Symphony #2 for a Dot Matrix Printer

Echo Hypertext

2005-12-05T18:58:00.000-08:00

It's still being fine-tuned (I'm not even remotely good with web stuff), but here's the link to my hypertext if anyone is interested:

pages.pomona.edu/~csp0200/echo

The Blogging Experience

2005-12-02T20:42:00.000-08:00

So I suppose it's about to time include the whole "what my academic blogging experience was" post to my repertoire.

I'll start with the pros of the process:
1) I liked reading the posts of other people in the class. While I may not have commented that much, it was always interesting to scan the aggregator page before class to see what other people were thinking about the readings. And sometimes it was surprising just how much I could predict about the course/ tone of the class discussion from reading the posts beforehand.

2) The informality of blogging was a real boon. It felt liberating to write about academic readings in a not-typically academic way. So often we read for class and write papers on the material and bind ourselves to formal structures and argument-proving that some of the more interesting ideas get lost in the mix. A lot of the ideas that I have while reading dead-end and/ or won't fit in an essay with a particular topic, so a lot of the interesting material goes undiscussed. Limited class time has the same result. But with blogging, classroom discussion can, theoretically, move outside the classroom and stay informal and only semi-structured.

3) I enjoy the concept of using new media in a class about new media. We aren't just talking about blogs or the communities that surround them; we actually become a part of those communities to some extent.

Now for the cons:
1) In regards to number 3 above, that community never really formed. Probably because we were all too busy or forgot to blog or something of that sort. Usually internet communities form because of a real passion for a topic or discussion, but in this instance, we were required to blog, and sometimes about material that we disliked, which removes some of the motivation to write. Additionally, this experience is different from other typical internet experiences because of the fact that we all see each other in real life twice a week. We know, roughly, who the people are who are blogging, so anonymity or a semblance thereof is thrown out of the window. Also, the conversation is related to something in real life, an extension of a real discussion and not conducted entirely via computer. So this alters our perception of the blogs in a fundamental way, I think.

2) While two posts may not seem like much per week, I think the informality of the blog that I spoke of early makes it even easier to dismiss, which may just be a personal issue. But I found that, when faced with writing a blog entry versus writing an essay for a history class, the essay seemed more pressing, more "real." This is not to say that the blog, in actuality, is any less real, but the informality of the internet can be deceiving. Also, two blogs per week on top of the class discussion was sometimes difficult, especially when I disliked the reading, because I didn't want to merely reiterate the thoughts that I expressed in class, nor did I just want to give an opinion of the reading, which was tempting to do (see the informality issue again).

3) Because the community surrounding the blogs never developed, it rarely felt as if the posts were accomplishing anything. There was no real connection between my classmates and myself except for the fact that we were writing about the same material. It still had the "I wrote a reading response for class" feel, except for the fact that we were getting to read other students' responses.

Overall I really liked the blogging experience, but until the assignment-ness of it fades away (and I'm not sure how this would happen), I'm not sure that it can be a real instance of online community or achieve more than the position of a higher-tech, less formal way of submitting reading responses and occasionally, interesting sites or articles.

Presentations: Day 1

2005-11-30T16:02:00.000-08:00

I really enjoyed seeing everyone's presentation today. It gave me a chance to see all the cool ideas that other people have had and have been working on this semester. I find that that's one thing I've liked about the media studies classes that I've taken: there's usually an element of creation involved with the academics. Don't get me wrong, I love English and History, but with my majors I've felt that I haven't really produced much of my own work (academic papers are just now getting to the point where they don't feel so structured and rote), so I've really liked that aspect of this class the most, I think. Getting to dive deep into something creative of my own.

Anyhow, to stop the prattling...or least to switch prattling topics...

I'm going to talk about two of the presentations right now, not to play favorites, but just because they were the ones that got me really thinking about things that I am dealing with in my own project or in my own academic interests. 1) Lily's project: earlier in the semester we talked about what a hypertext book would look like and the fact that it is actually possible to translate print into something more associative and choice-conducive. It was really nice to actually see that being put into practice. And while it would be difficult to implement on a large scale (i.e., printing a million copies of Lily's book), I really enjoyed that she explored the fact that even artistically, print and writing aren't confined to typical spaces. The concept of books that are created for artistic value, except in select circles, has faded away in our culture. The average person couldn't care less if a book was a paperback or a leather-bound book, especially not for the disparity in price. And I'm, in many instances, the exact same way. But I really value books that are made in beautiful and time-intensive ways. When I was abroad, watching bookmakers in Italy was one of my favorite moments. Just seeing the time put into the crafting of the book was amazing. And something about how the change of form not only leads to new forms of expression but also a revitalization of the idea of a book for art's sake is really appealing to me.

2) Lori's project: When we talked about hypertexts in class, I wondered about the other applications of hypertexts and whether they could be used for something other than fiction. So it was cool to see this in implementation. I agree with Lori on the fact that with a hypertext, something is invariably left out, that the argument is inherently incomplete, at least in the sense that the reader doesn't have access to all facets, but at the same time, something about that appeals to me. I think it depends on the type of academic essay that you are using. I mean, it would appeal perfectly to someone writing about bricolage or something of that nature, where a totality isn't assumed. Also, what I really liked about the project is the fact that she offered solutions (or at least what a "good" hypertext would look like). A lot of theorists or critics talk about the flaws in systems, but they rarely describe solutions. So I really appreciated that aspect of the presentation.

All in all, I enjoyed today's class a lot, and I look forward to the other presentations.

Censorship

2005-11-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

Please grant me a bit of a self-indulgent rant: I worked as general manager at KSPC a couple of summers ago, and the big issue that summer was FCC indecency regulations. I had to take veteran DJs through new training about what they could and couldn't say on the air, and it was all pretty ridiculous. Basically, the FCC regulation states that indecency can be defined as something that offends someone. This a) is incredibly indiscriminate and difficult to run a station by, and b) incredibly broad for a censorship regulation. KROQ was warned by the FCC for the word "scumbag" that summer, and KSPC had to be incredibly cautious about EVERYTHING being recorded (and still has to be). The fine for an instance of indecency can be up to $10,000, and there was a bill that passed the house that wanted to raise it to half a million. Luckily, nothing came of that (or at least I never heard anything further), but all this being said, it was incredibly frustrating to me just how regulated our media are. I mean, "scumbag"?!?! Come on. (To be fair, the FCC operates off complaints, so someone somewhere had to bitch to them about the term.) And as much as I love radio, it seems that maybe it really is a dying medium, a fact that really saddens me.

In light of my personal experience with the lovely group we call the FCC, I was interested in what Searls and Weinberger had to say about censorship in "World of Ends." Internet radio (and other media on the internet) are not censored, and I would hate to see that happen. But they made the point that as soon as Internet radio came out, it "was shot in its cradle," for reasons other than indecency. The tension between forms of control and censorship and the internet is an interesting one, and I think that S & W are right in saying that the internet doesn't belong to any group ("not any government, no matter how sincerely it believes that it's just trying to keep its people secure and complacent). But does this mean that it can't be owned in the future? I hope so.

The Mindless Husk

2005-11-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

As a horror movie lover, some of my favorite parts of Connected were the bits about vampires, zombies, slake-moths, Cthulhu, etc. I really liked the idea of these figures as representations of informational exchange, and above all, the most terrifying of these figures are those that don't just inflict bodily harm, but those that actually influence our minds, our informational processes. For instance, "vampires today are popular commodities, probably more popular than ever, but they are not really terrifying any longer. Rather, they feed our naive hunder for a safe dose of exoticism" (168). Whereas, the slake-moths drink the "fine wine of sapience and sentience itself, the subconscious" (168).

Zombies, too, eat the brains of their victims. Not only are people transformed into husks, a terrifying prospect, but the reason for their huskiness is brought about by something more sinister and frightening: the violation of the mind. It's not merely the human condition that we latch onto; if it were, Dracula would be equally scary. It's the power over our thoughts, our mental processes, our ways of thinking and ways of perceiving that we value; it's the illusion of freedom that the mind gives us; when our minds are bound so are we. The mind is the last bit of freedom that can be stolen.

Shaviro goes more into the economic side of this relationship, one which I found intriguing, but I got carried away by the idea of what actually frightens us about these mythical figures. Cthulhu looms dark, unknown, foreign, not a figure that necessarily overtakes our minds in a real way, but at the same time, he is unfathomable, he subverts our mind's capabilities to perceive the world. Lovecraft likes the discomfort of the unimaginable; in one of his stories he describes a color that does not exist. Even in the figure of Cthulhu, who does not actively destroy or overtake our brains, there is some fear of the loss of the mind, of the inability of the mind to freely understand and think.

Which leads me back to technology. If our fear (at least in the case of horror figures) is rooted in the fear of losing the mind, it seems to explain a bit more some of the technological determism tendencies. We are afraid of that loss of control. Being connected changes the way we think, the way we perceive our surroundings, the way humans experience life. "The insidious thing about electronic networks is that they are always there, whether you pay attention to them or not. Indeed, they assume, and even require, a kind of distracted inattention on your part" (5). This portrayal of the network as a looming, creeping, sneaking monster that quietly invades the mind in its moment of weakness, in a moment when its guard is down, also speaks to the fear that, under the reign of these networks, we will become mindless husks. (Too much TV will rot the brain.)

Mark Danielewski

2005-11-16T01:10:00.000-08:00

Tonight was the Mark Danielewski reading (about which I was very elated), and in the question and answer session he said several things that I found interesting in relation to this class.

Someone asked him about the online publication of House of Leaves (to get people to read the book, he put it online in a pdf format originally), and they asked how he felt about technology as a means of publishing/ whether it can replace the book (in essence, although my rewording isn't exact). And I really liked his answer. Basically, the book will have to reassert its place as a three-dimensional object. To read House of Leaves, you can't just read it online. It'd drive you even madder than the book format. One must print it off to be able to flip the pages the way they are intended to be read. And internet texts have to take on new roles as well; to justify their format, they have to assert themselves as essentially different from books.

This idea isn't something entirely new to our discussion, but it made me think further about other ways that the book can assert its position as such, as a three-dimensional object, and I think it's really exciting that we've just begun to tap the full potential of the book. Perhaps the development of internet publications can also contribute to the development of "real" texts. In thinking about the possibilities of the book it's difficult to imagine a radical departure from the left-to-right, up-to-down, sequential-page-turning that we are used to. But Danielewski, for one, has come up with a new form that draws that assumed form into question. And it will just take creativity to create others. Hopefully more of these new book-asserting forms will appear soon. Not that I want every book I read to be a mind-fuck, but I think it's really interesting to see literature that uses new forms to draw old ones into question, that pushes the limits of our assumptions about texts and about what it means to read. There just seems to be so much potential here....

The Online Self

2005-11-07T10:58:00.000-08:00

The issue of self is one that I have thought about a lot in my time at Pomona in various history and literature courses, and in one of my history courses the other day I noticed that most people today think of individuation as integral to one's idea of self. However, that's a fairly modern conception. Many people in older societies didn't have the luxury to think of themselves apart from their communities; social interest was crucial for survival.

David Bell brings up an interesting point in this statement: "As people fracture their sense of self into multiple online selves, they paradoxically produce a portfolio of singularities rather than recognizing that multiplicity dwells within an individual self." I haven't ever thought about the progression toward a postmodern self, and the idea that we are moving away from the individual again is interesting. We are dividing ourselves further, compartmentalizing, but in doing so, we no longer see ourselves as a whole, as an individual.

I'm still not sure what I think of this notion. It seems to jibe with the definitions of postmodernism that we've been given, but it's very hard to conceive of a self that is this fractured, that isn't a unified "self." However, just because it's hard to do so doesn't mean that this isn't the case, and I find that when I think about myself, I can see instances in which I compartmentalize my identity, especially online. I think an important question to ask is, how different/ drastic is this compartmentalization from that of previous societies? In the eighteenth century, the distinction between public and private was being articulated more commonly, and nobles had a public persona (a court persona) and a private one, a persona they shared with intimates. It seems that even in the modern self there have been divisions, so does the alteration depend on how sharp those divisions are or in their frequency?

Tracing the Decay of Fiction

2005-11-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

Man, oh man, did I love this DVD....

Beautiful, dark, surreal, well put together, not as boxy or rigid as Manovich's Soft Cinema--Tracing the Decay of Fiction really enthralled me. I loved the mixture of fact and fiction, new and old, truth and lies, and the way they all blended so seamlessly together. This movie gave you a real feel for the Ambassador without playing the straight documentary line. It reminded me of The 7th Guest in a lot of ways that also made me really love that game.

Steve Anderson quotes Kinder: "Embracing the interactive is important, but we don't want to just fetishize the interactivity. Agency does't necessarily make something wonderful." And I think that her recognition of this really comes across in this DVD. Where Manovich seemed so self-conscious of the form and wanted his viewers to maintain that consciousness for themselves, Kinder is more concerned with the product, with the creation of a database narrative that isn't just fetishized as such and that doesn't just appeal beacuse it's ergodic. There must be a level at which we look at interactivity and the way in which we favor it and try to figure out why, for what purpose. Just because you can walk through a 3-dimensional recreation of Berlin doesn't mean that that walk is special, enlightening, educational, or even entertaining. It just means that you can walk through a 3-D Berlin. There's only so much that interactivity can do for you; ultimately it must come back to content.

I really wish I could see some of the other Labyrinth Project DVDs. I looked them up on Amazon, and they look really cool.

Soft Cinema

2005-10-31T19:01:00.000-08:00

One thing that I thought was interesting about Soft Cinema that we didn't discuss is the actual format of the screens. Manovich retained the database cell format in the movies when he could have just made a database-driven movie with a single screen image. This is probably because he was self-consciously reinforcing the database-movie idea, and it seems appropriate when trying to artistically introduce the idea.

But I found the format to be the most frustrating aspect of watching the movies. The layout felt very boxy, regimental, restricted. And I know that a typical square screen probably only feels natural because we are accustomed to it, but something about the open spaces and the shifting layout (without obvious purpose) seemed bothersome. And Nick was right in his statement about the hegemony of the large box. Why was there always a favored image?

Also, in addressing Manovich's idea that the database film can battle our urges for narrative, I noticed that we all mentioned, in talking about what we focused on, that we still searched for some sort of narrative coherence: the image that matched the storyline or music the most, the scrolling text in "Absences." Even in a film that we know to be randomly compiled, we seek some sort of narrative, some sort of flow to the story.

N. Katherine Hayles and Talan Memmott

2005-10-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

In doing reading for my thesis I was reading a book called "Writing Machines" by N. Katherine Hayles, a professor at UCLA and came across an article about "Lexia to Perplexia" (there's also a chapter on artists' books). I couldn't get the text to work on 2 different browers, and I haven't attempted with another yet, but I looked over this article and found it pretty interesting and illuminating. She posits that Memmott enacts "narratives about how human subjects misunderstand themselves as autonomous agents when in fact they cannot be separated from the information technologies that, more than expressing, co-create them" (50). The idea of humans being co-created by the technology that they're using is really interesting; in a way it relates to Manovich's claim that human creativity becomes unncessary in using new media. We still perceive that we are in control, but in fact we are being controlled. Instead of seeing this idea as merely technologically deterministic, I think it's cool that Memmott made a technology to actually represent that.

Also, she claims that he brings this into focus through the illegible, layered texts. They "mark the limits of what human perception can discern" (50) and remind "us that the computer is also a writer, and moreover a writer whose operations we cannot wholly grasp in their semiotic complexity" (51). I'm not entirely sure that I agree with this statement (reminding myself that I haven't seen L to P, though) just because Memmott still had to write the lexia and program the computer to layer them; the computer may be authoring particular configurations through algorithms, but ultimately there is another writer. The computer isn't "authoring" anything.

not a whole lot to do with new media...

2005-10-12T13:38:00.000-07:00

2 very unrelated points to this post:

1) Is anyone in the class interested in experimental literature (I know this is a broad term) like some of the books Aarseth mentions? If so, do you have any recs? I have several experimental books that I love, but I'm always looking for others, and I'd love suggestions.

2) The new Kate Bush album (which I haven't heard) has a picture on the cover of what looks like rocks reflected on water, but also, the rocks look like the visualization of an audio waveform, so some guy reconstructed the wav to see what it would sound like. Turns out that it may (or may not) be from the album itself, but I thought that it was more interesting that he went through the trouble of recreating it than the fact that it actually turned out to be from the album itself. Anyway, here's a link to the blog where he walks you through the process.

http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/001035.html

As I said, not much to do with new media, but just something that I found fairly interesting.

Espen Aarseth makes me a happy girl

2005-10-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

I think my title sums up my feelings on Espen Aarseth. This is the critical reading that I've enjoyed the most. It's well-written, contemplative, rational, and interesting (at least it seems to be such to me). Additionally, I've been fascinated recently (largely because of thesis, I'll admit) with the idea of narrative layrinths, so the discussion of unicursal and multicursual mazes fascinated me.

Also, I really liked the idea that hypertexts lend themselves to modernist poetics (13). In writing my project proposal for class, this was an aspect of hypertextual fiction that I recognized. It's much easier in "non-linear" fiction to focus on emotive moments, consciousnesses, and abstracted images than it is to construct a traditional plot-driven story. And in this manner, while sometimes more frustrating, I find the texts to be engaging in a way that I've experienced only in reading Lawrence, Pound, Woolf, and the like.

In class Wednesday we talked a bit about the lack of closure in "Afternoon," and I see this evident, to a certain degree, in the discussion of cybertexts. And I must admit that I wasn't a huge fan of "Afternoon" (although conceptually, I found it very interesting), but I really like the idea that "by studying cybertexts and trying to discover this alterity of narrative, we may also get some small new clues as to what narrative is" (5). This idea that there are aspects of narrative, a term that gets thrown around frequently, in many contexts, of which we aren't even aware gives narrative form an intriguing, open-ended, elusive quality that really appeals to me. Much of the appeal of reading texts is the discovery they can yield, and I appreciate that through a new medium, we can redefine and re-experience and reinterpret ideas that we rarely think to question.

All in all, I suppose this post is just here to applaud Aarseth, but it just comes down to the fact that I really like the issues that she addresses and the way she uses them in conjunction with one another.

Turning the Pages

2005-10-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

This is a pretty neat site: http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

They have online first/ early editions of some great books (including Alice in Wonderland), and the interesting thing is that to view the books, you have to "turn the pages." It tries to make reading online as close to the act of reading a book as it can.

Decentering

2005-10-04T21:25:00.000-07:00

It always seems that each semester the subject matter of my classes converge, and this semester is no exception. I'm taking a course in poststructuralism (we're focusing on Derrida right now), and it's been interesting to try to figure out the ways in which the media theorists we've been reading have been using Derrida and Lacan to bolster their arguments (or, in the case of Ong, to reject poststructuralist notions).

So this article in particular intrigued me because I was glad to finally have someone discuss critical theory and media theory in conjunction instead of merely referencing crit. theory.

Firstly, Landow seems to be the first writer that we've read that acknowledges that Derrida, in his claim that writing, in some sense, comes before speech, does not completely ignore verbality. Derrida does not strike out to undermine orality, but rather to break apart the binary of writing and speech. In his essay "Differance," he argues that because, if one were to spell the word "difference" with an "a" one could hear no difference in the pronunciation, something about graphic representation must exist apart from sound and orality. Derrida is interested in working in the space between binaries, not in asserting the dominance of writing, and I like that Landon points this out.

Also, I find the notion that the book has been decentered by our acknowledgment of it as technology (25) to be an interesting one. If viewed in light of the essay "Structure, Sign, and Play..." this means that a new center has emerged and has taken the place of the old center (a center which, in some ways cannot be replaced...but to go into this is to complicate this blog post impossibly). If this is true, what is the new center? Hypertext? We recognize hypertext as technology, so does something else place it as a center, or will some other notion decenter hypertext? I'm not sure what to make of this, but I am interested in the idea that our realization of technology decenters our notion of the "natural."

There is a lot to address in this text, and I really enjoyed Landon's combination of critical theory and media theory (because I'm a nerd and like critical theory immensely), but for now I think I've rambled enough about Derridean thought....

Extension & Extraction

2005-09-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

As I was reading Bush's article, I was struck first by his idea that "publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record" (38). The idea that a medium can be extended too far is an odd one. Because we can't watch the entire body of films that have been produced, does this mean that film has extended too far? Because we can't listen to the entire body of music that has been recorded to CD (not to mention vinyl, cassette, or mp3s), has that medium been extended too far? Is a gauge of a medium's usefulness our ability to access it in totality? This doesn't seem arguable. There has never been an ability to access information in its totality, not even in an oral culture; some people know some things, others know others, and some things may be forgotten or lost in the cracks.

To some extent I do agree that the proliferation of publications can make the task of research trying at times, and one can never develop an exhaustive argument, but I don't think that this limits our ability to make "real use" of the record. What constitutes real use, in the first place? Is it easy access? Complete knowledge?

This statement, when coupled with his solution, "the extraction of parallel material from the existing record" (41), seems particularly problematic. How can we systematically extract parallel material? And what gets extracted (i.e., if two separate authors have written parallel arguments, whose gets taken out of the record)? This process seems additionally subjective (and impossible) when one considers that issues of diction, syntax, and connotation figure heavily into the content of a text. Even if the concepts behind two pieces are the same, the methodologies of framing will inevitably be different. How does one go about choosing which to eliminate?

Agreeably, "creative thought and essentially repetitive thought are very different things" (41). However, perhaps we need one to supplement the other. When we quote a source in an academic paper, we are repeating specific thoughts of the quoted author, but we are (in theory) using them for our own creative analysis. According to Bush's thoughts, are we to extract quotations from the record? Just how far does his proposed extraction process reach?

Something about the idea of extraction strikes me as particularly horrifying (aside from problematic). Perhaps this is me unconsciously returning to the idea that writing is a means of circumventing death, and by removing certain ideas or phrasings they will be lost, dead to us forever. I can't honestly speak to my visceral reaction, but the idea of removing any published words from a body of documents seems particularly frightening. Not that I value all printed materials, not that I think that everything written is intellectually valuable, but I think there is something inherently valuable in the process of recording. And if one begins to extract, when does the extraction cease? Who determines its limits? Who even does the extraction? My misgivings may be tied to the fact that I have only experienced a literate culture, a culture in which we hold on to everything printed, keep copyright libraries and extensive cataloguings of library holdings, and who knows, in fifty years my apprehension may be considered silly, even by myself. But in reading Bush's article, something within me was cringing at this notion of extraction.

Ramblings about the self

2005-09-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

Gitelman says that Gertrude Stein believed that not only was the typewriter an "aid to composition," but also a machine that "composed its writer into someone new, a self-forgery" (214).

The idea that one's self can be altered by technology is an interesting one. I was curious as to what exactly was implied by the meaning of "self." Is it "the total, essential, or particular being of a person," "the essential qualities distinguishing one person from another," or "one's consciousness of one's own being or identity" (dictionary.com)? All of these definitions seem to share a concept of particularity or individuation, an aspect that doesn't seem to mesh well with Stein's concern. If the typewriter obliterated the "personality" or "character" of the individual in business, this does not seem to be a self-forgery, but an attempt to destroy the self.

Additionally, I am fascinated by the third definition of self, the one in which consciousness is requisite. To be essentially altered by something, must we be aware? I would, at first thought, say no, but when one thinks of him/herself, one can only link him/herself to personality aspects of which (s)he is conscious. Meaning, my idea of myself cannot be derived from unconsciousness because I cannot understand myself in terms of things of which I am not aware. We can be unconsciously transformed by social changes and pressures around us, but how does this relate to the idea of the self? Is it only after "new media variously recycle our awareness of old media" (224) that we can incorporate these changes into our self-conceptions?

I feel as if I am not making sense, am talking in circles, but somehow these ideas are making sense to me, although I'm not sure where they lead us. But I'm fascinated by the idea that we can be transformed without incorporating this into our notion of "self," and also with Stein's idea of "self-forgery." I suppose that if one were conscious of the forgery, self-forgery would be possible, but I am not entirely sure that one's "self" can be forged by an external force without individual consciousness of that tranformation. It seems as if there should be a distinction between the typewriter "composing the writer into someone new" and "self-forgery." Or maybe I'm just too caught up in Stein's semantics....

On an unrelated note, it's somwhat difficult to blog reading responses. I suppose I could write them like normal reading responses and copy them into this text box, but something about the blog format feels more informal, more unstrcutured, more accepting of unperfected thoughts. What makes me perceive it in this way? Social construction of blogs or internet space, or is it something more tied to my personal perceptions or to my normal ideas about academic spaces?

A Modest Proposal

2005-09-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

This post isn't directly related to media studies or Gulliver's Travels or any of the issues we're addressing in class, but I just had to post it anyway. Swift is one of my favorites, and he wrote a fabulous satirical essay (which I'm sure many of you have read or heard of) about why the Irish should eat their children. It's pretty short and very funny, so I thought I'd include a link for anyone interested.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

Video Killed the Radio Star

2005-09-19T11:23:00.000-07:00

I'll agree with Lori that it's really easy to get behind in this whole blogging venture.... But here I am, ready to talk about McLuhan.

For part 2 of the reading, I focused on "Radio: The Tribal Drum," and I was really interested in what McLuhan had to say about the way in which radio has evolved. While radio still essentially combines privacy and "the tight tribal bond of the world of the common market" (302), since the rise of television, radio has "been free to diversify," to "begin a regional and local community service that it had not known" (306). I am not sure how this applies to "radio" as a general medium (Clearchannel still haunts our dials at every turn), but the US has seen a resurgence of independent stations in the past decade or so. Community media are finding a new voice in our nation, and it's interesting to think that this new voice is the result of television's universality. But it's not just radio that is finding a newly expanded audience; private presses and independent news journals are starting to pop up in local stores as well.

So does this mean that in order to escape the narcosis of electronic media (remembering that radio is still one of these media), people will begin to seek decentralized content in their media? McLuhan makes the point that the effects of radio are divorce from its programming, but the rise of independent stations seems to coincide with a rising awareness of independent, localized content. I will agree that the implications of radio stem from the medium of radio itself, of the way in which it disseminates information, the way in which it alters social consciousness and perception, but i think that the implications of radio that McLuhan only briefly touches on, the issues of content, are equally important and interesting.

What does universal media do to our perceptions of human/ social communities? Do we continue to live numbly under the influence of these self-extensions? Or will there be an attempt to escape (McLuhan describes pleasure as one means of escape), an attempt to return to the tribal notions of limited communities, to the Platonic idea of political structures? Radio allows us the sensation of an individual experience alongside a specific notion of a community (specifically, a limited listening audience), and I am fascinated by (but have no answers) the ways in which this unique trait affects the way in which we perceive our communities.

Typographic Space

2005-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

In reading the Ong chapters for today, the section on typographic space (126-7) caught my attention. For my thesis I am writing on a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and in it, the author uses bizarre typographical spacing to yield various effects in the reader. For instance, in a particularly suspenseful part of the novel, there is one word per page so the reader physically has to turn pages rapidly to continue with the story. One chapter (about labyrinthine spaces) is modeled after a labyrinth (and takes ages to read), with footnotes that connect, some that lead nowhere, sections of text that are backwards, upside down, boxed off, etc.
I am fascinated by the idea of using textual space to play with the reader's literary imagination, and I really liked the way in which Ong talked about how this is purely a creation of print culture. If manuscripts attempted to distort (or toy with) spatial notions, in the process of recopying them much of the spacings would have been lost. It is the accuracy of print that allows readers to engage with the typographic space, which leads to me to think that, in some ways, print can facilitate a reader's direct connection with literature (meaning that the text isn't cold, dead, and lifeless on the page). Textual forms can engage parts of the reader's psyche (and physical response as well) that manuscripts couldn't.

On a side note, or rather, a plug for House of Leaves, I suggest that you read it. Or, because I know that most students don't have time for leisure reading, at least track it down and flip through it. It's absolutely fascinating!

iPod Nano

2005-09-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

I'm sure some of you have seen this by now, but Apple made an even smaller iPod: http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/

B&G Music Rant

2005-09-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

There's a lot going on in the Bolter and Grusin, and I must say that overall, I'm not such a huge fan of this reading, but for the purpose of this post, I'm going to focus on one particular (and nit-picky) aspect of the reading: the way in which they deal with the discussion of music.

Now, I am a self-professed music nerd/addict. I've worked with radio for 3 1/2 years now, and last summer I lived, breathed, ate, and dreamed music. So if this seems to be a bit of a rant, forgive me.

Music first enters the scene on page 42, and I think B&G have some okay points, but they are way too generalizing in their treatment of "rock music." Firstly they say, in regards to Bowie, Cooper, and Kiss, that "the traditional 'musical' qualities of these productions, never very complicated, became progressively less important than the volume and variety of sound and the visual spectacle." I understand the point that live performances in this period became more extreme. With the rise of glam rock came glitter, glitz, and over-the-top fashion. With Alice Cooper came stomped chicks and make-up. With Kiss came pyrotechnics. However, I protest the idea that the traditional "musical" qualities were a) never very complicated or b) progressively less important. Many of David Bowie's persona changes/ stage show antics accompanied some radical musical shifts; music, in many ways, never took the backseat in his career. So to say that music was progressively less important in rock is to be ungenerous at best. (Although, I will sadly admit that with label consolidation and an emphasis on "hits" there are many rock bands out nowadays where music takes the backseat. But this is not the case with all rock music, nor has it ever been the case with all rock music.) Thus, I agree that live shows were subject to hypermediacy, but to say that hypermediacy hijacked the entire musical drive or musical technique of these artists is too general a statement.

On page 71 B&G assert that "those on the American religious right are compelled by their construction of rock music to remain distanced. They may claim that the sinfulness of rock music lies primarily in its lyrics, but it is the nature of hypermediated experience that really troubles them." Whew, what a problematic statement! First, what does "rock" mean? Is it hardcore, heavy metal, music played through amps, music of a certain speed or rhythm, music with a particular type of singer? And what of content? Does rock music necessarily employ questionable lyrical content? The generalization of rock music is too sweeping, too indiscriminate. Additionally, the statement that the "nature of hypermediated experience" is what ultimately troubles the religious right is fallacious. Growing up in the Bible Belt, I was exposed to Christian concerts with flashing lights, booming volumes, screaming singers, onstage antics, etc. So what makes that less of a hypermediated experience? And if the religious right is deterred by this experience, why are Christian concerts of this nature selling out in large venues? Local Christian stations host latenight "Christian hardcore" and "Christian hip-hop." This doesn't even begin to touch on other hypermedia forms (films, websites, etc.) that appeal to the religious right. I can't understand how this statement is either pertinent to the discussion at hand or, once iterated, how it is backed up with evidence.

Also, according to B&G "Rock music expects, if it does not require, that the viewer/ listener be intimately involved in the hypermediacy" (71). Are they specifically speaking about live performances, or does this apply to CD recordings as well? Because, while a CD may have undergone rigorous editing, sound-tweaking, level-adjusting, etc. during production, I wouldn't deem it to be hypermedia, at least not consciously. I don't listen to the new Wrens CD and think, "Wow! There was so much media involved in the making of this album!" No, I listen to the chords, the lyrics, the voices, the riffs. Perhaps I am misunderstanding their statement. Perhaps this only applies to live shows. Perhaps they are more conscious of the media involved in CDs (granted, there is the packaging), but somehow, I don't feel like this statement holds. They have a point about the pyrotechnics, glitz, and glamour of many stage shows, but this is different what what "rock music expects." This is what marketers, promoters, fans seeking to be entertained expect. (And B&G don't account for shows at venues smaller than arena-size; there's not a whole lot of glitz to 85% of the shows at the Knitting Factory or Hotel Cafe.)

And I have one more point to make before I dismount my high horse. The examples of Laurie Anderson, The Residents, and Emergency Broadcast Network are not the prime examples I would use in talking about a general trend of music. B&G admit that they are "avant-garde," but then continue to talk about the EBN CD-ROM as if it is a typical practice of many rock bands. Similarly, The Residents are very interested in concept albums of all types, and where "Freak Show" is concerned with juxtaposing media, 90% of the rest of their extensive discography is not. (On a side point, I think one of the coolest albums that I have ever encountered is "Eskimo," a concept album about Eskimos using Inuit field recordings of blowing wind, howling dogs, etc. And this album goes along with a documentary, so in telling you about it, I am giving you another example of The Residents and hypermediacy, but it merits a mention, and I did say 90%, not 100.)

For samples of these artists, you can get mp3s here:

(Laurie Anderson live on MN college radio in 1981) http://www.houseofdiabolique.com/laurie-anderson-1981-diabolique.mp3 (NOTE: It's kind of long, so if you don't want the whole thing, you can go to that site and stream it)

(The Residents- "Festival of Death" from Eskimo) http://www.progarchives.com/mp3/Residents,%20The%20-%20Eskimo%20-%2006.%20The%20Festival%20Of%20Death.mp3

(The video for "Electronic Behavior Control System" by Emergency Broadcast Network) http://launch.yahoo.com/ar-313216-videos--EBN

Anyhow, I think B&G have some good points, but they get a bit too carried away with sweeping statements. And this applies to most of the text that we have read. This little music issue is just one example of an area in which they seem to overstate their case without backing it up.

Feel free to disagree with me on the music bit, as I know that I am also being a bit extreme in my reaction. But I just wanted to point out that in general, I think B&G should be more careful to qualify their statements or to look more closely at their generalizations. It often distracts from valid points.

Interestingly:
I talked to a good friend of mine today who went to Pomona and is now in grad school at Duke, and he's currently taking a new media course. And he was reading the Bolter and Grusin as well. He actually just IMed me because he saw my away message which said "reading about remediation." Thought it was kind of funny....

2005-09-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I'd like to celebrate my first post to this blog. So, huzzah!

I've watched Natalie Bookchin's "The Intruder" several times now, and I like it a lot. Mainly because it's unlike anything else I've ever seen. I think it's pretty novel in the way that it traces the progress, not only of the story itself, but also of video gaming. It begins with Pong, progresses to a Space Invader-esque spaceship shoot-em-up, and ends with a sniper war game. The graphics, in general, get more precise and developed as the game continues. So I really like that Bookchin decided to chronicle some sort of media history in this piece; there are several chronologies occurring simultaneously, making the game more interesting.

However, sometimes there is so much going on that it's difficult to focus on the story. For instance, in the sixth section, the "Pong Girl" section, the game noises are louder than the narration, making it difficult to pay attention to the events of the story (and especially at such a crucial part, I feel this is a serious problem). I suppose the point still comes across strongly through the graphic representation of the girl being batted back and forth, coupled with female sexual imagery, but I feel like the gaming noises often distracted from crucial textual moments. Another example of this is in the second section, where one must catch falling words in a jar. The noises are distracting, and to be frank, fairly annoying.

But I must allow for the possibility (because this is obviously well thought out) that this was Bookchin's intent. If one looks at it from the hypermediacy standpoint, perhaps it's a statement about how too much media, too many mixed forms, can ultimately be distracting. Or perhaps the point is that one cannot be lost in the words or strict lines of the narrative because it becomes disjointed and interrupted, yet one is still able to grasp the point of the story through powerful visual representations.

One aspect of "The Intruder" that I found interesting was how the player becomes complicit in the destruction of the female. In order to progress through the story, one must play Pong with her as the ball, one must cause her to fall into holes, and at the end, one must snipe her. The viewer shares the common bond of the men at the end because, by finishing the story, the viewer has finished Juliana as well. Just as Cristian has taken her to a remote place to kill her, the viewer has watched her race through a remote terrain, has watched her attempts to escape. The culmination of the story occurs with the culmination of the running girl's life.

It occurs to me that we see the running girl three times in "The Intruder," and each time our perspective becomes more violent and distant. The first time we see her, she must collide with lines of words, but the second time, the viewer must allow her (or cause her) to fall into holes, to be swallowed with darkness. Initially, we don't know why she runs; we are uninvolved. But by allowing her to be harmed the second time we see her, we become implicated as being part of the cause of her fear. Not because we hurt her, but because we allow her to be hurt. And finally, we are looking down on her from a helicopter. We are no longer close to her in any way, and we actively seek to harm her, to track her. The violence is abstracted because she is faceless. We do not immediately connect her with the running girl of before, but as our objective.

There's so much in "The Intruder." More keeps occurring to me as I think about it. And I think this is one reason why it's so effective. It reaches us immediately, with obvious and powerful imagery, but there are also subtleties that stick with us, that become clear as we are distanced from the experience, as we contemplate it apart from playing it. We may be quick to see how the imagery represents the objectification of women, of Juliana's silence throughout the narrative, but we may not even realize that we are guilty, that we share the brothers' bond as we play.

One final word: I was intrigued that, despite the lack of directions, it becomes clear to the player quickly what she is supposed to do in order to complete the objectives of the different games, even when the objectives are contrary to initial instinct (as in the football section). Are video games this familiar to us, or is it something more innate, something automatically responsive?