MTD1Notes WEEK 12
Cultural Representations
Stuart Hall: ideological processes exceed apparent content - they are the water the fish swim in, what goes without saying (sound like McLuhan?)
Culture is not the apparent things, but the processes that underlie them[[1]]
Meaning is not fixed, but created
- in dialogue
- in difference
- in opposites
The Other is always seen in binaries Stereotypes - simplistic and reductionist, them and us
- Triumph of the Will[[2]]
- Birth of a Nation (2:07:00) [[3]]
- DJ Spooky remix (excerpt): Birth of a Nation [[4]]
+Why is there a hole in the middle of the book?
+Everything is a mix including our identity, our consciousness
Any sound can be you. It's an emotion of abstraction and attention deficit disorder
+Dj culture, and the hip-hop zone are founded on ancestor worship
People can become so unreflective in their usual media-habits that any kind of systemic renewal takes a long time to succeed
connections between Derrida’s deconstructions and turntablism's mixes
+being uncertain which direction to move, is actually a good thing, because it forces me to go back to the basic Issues.
+Scratch the surface-level homogeneity and America's deep ethnic schizophrenia is going surface. No one can escape an identity clash If they bounce of off the "received culture" of commercialized Information, not even WASPs. Identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection [5]
+African American culture went through a cycle of extreme flux during the slave period to create milieu where everything, down even to the words spoken, were the equivalent of a "found object:'
The multiplex consciousness
+Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American Transcendentalist poet, philosopher, lecturer, and essayist: "By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote!' And, he goes on to note something that conservative critics of hip-hop will never understand: "It Is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent!'
Taking elements of our own alienated consciousness and recombining them to create new languages from old (and in doing so to reflect the chaotic turbulent reality we all call home), just might be a way of seeking to reconcile the damage rapid technological advances have wrought on our collective consciousness
Glenn Gould: “… this whole situation of individuality in the creative situation - the process through which the creative act results from, absorbs, and re-forms individual opinion - will be subjected to a radical reconsideration!”
St. Columba and copyright violation – ownership by force
+Today's notion of creativity and originality are configured by velocity: it is a blur, a constellation of styles, a knowledge and pleasure in the play of surfaces, a rejection of history as objective force in favor of subjective interpretations of its residue, a relish for copies and repetition, and so on. We inhabit a cultural zone … where the subjective, multiple interpretations of information lead us to take the real as a kind of consensual, manufactured situation.
"Who speaks through you?"
blog questions:
Many of the ideas are a culmination of our past experiences and past ideas we have encountered. Which in a sense makes it unoriginal, but under this context is it possible for any idea to be original? Is being original important at all or is it just an extension of the ego?
It says in this reading that DJ culture is more than just technologically multiplex. It says there’s the whole issue of personal identity too. Then it goes on to say that “identity is about creating an environment where you can make the world act as your own reflection.” Do you agree? How would you define “identity?”
In the book one of the things he says is ” Today the voice you speak with may not be your own” when I first read that I kind of skimmed over it; but when I went back and reread it a few more times the meaning seems to escape me. I keep asking the questions What is My voice or our voice? What kind of voice are we using or have used? Is it our own or someone else?
Political power determines how people and things are represented
black women in advertisements [[6]][[7]][[8]]
Trends in New Media (Art)
Principles of new media (centrally concerned with the computer and what it makes possible)
- Numerical representation
- An object can be described and manipulated mathematically
- Continuous (analog) information can be converted into numerical, sampled (digital) information (eg, granular synthesis in sound)[11]
- Modularity
- Collections of discrete components (assets) combine to make a larger whole (Boston Cyberarts site in SL)
- Automation
- Variability
- Not “in the can”
- Can continue to grow and change, existing in several versions or a continuously changing state
- Eg. Paul Slocum, pi house generator [17]
- Transcoding
- Cultural reconceptualization through computer categories and processes (ie, Facebook)
some important ideas in new media: new concepts re authorship, the creative process Especially concepts of accident and chance -John Cage[18][19]
2 possible Taxonomies:
TECHNOLOGY
Motion Capture
- Mocap and dance performance [20]
- Merce Cunningham et al: Ghostcatching [21]
- Shelley Eshkar: Pedestrian [25]
- virtual vaudeville [26]
Virtual Environments
- Australian National Portrait Gallery - Doppleganger [27]
- Joe DeLappe re-enacting Gandhi’s march to the sea (1930)[28]
Locative media (gps, googlemaps, satellite vision)
- Trail [29]
Physical Environments
- A Very Nervous System , David Rokeby [30]
Networked
- Hacking
Cory Archangel [33]
SUBJECT/THEME
Socio/Political
- Wafaa Bilal: Domestic Tension [34]
- Invisible Threads [35]
- Scott Snibbe, Interactive Installations 97-2007, Boundary Functions [36]
Environmental
- Helen and Meyer Newton Harrison [37]
Formal
Composition tools:
- Golan Levin: Scrapple [40]
Paul Higham virtual sculpture http://www.virtualsculpture.org/
![[1]](http://audubonoffloridanews.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/iceberg.jpg){kind=link}
![[7]](http://screenshots.winfuture.de/1152191258.jpg){kind=link}