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Production - [Critical Media Concepts and Contexts]
"All that is solid melts into air" (Engels, F. & Marx, K., 1848. The Communist Manifesto) This lecture explored the notion of production, and found that every attempt to pin "production" down ended in the pursuit of something disappearing.
Evaporation du lac by FrancoisRoche on Flickr
Introduction
The ideas presented can be summarised in any one of the following ways:
- an examination of how creativity and production are actually forms of translation and transformation: not making something from nothing (creation) but reworking existing things into new forms (reproduction)
- deconstructing the common perception that human civilisation, with its industrial and manufacturing superstructures which underpin commercial production, represent a form of progress towards an ever better future.
- suggesting that the human production of knowledge is inseparable from the practices and motives which underpin it: it is instrumental, not objective
- tracing the shift away from the object and its aura, towards experience and its commodification
We occasionally looked at the practice of mapping in order to illustrate some of these ideas.
Production as creativity
- Poiesis - production as it is expressed by philosophers like Aristotle and Heidegger. The latter's notion of poiesis is a bringing-forth, like "the bursting of a blossom into bloom" (Heidegger, M., 1954. The Question Concerning Technology) - not the magical creation of things that did not exist before: rather, a liminal, threshold experience which facilitates transformation.
March 19, 2006: Apple tree blossoms by Matt McGee on Flickr
- Memetics and memes - the notion that thoughts, ideas and units of cultural information as they are expressed in our conscious thoughts are transferred and spread from mind to mind as genes are spread from body to body via reproduction. As such humans are merely vehicles - for both genes and memes. The idea was coined by Richard Dawkins (1976. The Selfish Gene) and has been taken up by other commentators on cultural ideas.
- Representation - the basic problems of philosophy revolve around various configurations of three components and their relationships: the world, the subject and representation. Representation might be thought of as the image of the world in our conscious thought. Various different philosophical traditions might argue about the relationship between the world and our image of the world (i.e. the relationship between world and representation). See Arthur C. Danto for a good introduction to the problems of philosophy, (1997. Connections to the World)
Shadow Play by Swamibu on Flickr
We can think then of representation as a reproduction of the world - the image of the world as it appears in human consciousness. A map, too, is a representation of the world. Does conscious human thought "map" accurately onto the world? For that matter, do maps accurately represent the world (consider the reductionism inherent in portraying the multi-dimensional earth in the two dimensions of a piece of paper or a screen)? Representation is a mediated and interpreted image of what is given: a copy of the world, which may be subject to distortion through our imperfect human sensory apparatus. As Shakespeare intimates - we see through a glass, darkly.
The images we work and rework - such as poetry (from the same etymological root as poiesis) are not inventions of language, but the reimplementation and translation of language. Of course language mutates and evolves through use. The introduction of "newness" - variety, diversity, heterogeneity might be comparable to the evolution of new species: iterative mutation induced through erroneous copying. The "meme" is the cultural manifestation of the biological gene.
Creativity, then might not be about a godlike ability to conjure things into existence from nothing, but part of the work of constant change and transformation that human beings enter into. There is no production, there is only reproduction, and - thankfully - reproduction is given to error?
translation by Swiv on Flickr
Production as the material and immaterial means of production and reproduction
- The parasite - the parasite is an organism which exploits a host without returning any benefit. Michael Serres' philosophical work (1984, The Parasite) provokes the thought that reproduction is a parasitical process. We might note that our industrial production processes viewed at the planetary level might be seen as rather parasitical.
- Complexity and reductionism - trying to understand either the material or immaterial systems which encompass contemporary culture requires getting to grips with prohibitively complex networks of interrelated factors, so we take short cuts (systems theory, marxism, discourse analysis, etc). Niklas Luhmann's development of systems theory - especially his application of it to the mass media (1996. The Reality of the Mass Media) is instructive here.
- Mechanical reproduction - understanding reproduction (and what it is we are reproducing) is one of the ways which people (especially marxists) have used to try to analyse the relationship between 'production' and culture.
No471701 by . SantiMB . on Flickr
- Marxism - a inescapably important thread of cultural analysis for over 150 years. You can find more about marxism here and ideology here. A marxist analysis of production might lead us to conclude that our acts of production and reproduction are aimed at little more than the continual reproduction of the means and conditions of our being able to engage in acts of production and reproduction. This might help us to understand everything from the resilience of capitalism to Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message" (1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man).
- Aura - the important and influential writer Walter Benjamin, who emerged form the important and influential Frankfurt School (who criticised the capital-oriented culture industry), analysed mechanical reproduction as leading to the loss of 'aura' of the work of art: the 'authentic' unique object of pilgrimage becomes the disposable object of consumption (1935. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction). Wither, and whither, the aura?
- Aesthetics, politics and fascism - Benjamin's sometimes equivocal essay (sometimes appearing to celebrate processes of democratisation and rebellion against the authority of tradition) also suggests that mechanical reproduction opens art up to exploitation for political purposes (i.e. propaganda); essentially, the co-option of art by those seeking power helped to facilitate the rise of fascism. He suggests that the aestheticisation of politics (in contemporary terms, this might be seen in the triumph of PR in politics) should be combated by the politicisation of art.
- Technological determinism - the suggestion that human lives are shaped by the technologies they invent. This idea is often ridiculed, since it is taken, in extremis, to argue that human beings have no freedom or agency. It is nevertheless a useful concept when thinking about how, for example, the built environment determines human behaviour: think about how the architecture of spaces like supermarkets and airports 'funnel' your movements. The argument here might be how much this is influenced by technology (which after all, human beings "create") and how much our behaviour is socially learned and constructed. See Henri Lefebvre (1974. The Production of Space) or Marc Augé (1995. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity) on the way we make, and are made by, space.
Faculty of Chemical and Food Technology by gadl on Flickr
Imagine I create a web page with an interactive map. My act of production of this web-based product relies on a precariously constructed network of immaterial labour interacting with the material conditions which facilitate and shape it. I utilise APIs providing textually represented information to write codes implemented by browsers using interpreters based on formats produced by assemblages of people working commercially towards shareholder profit or in open source collectives for infinitely varied motives, using complex stacks of code layers whose material manifestations essentially consist of the configuration of magnetised atoms on slivers of semi-conductors, co-opted into the mediation and storage of binary digits.
labyrinthine circuit board lines by quapan on Flickr
As of November 2009, the internet weighs 498, 438,559,990 kg (2009. Slashdot, How Heavy is the Internet?). How does one begin to untangle the complex web of interactions which go into the production of something which has only existed for a few decades and yet has grown mind-bogglingly large? And what perspectives might we take on the partner to our exponential growth in material production and reproduction? The partner of production is consumption: what ways can we hope to make sense of the consumption of resources that our production necessitates? How many more internets' worth of plastic and metal waste do we dump in landfills every year?
Calgary NW Landfill - 3 by D'Arcy Norman on Flickr
The interactions between the many actors which constitute the material and immaterial nodes in the networks of production and reproduction which facilitate our work as makers of digital artefacts, writers of diegeses on paper, copiers of performances onto photographic film, are extraordinarily complex, and all mutually embedded in and amongst each other. To pull out nodes from the network is to inevitably foreground certain figures and to discount other grounds. Such disembeddings are reductive: they try to simplify and by doing so, exclude. Only with such caveats should we proceed.
Production as the narrative of human knowledge
- Instrumental reason - the idea that human knowledge strives towards ever greater objective truth is a problematic idea; we might wonder if human knowledge is much more instrumental - i.e. partially directed towards purposes and outcomes.
- Teleology - the idea of future purpose. Humans often behave teleologically - believing that we are making progress, that we are working towards purposes. Instrumental reason as described above is exemplary of telelogically directed activities. But we might also question whether 'progress' is inevitably towards better things.
![Dividers [Project Blake] by joeflintham](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2787/4081543252_bf844a2e86.jpg)
Dividers [Project Blake] by joeflintham on Flickr
Consider maps and their relation to human perception and space and place to illustrate this. Early maps do not show aerial views, but human level perspectives. Naturalistic attempts at spatial and geographical "accuracy" (i.e. attempting to create spatially representative images of coastlines, cities and roads: "geography" literally means the drawing of the earth) is a late invention: earlier maps showed boundaries as perfectly circular, rivers as straight, important buildings as circles, etc. It is too simple to say that these early maps are "less accurate": actually they were trying to achieve something other than the naturalistic representation that we seek in maps.
Centro storico by zZeta on Flickr
Do maps get better as they get more naturalistically representative? Or, do they perhaps just serve different (rather than better) purposes? A contemporary geological map might be very useful to someone looking for minerals, but incomprehensible to most other people. Cook's mapping of the antipodes was as much a part of, and inseparable from, the practice of empire-building aided with ships and guns, as it was about charting navigable routes or creating disinterested representations of the natural world in order to have a more complete and objective understanding of it.
Some concluding remarks
- Simulacrum - Jean Baudrillard (1985. Simulacra and Simulation) imagined the world we inhabit as being a simulacrum - a 1:1 map of the world, rather than the world itself. The world of representation - that image world which humans construct around themselves, the world of mediation - is the world we inhabit. This world of experience is no longer "authentic" - its aura has withered as it has become an endlessly reproducible commodity. Experience has become the commodity produced for the purpose of consumption.
streetview by dq. on Flickr
Google Streetview is close to showing us the 1:1 map of the world - an external environment centred around the roads and commercial centres which structure our lives. Have we disappeared into that frozen mediated world in which nothing occurs but exchange, capital, and commerce? Are there no more geographies to explore or maps to produce, and are we now only left to consume the endlessly reproduced products of a culture industry? Have we disappeared into the map, or can we use the map to create authentic experiences? Perhaps we can escape the tyranny of consumption by becoming producers of our own experiences, using the resources of the given world: like the flâneur - the stroller and seeker of visions - of Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin?
BlakeWalkers by joeflintham
DJ Spooky has likened DJs to contemporary "troubadours", and that the artistry of remixing "found" sounds and samples is part of a new digital folk culture. (Birringer, J. 2008. Performance, Technology and Science, New York: PAJ Publications). The direct comparison here is with oral cultures in which the same stories are used and retold, each telling generates new rhythms and themes, resonances and meanings. Traditional music lovers might long for "real" music - as though the sound produced by a bow on a cello is somehow more "authentic" than a sample of a sample of a sample. Where is originality, newness, creativity and authenticity?
Is the DJ a parasite on the creative work of artists nurtured by the culture industry? Or is industry capital a parasite on the productive work of the artist? Or are the works themselves, the audio ephemera, around which such praxis and commerce revolve: the memes - are these the real parasites?
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2009-07-13T16:50:47Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- An Atlas of Cyberspaces
These maps of Cyberspaces - cybermaps - help us visualise and comprehend the new digital landscapes beyond our computer screen, in the wires of the global communications networks and vast online information resources. The cybermaps, like maps of the real-world, help us navigate the new information landscapes, as well being objects of aesthetic interest. They have been created by 'cyber-explorers' of many different disciplines, and from all corners of the world.
Tags: mapping cyberspace geography visualization
- iPhone Reference Library
iPhone programming documentation
Tags: iphone reference programming
- FMOD music & sound effects system
* FMOD Ex, the low-level sound engine
* FMOD Event System, more abstract, higher level application layer to simplify play back content created with FMOD Designer
* FMOD Designer, the sound designer tool used for authoring complex sound events and music for playback
Tags: sound audio api programming
- openFrameworks: about
a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.
Tags: programming framework library code design
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2009-02-18T22:55:18Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- From Andragogy to Heutagogy
heutagogy is appropriate to the needs of learners in the twenty-first century, particularly in the development of individual capability
Tags: education learning pedagogy self-directed-study andragogy heutagogy
- A few thoughts on copyright and culture - Ars Technica
Contemporary film, fiction, and music each employ their own sophisticated grammar, their own dense web of allusions, such that they're often not even fully intelligible unless you've been exposed to the prerequisite "texts."
Tags: copyright culture intertextuality
- Networked_Performance - Live Stage: Contemporary Fl^aneurie [Rochester, MI]
How does fl^anerie in art relate to GPS systems, virtual reality, surveillance, mapping, MMPORGs, and social networking
Tags: spatiality space place urban gps flaneur cities
Narratives: Familiarity and Strangeness
[Cross-posted at CEMP]
Notes from the third keynote in the Narratives series. This lecture deals with rationality and inevitability, Aristotle and Brecht, structuralism and formalism, mimesis and alienation. Previous lectures: Introduction followed by Stories and Structures. Whoah… TL;DR? This week’s shoutometer (warning – may cause offence).
Doing it for effect
As I’ve pointed out above, the shoutometer for this lecture was a little offensive. I took that offence further. I told you all that you are pathetic, lazy and unimaginative. I accused you of having no ideas, and that all the work you submit is entirely derivative, unoriginal and, frankly, boring.
I don’t know how convincing you found my rant, but I did reveal my words were part of, in effect, a performance – one designed to alienate you. It was my intention to make you feel a little uncomfortable, to make you wonder why I was breaking the usual conventions of the lecture format and the traditional confidence and good humour of the teacher – student relationship.
I was doing it for effect, and ‘doing it for effect’ is the simplest way of thinking about the subject of this lecture.
Right to reply
I gave you the opportunity to tell me what was wrong with my introduction. You said:
- my words were demotivating
- I was being too general
- you also said I waste time at the start, and rush things at the end. This is quite true.
I had some prepared ideas about why my introduction was inappropriate:
- I was needlessly offensive
- I was over-generalising about individuals too much
- I broke the normal rules of the teaching situation, which require at least mutual respect
And it’s possible, (and this was my hope), that by ‘breaking the rules’ in this way, I was making you think about why I might be saying the words I was saying: whether what I was saying was true (do you contribute enough to your own learning, or do you expect teachers to inject knowledge into your heads?), but also I wanted you to think about the teaching situation. What should our situation be like? Why should it be like that? Why are things the way they are? And maybe, somewhat optimistically, I hoped that you might rise up against me, and rebel against my patronising rant – depose the tyrant teacher.
These questions are fundamental to the subjects of this lecture: the idea of alienation; Marxism and politically motivated thought in general; the agenda of artists and theorists interested (broadly-speaking, and at the risk of over-simplification) in formalism
Recap: science, structuralism and story
So let’s recap where we got to last time. We said that structuralists were interested in understanding the internal structure of story using what they thought of as a scientifically rigourous method. We can think of them laying out the entire diegetic story and looking synchronically at all of its components (diachronic and intertextual) as ranged around a set of binary oppositions such as good/bad, friend/foe, familiar/strange, etc. This analysis will surely tell us (so say the structuralists) what underlying logic ‘governs’ the story.
There are some very strong reasons for thinking that the structuralists’ approach is useful. Saussure’s analysis of language has bequeathed us with an entire discipline (semiotics) and a body of knowledge which looks in depth at how communication works, (though we should do well to remember that not everyone subscribes to the tenets of Saussurian semiology). But we can also note some problems with it. Structuralists have tended towards trying to ‘universalise’ their findings – this is a consequence of ‘scientistic’ thinking which can be criticised for its reductionism and positivism (recall last week’s man in the tree). Or, to put it another way, do we really want to risk going after one-truth-for-all ideas (structure), at the expense of forgetting to celebrate and explore the uniqueness of individual experience (texture)?
I’m just going to bang this point home a little harder: critics of adopting scientistic approaches to understanding human culture and human nature point out that things like eugenics, euthanasia, Nazi gas chambers, phrenology and anti-semitism have all found justification in science and rational thought. While scientists would argue that the knowledge they pursue is “value-free”, that doesn’t stop people with extreme values trying to co-opt scientific thought.
What story?
At a far more trivial level, we saw in the last lecture that the very subject which structuralists want to analyse disappears like mist dispelling before our eyes if we look at it too hard. Memento showed us that the diegesis is pure illusion. We begin the film, with Lenny, trying to piece together the puzzle of his revenge, and we assume that the story that we see, provided to us by the film camera, is reliable, and that at the very least, even if Lenny might be mistaken, we can still solve the puzzle. But the repetition of a scene in which we see, first, Lenny inject his wife’s leg with insulin, and then secondly, Lenny pinch his wife’s leg between his finger and thumbs, tell us that nothing we have seen is reliable. The entire ‘coherent diegesis’ of the storyworld we have seen may be nothing but hallucination. There is no ‘story’ independent of plot, available for structuralists to study.
Here’s another way of thinking about it. As viewers, we look for the ‘foundational’ diegesis. At first we think that maybe Lenny is a justified avenging killer. Then we suspect he may have been ‘played’ by somebody trying to persuade him to kill Teddy. Then we think that maybe he’s been fooling himself in order to give his own life meaning. Then we wonder if his wife really is dead and perhaps she survived? Then we wonder if Sammy Jankis really exists, and perhaps Lenny is actually Sammy Jankis? Then we wonder if, actually, maybe the whole film was a hallucination in an institutionalised man’s head.
This entire sequence of wonderings is a search for the foundational diegesis or ‘underlying’ truth. But even given the usual caveats that the film is supposed to be fiction, the storyworld presented by the film (a solitary hallucination) cannot possibly have any ‘foundational diegesis’ at all, since it can only be a contradiction (there was no hallucination for us to see in order to realise that it was all hallucination). There is no story!
There is no ‘story’ without ‘plot’.
Story is a function of plot.
Story is the product of plot.
We start with plot and we make story.
There is no ‘diegesis’ without ‘framing’.
Diegesis is a function of framing.
Diegesis is the product of framing.
We start with framing and we make ‘diegesis’.
To understand this problem more clearly we’ll try to use the idea of mimesis as a way to think about the storyworlds we experience. Mimesis is a key idea when considering what ‘story’ might do. In order for us to believe that a storyworld is possible, it must be believable – and mimesis capture this idea of believability.
Before we get to mimesis, though, we take a detour through this week’s screening, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
A metaphor for what?
A mysterious monolith enters the diegesis at various times in Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its first appearance occurs during the sequence called ‘The Dawn of Man’, in which we see ape-like creatures, whom we take to be the ancestor of homo sapiens, discovering this unfamiliar object. Immediately thereafter, we see one of the proto-human apes sitting and looking at a piles of bones. We see the outline of the monolith, and return to the ape, who continues to look at the bones, as the non-diegetic soundtrack of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathrustra plays, until eventually the ape grasps what looks like a femur and starts smashing the other bones with it like a hammer. Kubrick intercuts shots of a boar falling to the ground as the ape smashes the white bones and skull on the ground before him. Shortly afterwards, we see the first murder committed, as the apes who have learned to use bones as tools compete for the water resources with other apes. In a triumphant gesture, the victorious ape hurls his bone weapon into the air. As it falls back to earth, Kubrick makes one of the most famous cuts in film: from an image of the bone in mid air to a spacecraft drifting through space.
Of course, I would not wish to suggest that the interpretation I offer here is the only one, the best, or the right one. The only thing I will say about the interpretation I offer here is that it helps to illustrate some of our ideas in these lectures, and might help us to grasp some of the concepts.
The monolith is rather abstract in form. It seems entirely unnatural given its formal properties – rectangular, composed of sharp right angled corners, standing on its end as if painstakingly placed, indeed, as though it were man-made and carefully constructed. Given that the diegesis of the film tells us that we are observing the dawn of man, then clearly the monolith cannot be a man-made object. Alien then? Perhaps the monolith is an alien artefact, and Kubrick simply wants to tease us by not showing us the the aliens who placed it there as the apes slept. But in these sorts of assessments we are trying to assume that Kubrick’s story is figurative – that what we see on screen is supposed to be an accurate representation of some kind of coherent diegesis, when we might more profitably understand Kubrick’s story non-figuratively, abstractly – the very abstract nature of the monolith perhaps hints that it should be interpreted conceptually rather than naturalistically.
We might also read the monolith’s presence at the dawn of the apes’ use of a bone as a hammer and a weapon as being a causal factor. The figure of the monolith represents in this reading the evolutionary leap that has just occurred – from an ape which is prey to big cats and other apes, to an ape which has tools (and we should remind ourselves that, etymologically, the word ‘technology’ simply refers to the human acquisition of tools and crafts). The monolith is present at the dawn of man – when man ceases to be an animal, and becomes a reasoning, rational, thinking being. The ape’s intent staring down at the bones as he sits on the ground suggests precisely that these are the first moments in which what we could recognise as human thought occurs. The newly acquired ability to think leads directly to the killing of another ape, and then, in the cut from the bone-tool to the space-craft tool, perhaps we can read the utter inevitability of the technological future.
So if we grant that Kubrick is being free with the mixing of diegetic and non-diegetic material (the monolith is just as metaphorical and non-diegetic as the Strauss soundtrack), and we see the presence of the monolith as being causally related to the evolutionary development of rationality in man, then it seems reasonable to suggest that the monolith itself represents man’s newly acquired attribute: ration – the ability to engage in abstract reasoning, illustrated figuratively and metaphorically by the abstract form of the monolith. The advent of rationality in man leads immediately to murder (and by extension, war) and in the longer term, the inevitable and unavoidable technological extension of man into space. The dawn of ration in man sets in chain a sequence of events which inexorably propels mankind forward into his destiny.
Of course none of these interpretations necessarily discount other suggestions as to the meanings intended by the monolith – such as that it represents the cinema (having similar dimensions as a cinema screen turned on its side). Rather I just want to hold onto some thoughts about the problematic nature of looking for an internally coherent diegesis, and the notion of the apparent inevitability, the deterministic, technological inexorability of human ration. Meanwhile we return to our exploration of mimesis.
Mimesis
Let us consider notions of believability and mimesis. Traditionally, mimesis is what grants a story the ability to be believed – the audience agrees to suspend its disbelief in return for a few promises from the story:
- that there will be a faithfulness of representation, that the story will imitate real life in a believable fashion.
- this imitative contract demands that the diegesis should be coherent and self-consistent
- such coherence and self-consistence should be maintained by obeying the laws of a formal system (such as causality, chronological consistence, etc)
It is by adhering to these criteria that stories become susceptible to a rigorous structural analysis. Since structuralism assumes the fundamental explicability of narrative, so narratives must be coherent, rationalisable and explicable. Such assumptions can be said to flow naturally from an Aristotelian approach to describing narrative.
Aristotelian narrative
While much of the analysis of narrative (or narratology or narrative theory) that we encounter casts itself as a way of understanding the phenomenon of story-telling, there was a time when thinkers saw themselves as advising and prescribing the remit and practices of story-tellers, rather than simply analysing their products. Aristotle’s work makes sense if you consider that this ancient Greek philosopher saw his work as much more didactic than simply critical. Hence his writings on drama often read like rules for creating good drama, rather than just describing what dramatists produce.
Some of his key ideas include:
- unities of time, action and place: the drama should depict a single complete action, unfolding over a single time frame, usually of no more than 24 hours, occurring in one geographical location
- anagnorisis: recognition and identification of the audience with the characters, events and situations
- catharsis: literally, ‘purgation’ – pity and fear are aroused in the audience, tensions build up, and these emotional states are ‘released’ (or purged) by the resolution of the narrative
- mimesis: the imitative depiction of the unfolding storyworld is a key to Aristotle’s other criteria: the unities help to ensure the drama appears ‘realistic’; the audience identifies with characters and events precisely because they are ‘believable’; and catharsis occurs only if the audience can empathise and understand – project themselves onto and into the storyworld. Mimesis is thus the necessary verisimitude which enables the drama to work its purpose.
A key point Aristotle makes is that if the drama is not a complete unified whole, the work will be disjointed or ‘disturbed’.
Mimesis and diegesis
Clearly the Aristotelian view of the necessary unitary nature of diegesis relies on mimesis. So trying to think about a film like Memento in terms of mimesis may be illuminating.
Memento is an interesting case since on first viewing it is initially somewhat confusing – the opening scene disobeys the laws of gravity (it runs the recorded film in reverse), and the subsequent scenes undermine our generic expectations by overlapping and repeating, until we realise that the scenes are unfolding in reverse order, and the repetitions act as a formal part of the grammar of this particular narrative, signalling how we should be decoding its formal system.
Once we have worked out how the syntax of the film works, the story then becomes somewhat more transparent as we are able to piece together the narrative, and engage with the puzzles of the film. Once we’ve become familiar with the storyworld, though, confusion strikes again, since, as we’ve already seen, the diegesis disintegrates.
One way of thinking of these changes in the penetrability of the story of Memento could be to think in terms of mimesis: the mechanisms of the story are non-mimetic, anti-mimetic, non-imitative … whatever the opposite of mimesis is (and take a moment to think about what the opposite of mimesis might mean – is it ‘fantastic’, ‘unbelievable’, ‘non-sensical’, ‘illogical’, ‘unnatural’, or in the Aristotelian sense, ‘disturbing and distracting’?). Since we’ve already established that Memento‘s diegesis is unstable and logically incoherent, where does that leave us? Well, it tells us that at least in the case of Memento, focussing on the content of the diegesis in order to ‘comprehend’ the nature or meaning of narrative is counterproductive. The diegesis is an illusionary property of the act of story-telling – the plot.
Here we see an extremely good reason, then, to move our examination away from story and onto plot – the framing devices used to conjure and encircle the diegesis. This is exactly what formalism is all about.
Formalism
We’ve already encountered formalism in the shape (form?) of Vladimir Propp, who analysed folk tales and distilled them into their discrete essential and interchangeable components (or functions). Indeed, Propp, along with other influential thinkers like Saussure, are considered to be the ‘fore-fathers’ of structuralism, since the analytical approach to understanding story which structuralism adopts has inherited some of the methods of the formalists.
While formalism and structuralism sound as though they ought to be similar things (what is the difference between form and structure?), they are in fact focussed on different things. Historically, it is true that structuralist approaches to culture (language, story, the subconscious) followed from, grew out of, and owes a large debt to formalism which is precedes structuralism. The key difference (and remember that I’m simplifying and generalising here in order to make a point) is that formalism is interested in the mechanisms of representation (plot, sjuzet, framing, story-telling, practices and techniques) and how the content of representation (story, fabula, diegesis) is conjured, rather than the content of representation itself, and what the internal structure of that content tells us about universal truths.
In practice, of course, structuralists can very easily incorporate formalist ideas into their rationalised schematic analysis of stories, and formalists are often also concerned about the content of stories, which is precisely why they are keen to understand how those stories are told. The point for our purposes is simply to understand the different ways that these schools of thought have approached the understanding of story and narrative.
The tale and the telling
Let us remind ourselves of the distinction between what a diegesis ‘contains’ and how it is framed, through an example: in 2001: A Space Odyssey, a space hostess traverses a circular, cylindrical corridor in a space craft carrying a tray. She approaches the foreground as we view her, collects an extra tray from a dispenser, turns around and returns to the corridor entrance. Before she leaves the corridor by way of the entrance through which she entered, she turns to the side and starts to walk up the side of the corridor’s circular wall. The camera remains static throughout this sequence, such that the hostess eventually ends up upside-down as we view her.
In the next shot, we see the hostess reappear from the other side of the doorway. Just as we left her, she is upside-down as she enters the cabin to bring the contents of the trays to the pilots. As she enters, though, the camera itself spins around and ‘corrects’ itself so that the hostess appears to be standing upright on the floor, rather than walking upside-down on the ceiling.
We infer from this sequence of course that gravity in the space-craft is mutable enough that such bizarre contortions of space and shape can be connected together to form a liveable and apparently normal transport service. So far so good. What happens though is that our attention is drawn away from the diegesis to the presence of the camera. The divergence of the ‘gravity’ of the diegesis and the ‘gravity’ of the camera is the device through which Kubrick ‘tells’ us of the nature of the storyworld.
For just a moment the illusion is broken; the mimesis falls away; the diegesis is punctured. We are pushed away, distanced, estranged: alienated.
Formalism and anti-mimesis?
If, as we’ve seen from Aristotelian approaches to narrative, the believability and purpose of a story is best served through mimesis, then deliberately paying attention to the form (as formalist critics do) or experimenting with formal systems (as formalist artists do), must undermine mimesis, and believability. Why would we want to be suddenly pushed out of the storyworld? Let’s look at some examples from 20th century art history.
Cubism
Apollinaire said of cubism that “what distinguishes it from the former way of painting is that it is not an imitative but a conceptual art which aspires to raise itself to the level of creation”. What can he mean?
According to art C20 DVD (Hazan, 2005), cubism is a part of “the unending process of research by painters into space, perspective and the expression of volume on the two-dimensional picture surface”. In the act of pictorial representation, the three-dimensional world, moving inexorably through time, is fore-shortened and flattened into a snapshot in two dimensions. The cubist might argue that mimetic approaches to art which aim for ‘realistic’ or ‘naturalistic’ depictions of an external reality are actually attempts to disguise the manufactured nature and the actual process of artistic work – to encourage the suspension of disbelief, to make the spectator forget the artifice in the art. Such disguises and sleights of hand are literally and morally speaking – illusions.
Pablo Picasso, Trois Femmes, 1908
However, were a painter to attempt to capture something of the lost dimensions what might that painter depict? Multiple perspectives, and captured severally over different moments in time, forced together onto the same canvas? What jumble and confusion might arise? We would look at such depictions and wonder what they might mean, wonder what kind of creature could really look like that, perhaps even wonder what sort of lunatic might see and paint in such a way. Spectators entrenched in traditions, with interests in the status quo, and reputations built on the mainstream, might recoil and decry such works, proving themselves to be reactionary and conservative. More forward-looking progressives might think more about what such work might mean: their attention drawn to the form of the work, they question the nature of the work and the whole enterprise itself. Aren’t such people dangerous? The young thousands rising unremittingly from the fountain of youth with diamonds in their mouth, ready to throw over the old order?
Futurism
The futurist art movement which emerged mostly in Italy in the early 20th century was self-consciously forward-looking and overtly denounced tradition, prefering instead to celebrate modernity and the triumph of technology. According to art C20 DVD (Hazan, 2005), futurism reflected a “rejection of the past and the advent of a new aesthetic that suited the world of speed, machines and the modern city.” The anti-mimesis and formal experiments of the futurists was a conscious effort to capture modernity, with its speed and movement.
Fortunato Depero, Fulmine compositore, 1926
Once again, the avant-garde can be seen as politically oriented, but in the case of futurism the optimism and verve that came with embracing modernity, mechanisation and technology also had a nationalistic edge verging on supremacism. Some might say it was playing into the hands of fascist tendencies which became prominent in the ultimate clash of ideologies – the two world wars.
Surrealism
The surrealist trick was to experiment not so much with the signs of craft (as did cubism and futurism) but to push the suspension of disbelief in the opposite direction – rather than puncture illusion and estrange the spectator through drawing the attention to the artifice and mechanics of the work, they instead pushed realism to breaking point – to become, literally, more than real. Impossible and phantasmagoric dimensions not of space or time, but of imagination and hallucination, were depicted with the utmost verisimilitude – pseudo-photographs of the subconscious. This technique was designed “to liberate the mind by emphasising the unconscious mind and the attainment of a state different from, “more than”, and ultimately truer than everyday reality: the ‘sur/uber/super-real’.
Rene Magritte , The Double Secret, c1927
Ironically, given the surrealists’ revolutionist manifesto, their work is one of the avant-garde schools which has been most easily embraced by the mainstream, resulting in countless Dali prints adorning the walls of student accommodation, and Dali himself ending up as a pale caricature of the revolutionary vision which surrealism first embarked upon. Surrealism is quite normal, now – another indication of the way in which the mainstream of popular culture is as happy eating any challenges to it as capitalism is happy to co-opt any counter-cultural activist movement it encounters… embrace and extend, indeed.
Verfremdungseffekt
The idea of defamiliarisation, dehabitualisation, distantiation, ostranenie, estrangement and alienation – of seeing the world anew – can be traced back to Russian formalists such as Victor Shklovsky who wanted to ‘defamiliarise’ the products and techniques of art and culture. We could see Propp’s analysis of the folk tale as a way of making folk tales look unfamiliar: laying bare the device, because the device is ideological. The subject of ideology is explored in this online lecture.
Bertholt Brecht (1898 – 1956) was a profoundly influential German poet and playwright and a Marxist through and through. We might even see his entire body of work as directed, relentlessly, at furthering his political ideals. He’s particularly known for his theories of estrangement.
The German word “Verfremdungseffekt” is better than any of the English translations for it, which all carry negative connotations which aren’t necessarily appropriate: alienation or estrangement . It literally means: the effect of making something seem foreign or strange. Brecht used it in his theatrical discipline in a very specific way: to break the illusion of the diegesis, or draw the audience’s attention to the fact that they were watching a fiction.
Brecht’s biographer, Esslin, describes Verfremdungeffekt thus:
“the audience must be discouraged from losing its critical detachment by identification with one or more of the characters: the opposite of identification is the maintenance of a separate existence by being kept apart, alien, strange…” (Esslin, 1959, p115)
Brecht’s techniques to ‘make strange’ included informing the audience of the outcome or denouement at the start – thus shattering any chance of suspense; encouraging the actors not to act ‘naturalistically’; and structuring the play in an episodic fashion, rather than as one Aristotelian whole sweeping towards an inevitable climax:
“The construction of the plays […], which rejects the logically built, well-made play, is free from the need of creating suspense, loosely knit, and episodic, instead of mounting to a dynamic climax, the story unfolds in a number of separate situations, each rounded and complete in itself.” (Esslin, 1959, p118)
The normal, Aristotelian, emphasis normally placed on ideas of identification, catharsis, and mimesis, is repeatedly criticised by C20th Marxists like Brecht. Theodor Adorno was also critical of film for the same reasons: by immersing oneself in the illusion of fiction, and allowing oneself to be swept along in the diegesis of the story, one loses one’s critical faculty; one’s imagination is silenced; one is not able to question the actions and events that take place – they are inevitable. This is one of the key aspects of Brecht’s rebellion against the theatrical conventions that were traceable back to Aristotle: the rejection of inevitability.
Revolutionary Theatre
A key aspect of the kind of theatre that Aristotle described is the privileged position of the audience. Dramatic irony – when you know something a character in a narrative does not – depends on the audience’s ability to see all the action. The audience has the comfort of having a kind of omniscience – being informed of the disparate events that characters are not party to. Those events have causes and effects, which unfold as causes and effects do – and try as they might, the characters are unable to circumvent their fate: the outcome of the narrative is inevitable, inexorable – the way of the world or the will of the Gods.
So Brecht wanted his audience not to ‘immerse’ themselves in the diegesis of the story. Rather than avoiding ‘disturbance’ as Aristotle advised, Brecht wanted to encourage disturbance. He wanted his audience to retain their critical faculties, to retain their disbelief. This way, perhaps they might concentrate on why and how events unfolded before them, instead of blindly accepting them as the inevitable destinies of mankind. If destinies are not inevitable, then destinies can change; we need not look to the Gods or to fate to determine the future: we can act and make the future ourselves.
For a revolutionary socialist, these ideas are profoundly meaningful – Brecht, in short, wanted to make a kind of theatre that would foment revolution: by challenging preconceptions, complacency, ideology. More online lectures on Ideologies and Marxism, if you need them ….
Estrangement today
Of course, many of the techniques of estrangement end up being co-opted as normal dramatic techniques. The ‘breaking of the fourth wall’ in which characters address the audience directly are often used as another device in the story-tellers toolkit.
Tyler Durden looks straight at us, as the edges of the film quiver in and out of the scene behind him, and tells us we are the all-singing all-dancing crap of the world. Indeed, Fight Club is full of classic estranging techniques, such as drawing attention to the ‘cigarette burn’ spot, showing us Ed Norton’s inner penguin, superimposing the Ikea catalogue onto the dream apartment. Hell, Fight Club even tells us a story about how we could destroy the entire vampiric capitalist machine without having to kill a single innocent human being. Clearly, though, despite being confronted with the possibility of changing the world, neither Brecht’s playgoers, nor the Fight Club audiences walk out of theatres and cinemas ready to start a revolution.
Understanding the world or changing the world?
I hope that what is starting to emerge here is a contrast between the goals of different kinds of theory. Structuralist theory, I have argued, assumes that human beings, culture, the subconscious, language, etc, are fundamentally explicable, and adopting a rational and scientific approach offers the promise of providing those explanations. Formalist thought, meanwhile, is concerned less with trying to explain the world, but more with trying to render it inexplicable or surprising, to demonstrate its malleability and ultimately to persuade us that we can affect and change it. Instead of a rational, deterministic universe in which outcomes are causally connected and inevitable, we are offered a world of potential, openness and possibility.
In the lecture I suggested that, for me at least, Brecht was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. I find his political approach to his craft inspiring. But I also think his intellectual ideas have a much broader relevance.
Puzzlement
If the politically committed artistic act of drawing attention to the artifice of representation might make us see the world anew, then perhaps one aspect of that process is puzzlement. When Brecht makes his audience think, when he pushes them out of the diegesis and forces them to wonder about the alternatives, he must puzzle them. “Why is this character breaking the fourth wall?” “What else might happen to avoid the inevitable tragedy of fate?” Why is the world the way it is?”
This act of ‘enpuzzlement’, the presenting of a puzzle*, is a nuance of narrative that provokes a host of new questions. Where does play fit into narrative?
‘Play’ will be the subject of the next lecture in this series.
- addle, amaze, bamboozle, beat, befog, befuddle, bemuse, bewilder, complicate, confound, discombobulate, disconcert, distract, disturb, dumbfound, flabbergast, floor, flummox, foil, frustrate, mystify, nonplus, obscure, perplex, pose, rattle, stir, stumble, stump, throw
Too Long Didn’t Read
Structuralists want to make the humanities into a science. Science deals quite well with material matters, but there are problems when it comes to imaginary things like minds, ideas and stories. Formalists want to understand the devices humans use to tell stories and communicate ideas about the world, and they often do this because they want to change the world. Aristotle prescribed techniques for story-telling that emphasise mimesis, verisimilitude and ‘suspension of disbelief’. Brecht prescribed techniques for story-telling that emphasise alienation, political action and suspension of the suspension of disbelief. Is being puzzled by a story a good thing or a bad thing? Tune in for the next installment to find out!!!!!
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2009-01-24T15:16:49Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle
On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone... Now I know where she lives.
Tags: spatiality space surveillance location mobile privacy gis locative gps
- artcornwall
Tags: art shaughnessy
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2009-01-19T12:18:07Z]
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-11-04T03:04:37Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- Maps for Advocacy: An Introduction to Geographical Mapping Techniques | Tactical Technology Collective
using maps in advocacy. The mapping process for advocacy is explained vividly through case studies, descriptions of procedures and methods, a review of data sources as well as a glossary of mapping terminology
Tags: mapping geo advocacy participation media-participation cartography spatiality space place map geotagging
- The Valve - A Literary Organ | Three Very Short Kurmanji Stories
a way of interpellating a whole country, a whole people, as violent and barbaric
Tags: imperialism colonialism
- Photojojo >> Day of the Dead: Memorial Photography
the process of dying was ultimately all about understanding and appreciating life
Tags: death photography history
- A List Apart: Articles: Progressive Enhancement with JavaScript
useful tips on implementing progressive enhancement
Tags: javascript programming ajax
- DIYcity
DIYcity aims to accomplish [the goals of making cities more efficient, more effective, more sustainable, better able to respond to problems, friendlier and generally more accessible to the individual user] with user-built applications created on top of existing web technologies
Tags: city urban activism sotware smart-mob
- City of Transformation Paul Virilio in Obama's America
your LOLquote: "dromology has no real meaning outside of logics of capture and endocolonization and predation"
Tags: virilio capitalism economics theory
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-11-03T00:43:10Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- SitePoint Blogs >> 7 Places to Find the Code You Need
code search engines and snippet libraries
Tags: code programming archive development
- Code: Flickr Developer Blog >> The Shape of Alpha
Interesting map / place / shape data API from Flickr and their geodata
Tags: geotagging mapping maps spatiality space place photography api shapes
- New evidence for homeopathy
An open assessment of the current evidence suggests that homeopathy is probably effective for a number of conditions including allergies, upper respiratory tract infections and 'flu, but more research is desperately needed
Tags: homeopathy medicine research trial
- Granum :: Book information
The Internet is viewed as a tool, channel and forum enabling citizens to make an impact on social, cultural and political change. Civic empowerment through the Internet emerges in people's everyday life. Big politics is broken into pieces to become a multitude of small, more personalised political engagements. The Internet is a powerful medium for gathering coalitions and organising mobilisations of all kinds. It also transforms political styles and types of activities
Tags: politics media-participation participation book internet activism engagement
- Air Force Aims to 'Rewrite Laws of Cyberspace' | Danger Room from Wired.com
..." upcoming Air Force doctrine calls for the service to have the 'freedom to attack' online. A research program, launched in May, shoots for 'gain access' to 'any and all' computers"
Tags: technology military security internet surveillance
- #@*!!! Anonymous anger rampant on Internet - CNN.com
" the dark side of communication" ... "Kids don't realize that one post can destroy somebody's life forever"
Tags: psychology anonymity public-sphere anger trolling abuse
- Home - FOLDED-IN
"Folded-In is a 3D multiuser online videogame, which attempts a detournement of the representational space of YouTube, by transforming it into a gamespace, and by respectively turning the selected videos and the tags into game elements"
Tags: remix participation game youtube web2.0 mashup
- Nation Institute
Tags: for:saraha_3
Web as Soundscape
I have, just over the past weekend, acquired www.websoundscape.com as the site which will be used to host and disseminate the Soundseeing artefacts and research which I'm working on with Andy Causton at Bournemouth University. More info here when I have it :-)
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-07-30T07:37:25Z]
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- http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/
put this in your feedreaders!
Tags: george-orwell diary literature writing politics journal orwell
 - World of Ends
Because the Internet is an agreement, it doesn't belong to any one person or group
Tags: internet participation technology web
 - "The internet's output is data, but its product is freedom". Many-to-Many:
The core virtue of the internet was a huge increase in the technical freedom of all of its participating nodes, a freedom that has been translated into productive and intellectual freedoms for its users.
Tags: internet participation freedom technology information
 - A Low Impact Woodland Home
Tags: ecology architecture
 - We Tell Stories - 'The 21 Steps' by Charles Cumming
google-map-based mashup adaptation of 39 Steps
Tags: google map mashup fiction adaptation spatiality
 - Universal goes DRM-free - Boing Boing
Tags: universal copyright RIAA piracy DRM
 - Summary of Findings: Internet News Audience Highly Critical of News Organizations
People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance
Tags: news journalism msm
 - BBC NEWS | Technology | State of Play: Violence and video games
BBC on videogames is never a pretty sight. Here's some more bollocks
Tags: media-effect game videogame violence
 - if:book: "the bookish character of books": how google's romanticism falls short
Google's ambition to organizing the world's books and making them universally accessible and useful is being carried out in a hasty, slipshod manner, leading to a serious deficit in quality
Tags: library book digital google archive techno-utopianism
 - Mute magazine - Culture and politics after the net
Our visions of the landscape can now be filtered through a digital interface. Collectively these visions form a snapshot of the townscape and the personal topographies of the auteurs
Tags: video form space landscape history mediation
 - E
elit links
Tags: literature hypertext e-literature
 - Crisis of Value and the Ethical Economy - P2P Foundation
the ?creative economy? of the urban music, arts and fashion scenes, which is growing in importance as a productive externality for the creative industries proper, is not primarily motivated by monetary incentives
Tags: economy ethics gift-economy media-participation
 - if:book: six blind men and an elephant
This idea of "whole books" as rungs on a ladder toward knowing something. Books are a kind of conceptual architecture that, until recently, has been distinctly absent on the Web
Tags: book library expertise knowledge information participation research
 - Waggish: Grondin on Gadamer
Writing is self-alienation. Overcoming it, reading the text, is thus the highest task of understanding
Tags: gadamer hermeneutic tradition writing
 - Spamgraffiti | Online installations created from spam
spam art
Tags: spam gallery graffiti art
 - Blogging Resources / Participatory Media Literacy
Tags: blog blogging resources
 - things magazine: an online journal about objects and meanings
cassette nostalgia = "yet another way of extracting the lingering analogue bits of our lives"
Tags: nostalgia tape cassette music analogue
 - Stuart Moulthrop: Essays
essays on hypertext, literacy, game, play, etc
Tags: hypertext fiction literature
 - SeeqPod Playable Search - Find. Discover. Watch. Listen. Share.
it must be awesome cos I found a moog version of Smells Like Teen Spirit
Tags: audio search
 - drawball.com
interactive social drawing thing
Tags: visualisation social drawing flash interactive
 - Communication Theorists Enter Hardware and Software Studies at WRT: Writer Response Theory
advancements in technology will increase qualitative and biological indicators of immersion
Tags: game immersion narrative story media-effects physiology violence
 - YouTube - Content Aware Image Resizing
cool image resizing tool
Tags: image production
 - Free Speech Sometimes Trumps Copyright
legal argument that copyright inhibits freedom of speech
Tags: copyright censorship freedom-of-speech US law
 - Mission Stencil Story - a set on Flickr
"an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure story that takes place on the sidewalks of the Mission district in San Francisco"
Tags: writing streetart interactive fiction urban space
 - CONELRAD | DAISY VIDEO
The Daisy Video - political campaign add with "a little child innocently counting juxtaposed with an adult military countdown"
Tags: video politics US advertising
 - Reverse Geocoder for Google Maps API Documentation
Reverse Geocoding is the inverse relationship where each geographical coordinate is mapped to the nearest known address
Tags: map google ajax api geodecoding
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Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-07-02T11:14:15Z]
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- Earth's Cries Recorded in Space - Yahoo! News
"Earth emits an ear-piercing series of chirps and whistles ... The sound is awful"
Tags: sound space earth radiation audio
 - CherryPy - Trac
pythonic, object-oriented HTTP framework
Tags: python programming web-development
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Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-06-11T22:28:21Z]
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- NASA - Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars
might be one of the most beautiful photos ever taken
Tags: earth space photography astronomy mars
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Arcade - [Flickr:Places-And-Non-Places]
imported from flickr:places and non-places
The word 'arcade' invokes Walter Benjamin. I even like to imagine that somewhere in a municipal office, an architect even thought of Benjamin's flâneurs, strolling through the decaying decadence of a Parisian walk, as this space was committed to blueprint.
When I picture this place in my mind, I imagine the ground is reflective, a perfect mirror echoing back the gorgeous temptations of the shop fronts - this despite the fact that every time I actually see it, even when it is not locked up to keep out vomiting nightlifers, the matte, grimy floor supports only occasional, isolated humans amongst the litter and the pigeons.
Atrium - [Flickr:Places-And-Non-Places]
imported from flickr:places and non-places
The new atrium space at Bournemouth University: at 7.30am, the light dapples the empty space. I feel ambiguous in this place - it is more inviting when empty - the more people fill the space, the more it falters. Just out of shot is not a lecture theatre, but an icon of consumerism: Costa Coffee.
Seats - [Flickr:Places-And-Non-Places]
imported from flickr:places and non-places
The space in the BU atrium is very tall, but nevertheless decapitates you. Enter more than one individual into the space and there is only cacophony, rather than conversation. The surface has an aesthetic quality, which is ruptured and lost by the entrance of human beings.
Places and non-places
I started a new flickr set. Quote:
Marc Augé describes, in "non-places : Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity", the reconfiguration of space in contemporary society. Here history bites our heels, space expands yet the world shrinks, and the individual is supposed to be allowed to be, do, but most of all, consume, whatever is necessary for them to achieve selfhood.
Of place, we might have thought that "all the inhabitants need do is recognise themselves in it". Now, in the supermodern space, we misrecognise ourselves: we obey direction, and we are permitted to experience only solitude: the consequence of individualism is solipsism, that of consumerism is solitude.
Updates will appear here via the magic of the Flickr API and python, or you can watch it at source.
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2008-05-10T16:28:16Z]
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- BBC NEWS | England | Berkshire | Mother's porn law campaign ends
Discuss: "Sometimes the freedoms of like-minded, decent people have to be curtailed because of a few others."
Tags: crime porn violence uk sex imagery censorship
- Technology Review: Where Are They?
extraterrestrials and existential risk: "if we survive and prosper, we will presumably develop some kind of posthuman existence"
Tags: astronomy evolution space science cosmology
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-06-25T17:07:52Z]
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-04-28T11:07:07Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- Ficlets: Literary Lego at WRT: Writer Response Theory
Tags: story interactive social fiction
- Slashdot | New MySpace China Tells Users to Spy on Each Other
Tags: censorship china myspace
- MiT5 abstracts
Tags: collaboration participation theory
- GAMER THEORY 2.0
Tags: theory game e-writing book
- Tech.view | Criminalising the consumer | Economist.com
Tags: DRM copyright
- Internet Radio Equality Act would overturn decision on webcasting fees
Tags: radio copyright
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-04-19T10:38:11Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- Boing Boing: VA Tech: Cho sent "multimedia manifesto" to NBC; Siva on tech judgement rush
Tags: va-tech
- Pew Internet: Teens, Privacy and SNS
Tags: survey statistics teenagers online
- After a tragedy, the anti-gaming voices always get louder
Tags: game violence
- Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace -
Tags: e-learning PLE web2.0 myspace
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-04-11T11:14:51Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- EMI goes DRM-free on iTunes Store
Tags: DRM apple EMI music
- High schoolers turn in plagiarism screeners for copyright infringement
Tags: plagiarism law copyright education
- Why the RIAA doesn't want defendants exonerated
Tags: RIAA law extortion
- Violence and video games: more meat for the grinder
Tags: game violence
- Accounting for the big plunge in "music sales": the digital singles effect
Tags: RIAA economics music
- NPR fights back, seeks rehearing on Internet radio royalty increases
Tags: RIAA NPR copyright fees extortion public radio
- ISPs could be forced to police user behavior in Europe
Tags: EU copyright IP law
- Adobe launches Apollo, its web application runtime for the desktop
Tags: adobe web programming desktop development apollo
- Study finds stable personalities unaffected by violent games
Tags: game violence psychology
- Study finds that AJAX toolkits don't protect against JavaScript security vulnerabilities
Tags: ajax javascript programming development security
- EFF lawyer warns of e-learning patent dangers
Tags: blackboard patent education e-learning
- Blogger Code of Conduct: the tyranny of good intentions
Tags: blogging civility code-of-conduct ethics
- RIAA and MPAA: Copyright holders should be allowed to use pretexting
Tags: RIAA MPAA privacy law piracy
- MySpace prank gone bad leads to misuse of school resources, multiple lawsuits
Tags: myspace law cyberbullying
- Defendant prevails in another RIAA file-sharing case
Tags: RIAA music copyright piracy law hypocrisy
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-03-11T00:35:29Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- YouTube - Grand Theft Simulacra
Tags: baudrillard GTA simulation
- Big Brother State - an animated short by David Scharf
Tags: surveillance video animation
- Wired News: John Maeda Goes Meta on Design
Tags: design culture technology
- Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll -- New York Magazine
Tags: teenagers social myspace privacy generation
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-02-18T11:58:48Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- Myspace.com
Tags: disney anti-nazi propaganda video
- Mulitple IEs
Tags: browser web-development hack web-design
- Textbook disclaimer stickers
Tags: science religion education creationism satire
- Slashdot | MPAA Violates Another Software License
Tags: MPAA license violation software
- Inside MySpace.com
Tags: myspace scalability technology
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-02-14T09:03:21Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- YouTube - Nora, The Piano-Playing Cat
Tags: awesome
- The Museum of Lost Interactions... About MoLI
Tags: archive interaction
- The Museum of Lost Interactions
Tags: archive interaction
- Boing Boing: MAFIAA's list of enemy countries
Tags: mpaa riaa copyright
- BBC NEWS | Technology | Music execs criticise DRM systems
Tags: drm music market
- Boing Boing: R.U. Sirius' True Mutations book
Tags: transhumanism futurism book
- Wooster Collective: Urban Curators
Tags: streetart curation humour activism
- 'It feels like she is still here' - web - Technology - theage.com.au
Tags: death myspace
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2007-01-23T12:23:14Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- hyperrhiz: new media cultures - current issue
Tags: new media
- Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education: Murder by Web 2.0, plus Second Life, or not
Tags: death social myspace second-life violence game
- dear internet
Tags: letter-writing writing blogging
- networked_performance: Dear Internet v1.
Tags: letter-writing blogging writing
- networked_performance: CELL PHONE
Tags: mobile art
- WIRED Blogs: 27B Stroke 6
Tags: copyright law US commons
- Throwaway Identities
Tags: identity
- Boing Boing: China nukes Marxists.org
Tags: marxist censorship china hack
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2006-12-20T19:02:04Z]
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2006-11-30T01:21:57Z]
imported from del.icio.us:joeflintham
- We love our Internet friends, really.
Tags: social internet
- The Art Newspaper -- News
Tags: art copyright museum
- Speakers of different languages perceive rhythm differently
Tags: language
- 4096 Color Wheel Version 2.1
Tags: colour
- Topix.net: News Front Page
Tags: news aggregator
- kutv.com - Woman Hijacks Cheating Boyfriend's 'MySpace' Page
Tags: revenge bournemouth myspace
- Group Cites Video Games for Violence
Tags: game violence media-effects
- Table of Malcontents
Tags: streetart
- BBC NEWS | Technology | Next-generation consoles on show
Tags: ga
- Sex Drive Daily
Tags: blogging sex privacy
- Gear Factor
Tags: ipod tax
- Table of Malcontents
Tags: sci-fi
- Slashdot | Internet Archive Gets DMCA Exemption
Tags: archive DMCA
- Free Public Domain Music - Welcome to Musopen.com
Tags: open classical music archive
- Boing Boing: Open classical music repository
Tags: mucis classical resource
Linkage - [del.icio.us: 2006-11-10T00:14:29Z]
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- Slashdot | YouTube Removal Highlights Media Self-Censorship
Tags: youtube msm censorship
- Very Cool Bugs
Tags: insect archive photography science
- Slashdot | Google Video Sued for Copyright Infringement
Tags: google youtube law copyright
- Slashdot | Judge OK's Challenge to RIAA's $750-per-song Claim
Tags: RIAA file-sharing law copyright
- New Media Journalism: How Professional Reporters Are Being Influenced By The Internet - Robin Good's Latest News
Tags: jornalism citizen-journalism media-participation
- Boing Boing: Why Zune shouldn't pay blood money to Universal
Tags: ms universal copyright piracy
- What Real People Use on the Web
Tags: teenagers web
- Murloc RPG and other Free Internet games @ CrazyMonkeyGames.com
Tags: rpg flash
- Earth from Space | Smithsonian Institution
Tags: earth images photos world space awesome
