Notes

Benjamin is attempting to derive an approach to the understanding of art that is useless for Fascism (in the sense of discourse). But rather, the theory of art should be useful for developing revolutionary aesthetics and values.

1

The work of art is always reproducible, at least in principle. Mechanical reproduction enables this to a dramatically increased extent. Reproduction itself has a history originating in stamping and extending through woodcuts, to lithography, to finally photography and film. The emergence of these technologies enabled two things: 1) the ability to “reproduce all transmitted works of art”, and 2) to become legitimate in their own artistic process.

That first point is made very quickly and is a very dangerous statement. Benjamin might be meaning something more limited than it sounds, but it makes the ground a little shaky.

2

Reproductions are different from the originals in that the original has a presence in time and space. It also contains a history (one might say a cultural capital), which cannot be copied. (Although it could be emulated or referenced…)

A curious bit here: Manual reproductions were considered forgeries, and these allowed the original work to preserve its authority, but the process and culture of forgery seems more curious than that, further, a really *good* forgery might have the quality of confusing experts, and this blurs and confuses the attribution of authenticity.

Technical reproductions are different in that they tend to enable more to be derived from the original work. For example, photographic enlargement or slow motion film. “…technical reproduction can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself.” The mechanical reproduction also enables distribution for the beholder to access it easily, without requiring labor or effort (travel, or, in the case of kitsch, education).

The next point is the highly controversial one: “The situations into which the product of mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the actual work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated.” This establishes the idea that the work of art is diminished by its reproduction, but there is a bit more subtlety going on. (And this ties strongly into Greenberg, later.) Namely, the value of the original is perceived as being less when confronted with the superiority of the mechanical reproduction. This point is still contestable, but follows directly from the previous.

The effect of reproduction is to detach the work of art from its tradition, and destroy the value of cultural heritage.

3

On the aura of natural objects: this is determined by proximity, how close one is to the object of attention. But, (in the case of the masses), there is a desire to get closer in proximity to the object, and failing direct access, that may be done via its reproduction. However, that destroys the uniqueness of the object.

Criticism can be made at this point of the role of uniqueness. After Barthes, one might say that uniqueness and meaning derive from the beholder, not from the object or its image.

4

Before the era of reproduction, art was dependent on a sort of ritual function. Later, with the rise of reproduction, art reacted with the idea of “art for the sake of art”. This idea was to deny the social function of art and ascribe to it a pure ritual or theology.

The function of mechanical reproduction is to liberate art from its dependence on ritual. Instead, art becomes art designed for reproducibility, which undermines the notion that authenticity might even exist. Thus, art begins to serve the function of politics.

5

Art operates in the service of functions. Originally, in the neolithic era, it was a function of magic and ritual, only later being termed art. The emphasis of the value of art leads to new functions, but these functions may be kept concealed.

6

Photography takes on a new set of functions and through a change in approach, takes on a new political significance. Specifically, Benjamin is looking at Atget who took photographs of deserted streets in Paris such that they looked like scenes of crime.

The fact that photography can take up political functions though, does not imply that other works cannot serve different functions than traditionally ascribed either. The significant change seems to be in referencing the work to another system of meaning (crime photography), rather than being an intrinsic property of photographs as reproducible.

7

In the early days of film, critics attempted to view film using logic of ritual.

Overview

This is intended to be read as a futurist look ahead of the future. Negroponte gets many things wrong, but a few of his predictions have been realized remarkably: the popularity of email, emergence of netiquette, and self-published video.

Negroponte’s focus is on individual users, but does not really acknowledge other units of social organization. He seems to dislike demographics, and want to get rid of classifications that are more general than the individual. He strips culture down to the individual level, but disregards the prevalent strength of other emergent social structures. If there is no society (just users and technology), then there is nothing in the way of technology.

The book works in a perfect opposition to Duguid and Brown, who claim that social structures are resolute and hard to budge. They argue, accurately, that technology that does not account for society will fail. Their failure is to suggest that society will not change at all.

Assorted Notes:

Things are changing from atoms to bits. Things might read as important things, or the important parts of things are being understood in terms of bits instead of atoms, as information rather than matter.

A lot of this is brought about (or at least reflected by) the change and rapid growth and saturation of the world and everyday life with microprocessors. The change strikes Negroponte as inevitable, and having the potential to drastically change things. In the introduction, the argument seems to lovingly reflect a sort of futurism of the infinitely possible. Especially, Negroponte sees cultural systems as being drastically changed by digital communication.

The intense anti-futurist focus given by Duguid and Brown make some sense while compared here.

Chapter 13

Post information age: Evidently (during 1995, when this was written) we were passing into a post-information age. This seems hard to swallow. The internet, the chief vehicle of the information age had barely spread its wings by then.

In terms of post-information, what seems to be understood as this relates to consumer culture is an idea of individual knowability. That individuals are composed of information (notably as opposed to statistical rows, this has a more declarative model). Negroponte describes machines being able to understand people with a significant degree of subtlety.

Granted, some of this has been realized: notably in terms of advertising and search technologies, but even still the amount by which distributed software systems know their users is minute, and far from Negroponte’s examples of the helpful liquor store agent. (p. 165) Negroponte’s point is that “All of these are based on a model of you as an individual, not as part of a group who might buy a certain brand of soapsuds or toothpaste.” The problem is that is nearly EXACTLY what the new models do! They are based not on committee decided consumer models, but on statistical and correlational ones. Their only virtue is their emergent nature, but they are just as demeaning and reductive as any other.

Furthermore, these examples seem extremely invasive of privacy. For every bit of helpfulness that a system might generate, there is ten times that in the potential for abuse and exploitation. Negroponte claims that “advertising will be so personalized that it is indistinguishable from news. It is news.” (p. 170) This is a terrifying prospect, since an advertiser is always investing in potential return, which by nature, is not in the consumer’s best interest.

Chapter 14

Media consumption is leaning towards a pay per view model of content. This does make sense and is consistent with contemporary models.

The abundance of meta information is also forecasted here, which plays out as well. Negroponte’s preoccupation with television seems to foreshadow phenomena such as YouTube.

Chapter 15

On interpretation via decoding (looking at decoding a page as a “fax”). Sounds like it could reference classical information theory.

Describes MIDI as a potential replacement format for storing music effectively. Essentially, Negroponte is trying to make the distinction between underlying structural information and rendered “image” information. Taken to the extreme, a musical recording is nothing more than the score or a midi file.

This misses the huge stumbling stone that midi is horrible. And the matter of representation via schematic is prone towards variability in representation, rendering power, consistency, and many more difficulties. What is troubling about this argument is not that it claims that schematic transformation is possible, even if lossy, but that it claims that the image is nothing more than a rendered schematic.

Modern compression (or even a relatively old format such as mp3) has a significant compression power, but its approach is totally different.

Negroponte evidently really doesn’t like fax. Then again, who can blame him? And yes, email is really so awesome, and will be once users learn decorum. This makes sense and has happened. It’s hard to understand what is being argued, though.

Chapter 16

Negroponte looks at kids doing things with Lego/Logo systems as a way for reaching children with varying learning styles. This references the evocative capacities of computers discussed by Turkle. He strongly references Papert on this issue. Notably, computers enable a learning by doing as opposed to a learning by drill and practice.

Via representational power, computers can provide context in learning.

Example of the wild goose chase separates “street smarts” from “classroom skills”. The internet enables an abundance of information available for children to learn and assemble. An odd critique of this is (again) the matter of abuse and safety. While the internet may enable a sort of collective intelligence, Negroponte assumes that all content will necessarily be positive and complimentary.

Concluding he discusses Sheik Yamani and learning and education. Primitive people are ones who have a different means of conveying knowledge (from the modern perspective), and have a supportive social fabric to sustain them. Uneducated people are products of a modern society whose social system cannot support them.

The connection here is that children who learn with games and the internet will learn skills usable later in life, and (evidently) will be supported by the supportive embrace of technology. This sort of implicitly assumes that other educational approaches have failed in the modern age. There are still dangers here, games that support also have biases, they may have agendas, and the ones that are fun tend to be ones that do not require critical thinking. Games such as Civilization are fun and require thinking, but thinking within the model of civilization put forth by the developers. It does not truly teach critical thought, because, like rote drill and practice, promotes adoption of one model, and one model only.

How is the simulation internalization model different from the “games and violence” or “tv and violence” models of social systems? Kids learn via doing (ex with Lego/Logo, etc), and they know to distinguish real from make believe. This requires a kind of literacy and awareness, though.

Notes, Chapter 5

In the office of Razorfish, the design of the space reflects the themes of computer culture: interactivity, lack of hierarchy, modularity. Outside, design of physical objects has shifted to evoke the idea of the computer (reversing the original principles of GUI design). Manovich returns and emphasizes that the first form of digital media is the database (which includes structure and logic). The second form is “a virtual interactive 3-D space”.

The database is the metaphor to conceptualize both individual and collective memory. In this sense, social rules and values would be encoded as points of data within databases. Even appreciating Manovich’s extended interpretation and concept of the database, this seems very far of a stretch. Furthermore, computer culture supposedly uses 3D to represent every kind of information imaginable. Examples cited describe a few visualizations, but these visualizations are probably not used in abundance currently.

Using metaphorical terms: “…increasingly the same metaphors and interfaces are used at work and at home, for business and entertainment. For instance, the user navigates through a virtual space to work and to play, whether analyzing scientific data or killing enemies in Quake.” This captures a very strange semantic moment, where, as a culture, we are approaching vastly different subjects using the same ideas and metaphorical tools. But, surely, everything isn’t reducible to these core essences? Even as a mathematician, I don’t try to apply my mathematical tools (logic being the “core of reason”) to everything. Is the effect of digital media to universalize everything under the same vocabulary?

Manovich uses the metaphor of narrative and description to tie an interesting point around the dilemmas of the information age. Traditional culture provided well defined narratives for handling information, and now we have too much information and not enough coherent narratives to tie it together. As such, information access (in the raw sense of accessing bits of unrelated, unconnected data) is much more important. Manovich says that we need an aesthetics of information to guide information design, and that all design has turned to information design. A key subtlety of this is that traditional narratives unite information in the form of knowledge, and generally provide a sense of a knower. The new aesthetics would treat information as raw and without perspective.

The Database

Manovich’s database is significantly more complicated than the database of traditional computing. It may be subject to multiple and complex methods of arrangement and sorting, as well as having ontological classification and some degree of procedural interaction. However, all of these characteristics are minute and are outside of the central point which is the data.

Games are characterized by algorithms, what others might call rules. The rules Manovich dwells on are remarkably high level (ie, the directions that enemies come from in Quake), glossing over the the many deep steps needed to get any visual effects at all.

A database represents the world as a disorganized list, and narrative orders events via cause and effect. By this, the two means of representation are in conflict. Manovich explains in clunky language that an individual working through a text, (either reading a narrative or playing a game) must uncover the underlying logic that governs that text. Manovich calls this logic an algorithm.

Later, new media is distilled into an amalgamation of multimedia: “The new media object consists of one or more interfaces to a database of multimedia material.” (p. 227)

The differing pair, database vs narrative are examined in the sense of semiotic linguistics. In traditional narrative, the database is interpreted as as a paradigm, versus the narrative which is a syntagm. The database is implicit (as a set of elements which might comprise something), where the narrative is explicit in its actual construction.

In new media, the database is made to be the explicit paradigm (as the dominant feature of new media) whereas the narrative is dematerialized as the syntagm.

Database and narratives produce endless hybrids. Examples are epic poetry, encyclopedic texts. This issue is reminiscent of Aarseth’s Cybertext. Manovich looks at video art next, and examines some of the intense variations produced by experimental mathematical visualization. While this would seem to be more evocative of the procedural nature of media, it is the capacity of variation that is interpreted as tying back into the database. Rather than procedural variants, they are understood as data variants.

Navigable Space

Manovich brings in and compares the games Doom and Myst, as elements of spatiality in digital media. He maps narrative elements onto these, but in a slightly skewed manner: “Instead of narration and description, we may be better off thinking about games in terms of narrative actions and exploration.” With this, the player is responsible for moving the narrative forward. Exploration is an aspect of progressing through that narrative space, not just the dimensional space of the game world.

Manovich leaves these reasonable conclusions to assert something strange- that navigable space is common to all areas of new media, and that the motion simulator is the “new genre” of entertainment. This can be seen, especially with games, though not with most software or other digital media. Games too use space, but are not always about the space.

One odd characteristic of space in computers is that is representation is austere, utterly blank, and empty. 3D modeling programs present the user with a void, with only the coordinate system to situate construction. Furthermore, construction is out of nothingness, computer space lacks a medium (and this can be said for most computer modeling or art programs). It lends toward disembodied work, without ties to anything else. (p. 225)

Manovich claims that the trend is to progress towards an aggregate or systematic space. Such space ties together others in a rhizomatic manner. Manovich seems to be claiming something very literal, that the internet will transform into some massive heterogeneous chimera of 3D space a-la Second Life crossed with every other science fiction portrayal of the internet. This seems to be nonsense, but there is ground to be held on this argument at a symbolic level.

Further, among navigating space, and the narratives and philosophies thereof, Manovich looks again at computer games: “The dominance of spatial exploration in games expemplifies the classical American mythology in which the individual discovers his identity and builds character by moving through space.” (p 271) Beyond games, information access is seen in terms of navigation and traversal (which can be applied regardless of 3D).

Overview

Stafford explores the concept of analogy as a kind of foundation for cognition. Analogy here is the notion of connecting, or finding similarity, which is opposed to the process of finding difference. Stafford specifically is exploring visual analogy, and using visual analysis and language in her investigation, but the concepts of analogy and its visual method can be extended to a general approach to connecting and cognition. Platonism, gnosticism, and other forms of classical philosophy bear heavily into her discussion, and she draws out classical and modern philosophy to approach consciousness and media, both new and old.

Notes

Plato’s take on analogy: Desire for union with unpossessed. Theological, philosophical, rhetorical aesthetic middle term: delayed not-yet, allusive not-quite. Analogy relates to mathematical ratio. Visual arts are uniquely suited to analogy. Compare with 19th century disanalogy or allegory. Balance between opposed duals, etc. (p. 3) About knowledge: a heuristic system in pursuit of equivalences, exposing ties, concretizing abstractions. “By raising a periscope, so to speak, over the social, biological, technological, and disciplinary landscape, I shall argue that we need both to retrieve and to construct a more nuanced picture of resemblance and connectedness.” (p. 8-9) On Hegel and Marx: Forming a new theory of subsumption of dichotomous concepts: Allegory. This loses something, instead of drawing connections between two things, this approach lumps them together into ungainly whole. (p. 9)

Contemporary reasoning focuses on difference and unlikeness. (p. 14) Analogy in science: social analogy of forces (consider Freud’s drives as Newtonian forces, social systems as particles in fields, etc). This seems to occur across sciences. (p. 19) Types of similarity in law: Analogizing morality across society. Law poses that mathematical formulae are isomorphic to behavior, generalizes throughout society. This has a tendency to dehumanize, as it likens people to bits in equations. (p. 31)

Stafford cites D’Arcy Thompson! principle of similarities as functional. This sounds like computer code: Things have similarity across morphology and functional characteristics. (p. 46) How to coordinate a mosaic out of the dissociated elements in the digital age? Fragmentary nature of data tends to replication and solipsism. Computers, search engines do not know how to reconstruct mosaic from fragments, or perceive resemblances. (p. 53)

Analogy vs Allegory: Dichotomous structures, binary, obverse/reverse of same coin. Compare: Analytic allegory vs synthetic allegory. (p. 77) Trancendental culmination here: Contemplated object passes from reach of will or representation. Consider and compare aesthetic sublime. (p. 95)

Analogy as viewed by Aristotle: Translation (!) [as compared with mysticism previously]. Mimesis is at odds with hermeneutics. Metaphor translates words from one order of reality to another. “Aristotelian mimesis, or the activity of visibly converting and reconverting words in order to see phenomena in a new or better light, is fundamentally at odds with a negative, decoding hermeneutics.” (p. 116) On Leibniz: mathematics and world view, and Gestalt psychology. “Libniz is also not far afield from the schema theory of Gestalt psychology, attempting to relate universals to particulars in accessible ways.” (p. 127)

Discussing AI: We lack a deep understanding of the nonverbal “inner-life” of the self: AI and neurobiology should look at visual connection/analogy. (p. 139) Perspectival knowing: Charles Saunders Pierce and Leibniz: reality is the end result of imaginative creating of categories that we stretch out to grasp. (p. 146) Discussion of cognition and analogy (similarity and connectedness) to how the brain works. Cartesian legacy leads to the natural conclusion that mind is a general computer learning program. (p. 158) Embodied analogy is an argument against AI (Strong AI?). We concentrate the universe in ourselves and radiate it outward. “In sum: It seems that the crux of the problem of consiousness lies in the flagrant contrast or clash between organ and awareness. How does one satisfactorily reconcile the paradox of a disembodied brain as a scientific conglomerate of dissected processes with the gut feelings, flickers of emotion, moral struggles, and secret attractions we intuitively feel? I have been arguing that the soution to this dilemma requires the full participation of humanistic imaging in that supposedly ‘interdisciplinary discipline’, cognitive science.” (p. 179)

Notes

Jameson opens his chapter with some general and vague articulation of contemporary culture. The general trend is that the understanding of the future has changed from a catastrophic or redemptive vision, to a declarative finality: the end of ideology, art, social class, etc. This attitude is what Jameson calls postmodernism. Postmodernism is characterized by, at least in its etymology, by being the state after the movement of modernism. The postmodern is sort of a declarative end of modernism and all that it stands for.

Jameson gives some discussion of the modern- generally through examples. Many recent works are characteristic of “high-modernism”. The defining point of modernism seems to be an elitism, destroying and reconstructing traditions in pursuit of a certain ideal utopia. Postmodernism, by comparison is characterized by the popular. The postmodern seeks to erase the distinction between high and low culture or art as defined by modernism. Instead, the postmodern adopts and incorporates popular and low culture into its substance.

Seemingly, Jameson is attempting to analyze this through a “periodizing hypothesis”, as opposed to an account of postmodernism as a single movement among others. This method of investigation is intended to give credence to the nature of postmodernism as one, a new period separate from modernism, and two, a “cultural dominant” that incorporates and subsumes other features.

On footwear: Jameson gives an extended example of Van Gogh’s “A Pair of Boots” as a high modern work, because its evocative reference to a larger system of a world and values (peasants, the suffering of work life). Van Gogh uses color to romanticize and make utopian common objects. This approach makes the art form a form of powerful representation, in the sense that it is heavily symbolic and stands for ideas, and a system of meaning.

The postmodern example is Andy Warhol’s “Diamond Dust Shoes”, which is dead and lifeless, detached from a sense that the objects might have a life or history, but they are rather random and inert. This work still conveys meaning, but it is not conveyed representationally, the work does not represent meaning, but rather evokes meaning from the viewer’s association of the commodity.

Postmodernism is also characterized by a “waning of affect”, where feeling and emotion are left lacking in newer images. Instead, images are commodified and are referential to the surface only, suggesting that there is only the image. This regression of images ties back to Baudrillard and simulacra. Common themes of the modern, anxiety and alienation, are missing or are inappropriate in the postmodern.

Instead of representation and explicit signification, the postmodern uses simulacra in the sense of Baudrillard. Instead of representation, the postmodern connotates, parodies, or uses pastiche. Contemporary works can no longer represent the past, instead they can only represent our ideas and stereotypes of the past. The postmodern in this sense is able to destroy history as a concrete thing.

The understanding of history in the postmodern era is schizophrenic. Instead of having a concrete chain of signification that composes a coherent meaning, postmodern memory has a breakdown of meaning, in the form of “a rubble of distinct and unrelated signifiers.”

Jameson spends time exploring some final notes on mapping and architecture. Postmodern architecture and mapping are characterized by a lack of signification. The postmodern building is a totally self contained and nearly imaginary structure, without traditional ideas of reference and space. This leads to an alienation that can be seen as a lack of mapping. Traditional mapping connects the imaginary and the real, or the space with the map (or the model). A postmodern work/map/building must be dissociated and global. What that means, or how it would play out is left to be determined.

Notes

Chapter 1: Crisis

Lyotard opens by explaining some representational models of society. He finds two primary models: A holistic model (derived from Talcott Parsons) and a dualistic model (often characterized by Marxism).

The totalizing view is the one promoted by science and views society as a self regulating system. Marxism sees to differ by positioning society in a different relationship with power and knowledge. However, the alternative offered by Marxism is still totalizing, and offers the same problems in understanding the social bond.

Lyotard’s aim is to show that classical “grand Narratives” have broken apart and dissolved. The role of the individual becomes prominent, but that has a tendency to lead to a certain isolation. However, Lyotard sees this as not a notion of disconnected islands, so much as nodes in a network.

The approach Lyotard uses is Wittgensteinean language games. Inquiry into the social bond exposes ideas of subject and referent, and issues of communication, which are essential to language. The social problem must not be understood as merely a communication issue, though, as that misses the role of attention in the language games.

Knowledge is a matter of significant interest here, and its role in understanding culture is significant, as knowledge shapes the matters of “how” in a society. Lyotard is interested in using the terminology of narrative to understand how knowledge shapes a culture. There are five reasons for using narrative:
Narrative carries values and positive and negative models.
Narrative is well adapted to language games.
Narrative has clear means of transmission.
Narrative has a certain rhythm and place in time.
Narrative, finally, belongs to no one, cultural narratives are open and cannot be contained by institutions.

The underlying implication to this seems to be that the understanding and transmission of knowledge is inherently dependent on these language games. Truth cannot be told or understood without using a narrative form, so, as a result, science is dependent on a narrative foundation to even establish its most fundamental rules. Mathematically this would probably relate to the acceptance of axioms, or the meta-language understanding of how to reason about axioms.

Turning to how knowledge is legitimized via narrative approaches, or alternatively, the narrative of legitimization: Lyotard finds a political and philosophical approach. The division that is established seems to be in the role of science, whether it is for itself, or for the state, or for humanity. Science is delegitimized when its narrative is somehow vulgar. Science is incapable of legitimizing itself, and so languages of science that die out will lose their legitimacy. Conversely, new languages are created and are added to the old.

The postmodern era is characterized by a splintering of languages, science takes on multitudes of meanings and ideas. The postmodern world is about a legitimization that is not dependent on performativity (that is, it does not need to work for it to be legitimate, and vice versa).

Overview

Eagleton is a philosopher if nothing else. This work looks at the concept of the Aesthetic through Western (generally German) philosophy and ideology. He moves through a multitude of philosophers using each to push the aesthetic to an ultimately liberating Marxist concept. The Aesthetic is an interesting value, very human and essentially embodied.

Notes

Eagleton starts by looking at the liberal tryptych of class, race, and gender. He brings this with the centralized theme of the body, connecting it with the state. “I try in this book, then, to reunite the idea of the body with more traditional politics of the state, class conflict and modes of production, through the mediatory category of the aesthetic; and to this extend the study distances itself equally from a class politics which has little of significance to say of the body, and form a post-class politics which takes refuge from such rebarbatively ‘global’ matters in the body’s intensities.” (p. 7-8)

Aesthetics is about the study of bodily sensation, reaction, and experience. This is opposed to “reason”, essentially the dual of the aesthetic sense. Aesthetic relates to somatic perception. This compares with Clark and Alison Adam, on AI and embodied understanding. The aesthetic, like reason, is a bridge between the material and immaterial, and thus applies a similar abstraction between the conceptual and the world. In this regard, the pair of aesthetic and reason map to modeling and representation for simulation. (p. 13)

Eagleton discusses custom as perceived by Kant and Hegel: “This centrality of custom, as opposed to some naked reason, lies at the root of Hegel’s critique of Kantian morality. Kant’s practical reason, with its uncomprimising appeal to abstract duty as an end to itself, smacks rather too much of the absolutism of feudalist power.” (p. 20) In this morality, custom is aestheticized as moral. This puts a feudal motivator behind the means that customs emerge to maintain the cultural values of a society.

The aesthetic as applies to law and morality: Judgment, character, virtue, morals are seen as aesthetic values. A utopian state focuses on internal aesthetics: the law is embodied and internalized. This relates to simulation and the embedding of values and laws. Simulated societies do not usually operate on the sense of aesthetics, though. “A sound political regime is one in which subjects conduct themselves gracefully — where, as we have seen, the law is no longer external to individuals but is lived out, with fine cavalier insouciance, as the very principle of their free identities.” (p. 37)

Another approach: Mimesis and the grounds for social foundation: The law is built on reflected imitation. From this perspective, laws are learned values. But, Burke believes that aesthetic values are universal. This pulls back again to explicit and implicit customs as discussed by Goffman. (p. 53)

Some dizzying takes on “the subject”. Modern independence is defiant and isolating. Kant tries to repair the damage to the subject wrought by Hume. The subject is undefinable and unidentifiable. It *exists* in as much as it is *not* an object. Derrida: it is a kind of nothing. Embodiment is reduced to an aesthetic phenomenological thing. (p. 73)

On representation: A sparring between Kierkegaard and Hegel. The Hegelian system cannot be lived, it is purely conceptual. “Reality is an organic artifact, but it cannot be spontaneously known as a whole through aesthetic intuition. Wisdom for Hegel is finally conceptual, never representational: the whole can be grasped through the labor of dialectical reason, but not figured there. Art and religious faith are the closest approximations we have to such concrete imaging; but both involve sensuous representations which dilute the clarity of the concept.” (p. 150)

This seems to relate to sociology again: The conflict between lofty cereberalism and embodiment. Schopenhauer seems like an interesting base for looking at simulated models. “If humor and hopelessness lie so close together, it is because human existence for Schopenhauer is less grand tragedy than squalid farce. Writing in the toils of the voracious will, driven on by an implacable appetite they relentlessly idealize, men and women are less tragec protagonists than pitiably obtuse.” (p. 155)

The role of the subject in morals and compassion. The matter of the subject leads to a paradox: “Moral action, like aesthetic knowledge, would thus appear to be an unthinkable paradox. For there can be no practice without a subject; and with subjects come domination and desire. To speak of a compassionate subject would seem oxymoronic: even if a purely contemplative benevolence were possible, it could only realize itself in action at the cost of falling prey to the voracious will.” (p. 165)

Through history, morality originates in compulsion, and then becomes custom, and finally it becomes gratifying virtue or instinct. (p. 236)

Self identification and nature. Sentimentalism aestheticizes nature as benign. Nature is made to seem like mankind and is anthropomorphized. This seems to relate to simulation very nicely. Eagleton is discussing Nietzsche and his reaction to sentimentalists who project their values onto nature. “Such thinkers merely project their own arbitrary values onto reality and then, in an act of ideological consolation, unite narcissistically with their self-image. In a subtle gesture of dominion, philosophy always fashions the world in its own likeness.” This resembles naive modeling, and in simulation has the capacity to reflect varied understandings of value systems. (p. 249)

On Freud, and the self-thwarting nature of the superego: “But this social order inevitably entails a renunciation of instinctual gratification; so that part of our aggressiveness is driven back upon the ego to become the agency of the superego, source of law, morality and idealism essential to the operations of society. THe paradox, then, is that the more civilized we become, the more we tear ourselves apart with guilt and internal aggression. Every renunciation of instinctual satisfaction strengthens the authority of the superego, intensifies its brutality and so deepens our guilt. The more admirably idealist we grow, the more we stoke up within ourselves a culture of lethal self-hatred.” (p. 270-271) Now, Freud should not be taken as “correct” in any sense, but this is a beautiful system of torment that would be excellent to address via simulation. Simulation allows us to say things like “suppose Freud is right about this, what would happen?” and go! Many works of literature do use these foundational concepts , but rarely do they give us the capacity to explore their procedural complications.

Adorno may find himself in agreement with Weizenbaum. Rationality and thought are violational. Rationalism relates man to object and serves to oppress. To Adorno, thought is inherently pathological. Calculated rationality and the reduction of the self to reasoning machine deprives us of our humanity (hence Aushwitz). “Emancipatory thought is an enormous irony, an indespensable absurdity in which the concept is at once deployed and disowned, no sooner posited than surmounted, illuminating truth only in the dim glare of light by which it self destructs.” (p. 347) This analysis is highly evocative of the self-destructive impulse of humanity and is the nucleus of post-nuclear anxiety.

Overview

Convergence culture is about the convergence of media (and media devices), and the corresponding divergence of artifacts across media (both in terms of access and adaptation). Convergence occurs from the top down (corporations imposing convergence and promoting convergence in ways that is profitable.), as well as from the bottom up, being encouraged and organized by consumers, who aim to use convergence as a popular device.

Convergence is relevant from both the perspective of adaptation, as well as that of cultural analysis. We could look from Geertz’s perspective and treat cultures as texts, then we could think of culture in general as a medium. The artifacts of this medium would be cultural practices and values. Given this perspective, convergence from Jenkins’ perspective makes quite a lot of sense in that convergence brings together cultural practices with media artifacts in new ways.

A standing question is why is convergence a new phenomenon? Convergence has happened for quite a while before new media and the internet. What is new is (arguably) the increased participatory power of consumers.

Assorted Notes:

On death of forms of media: There are always persistent cries that some types of media are going to replace others, but this is usually a fallacy. The applications and functions of media may change; the content may change, audience may change, but media will not die.

Convergence resides in knowledge of consumers, connects Pierre Levy’s concept of collective intelligence. Convergence culture is how collective meaning-making changes how institutions operate.

Strongly referencing Negroponte’s “Being Digital”. The relation of new technology and culture is similar to Duguid and Brown’s social life of information.

However, Jenkins looks at businesses (in a New Orleans conference) interested in pursuing long term change and other interests via technology, they aim to use and profit from technology, or to save themselves from potential threats exposed by technology.

Ithiel de Sola Pool was the first to lay out the concept of convergence. Divergence of media into multiple modes is another perspective on the same phenomenon. Walls are breaking down separating media and content. Pool also predicted against sudden change, but rather gradual constant force operating in the background. Jenkins’ goal is to explore how convergence affects consumers.

One fallacy about convergence pertains to the “black box” which is a single piece of ubiquitous technology that everyone uses to receive media. This is a fallacy due to cultural forces and consumer appropriation.

Convergence is both a top-down and bottom up process, run by producers and consumers. In participatory culture: consumers are active and seek out content; changes the relationship between consumer and producer. Consumption is a collective process.

(ch 6) Consumption mixes and blends with politics. Enzensberger: “If information is power, then this new technology is distributing power.” Jenkins poses a universality of the power of photoshop, but there is a small part of the population that has access or knows how to use it (legally or illegally)

Applications

Looking at cultures as texts — as a kind of media Geertz looks at culture as a text, thus it could be considered a medium? So, could we look at culture as a medium (but not for artifacts, but for practices and values) and these things can be subject to the same sorts of values that arise in other media artifacts.

So…. culture of terror:
culture holds values of terror
politics gets infused into entertainment (comedy shows, sitcoms)
carries through in other media which, (through or in artifacts) carry the values
carries through in films (artifact media), in tv and radio (instant media), news and www portals(delivered media)

political speeches exist as medium, reference each other
with YouTube, it is possible for these to be compared easily
web enables large diversity and access of information
tv media is afraid to cover policy, but cover instead strategy of candidates

maybe… culture of Disney
values of Disney
also has fan culture (long before internet)
but w mousketeers, Disney gave people the false impression of fan culture in control
theme park wrt film occurs in Walt Disney’s time, so Convergence is not a contemporary thing
theme park, as media experience, rides, surroundings
Baudrillard would have a lot to say about American values reflected in Disney
shows, animated movies, MERCHANDISE, (contemporary) games, etc
with internet, however, comes the copyright insanity

Disney is an interesting example, because it employed convergence on a significant scale long before new media ever appeared.

who controls the media (the channels of media), and thus carries the values? Convergence is the convergence of values.

Notes

This is an analysis of fan culture, but from the perspective of a fan and cultural theorist.

Fans are a borderline cultural group, they are diverse, and exist at intersections of different cultural groups. Thus, the traditional sociological treatment of hegemonic culture falls apart a little in discussing fans.

One aim is to challenge the images of fans as depraved social misfits. And the goal is to replace that with the notion of active readers.

Textual poachers explicitly derives from DeCerteau, who described active readers as “poachers”, who refuse to absorb content as mere consumers. They occupy a position of weakness and desperation, petitioning media producers to keep the integrity of their favorite characters.

“Fans must actively struggle with and against the meanings imposed upon them by their borrowed materials; fans must confront media representations on an unequal terrain.” (p. 33) Producers and consumers often have conflicting interests, and this can lead to suspicion and open opposition over media artifacts.

Poaching is not misreading, rather it is an appropriation. Misreading implies that there is a “correct” approach to finding content, and anything else is false. This struggles with but does not obviate authorial intent. It also challenges traditional semiotic communication theory (Stuart Hall’s encoding and decoding). Even in Stuart Hall’s understanding of oppositional readings, it is necessary for the reader to have a stable position, which is lacking in popular tactics. Poaching is thus more fluid.

Poachers are also nomads, they travel intertextually, appropriating new materials, and constructing new meanings. Jenkins diverges from DeCerteau in claiming that fans take these new and appropriated meanings and become producers themselves. It seems though that fan created content is always at a second class compared to produced content.

Textual Poachers 6: Welcome to Bisexuality

This chapter is on fan writing, specifically the phenomenon of slash fanfiction. The term “slash” itself derives from the way that the stories are signified to the community. Examples are Kirk/Spock or simply K/S, but this can naturally be extended to other areas of fandom Potter/Snape, etc.

Jenkins provides a rather holistic discussion of slash, the communities that arise around it, and various theories put forth by scholars of cultural studies on the matter. This approach is somewhat dangerous, since it runs the risk of simplifying a very broad and widespread phenomenon into something that can be theorized about generally. It is important to note that it is a widespread phenomenon and is highly diverse in nature, thus the communities around it are similarly diverse and complex.

Nonetheless, Jenkins starts with a historical account of Slash as pertains to Star Trek, originating in the early 1970s. Reception to the writing has been generally very negative (usually from the perspective of official writers or other fans).

To fans and slash writers, the fiction serves a more complex role: It allows for an exploration of and a challenge to traditional gender roles. (Stoltenberg) It also allows a projection of sensuality into masculine characters. (fan writer Joan Martin) Joana Russ sees slash as giving insight into female sexual fantasy.

It is important to note that slash reading and writing is predominantly a female phenomenon. In this sense, it serves to look at romantic literature as studied by Janice Radway, who finds that romance gives a release from the traditional patriarchal gender roles, while simultaneously reinforcing them. Slash serves a similar function, but by virtue of being fan created, it is necessarily reflective and exploratory.

The ambiguity and androgyny (or hyper-masculinity) of characters in slash echoes the reflectiveness found in Turkle’s study of chat room gender play. Ultimately, slash is a kind of “making do” to use DeCerteau’s term, with the content provided by popular media. The gender deconstruction of the characters, as well as the identification with their masculine status sounds like a tactic for co-opting gender for the slash community.

Slash has a formulaic structure with several phases:

1. A perspective on the initial relationship.
2. Masculine dystopia.
3. Confession.
4. Masculine utopia.

The fascinating thing about this is that it reflects very sharply the formulaic structure of Romance by Radway. (http://www.icosilune.com/Research/012_radway.php) The parallel here is that both serve to restore a utopia of emotion. Jenkins leaves off claiming that slash serves to challenge traditional masculine roles, but its existence is evidence of a poaching tactic to find emotional fulfillment in a landscape of cultural artifacts that is lacking.

All cultural artifacts and products of creative expression come laden with implicit ideology of the producers. When fans take these artifacts and poach them, they introduce new values into their creation, which is a synthesized product. However, within participatory culture, the separation between producers and consumers can narrow significantly. When this occurs, what happens to the ideology of the artifact and synthesized products?

Overview

Originally, this was going to be on the Poetics itself, but instead this is a text that summarizes and extrapolates on the subject. Cooper expounds on the Poetics a great deal, specifically addressing its context and its reception over time. The poetics themselves outlines a theory of drama, specifically addressing epic poetry and theatrical tragedy. Aristotle breaks things down into categories and establishes the properties of these categories in an extremely methodical format. It is questionable as to how contemporary types of drama or media which cross many boundaries would fit into or adjust his system of classifications. The type of drama that Aristotle espouses though has a very formal structure, but is general enough to explain a great deal of modern instantiations of this format.

Notes

Some context on the Poetics in its contemporary setting: there was a conflict between the Homeric rules of art versus “higher” philosophy as dictated by Plato. “In prose, it has been assumed that the Dialogues of Plato were background and incentive to the treatise of Aristotle; it is often held that the Poetics is a defense of poetry against the attacks of Socrates upon Homer and the dramatists in Books 2, 3, and 10 of the Republic.” (p. 9)

Aristotle’s background and concern was as a biologist. He was primarily concerned with treating things as organisms to uncover their properties. Later on he relates the study of poetic works as bodies with different parts. Aristotle’s concern is looking at the meaning and purpose of a work and understanding it as a whole, rather than analyzing the individual parts independently. Compare this approach with the unit versus element or system. Also, this is interesting in terms of modeling and simulation, to explore things in terms of functional properties. Aristotle ostensibly was constructing a model or grammar of poetics in his work. (p. 11)

Elaboration of the above: “Since he regards a work of art as a living organism, he likens each several kind of poetry, and indeed each individual poem, to an animal, and will consider its ideal form or structure as related to the proper end or function of the art.” There is emphasis on the classification or categorization: Each has its own form and function, and its own ideals. This relates heavily to Sorting Things Out, wherein classification is seen as a highly moral and judgmental process. Aristotle (and his contemporaries and many followers) see moral judgments as being the aim of this classification, rather than precautions to be considered. One of the aims of the Poetics is to defend and justify the epics of Homer in consideration of the “better” dramatic form that is Tragedy. (p. 15)

An interesting trend begins here, which concerns “imitation” or mimesis. The purpose of poetry, to Aristotle is to hold up the mirror to human nature. The value of this is at odds with Plato’s treatment of poetics in the Republic, which claims that there are three types of objects: The ideal, which is “made by God” and discussed by philosophers; the real, which is made by craftsmen; and the representative, made by artists capturing the craftsmen’s work. By being twice removed from the ideal, the poetic representation has less value. A humanist objection occurs from focusing on the world of the living instead of the divine ideals, and that seems to be what Aristotle is trying to do. The layers of abstraction and reference is an interesting apt comparison to modeling and simulation, where the abstraction works in the opposite direction: moving from base hardware (ones and zeroes) to symbolic representations and attempting to work towards artistic and humanistic directions. (p. 19)

Aristotle is good at providing bullet points for summarizing the properties of his classes. In order of importance, the qualities of tragedy are: (1) Plot (or action, the events that take place). (2) Moral bent in the agents. (3) A display of arguing, thinking, inferring, and reasoning. (4) The use of diction as the medium for the representation of the above. (5) A musical element. (6) The element of spectacle. In the next section, Aristotle discusses the principles for constructing tragedy, and the nature of its mimesis. “Tragedy is defined in terms of (1) of the object imitated–men in action; (2) of the medium of imitation–embellished language; (3) of the manner of imitation–direct presentation; and (4) of the function of tragic arg–the arousal and expurgation of pity and fear.” The final point is the definition of tragic catharsis. In drama, an interactive element changes this dynamic significantly (Consider Mateas). The focus on the player and the interaction necessarily pushes the plot down to a subservient priority. (p. 29-30)

Choice (of characters) forms the core essence of character; while the action itself is the essence of the tragedy itself. Characters think, reason, choose, and then act. The choice itself is ultimately less important than the ultimate action, but it is still significant. Compare this treatment with that of AI and choice and planning? (p. 34)

Some elements of plot: Reversal (falls or redemption), Discovery (revelation of knowledge unknown to characters, or possibly audience), Suffering (actual empathetic suffering, or more likely violent physical suffering, agony, or death). These are the building blocks for establishing a tragic plot. These must ultimately be bound to what is realistic for the character, though. A clever character should not fall from being outwitted; after all, he was clever. Rather, this combination of conditions leads to the emergence of the tragic flaw, the tear in an otherwise strong and moral character. (p. 46) Interestingly, this can be seen as an emergent property rather than a definitive one. Were interactivity or other factors introduced, their properties and “ideal” forms could be distilled and it would be possible to identify things that emerge that meet the preconditions.

Cooper touches briefly on comedy: Aristotle neglected comedy in the poetics, and it was perhaps something to be addressed in a work that never survived or was put to writing. Cooper cites a work, the Tractatus Coislinanus, which is a mere fragment, but seems to follow the Poetics, “After noting the place of comedy among the types of poetic art, it begins with a definition echoing that of tragedy in the Poetics: ‘Comedy is an imitation of an action that is ludicrous and defective, of adequate magnitude; [in language variously embellished,] the several kinds of embellishment being severally used in different parts of the play; carried on by agents, not in the form of narrative; through pleasure and laughter effecting a catharsis of comic emotions. Comedy has laughter for its mother.'” The focal point seems to be on the language used, not the actual plot or events thereof. It seems hard to seriously imagine comedy as being merely language driven, since it could operate in much the same fashion as tragedy can, especially given more modern approaches thereof. (p. 69-70)

Aristotle and unity: Each poetic form has an underlying essential characteristic, without which a work does not match the form. “The Poetics contains the beginnings of scientific grammar.” This grammar bears a resemblance much more to Proppian or symbolic grammars rather than actual language. As in these, the emphasis of statements is merely symbolic and referential in nature. With such abstraction, drama ceases to be about the content of its narrative, but rather about the form itself, each member of a category being a reference to the larger mythology of the dramatic category as a whole. (p. 80)