word on paper--you will have to find another way. A song? A sculpture? A film? But in any and every case you should strive to convey a remediated insight. The entirety of your remediation should strive to be insight as insight. Not summary. Not issue. Not anything but insight as insight; insight for the sake of insight. Far more concerned with the rigorous journey than the pat conclusion.
I imagine a syllabus for a new course as something of a vehicle that I hope will serve us well and carry us through "reliably" to the end of the term. As such, it attempts to reflect my consideration of likely and possible places the course may take us.
This then was the springboard from which my move to centralize multimodal composition took off. In the sprit of the radical shift, I entered the first day of the course not speaking a word, but with a guitar and a hope that I would get past any novelty of such an act and move toward what the course was getting at.