Maya Disjuncture and Difference

Disjuncture and Difference in the global Culture
By Arjun appadurai


This article begins by asking, “Does globalization mean that local cultures are becoming more homogeneous?

I think that globalization has actually made people more nationalistic because they are searching to define themselves and their culture against the global economy.

I agree that we have to let go of these definitions that are based on opposites, and therefore always create an edge or limit with clear boundaries. We don’t exist in a culture or world with clear boundaries anymore. If “space-time compression” means that we can actually “be” in more than one place at the same time, Internet, travel, networks, blogs, then there are many different associations that define our identity. We are no longer “global/local,” “north/south,” or “black/white.” Instead Arjun Appadurai suggests we must look and think in terms of flows or “scapes” that move through the globe carrying capital, information, images, people, ideas, and technologies.
By changing the terms of reference, or the language we use, we are able to open up a new dimension for looking at our understanding of identity and difference.

He suggests that these “scapes” can be categorized into ethnoscape, mediascape, technoscape, finascape and ideoscape. These “scapes” seem to dynamically organize and move themselves with in a framework of the individual (actor). This could mean that our identity is constructed based on what we do, what we think, where we live and more that actually existing in a constant state of flux.

Issues of deterritorialization in relation to money, commodities, film and people begin to construct a fractured reality. The problem with this new feature of global “scapes” is when two “scapes” fight for power or dominant ideologies. This then creates a disjuncture, evident in nation-state relations. Examples include Quebec separatism, bush invading Iraq, and national and international boarders.

Globalization is not the same as homogenization however it uses a variety of instruments of homogenization. These instruments include armaments, advertising techniques, language, clothing style etc, which are repackaged as national sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism etc. This fight between sameness and difference between these global “flows” and uncertain forms or boundaries of the “scapes” creates a really uncertain placement for individuals and countries. Arjun Appadurai is saying that this is a result of the global cultural process.
Is this is good state to be in? We have acknowledged that globalization does not me homogenization, but does this fluctuating state of the unknown “scapes” with their uncertainties and disjunctures provide us with a stable framework to identify ourselves with? Or will we live in a perpetual state of conflict?

Jordy: Notes and Responses: Rorty

Globalization, the politics of identity and social hope
Richard Rorty

- Does not think that “revival of long –repressed hatreds embedded in ethnic, religious and national identities” is surprising
- Does not see that terms like “politics of identity” point to anything interesting or different
- Does not think that the fragility of universal conceptions or postmodern skepticism plays a role….
- Loss of faith in universal notions and cosmopolitan…

Concludes:

- Things couldn’t get much better than they are right now!
- We will never have a classless global society!

o When ideal stood… there was little interest in the minority or marginal cultures
o If a global monoculture was prospect, than it was worth the loss of cultural inheritances

2 scenarios:

1. Marxist proletariat followed by the loss of entrepreneurialism
2. Peace and technology would progress to virtually unlimited economic prosperity

Fear: United States is a danger of developing an over class to the misery of everyone else

- The middle class of the US and Brazil have more in common then with the poor of their own country
- Concerned with the loss of the two egalitarian utopias, therefore concerned about globalization
- Appropriate intellectual background to political deliberation is historical narrative

Past:

- Philosophers formulated their taxonomies of social phenomena, and designed the conceptual tools they need to criticize existing institutions, by referring to a story about what happened and what we might reasonably hope could happen in the future

Present:

- Taking starting point from psychoanalysis, language, “identity”, and “self” and “subject”
- Turn away from narration and utopia dreams towards philosophy seems to gesture of despair… IMPOSSIBILITY

Central Question: those about the relations between rich and poor

Globalization: the economic situation of the citizens of a nation-state has passed beyond the control of the laws of that state.

“…The absence of the global polity means that the super-rich can operate without any thought of any interests saves their own...”

US was a world leader for its egalitarian roles… it has lost that role….

The role of United Nations... In the past several decades we have seen the United Nations falter on many occasions. Its relevance has been questioned for in terms of having any control of what is occurring on a global scale. I think that the relevancy of such an institution is symptomatic of its failing state. However, I think the United Nations needs to be reformed, repackaged, and restructured.

I think the majority of its problems stem from its oppressive structure that allows a few select states be in control over a larger group of smaller countries. I do not think that countries should have “veto power”. The role of the oppressive countries in the United Nations is a reflection of what is occurring in a broader global context.

A global authority is necessary in this complex and high-speed political world. However there are some hard questions to ask about the extent of such an authority. What authority should it have? To what extent should there authority be? Who should be in charge? How much power should each country have? Should it only be countries? Many corporation have more land / wealth / workers than some smaller countries… should they have a role in a global authority?

Should global authorities only be a political agenda? Should the other scapes have a global authority? Do we need regulating zones for media, technologies, cultures, and ideas?

What about moral questions? When would a global authority have a right to intervene? Does it have a right to intervene? What role does a global body have? Is it even possible for it to keep relevance in this high speed and complex world?

Identity:

- No such thing as “intrinsic” or “essential” attributes
- Preservation of cultural identity
o Native tribes
o Oppressed groups
o “Politics of identity”
o Distinct from the struggle of rich against poor

- Become aware of humiliations (i.e. colonialism)
- Counteract by having a voice
- Reveal blind spots:
o Correctable: attention called to the harm we have been doing without noticing that we are doing it.
o Open to pluralism: individual variation

Blind spots?

It is funny how we can create blind spots towards certain ideas, actions, or beliefs. It is possible to act in a horrendously immoral and insensitive way without even knowing what you are doing. One of the most striking examples would be exposed with the Holocaust. Hannah Arendt has done amazing work in showing how banal evil can be with her text called Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the text, she demonstrates how the bureaucratic actions of one man caused the death of millions of innocent people, while he felt no remorse or acknowledgment of his actions.

These blind spots occur on everyday scale as well. How often do you turn away from a homeless person? Or disregard a famine that is occurring half a world away? How much responsibility to you feel for those occurrences? How much should you feel for these occurrences?

I understand blind spots from my experience of schoolyard bullying. When a child is unfairly bullied or picked on and the classmates, teachers, parents ignore the bullying, it is a prime example of blind spots. We are ignoring that an unfair action is happening to an innocent person, which could be stopped. What is requires is the acknowledgment of all parties of what is occurring. We do not necessarily need consensus, but the issue needs to be addressed. If we as a society still let children were bullied how can be ever address larger issues of abuse? I feel that any possible chance for an egalitarian society exists in the school yard and by educating others…

Jordy: Notes and Responses: Disjuncture

Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy
Arjun Appadurai

Does the globalization mean that local cultures are becoming more homogeneous? NO

Is it really possible to become homogeneous? By the other cultures coming into contact with one another does that necessarily entail copying and assimilation? Is it a negative thing that cultural influences are flowing across boundaries? Is this a new phenomenon or just an old story that has a new technological and high-speed twist?

It is true that when cultures meet / combine / interact / engage that there is a potential for abuse and oppression. You don’t have to look any farther than the Native Americans encounter with the Europeans for a classic example and there are examples of colonialism still occurring in various parts of the world. However, I do not think that I necessarily result in homogenization. It would be very hard to argue that Native Americans are some how homogenized into European culture. Obviously, there culture has been transformable / obliterated / oppressed, but they still resiliently hold their own identity and culture. I think greater challenged for Native American culture in Winnipeg is not only the holding onto their identities, but also determining their place in a larger global context. The question that remains is how to place yourself in a larger context of media and cultural belief? How do you change opinion? Do you go with the flow and risk losing identity and control? Or do taking part and using media to counteract and exist in the context retain cultural identity?

Disjuncture? It is these disjuncture and differences that so often drive us apart, which are what is required in a global context. What causes some disjuncture to be negatively received? What was the disjuncture between in Rwanda? Why was that disjuncture explosive and violent? What is the difference between that type of disjuncture and one that can peacefully coexist? If these disjuncture exist within these “scapes” how can they be used to make our differences a good thing, rather what drives us apart?

Contradicts:

- Globalization,
- Postmodernism
- Post colonialism
- Oppositions “global/local” and “north/South”

Suggestion:

- Flows / scapes of information, technology, images, people, ideas, capital…
- Mutation of flows
- Relationships are antagonistic and distant
- Pass through national boundaries
- Greater possibilities of colonies centres, and nations to states (favors globalize)

Other question: Who is losing out in the globalization?

Problem with global interactions is the tension b/w cultural homogenization and heterogenization

i.e. Homogenization: Americanization… Contradiction to argument: indigenization
- Music, housing, science and terrorism

New economy is understood as complex, overlapping, disjunctive order…
Cannot be understood in terms of old periphery or push pull migratory models

Exploring disjuncture: five dimensions:

1. Mediascape
2. Ethnoscapes
3. Technospaces
4. Finanscapes
5. Ideoscapes

Scapes:

- Perspective constructs
- Different actors
- Historical, linguistically and political

*** Individual actor is the least locus of the perspective set of landscapes
- “Imagined” worlds
- Multiple worlds
- Contest and subvert
- Characterize international capital as they do fashion styles…

“Global flows occur in and through the growing disjuncture (disconnected, separated, incoherence) between ethnoscapes, technospaces, finanscapes, mediascape, and ideoscapes’

“The sheer speed, scale and volume of each of the flows is now so great that the disjuncture have become central to the politics of global culture”

“Deterritorialization” i.e laboring classes into wealthy areas;

My visit to Princeton: It was an odd experience when you visit one of the most prestigious and elite schools in North America. It is renown to be for the rich and the future rich. What amazed me was the realization that a mostly Mexican labor force supported the entire school campus. There was a stark contrast of the mostly Caucasian students and the mostly Mexican workers. Thus, it seems that the barriers of distance, wealth, and culture had collapsed into an odd world of inequalities.

Invented Homelands:

What does it mean to from a place? Do you have to be born there? Is it a question of genealogy? Inheritance? How do you determine where you are from and when does it become part of a group? How do you take ownership of place?

For instance, when will I feel that I am from Canada? When will my Canadian citizenship become my predominant culture identity and not my cultural heritage? Or is the reverse the underlying condition? Maybe Canada’s identity crisis is a demonstration of what the global culture is becoming. Such as an ethnoscapes in which you can live in one place, but identify with multiple places and cultures. Perhaps Canada’s identity is a mixed, varied, unsure, and plural state?

The role of the nation state in the disjunctive global economy of culture:

Nations in search of states:

- Imagined groups which seek to create states of their own or carve pieces out of existing states i.e. Quebec

States in search of communities:

- Museumizing and representing all groups as uniform through out the world

*** states and nations are at each others throats (imaginative and roaming nationhoods)
Primordia have become globalize;

- Locality has been turned into staging ground for identity
- Localities stay connected by sophisticated technologies
- Become a global force slipping b/w the cracks of borders..

i.e. Palestinian and Israel conflict

Uncertain / fluid interplay b/w production and consumption

- Fetishism of the commodity
o Production fetishism
o Fetishism of the consumer

Production fetishism:

- Illusion created by contemporary transnational production loci, which masks translocal capital…
- Free trade zones as the model
- Not masking social relations, but production relations
- The locality (factory, site of production, nation state) becomes a fetish which disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive the production processes

Consumerism fetish:

- Consumer has been transformed (through commodity flows , mediascape) into sign
- “ These images of agency are increasingly distortions f a world of merchandising so subtle that the consumer is consistently helped to believe that he or she is an actor, where in fact they are at best a chooser”

“the globalization is not the same as its homogenization, but globalization involves the use of a variety of instruments of homogenizations (armaments, advertising techniques, language hegemonies, clothing styles…). Which are absorbed into local political and cultural economies, only to be repatriated as heterogeneous dialogues of national sovereignty, free enterprise, fundamentalism, in which the state plays an increasingly delicate role”

i.e Chinese revolt

Thus, triumphantly universal and resiliently particular

Bizar question of the Global Political spectrum

Artist David Cerny created a sculpture of Saddam Hussein before the sentencing of the trial. Taking inspiration from Damien Hurst's pickled tiger shark. This work was banned as public work for its prevocacy and obscenity. Read the article at the url below.
This asks questions about the effect of global politics, also a question about communication in public space. Something like this could be banned in physical space, but becomes common place in the constructed space of the internet.

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/75583

Canadian Artist Penny Cousineau-Levine

Regarding identity

After years of examining Canadian art photography, she went back to the critics, including Northrop Frye, John Ralston Saul and Linda Hutcheon, and found that the themes they identified in Canadian literature and political life— of disconnection, of looking out to another world — are also present in the work of many Canadian artists working with the camera.

In the book, she noted such preoccupations as the entrapment of animals, the inability of individuals to feel at home, recurring images of windows, “symbolic codes,” parallel “zones of reality,” and especially, “a fascination with the phenomenon of death that goes far beyond that of any other group.”

http://ctr.concordia.ca/2003-04/sept_25/08-cousineau/index.shtml

Maya The Politics of Identity

Globalization: The Politics of Identity and Social Hope
Richard Rorty

Does globalization and homogenization really begin to effect our identity? Do we feel lost in a a sea of brand names?

After world war II there were hopes of constructing a classless society. It is a utopian idealistic dream that everyone is equal, but that has not been realized. I was watching the news and they were saying that the gap between rich and poor is the largest it has ever been in the last 30 years.
Regarding globalization and its central question about the relationship between the rich and the poor. The problem now is that there is a global over class making all the economic decisions independent of government. There is not apparent solution. He suggested that Government would not do anything about it either because it would be “economically inefficient.”

Does individualization mean defining who we are based on deciding what we are not? If everyone was the same and equal, then I am sure that we would still find a way to judge one another. This reminds me of a similar question raised in art and architecture about determining what is good. It is difficult to decide what is ultimately good, instead there are just varying degrees of comparison over which is better than the other. Post modernism seemed to recognize the individual and an individuals thoughts; acknowledging that these thoughts don’t need to belong to a general ideology.

The theories of Marx’s as well as Hobbes’ and Locke’s based their analysis, critique and proposed solutions from the historical narrative. It is interesting to see that this referential system really depends on our cultures collective memory and places limitation of any possible solution within the framework of our collective history. Even though I think this grounds our culture and makes it easier for the collective to understand it suggests “history is doomed to repeat itself,” simple because things are based upon what we already know.

The alternative suggested take their starting points from philosophy of language, psychoanalysis or from traditional philosophical questions of identity, difference, self, subject, truth and reason. Rorty suggests that by using these reference points we are degrading our historical narrative and any possibility of progress. I disagree. By allowing for new reference points we are possibly able to rewrite our historical narrative and open up new possibilities for interpretation free of historical association.

These statements about “identity and difference” help to support my questions and reasoning behind our ability to self defines who we are.

Nietzche-Heidegger-Derrida criticism that there is no natural or intrinsic attribute to anything. “There is nothing vital to the self-identity of a being, independent of the descriptions we give of it.”

2. There is a question regarding the “preservation of cultural identity.”

If we are able to create a new framework or point of reference, or as Foucault says linguistic communication, identity issues regarding marginalized societies can be reframed within new boundaries.

There is less to be said about Identity and Difference. In order to address identity and difference you need to look at and reveal the flaws in the communication, economic or social framework that we work with in to construct our environments.

Gorretti: Lecture Notes and Thoughts

Encoding Decoding:

Forms and levels of communication.
- Is communication instinctual or is it learned? Is there such thing as primal communication?

Language and emotion – do you need to understand the emotion that is encoded in the language in order to decode the message?

Are we differentiating between body language and verbal language? What kind of language are we addressing if there are in fact categories of language?

There is a complexity to communication including:

Senses
Perceptions
Time

How does this apply to architecture?

All of our intentions must be encoded into the work… typically this is constructed into the work. It is manifested/staged through ritual and landscape perceptions. THIS IS THE NORM – why?

Cook, eisenmen – all wrote for years before building. They were building their “language” so people could decode their architecture.

If there is something called primal communication than…

We have to access the cultured memory, when we do that the fashioning is no longer important

Our human scale is more important than our cultural fabrication. Therefore there is no difference between US born (modern) child than Ethiopia born (villager) child because the greater issue is that we’re of the human culture.

Hot and cold media:

Hot media is something that doesn’t leave anything to the imagination and cold media is engaging.

Mediation and intermediary:

Intermediary – is complete transparency – medium is non existent

Mediation –
CNN packaging their news broadcast (their production) – this package is the recoding of the message (i.e. war on Iraq)

Flow and stoppage is integral to each other – they act as edges to each other.





Ecstasy of Communication:

Society is changing from cash owed to cash flow

In the past it was about owning a car but in contemporary time its more important how you drive the car.

Comment:
The ownership is placed on the skill over the mechanism – the virtual gamer, google, wikipedia – it’s about owning the machine through the skill.

Idea:

Time based architecture -?????

Surface/boundary

Private/public

Wedding ring –

Ring is nothing but the ceremony surrounding the ring is by far more significant (event overriding object)

Obect is the value

historical value is more important that then object (double check)

pure event

rings are everywhere – potentiality of ring is letent in the world

but the right given to you from a friend is more valuable

value constructed

If we want to create value (in arch) you have to activate eventful eventful engagement.

screen and mirror – its about how we engage it that determines which on eit is

what is obscenity in architecture? what is obscenity?

jerry springer, jackass, howard stern and reality shows questions what is public and what is private? – the more secretive the more successful

amsterdam – drunkeness and prostitution are public which drops the value

economic theory – when scarity is present then value goes up and vis versa

public ownership – does it exist?

its not what you own that determines if its public or private, its how you claim certain things.

its situational logic not transendental logic –

public space – “non private space” does “true” public space exist – did they ever exist?

malls are NOT public they are private – my opinion

Jae – does ownership matter?

MTA – performers are not allowed to set up shop in the tunnels - they have to audition and get a permit to do so – as well as street vendors. all these actions take place in the public realm therefore does this governing rule take away the “public”? elaborate

true sense of private is disconnection





Over Exposed City:

Boundary and surface becomes machine – the mechanism. It is the active negotiator of private/public

Surface is the first contact point between two agencies.

Arabic embassy (France)
Interior façade is composed out of camera lenses – opens and closes with the sun path. These lenses become the negotiator.

Boundary = a means of control (i.e. room) – LOOS – room vs. round (the room condition)

Obscenity – trivialize the subject in order to (de-value)?

Airport objective – maintain the flow

Lag time? – Time that exists between flights – the architecture that we build for airports supports lag time

Water, rail, road – real life interception
Air – the virtual

Maya: where are we going?





In the Place of the Public:

Notion of travel becomes very twisted

Hockey game

You know more about the hockey game if you watch it on TV than if you were in the arena. – Because of views, replays etc.

Therefore you’re more there than the people that have been there.

The Internet becomes a tool for this idea – you’re more there than those who have been there.

Is a depression in the classical sense? Distance (old) modern (contemporary)

The notion of here and there may have been invalidated. Its about why and how we’re here or there.

Experience in rapid secession – compare to slow movement (not to be discussed in black or white)

Slow movement – you get the “whole” experience/adventure

Jordy: observations of a travellor

“The space created by capital perpetually re-creates its own underworld, its own space of underdevelopment and immobility, and its own wasteland. “
If we consider the articles perceptions and observations of air travel to be true, then what are the implications for the design of cities? In the article she observes that the space allocated to the airport becomes a wasteland because of the noise pollution from aircraft and its distancing from urban centres without appropriate commuting opportunities. How might these conditions be resolved? What are the potential resolutions to this problem?

Boston is resolving some of its transportation issues by burying it under ground. Freeways in LA build huge sound barrier walls integrate them into the city. What are the future conditions of air travel going to be? Is the mitigation or resolution for this problem going to be resolved through technological means or is it going to require the redesigning of cities as space become even more crucial to burgeoning populations? Can we imagine a future of cities built with massive sound deflection panels over communities?

Jordy: Notes: Observations of a traveller

In the place of the Public Observation of a traveler
Martha Rosler

1. Car
2. Buses
3. Airplanes

Interested in:

- The ephemera and experience of air travel (different in time, space, self organization)
- Movement of bodies across distances
- Effacement of the experience by constructs designed to empty the actual experience of its content makes it the carrier of another sort of experience entirely

Air travel and its associated spaces, structures, and experiences compared with the subject of virtual reality…

- The relations of production, mapping political economy onto the physical, produce space.
- Cyber space is part of the collective imagery of late capitalism
- The history of flight is not separate from the history if history of information management

An embryonic start toward virtual reality was the flight stimulator.

- Relationship b/w video games / flight simulation
- Air traffic controllers

Railroad:

- You are at the will of the train schedule
- Perceptual experience of the world passes by while you are stationary

Flight:

- Experience of flight not capitalized by business
- Speed has no meaning in the sky
- Illusions provided
- Passengers lose dignity


- View form plane is dreamlike
- Flying says there’s no journey… only trajectory
• Denial = speed and elevation, safety,
• Absurdity of its social space (le Corbusier designed houses based on air travel)
• Connection to cell phones (Plugged in) = telephone slavery

How different is this condition (cell phones) from the social offender how must wear an electronic bracelet?

Airport:

- multi dimensional, multi functional system whose overriding concern is operational
- no situated in the downtowns (therefore facades are not as important)
- architecturally considered to be a large hangar or shed (functionality)
- human docility, homogeneity, replaceability, transistoriness.
- Money and crown are prim movers
- Surveillance is the second practice
- Wholw system relies oninformation (plane arrivals…etc)
- Microscopic scanning of personal items

Jordy: Overexposed City Notes

The Over-exposed City:

- Cities and companies having introversion of cities (i.e. Berlin wall)

State’s gateway = airport (city walls)

- Buildings are no longer built according to traditional technical constraints, but to minimize risk (sterile = arrival, non-sterile = departing)
- Designed for safety and precautions
- Intense control and high surveillance experimentation
- Comparison b/w prisons and airports (incarceration)

Access to the city

- Not at gates
- Electronic audience equipment (somebody taking part in a discussion or conversion in permanent transit)
- Breaks in consistency no longer occur in physical space, but in space-time… b/c of the industrial and advanced technology… restructured through interruptions.
- … This causes urban decline

Transformation of enclosures:

- Development of enclosures (fence to screen)
- Boundary surface is continuously transformed
- Recent transformation = interface

Does the urban metropolis have a façade?
“Go into the city”? We are no longer in front of the city, but inside of it!

What is Winnipeg’s façade? I would argue that its you do not perceive Winnipeg to be a city. Rather, its metropolis roots of a collection of independent entities still maintain itself. For instance, if you are visiting the city you do not say that you are going to the city instead you would identify yourself with a particular segment or area.

Metropolis:

- It no longer corresponds to the old divisions of city and control
- “Intramural/extramural” weakened by telecommunications
- Paradoxical phenomenon in which the opacity of construction material sin being virtually eliminated. (i.e. curtain walls)

The interface and transparency seem to be part of the urban condition. With such densities it seems appropriate to remove the claustrophobia. Furthermore, the immaterial of transparency is a perfect reflection of our time, in which we no longer value permanence. The material itself could be anything and does not carry any loaded meanings.




MY Studio: The image is of a screen installation project in a city. The screen functions to electronically capture the movement of the personal passing by and then replay back. In sense it is creating an electronic shadow of the person’s movement. The important implications of the project is its demonstrating how the urban construction is dissolving into an immaterial and electronic interface. The screen isn’t projecting any of the past ideas of permanence, value or materiality. Rather it is portraying movement, immateriality, no depth and instantaneous consumption of the subject matter.

Screen Interface:

- Computers, screens, teleconference
- Depth of field a representation
- Differences b/w positions blur (results in confusion)
- Devoid of limits (electronic ether)
- Describe in instant temporality in diffusion
- Constructed space in new electronic topology
- Solid pace no longer exists
- Near and far disappear






Overexposed image demonstrates one example of how the meaning of the title may be read. The overexposed image has its subject blurred and unclear. There is no clear distinction of what the subject matter is b/c everything becomes the inextricably linked without any way of making clear boundaries.

The title of the article could also be read as a criticism suggesting that we are over-exposed to many of these urban conditions. The current state is of over saturation.
For instance, like a trip to Universal Studios, in which everything is meant to bring you pleasure and to stimulate.

Technological Space-Time:

- No longer night and day (open shutters and TV)
- Chronological and historical time succeeded by a time that instantaneously exposes itself.
- Urban form is no longer demarcated with a line that says here of there, but it synonymous with the programming of a time “schedule”

Oppositions occur b/w the city’s resident occur only in time:
1. Historical time spans identified with monuments
2. Technological time spans have no relationship to calendar of active nor to collective memory


“… Contributing to the creation of a permanent present whose intense pace knows no tomorrow. The latter type of time is destroying the rhythms of a society which has become more and more debased.”

“Every surface is an interface b/w 2 milieus in which a placed in constant with one another”
- Constant surface
- The surface becomes an osmotic membrane
- A thickness without thickness

Camera: “the camera ahs become our best inspector”

Effraction:
Diffraction:

“The overexposure attracts our attraction inasmuch as it portrays the image of a world without antipodes. Without hidden sides. A world in which opacity is not longer a momentary interlude”

Gorretti: Pleasure of the Text

Pleas·ure n
1. a feeling of happiness, delight, or satisfaction
2. gratification of the senses, especially sexual gratification
3. recreation, relaxation, or amusement, especially as distinct from work or everyday routine
4. a source of happiness, joy, or satisfaction
5. somebody’s desire, wish, or preference (formal or literary)

v
1. vt to give somebody pleasure, especially through sensual or sexual stimulation or gratification
2. vi to derive satisfaction or happiness from something (archaic)

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.


My pleasures are:

1. hearing dirt being sucked in by a vacuum (sound)
2. emptying the lint trap of a dryer
3. finding split ends
4. finding pants that fit
5. cutting nails
6. picking at scabs
7. clean socks
8. warm weather
9. finding money
10. exact change

Bliss n
1. perfect untroubled happiness
2. a state of spiritual joy

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

My Bliss:

1. getting the last of something
2. watching people trip
3. loud sex
4. scaring people
5. playing tricks
6. free porn
7. teasing
7. getting away with something wrong
8. stealing
9. doing better than others
10. cleaning my ears

Gorretti: Pleasure of the Text

Emotion, bliss, wisdom, pleasure, do these sensations exist independently or are they simply synonyms of each other? In the Pleasure of the Text they are all determined to exist as their own entity however that is not to say that they do not act as seams of edges for one another. How then do we distinguish the seams and edges and furthermore, how do we begin to label them?

jordy: pleasure of text

Pleasure of text:

The pleasure of text is sanctioned Babel.

Terminology: margin indecision: the distinction will not be the source of absolute classification, the paradigm will falter, and the meaning will be precarious revocable, reversible, the discourse incomplete.

Does writing in pleasure guarantee – guarantee me, the writer – my reader’s pleasure? Not at all, I must seek out this reader with out knowing where he is.

Neurosis: every writer’s motto: mad I cannot be, sane I do not deign to be, neurotic I am. (Page 5)

… The text you write must prove to me that it desires me…

Language is redistributed
- Achieved by cutting
- Two edges created
1. Obedient and conformist
2. Mobile, blank, Death of language is glimpsed… (page 5)

Duplicity: two edges

“ The subversive edge may seem privileged be/c it is the edge of violence: but I is not violence which affects pleasure wants is the site of a loss, the seam, the cut, the deflation, the dissolve which seizes the subject in the midst of bliss. Culture thus recurs as an edge: in no matter what form” (page 7)

The edge is the clearest in form of materiality…?

“Everything is attacked, dismantled: ideological structures, intellectual solidarities, the propriety of idioms, and the sacred armature of syntax : the text no linger has the sentence for its model… a gush of words , ribbon of infra-language.”

Flaubert: a way of cutting, of perforating discourse without rendering it meaningless.

… There is no longer anything, but language.

Status of discourse: narrative is dismantled yet the story is till readable:
- Controlled discontinuities
- Faked conformities
- Indirect destructions

Oedipus

Pleasure of performance: the feat is sustaining the mimesis of language (language imitating itself)… so radically ambiguous that the text never succumbs to the bad conscience of parody.

Is not the most erotic portion of the body where the garment gapes?
- No “erogenous zone”
- Intermittence which is erotic (skin flashing b/w 2 articles of clothing)
- It is the flashing itself which seduces
- Appearance as disappearance

“The pleasure of text is not the pleasure if the corporeal striptease or the narrative suspense. In these cases there is no tear or edges; a gradual unveiling.”(page 10)

“We do not read everything with the same intensity of reading: a rhythm is established, a casual, unconcerned with the integrity of the text”

Skip boring… get to the good parts (always articulations… whatever further reveals the riddle, the revelation of the fate)

Like someone hastily ripping off a strippers clothing in the same order.

The writer cannot choose what will not be read… yet is the very rhythm of what is read and what is not read that creates the pleasure of the great narratives.

What is not enjoyed in a narrative is not directly its content or even structure, but its abrasions. (page 11)

I read on
I skip
I look up
I dig in again

Pleasure of text: what is it for me? Cannot be associated good or bad pleasure… it is subjective. It cannot be too much this… to little that.

The text that comes from culture and does not break with it

There is not behind the text, someone active (the writer) and out front someone passive (the reader) there is not a subject and an object.

Text: the certain body (i.e. anatomy, biology, psychology… etc)

The pleasure of text is that moment when my body pursues its own ideas – for my body does not have the same ideas I do.

A text of pleasure cannot be anything but short…

Pleasure can very well take form of a drift:
- Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole

Nihilism

Doctrine

Gorretti: In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Traveler

Air transportation doesn't give us a satisfying journey because they are not proper spaces.

They are:
themed spaces
consumption spaces,
passing through spaces

There is no sense of space (wayfinding, everything needs a sign or directions) and there is no time.

Reaction:

When flights are running late, how do we "make up time in the air?" Is there such a thing? Is air travel the only place wherein we can manipulate time? I suppose time does not hold real value in air travel because time itself is in constant flux (i.e. time change). How does time change affect perception of time? Does it?

Airport surroundings are wastelands because they are not used and they are far removed from the city core.

airport vs. train station

airports are NOT made for meeting and gathering (location)
train stations (penn station and grand station) have meeting spaces but are also cenrtally located.

Reaction:

I don't agree with Rosler's take on airport spaces. I would argue that there is a space that can be considered a space for gathering. For most airports this would be the baggage claim. Although this might not be deemed a proper gathering space people do, despite how short the time may be. Is there really a need for this space in airports anyway?

The Nuances of Air Travel:
It is the only means of transportation wherein you see the fully spectrum of social classes. There are mulitudes of emotion that transpire in airports. You see anger, frustration, sadness, happiness, anticipation, nervousness, anxiety, boredom, confusion, wonder etc. No where else can you find such an array of emotions. Therefore although Rosler argues airports lack the sense of gathering it holds a much more interesting aspect. Can we say that the airport is a space designed for all emotion?

Maya notes from feb 26 meeting

Permanence is no longer important? Is that true? Home is where your heart is? Do we actually establish our roots and have a connection to any particular place? This could be the reason for high divorce. We still value permanence, but we no longer strive for it. Considering resale value as the determinant for purchasing property or products, our investments are non-permanent and our money is constantly being traded on an invisible market for the next best thing.

Replacing culture verse repairing culture. We are more apt to through something out then keep it and repair it.

Time costs money. Who makes things any more, we place value in our gifts by the price of the product not the time that it took for someone to make it.

We are in a non-permanent culture. Extended warranties, the laptop backing up information. Where are the storage spaces in the ultra modern home? We are expected to move from place to place and it is easier to throw something out then to keep it. What happens to the memories that we embed in our products when they get lost or thrown out?

Digital verses analog technology has allowed us to frivolously take pictures of things that we don't actually consider valuable or prescious, unlike our parents or grandparents generation that purchased and kept things that were built to last and retain their value.



Urban form is no longer designated by a line of demarcation between here and there, but has become synonymous with the programming of a “time schedule.”
With the advent of instantaneous communications.. arrival supplement depart: everything arrives with out necessarily departing.

Note: Black berry phenomena. We can do everything via the phone or the internet. We can be in many places at once, in meetings over IP phones. We may never have to leave the house. I don’t think that we will be able to work from home. We are social beings and need to be with other people. That is why computer communities have popped up over the internet (my space, msn chat, chat line, online communities).

The secret life of Cory Kennedy

Instant celebrity.

A photogenic teenager becomes an Internet celebrity and international style phenomenon before she's even 16. What's a mother to do?

Maya reading week 6

Paul Virilio's Over exposed City



Question of going into the city verses going to the city. I really liked how this question alludes to our invisible and physical boundaries.

You know you are in a city when there is a distinct aspect, you know you have crossed the boundary not when you potentially see iconic images that we use to define the city. Even though you are in the city, you may not believe you are actually there. The relationship between the image and your actual experience are different. Seeing the city skyline, or seeing a very defined boundary such as New York Manhattan when you establish that you are in the city because you have gone over one of the bridges and are on the island. The other problem associated with not knowing if you are in the city, is because the sprawl of surrounding communities have no defining characteristic. The suburbs of New York look similar to the suburbs of LA and similarly the suburbs of Winnipeg look similar to any suburbs of other Canadian cities. I use to live in Airdrie which is out side of the city of Calgary. We use to drive into the “City” each day to drop my Mom off down town and for me to go to school. I always remember seeing the city limit sign that apparently defines where the city is, but looking around all you see are fields, houses. I actually only feel that I know where the city is when I see the sky line as I approach downtown. That is where the city is, even though the physical boundary, or imaginary boundary on the map is located elsewhere.



Ephemeral, fortress that is keeping things internalized, verses our post modern time that does not want to fit into one category or another. Things now push the boundaries and do not follow the rules. Our boundaries are no longer physical, like the wall you see between the Mexico and American border. Instead these boundaries are "immaterial." Since they exist as momentary and instantaneous expressions (549).

I think that this makes it difficult for our global culture to communicate and determine which resources belong to who. If the boundaries are constantly being redefined, we exist in a suspended state of unknowing. If we are all in this state, it is easy to understand how our "cultural reference points" are disappearing.

I particularly liked the comment that our actual "physical structures" are becoming introverted, as they contain all the technology needed to connect you to where ever you want to go. Why is it in this environment we feel safe? Is it the anonymity, control, or illusionistic freedom we have over this technology? I think that although the Internet is opening up communication, it is also threatening the boundaries that we use to establish national and cultural identity. If we, like our cities, are just made up of individual pockets of beliefs, what then do we refer to as our common belief system? What unifies us as a nation, or as a city? Cities that do not clearly define themselves are physical places with place less identity.

Gorretti: Homebodies on Vacation Revisited

During my trip to California I came across a strange tourist destination. Off of the number 10 highway east in the small town of Cabazon sat a gas station, a McDonald's and 2 life-sized dinosaurs; a tyrannosaurus Rex and a brontosaurus to be exact. Although I have not travelled to very many exotic locations I would consider myself to be a seasoned traveller, one that prides myself in the fact I NEVER cecum to the typical tourist attractions. However, when I saw these dinosaurs I had to take a picture along side them. Why I had to see these sculptures in person rather than out of a car window and why I had to take a picture with me them, I'm not sure but I do know it was something I truly felt compelled to do. In all honesty there was a great sense of satisfaction when I stopped and photographed the dinosaurs. I felt as if I was capturing something important, something that was useful and precious but looking back at the photos now I do not get those same sensations. The only thing I get is the faint recollection of the excitement I had when I had first taken the photos. Perhaps that is what its all about. Maybe photos simply allow us to hold on not only to the visual memory, but the emotions that are attached to the events.

Maya Reading week 6

picture taken flying over Pheonix

In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Traveler by Martha Rosler

This article deals with issues of transportation and the time/space it creates. Martha Rosier compares the form of air transportation to rail way travel. Flight simulations have lead to computer games and simulated environments in cyberspace. Do we have to physically experience the space for it to be real? Is it enough to experience the space through vision alone? This links back to our cultures desire to multi task and be in more than one place at the same time. We expect things instantaneously.


The use of flying instruments has changed the way we view our environment and our relationship to the environment has changed. We become more removed from the environment and by entertaining a simulated environment we begin to loose touch with reality and are unable determine the fake from the real. Why is it that we are reassured by technology that it is ok for our bodies to travel at such high speeds? Perhaps it is because looking out the window of the plane everything is at a smaller scale that we assume that because the structure is made of steel and industrial materials we will be safe. Consumerist and capitalistic ventures help to reinforce this feeling by associating any failures in flight travel to be associated with terrorism and not with malfunctions or human error.

The article also talks about the type of space created in airport environments. The airport actually lacks actual space or time. When you are neither here nor there, the airport fills in this time gap by posing as public spaces that appear to be like a shopping mall. They look at space as either spaces of consumption or spaces of disorder.

The effect that airports have of the surrounding environment is negative. Unlike trains that can go right into the centre and create public space, the plane is on the outskirts of the city and creates a zone of destruction, which devalues the surrounding land in its direct flight path.
As well the space created inside of the air terminal does not allow for intuitive navigation of people. It always seems as if we are just walking down a series of hallways always searching for signs to direct us.

My big question regarding this article is what is it that she proposes we do? Our culture is interested in the immediate response and is not as interested in the journey as in the destination. If we had a better train system would we really have better public space? I ma not sure, with the competing internet communities and the speed in which information is received, I think that the new public space has no physical space at all.

Maya Theory group discussion notes from feb 25

Discussion on the narritive the media creates about war. Belief systems are being reinforced by tv programs like "24" that propagate a political view on war.

Assigning values in war. You can bomb this area, but not this area because there is fewer casualties. There are absolutes, the absolute is that killing is wrong, there is no cost benefit analysis that will justify this act.
Watching Bombing on Baghdad. War has become a next tv mini series drama. It is set up like a movie that we watch so that it does not appear to be real. Instead it becomes a special that is quickly forgotten about after the show is over. This refers back to the comment that once a narrative has been broadcast it becomes history and we no longer feel effected by it.

9-11 the footage played of the towers going down and people jumping out of the building. There was a certain amount of pleasure watching reality TV, this sense or infatuation with real time events and needing to understand them through a visual means, has actually desensitized us to the consequences of the event.

Gorretti: Over Exposed City

Over Exposed City:

Border and edges – mid 80s and WWII started to divide their cities
This mentality affected airport design – notion of terrorism
Go TO the city vs. going INTO the city

Inner boundaries i.e. Corydon or Osborne not just Winnipeg

Reaction:
Is it about the relationships we develop with the image that allows us to be in the city instead of going to the city? If I were to visit New York for the first time would I be able to recognize it? Are the iconic buildings and scenes from picture of New York my only indication of my place and whether I’m in it?

Cities are divided by borders edges

Types of boundaries and edges: racial, financial, interest, commercial, industrial, residential etc… social connection???

Reaction:
Do the things we do, places we go and people we know create boundaries? How significant are the boundaries and edges of an individual?

Transparent buildings

Permanence is no longer important

Reaction:
Do we accept this culture of non-permanence, do we proliferate it or do we reject it?

Perhaps there is no right or wrong answer to this question, or perhaps it is that we do all of the above. I think there is a romantic notion of permanence. I think we want to believe that things can stand the test of time because we feel that it exudes the ideals of quality and endurance. However, the truth is things aren’t permanent they break, fade, get lost, don’t work and are out grown. I feel our culture recognizes this natural process of non-permanence and has developed a means to counter act it. The result is a grotesque exaggeration wherein not only are things non-permanent but they are disposable. This notion is brought to life with every prenuptial agreement, extended warranty and quoted resale value. Nothing is forever and everything is temporary. Is this because time is money?

Maya Nots of meeting feb 18

Scene and the mirror is lost
screen and network are now most important.

We associate ourselves with an object and therefore associate ourselves with the value that the objects

The screen and the network
We are the screen the network are things like the internet, myspace, facebook
Network represents the global you, personal identity is lost and we no longer have control over what we want to associate ourselves with

Dominance culture if we are a screen culture then who is controlling the screen? Who ever is controlling the mass commercial or consumerism then controls the screen.

TV is production, use, reproduction, a representation, circulation, distribution and consumption, reproduction. A weird continuous loop with a variety of variables.

War situation something’s blows up, witnesses report to reporter, translate to news reporter, distributed to the network, maybe the network reproduces it at the stage of and the cycle begins again.

Weird tv shows like Unsolved mysteries, hypothesize on an event that happen and therefore they reproduce an event that happiness and only through this reproduction does it become history.
Construct a narrative from a variety of scenes and reality is constantly under debate. Film documentaries, only one story or narrative of reality.

The Hills, reality show, but the shots are so perfect that it looks like a well-constructed reality.

Universalities of codes, but everyone needs to know the encoded message

The message must be identified in order to be understood, advertisements where you are not sure what they are advertising, but it is so mass distributed that it becomes widely accepted before the product comes out

Object can have multiple meanings


Communication is now obscene?

So useless that don’t actually add to our life, very intimate and out of context that we can not properly decode the messages we receive.

Forced extraversion of information and ideas.

Network to the internet?
Is this abundance of information and communication a bad thing?
Do we have to access this network? We can choose not to look at things we see as being obscene?
Spam, pop ups, things that don’t add to our life are also things that we can not control.

Everything is obscene. In the past there were common morals but after PM anything goes, the degree of obscenity depend on our own morals

News--- gulf war is the first media coverage, PM war, but the war now completely controlled by the media, secrete messages are sent through tv shows like 24 about how to think about the war in Iraq

User generated content. Lebanon and is real placing things on the cell phone cameras, it was different than having pre packaged news.

All history is just a narrative? How do you apply moral judgment on one or the other. If obscene is all information we are still applying moral judgment.

Internet has become our everything, new education, past time, try and find something that is similar in the past and is more moral. Verses Catholicism. Its own pre packaged, one common view operating with in the predominant code. Verse the internet that opens up the number of sources and views and relies on you to decode them based on your own source.
Scholarly journals corporate controls
News still package information under dominant beliefs
We are not allowed to use things like Wikapedia as a credible source, but when a false statement is made there are a series of checks and balances.
Encyclopedia britanica had more inaccurate facts in them then Wikapedia who’s information could be changed in real time.

What is the difference between the news editing and selecting information that they consider to be news worthy and the fashion industry that lets you know what style is in and out.

We are now in a new form of schizophrenia… we are listening to a variety of voices and not quite sure where our own voice is anymore.

Group 10 Questions

Maya Cochrane
Jordy Craddock
Gorretti Layco
Przemek Pyszczek


Questions: The Ecstasy of Communication

1. In the past we had governing forces such as the Catholic Church to dictate what is good, or bad and right or wrong however now in contemporary society, we are left alone amidst the boundless network of information to decide our own morals. In Baudrillard’s Ecstasy of Communication he talks of Marx theories of commodity and how this new world of information/communication overload is obscene. Is the information around us obscene? Does information/communication add or detract from our quality of life? Is the idea of obscene subjective or is all information/communication, as stated by Hall, obscene?

2. Scene and mirror can be understood as a method in which we reflect our own values onto objects. Contrarily screen and network, forces the individuals to become the screens that speak a projected message. However in the context of consumer society did scene and mirror ever truly exist?

3. The production of images and scenes that connect humans has now surpassed production of tangible human connections. The growing virtual nature of contemporary society has brought about less need for physical spaces. Can we effectively bring about change as a society if our interactions occur in virtual spaces, rather than physical public spaces?

4. Because government, corporations and financial investors have associated themselves with all that is deemed “public,” has the internet(work) become the one true space that is public?

5. Baudrillard states the “TV renders the room into an archaic envelope.” This implies that the physical spaces we inhabit no longer exist to shape our lives; instead these spaces are used to house the images that bring the events of the world to us. Many would argue that all aspects of culture and society are interwoven, and that architecture reflects these characteristics. Thus, why has no change occurred (in an architectural scale) with the development of the relationship between the room and the TV/person and room?

Question: Encoding, Decoding

6. In the past communication theory has been organized as sender message receiver and now the linear progress has been broken down into distinct, autonomous stages; each imprinted by institutional power relations. If we do break down these communication stages then who is in control of the messages sent and how they should be received?

7. There is a debate between the credibility of corporate news agencies verses the independent Blogger? The advent of the Internet has allowed for independent and corporate to exist within the same media source. Who should be in control of what type of information is in circulation?

8. “The event must become a ‘story’ before it can become a communicative event.” If all events become narratives and if we assume we each event could be constructed into our own personal narrative, then is it even possible to construct a dominant stream? If there are dominant streams, then how do you become part of it or begin to decode the preferred code? Hall states that the communication circuit creates a pattern of domination. Is a dominant stream a positive or negative element in our society?

9. There are advertisements where in production, the message has been lost or completely omitted. If this type of advertisement is distributed and is omnipresent in society then does it abide by Hall’s theories on the communication process? For instance, if an advertisement with no intended meaning was distributed, would society begin to construct their own meaning? Is it possible to decode an advertisement at the stage of consumption?

10. Should we be socially responsible for the messages that TV sends out? If we no longer have a collective set of morals, then who should monitor the “obscene” broadcast on the TV?

11. “The representations of violence on the television screen are not violence but messages about violence”… If an act of violence results from the messages portrayed on a television screen that is responsible for the decoding of the message? Should the responsibility of decoding the meaning be placed on the viewer or the producer of the message?

12. When signs that already have encoded meaning are introduced to a cultural context they take on new meanings. Is this mechanism of appropriation enriching these meanings or are they being devalued from its original content?

13. In the past we used the TV as a single source representation of our cultural values. For the most part the TV programs were highly constructed and idealize representations of society. In today’s context we have multiple sources providing live feeds, reality television, and personal Blogs, etc. What are the effects this personal technological revolution? Is it changing our cultural values? Are the new opportunities for opposition and plurality a good thing? Or is it just a just another means for dominant messages to be circulated?

Gorretti: Ecstasy of Communication and Encoding, Decoding

Notes: Ecstasy of Communication:

projective, imagery and symbolic = universe

Scene and mirror what are they?
Scene = different spaces? Different realms? Scenster? Scene is the portrayal

reflection of the landscape in building glazing – not the actual landscape, only the

Mirror = project of the object (what it is versus how it is perceived)

Screen and network:

Things are changed without being seen?

What is the difference between screen and scene mirror and network?

The television – the new screen and network – controllable

Projecting onto your object
Things are not really being there but are being played out

Computer at the wheel – the relationship between driver and car – what feeling do we tie to the object – are there feeling connected to the object?

"the vehicle now becomes a kind of capsule its dashboard the brain, the surrounding landscape inflooding like a television screen"

the object mirror screen network relationship – do they become synonymous – presence with his objects

uninterrupted interface – communication

hyperrealism of simulation

“The era of hyper reality now begins: what was protected psychologically and mentally what used to be lived out on earth as metaphor, as mental or metaphorical scene, is henceforth projected into reality, without any metaphor at all, into an absolute space which is also that of simulation.”

capability of regulating everything from a distance

Response: The physical aspects in our world are being undermined because of advancements in technology. We no longer have to carry out actions we just have to push a button. This means that time is changed as well as action. Everything that we think were doing is a mere simulation.

“The real itself appears to be a large useless body” – Response: can this be compared to the millions of techno shells that are being thrown out everyday? Empty shells

Network – our body is just a part of a network – like the Internet is a network

Advertising – it is its own universe – a great scene

The entire universe comes to unfold arbitrarily on your domestic screen

There is an obvious connection between object and mirror and the physical world and there is also an obvious connection between screen and network to the virtual world.

Screen becomes the literal screen of technologies, digital cameras, televisions, and computers. It become the vehicle that carries out or experiences,

Network can be related to the internet (work). It is the new community that we live in. Can this be related to blogs, facebook, myspace, lavalife what else is part of the relationship between network and internet(work)?

Maybe it’s that the network decides what will portrayed in the screen

Previously it was the object and how its image was being reflected (perhaps) onto you. So there is a degree of self-similarity in the reflection, now there is no “you” involved, the network that represents the global you chooses the subject/object that will be placed in the screen. So then screen loses its technological association and becomes a screen used for sifting and filtering.


Ecstasy of communication – blackberry phenomenon. Be in touch where ever when ever

Marx: the obscenity of the commodity – obscenity of communication – communication is a commodity

Info is useless because it doesn’t add to our lives – the info is so abstracted.

Communication is like information: internet(works) where not the first of its kind… encyclopedia?

interiority and intimacy – no more secrets – everybody knows and sees everything

is that bad?
do we have to access the network?
we can choose not to
spam/pop ups – maybe that’s why we don’t necessarily have the choice not to access the network

notes from the “talk”
we are the screens in a network of advertisements



Notes: Encoding, Decoding

hall – four stages of communication – production, circulation, use (aka distribution or consumption) and reproduction

things that affect the message that is being communicated:

“imprints” by institutional power relations
when the message is received (at what stage)

earlier theorized stages of communication – sender, message, receiver
new - production, circulation, use (aka distribution or consumption) and reproduction

object = sign vehicle;

anything that can holds a sign

sign references a symbol or meaning

the meaning of the message must be identified and understood in order for the message to be effective/received. what about ads… they are not always understood but the mere exposure of it can be effective

history – the event must become a story before it can become communicative event.

television a means of production, circulation, use and reproduction

war and unsolved mysteries, real world.

Maya: what is a code and how do we decode it?


questions:

everything is obscene because you don’t get to choose because there is not standard.

gulf war:

internet – there is not set standard or one set rule like Catholicism… its is anything you want it to be

what is dominant? blog vs. CNN

Jordy: encoding decoding

Stuart Hall

Subject: how messages are produced and disseminated (television)

Proposes a four stage theory of communication:

1. Production
2. Circulation
3. Use (distribution or consumption)
4. Reproduction

*** Each stage is relatively autonomous from each other, therefore…

- The coding of the message does control its message, but not transparently
- Each stage has its own determining limits and possibilities
- Polsemy is not the same as pluralism: messages are not open to any interpretation or use whatever (b/c each stage in the circuit limits possibilities in the next)

Messages have a “complex structure of dominance” … b/c at each stage they are “imprinted” by institutional power relations.

A message can be received at a particular stage only if it is recognizable or appropriate… power relations at the point of production will loosely fit those at consumption… in this way the communication circuit is a circuit which produces a pattern of dominance…

Is this referring to those in power stay in power by the manipulation of the poor? For instance, the corporate fashion industry stays in power through the production of its clothes, which need to be accepted at the consumption level. The production / consumption relationship is not reversible and guarantees the corporate fashion industry control over cultural production of clothes. Thus, there is a pattern of dominance.

Old model: sender / messenger / receiver

Distortions / misunderstanding result from lack of likeness b/w the two sides of communicating (each side of the communication is then determinate)

Television is not a behavioural input…. (i.e. tap on the knee)… that representation of violence on TV screen ‘are not violence, but messages of violence”

TV

- 2 types of discourse: aural, visual
- Iconic sign: possesses some properties of the thing it represents”?
- B/c it translates 3D to 2D it cannot be the concept it signifies.
- Reality exists outside of language, but it is constantly mediated by and through language (we only know what we’ve talked about)

If reality is mediated through language does this mean that whoever controls language also controls reality? In effect, those who control culture production may in large part control how we understand our reality. So, if the corporate media generators own the distribution methods do they as a result own part of our perceptions of reality? (reference: gulf war and the military/media controlled distribution of information vs. the Vietnam war and the independent media reporting)

Natural codes: widely distributed in language and culture

Every visual sign in advertising connotes a quality. Situation, value or inference, which is present in an implied meaning.

Sweater
= Warm garment
= Coming of winter / cold day
= Long walk in the woods

3 positions for decoding of TV discourse:

Dominant-hegemonic discourse:

- Operating inside the dominant code
- Perfectly transparent communication
- Professional code works within the dominant code of discourse

i.e. CNN’s presentation and selection of material

Negotiated discourse:

- It accords the privileged position to the dominant definition of the event will reserving the right to make a more negotiated application to the local condition.

i.e. The soldier’s personal position on the war in relation to what is presented on a national level by the president.

Oppositional discourse:

- Decode the message in a globally contrary way
- Detotalises the message in the preferred code in order to retotalise the message in with some alternative framework of reference

i.e. protesters against the war’s understanding on President Bush’s speech and then, the oppositional vocalization to it.

I feel that the most pressing issue in the article is the question of dominance in the production of messages. It seems that those who control the method of production in turn control what messages are produced. So, the TV posed a directly unfavorable position for the viewer b/c they were only receiving the inputs. Whereas with the advent of the Internet it empowers the viewer to not only receive messages, but to also participate in the production of their own.

Maya Encoding, Decoding

Encoding, Decoding by Stuart Hall

In this reading he is talking about how the way we understand communication theory has changed from a linear conception of sender, message, receiver to a process of production, circulation, distribution, consumption and reproduction. Each of these stages now act independently of one another and are able to exist and influence the encoding and decoding of the messages now giving messages a variety of meanings and interpretations.
In order to understand this Hall uses the example of television. The television represents a means of communication that has its own set of values associated with it. When looking at broadcastings like the news it goes through this 5 stage process. What is troubling is that the narration produced often shows one set of values. What happens if those values do not reflect the dominant main stream? I think because of the associations and intrinsic value or faith we place on our news broadcasts these messages become consumed by the public. If the public then goes and tells more people about the story then it gets re distributed.
“Before this message can have an effect,… it must be appropriated as meaningful and be meaningfully decoded. If the mode of communication is placed under an institutional control then do we really get to decide if this is meaningful? Or is the message predetermined to be meaningful simple by the way the message is produced and circulated? Hall also says that certain codes are so widely distributed that they appear to be natural, and therefore are representations of its universality. What exactly does he mean by this? Could it be that when we look at a picture of say an apple, we do not recognize it as a sign or symbol for apple, but actually think it is and apple? There are many examples in television or photography where we confuse a representation of an event with the event itself. If an image represents some qualities of the real thing, and it has been so deeply embedded in our culture that it becomes normalized then how do we begin to decode its meaning? What if the message does not have any meaning for us? If we are individuals in a Post Modern world then what happens if you do not follow the main stream? Messages under this new way of thinking involve a more active role of the individual decoding meaning. Hall states that there are three hypothetical positions from which decoding of television may be constructed. The first is clear communication where the viewer is fully operating under the dominant code and accepts it. The second more realistic is when the person acknowledges the message and is able to pull from other sources to confirm or not confirm the messages underlying ideologies, and the third is when the individual chooses to decode the message under oppositional codes.
This made me think about the television program 24 and an advertisement for one of the tv shows. Using the American statement, “the constitutional rights of all Americans.” They twisted this phrase and said, “we are fighting for the right to not be Iraq.” I operated under the negotiated code and was able to understand that this message may have first been produced by the government, broadcasted and consumed by the general public. In order for television shows to reference the underlying ideologies of the government it is now redistributing these messages with its T.V. program.
This is much more complicated way of looking at communication that the old sender message receiver formula. By allowing a more complex set of variables it exposes the way our media communication is structured. Who ultimately has the ability to control this form of communication? Does the individual consumer have power to decode these complex messages, or does the producer of these message have more control over each of the stages of communication?

User Generated Content

From Wikipedia (I thought the source was appropriate since it is about user-generated content)

User-generated content (UGC) refers to various kinds of media content that is produced or primarily influenced by end-users; as opposed to traditional media producers, licensed broadcasters, and production companies. The term came into the mainstream during 2005 in web publishing and new media content production circles. It reflects the expansion of media production through new technologies that are accessible and affordable to the general public. These include digital video, blogging, podcasting, mobile phone photography and wikis. In addition to these technologies, user-generated content may also employ a combination of open source, free software, and flexible licensing or related agreements to further diminish the barriers to collaboration, skill-building and discovery.

Is user-generated content more powerful than existing media? What is more trustworthy, existing forms of media, or new media/user-generated content/web 2.0?2

Screen as mirror

The ectacy of Communication

"but today the scene and mirror no longer exist; instead, there is a screene and network."

Even my computer screen pretends to be a mirror and the camera captures pictures of myself. If in Baudrilard's world we are cold, then my computer screen can simulate that.

Maya Ectasy of Communication response

Trying to find the control Z in life


This was a difficult reading, and more difficult to come to conclusions about the way our lives are now verses our relations to objects in the past. Why are we so critical about a state of transcendence and fantasy? It sounds like a more enriched life over being transformed into a blank screen for communications networks to broadcast over. Are we trading one evil for another? Do we no longer fantasize because now our "bodies, landscapes and cultural spaces are disappearing as our brain becomes the most important organ?

Have we really began to loose both public and private space, or have we just entered a new way of defining what public and private mean in a world where nothing is obscene anymore?


Do images really pass through me? Am I just a walking billboard? Am I really that transparent?

Notes from the reading:

Transcendence and fantasy verses value association have been loss to a communication screen and network that is narcissistic; using connections, contact, cognitively, feedback and a generalized interface.
Instead we are in control of a hypothetical machine that exists in a simulated world of hyper realism.
There is a tendency towards 3 things
1). a displacement of the body
2). miniaturization of the "real" scene
3). formal operation of abstract elements and functions are combined into a single virtual process
"Where is my ctrl alt delete in life?"
After dropping or spilling something I find myself looking for the ctrl z or ctrl y. Where is it if I am just a blank screen?
When I loose something I look for the search option. Will we become so virtual that one day I might find it?

Hot Sexual obscenity is replaced with cold communicational, contextual obscenity through a communication network of "superficial saturation."

Baudrillard concluded that this scene excites us and this new obscene fascinates us. Why? Is it because we can finally uncover all the secretes. What fun will that be when all the secretes are exposed in this world that lacks interior and intimacy, what will fascinate us then?

Maya Notes from Feb 7

Identity, originality,

What is wrong with plastic signing?
Copy, fake,

What is wrong with fake wood?

Makes sense in regard to peoples happiness, durability, and sometimes is more environmentally friendly than other materials, so why do we fundamentally think it is wrong?

It deals with issues of authenticity, originality, and assimilation

What does it mean to say that if a fake?

Need a level of assessment value, and a position for choosing materials then it will be taken over by the client who may be moved by money.
How do we argue the value of something being sustainable?
A real value must be significant to the client and therefore will give meaning to your decision making.

What informs the identity, mechanism of identity creation? Broader, what makes Canadian, Canadian, Architects, architects etc.

My own response: I think it is created by the a history of events that have already occurred that effects the current cultural, physiological, context. I think true Identity is in constant flux.

Engaging the world from the inside out, as a cognitive processing based on our senses (very internal, self centered process)

Vs.

Gagging the external environmental influences

The issues are the blurring of that boundary,

What is our source of identity? What is our reference?

There are two many referential systems, that it is difficult to determine which reference system gives an appropriate identity. The only way we can copy with this is to be inclusive and realize that it is a combination of a variety of values.

PM condition is always an and condition, assemblage rather than discrimination

If assuming A as their identity and therefore using one material because of that. If the user group identifies with B then how do you justify their choice.

This reminds me of the issues I will have to face with my site. I have chosen this dune buggy area with a culture of people that I do not identify with. I have one judgment regarding their erasure of the environment, waist of resources, etc. I am sure that that group of people have a very different view of their identity and their activities in the place.

Do you just enforce your views on this type of behavior? Write books about it before hand.
If you prepare your ideas beforehand then like Eisenman people will be able to understand you design philosophy before you even build anything. Preparing your market.

Value or identity creation. It is not given, but it is manufactured.

By references other histories, products, cultural contexts, this linkage gives identity to the new product, person, culture etc. regardless of the authenticity of the referenced.

What makes certain things inauthentic?

My response: Something that is not true to its own original intentions, it could be a copy of something else as long as it is not a reproduction of those intentions. Our products now could always find reference in things of the past.

Group discussion:

The only way things are authentic is the way in which we process the stimuli.

Why do we even think about authenticity?

We think about authenticity because there is no general reference point for a collective group of people to refer back to. As PM individuals we all have the right to choose.

Why do we think about an authentic experience of Time Square.

Group discussion:
We no longer have a point of reference we have an territory of reference
PM it is all relative. That depends. PM talk
When you have to act, then you have to project certain values.

Authenticity is linked to power. By giving authenticity to a certain object, you are giving power to it.

As a means to read into the other dimension. Did video kill the radio star?

All bring up questions of place. Placelessness etc.

Is it important to know if we are experiencing is read or simulated?

Active/passive nature of our culture. There is a predetermined nature of simulated environments like Disney Land that allow for a false sense of security.

Total immersion is something we are scared of (Nazi, communism, etc).
Being in the balancing position is always good for you, on the margin, on the fringe
We lost how to get towards total immersion, we are constantly measuring things, we are always distancing ourselves from the subject. How do you talk about these things?
But are we really out of that position?
We might actually be part of it, but we are taught to distance ourselves from its,……. Illusionist.

True calculation can only be done from within
If you want to talk about the ecology of Disney land you must be inside it in order to understand it.

You can not escape from the frame of reference. Post-structuralisms are saying that the exterior condition does not exist. It only exists when we go back in history. By that point you are outside.

Travel

Why do we feel the need to leave? Why do we need to travel?

Distancing so that our day to day lives can be looked at with new eyes.