Our final class meeting will be 12/16 at 7 p.m. (until we're done, likely b/w 9-10ish.) I'm going to see if we can meet at IML's conference room, as it's a bit more festive than our classroom but has access to tech/a kitchen, etc.
I'll bring some kind of light meal and some wine. Feel free to supplement w/ wine/sweets if you like.
Cheers,
Tara
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Visualizing Dinner
The New York Times has posted a great visualization of the prevalence of various Thanksgiving dinner-related search terms (recipes, ingredients, etc), revealing state-by-state preferences for things like sweet potato casserole and pecan pie.
Happy holidays!
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Databases and Distributed Narratives: Resources and Examples
The following links provide a broad range of examples for those interested in both a general history of databases and information networks, and the role such technologies can play in the creation of fiction and other kinds of narratives.
Keep in mind that there's a fair amount of stuff in here that's only tangentially related to databases or distributed narratives per se -- but we feel that in the context of our readings, this extra material provides important context and flavour. Mmmm. And yes, that's flavour with a 'u'.
The list follows a general trajectory of antecedents --> early examples --> contemporary examples --> future directions.
Keep in mind that there's a fair amount of stuff in here that's only tangentially related to databases or distributed narratives per se -- but we feel that in the context of our readings, this extra material provides important context and flavour. Mmmm. And yes, that's flavour with a 'u'.
The list follows a general trajectory of antecedents --> early examples --> contemporary examples --> future directions.
- Clay Shirky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Relational database - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- ODP - Open Directory Project
- dmoz.org - Site Info from Alexa
- wikipedia.org - Site Info from Alexa
- delicious/tags/plautus
- Google Image Labeler
- cyoa · animations
- ryanTree.jpg (JPEG Image, 500x435 pixels)
- Electronic Literature Organization
- YouTube - iPhone App: Bloom by Brian Eno & Peter Chilvers
- jeff watson » Blog Archive » Tenori-on
- Quasimondo : Incubator - Experiments, Sketches and Computational Craft by Mario Klingemann
- Lev Manovich - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The Work of Jonathan Harris
- The Whale Hunt / A storytelling experiment / by Jonathan Harris
- Twistori
- ATLAS experiment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Many Eyes
- Watch MGMT "Electric Feel"
- Queneau sonnets
- Grafik Dynamo!
- Year Zero Case Study
- I Love Bees - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- MIT Press Journals - The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning - Abstract
The Lost Archive- Holding narratives
In our readings on archive and narrative for this week, I am intrigued by a number of possibilities and questions surrounding a sense of reader/viewer and the ability to spatially and temporally construct narratives. Jill Walker poses this possibility- this position concerning technology as fragmented, but in a way that opens up a construction of the personal/professional within the context of a daily life. Walker claims, “Yet perhaps they also point to a new kind of unity: a
unity where the time and space of the narrative are in sync with the time and
space of the reader.” In Steve Anderson’s discussion on Soft Cinema, this combination of database and narrative pose a similar construction of multiple “selves.” Rather than a centered or linear account, the network computer reveals (as well as obscures) this account of modern identity.
In constructing multiple identities and possibilities for understanding narratives, Marsha Kinder’s Labyrinth Project also reveals this possibility in selection and categorization as crucial elements to language, allowing for further interrogation of master narratives. I can’t help but reflect upon Tom Gunning’s talk at USC last week, and his discussion and research on moving images. He talked about much of his recent research in LA, showing a couple of example clips of thumb or flip books, playing with this idea of still images and the physicality involved in moving the image. One of the most striking elements to the clips involved the very straightforward close-up of a flipbook, from cover to cover. I am reminded of the materiality in covers. Perhaps this line of thought is getting away from this week’s readings, but I am very much wrapped up in the idea of covers as beginning and ending points. It is this attempt in capturing narratives (master narratives), and the physicality of holding a journal or book and flipping pages that makes me reflect upon discourses of unity and the user/reader’s/consumer’s investment.
I can’t help but think of Jem Cohen’s film Lost Book Found, which documents the filmmaker’s obsession with finding a journal on the streets of New York with lists upon lists of numbers, dates, names and places. The film essentially mediates on this question of lostness within an urban space, as well as the impossibility in reconstructing someone else’s obsessions and mental categorizations. In the filmmaker’s attempt to reconstruct a stranger’s place in New York City, the film also shows a layering and mapping, both in the understanding of New York as a Place, and the patterns in the filmmaker’s mind in unraveling this code, his own understanding of his role as an observer and dweller through a set of visual objects.
unity where the time and space of the narrative are in sync with the time and
space of the reader.” In Steve Anderson’s discussion on Soft Cinema, this combination of database and narrative pose a similar construction of multiple “selves.” Rather than a centered or linear account, the network computer reveals (as well as obscures) this account of modern identity.
In constructing multiple identities and possibilities for understanding narratives, Marsha Kinder’s Labyrinth Project also reveals this possibility in selection and categorization as crucial elements to language, allowing for further interrogation of master narratives. I can’t help but reflect upon Tom Gunning’s talk at USC last week, and his discussion and research on moving images. He talked about much of his recent research in LA, showing a couple of example clips of thumb or flip books, playing with this idea of still images and the physicality involved in moving the image. One of the most striking elements to the clips involved the very straightforward close-up of a flipbook, from cover to cover. I am reminded of the materiality in covers. Perhaps this line of thought is getting away from this week’s readings, but I am very much wrapped up in the idea of covers as beginning and ending points. It is this attempt in capturing narratives (master narratives), and the physicality of holding a journal or book and flipping pages that makes me reflect upon discourses of unity and the user/reader’s/consumer’s investment.
I can’t help but think of Jem Cohen’s film Lost Book Found, which documents the filmmaker’s obsession with finding a journal on the streets of New York with lists upon lists of numbers, dates, names and places. The film essentially mediates on this question of lostness within an urban space, as well as the impossibility in reconstructing someone else’s obsessions and mental categorizations. In the filmmaker’s attempt to reconstruct a stranger’s place in New York City, the film also shows a layering and mapping, both in the understanding of New York as a Place, and the patterns in the filmmaker’s mind in unraveling this code, his own understanding of his role as an observer and dweller through a set of visual objects.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Database Readings
Here are the web-accessible readings for this week.
Steve Anderson: Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database
Serial Consign: Interview with Kate Armstrong
Marsha Kinder et al, About the Labyrinth Project
Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media pp 194-207 (account req'd)
Jill Walker Rettberg: Distributed Narratives
Clay Shirky: ""Ontology is Overrated"
Steve Anderson: Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database
Serial Consign: Interview with Kate Armstrong
Marsha Kinder et al, About the Labyrinth Project
Lev Manovich: The Language of New Media pp 194-207 (account req'd)
Jill Walker Rettberg: Distributed Narratives
Clay Shirky: ""Ontology is Overrated"
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Rick Prelinger
Rick's website and Vectors' project
Excerpts:
MANIFESTO
1. Why add to the population of orphaned artworks?
2. Don't presume that new work improves on old
3. Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4. The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5. Dregs are the sweetest drink
6. And leftovers were spared for a reason
7. Actors don't get a fair shake the first time around, let's give them another
8. The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9. We reach the future only by roundabout means
10. As we wish to address the future, so the past desires to address us
11. Access to what's already happened is cheaper than access to what's happening now
12. Archives are justified by use
13. Make a quilt not an advertisement
FOUR STAGES OF AN ARCHIVISTS' CAREER
1. Each film is precious and unconditionally loved. Its discovery is a thrill; its existence a blessing.
2. Style surfaces. I hear the tone of a stentorian narrator, revel in saturated Kodachrome and the roundness of old cars, float on waves of elevator music. Looking across time I focus on appearance, enunciation, style and the illusion of simplicity.
3. Move beyond style to historicity. Films become pointers to historical contradictions, provocations and insights. Who made them? Who paid for them? For what purpose, and in what context? The documents speak to the events and practices that surrounded them and become aliases to a meta-archive.
4. Revert to essentials. An egg is just an egg. "When you said gum, I knew it was gum." Sandblast the bricks, grind off the accreted patina. Reuse historical images for their analogical content. Pretend this isn't the Spam factory in 1965; these men are just processing meat from pigs and people will eat it. Let the superstructure slough off, at least long enough to make a movie.
Excerpts:
MANIFESTO
1. Why add to the population of orphaned artworks?
2. Don't presume that new work improves on old
3. Honor our ancestors by recycling their wisdom
4. The ideology of originality is arrogant and wasteful
5. Dregs are the sweetest drink
6. And leftovers were spared for a reason
7. Actors don't get a fair shake the first time around, let's give them another
8. The pleasure of recognition warms us on cold nights and cools us in hot summers
9. We reach the future only by roundabout means
10. As we wish to address the future, so the past desires to address us
11. Access to what's already happened is cheaper than access to what's happening now
12. Archives are justified by use
13. Make a quilt not an advertisement
FOUR STAGES OF AN ARCHIVISTS' CAREER
1. Each film is precious and unconditionally loved. Its discovery is a thrill; its existence a blessing.
2. Style surfaces. I hear the tone of a stentorian narrator, revel in saturated Kodachrome and the roundness of old cars, float on waves of elevator music. Looking across time I focus on appearance, enunciation, style and the illusion of simplicity.
3. Move beyond style to historicity. Films become pointers to historical contradictions, provocations and insights. Who made them? Who paid for them? For what purpose, and in what context? The documents speak to the events and practices that surrounded them and become aliases to a meta-archive.
4. Revert to essentials. An egg is just an egg. "When you said gum, I knew it was gum." Sandblast the bricks, grind off the accreted patina. Reuse historical images for their analogical content. Pretend this isn't the Spam factory in 1965; these men are just processing meat from pigs and people will eat it. Let the superstructure slough off, at least long enough to make a movie.
Amelie Hastie and collections
Here's Amelie's book:
Cupboards of Curiosity
She also edited a special issue of Journal of Visual Culture on "The Object of Media Studies" that includes some of her thoughts on the ticket stub. [Journal of Visual Culture 2007; 6; 171]
Also, see Amelie's Vectors' project, "Objects of Media Studies" -- this is itself a collection but Amelie's thread of the piece is about ticket stubs
Prezi language
Sorry for the delay in my lab post from last Friday. I came in a bit late, missing part of the initial talk/presentation by a guest speaker with the Engineering department at USC. Basically, he discussed the role of presentations in academia, specifically outlining the use of Power Point in Science related fields. The Q&A after the presentation posed some thoughtful responses and observations in looking at the role of performativity in presentations (especially Power Point work), and the comparisons in performance styles at the recent UCLA conference.
Steve’s portion of the workshop focused more so on alternative presenting programs, including Diigo, Vouvox, Slidesahre, Wordle and Prezi. The actual “hands-on” portion of the workshop involved a tutorial of Prezi and it’s basic format as a collection of research materials/ideas. Prezi has a free trial service, which I’ve been toying with over the past couple of days. There are also varying membership prices and options (which look kinda expensive). However, I can’t say that I completely understand the rhetoric involved in making a presentation with Prezi (lots of functions, different types of mapping). The tutorial allows you to play with text, moving your work along a grip (which can become a miniscule dot if you scroll out far enough- you also can “lose” it in this case). Perhaps in reflecting on this week’s readings and topic surrounding the archive and research, the use of a tool like Prezi opens up a rich visual discussion in both the active role of memory, and movement of objects in the audiences’ ability to receive and retain information. I’m curious as to what a “finished” presentation product would look like- perhaps I will have something to show soon enough.
Steve’s portion of the workshop focused more so on alternative presenting programs, including Diigo, Vouvox, Slidesahre, Wordle and Prezi. The actual “hands-on” portion of the workshop involved a tutorial of Prezi and it’s basic format as a collection of research materials/ideas. Prezi has a free trial service, which I’ve been toying with over the past couple of days. There are also varying membership prices and options (which look kinda expensive). However, I can’t say that I completely understand the rhetoric involved in making a presentation with Prezi (lots of functions, different types of mapping). The tutorial allows you to play with text, moving your work along a grip (which can become a miniscule dot if you scroll out far enough- you also can “lose” it in this case). Perhaps in reflecting on this week’s readings and topic surrounding the archive and research, the use of a tool like Prezi opens up a rich visual discussion in both the active role of memory, and movement of objects in the audiences’ ability to receive and retain information. I’m curious as to what a “finished” presentation product would look like- perhaps I will have something to show soon enough.
the tools of collecting
I’m going to shift my response to the tools of collection, largely because when I examined my own processes, I found that there was little that I made the effort to collect in any exhaustive or detail-oriented way. There have been periods where I kept an eye out for matchbooks, novelty magnets, floaty pens, and books of poetry, but by and large those interests have passed, or the collecting urgency, the archival desire, has mellowed out considerably. There is plenty that I sort through however, and even more that I neglect; I moved a few months ago and still have unpacked boxes piled up in my closet, and my email inbox, at this point in the semester, has gotten particularly bad, despite my best efforts to create ever more descriptive and narrow folders and subcategorizations.
But I’m interested in the area of tools of collection, what one needs in order to survey or maintain or even “use” a collection, be it some kind of music player, an eBay account, or a refined skill in a specialized area. I am a compulsive notetaker and carry with me a notebook everywhere I go –it’s necessarily blank, without lines, and small. And while it’s fairly heterogeneous as far as the kinds of things that go in there – lecture notes, shopping lists, messy film notes written in the dark, odd words or phrases I hear, particularly medical ones, messages written in big letters to be shown to my roommate while she’s talking on the phone—it’s not personal in the way that my actual journaling or writing is, which takes place only on my computer, nested away in a labyrinthine system of deliberately misnamed folders. But I like to think of my notebook as an alternate journal, something more “public,” though not with the intention of being seen; a kind of net that’s cast to collect all the words and ideas that I come across in the everyday. A bit more formally, i.e. on my laptop, I keep a list of all films that I ever watch, organized by year, and listing information such as who I saw the film with, and what venue I saw it in (this would suggest I am a huge cinephagus; I am not. I just have a poor memory). But these lists and little books, ordered chronologically, accessible only by me (as entry is limited by my handwriting legibility, even for me), become their own kind of archive, some physical substrate of ephemeral experience, a material memory. I rarely go back to my notes, but there’s something comforting in having them there, even if I can’t find what it is I’m looking for, or if my graphological inscrutability –my personal “code”– has locked me out entirely.
For me, one of the paradigmatic collector figures is, of course, Harry Smith, who was known for his wildly diverse inhabitations of different fields and material things, from string figures, recordings of Kiowa ceremonies, paper airplanes, and Ukrainian Easter eggs, to his own paintings, films, esoteric mysticism and his seminal Anthology of American Folk Music, which formed an archival backbone for the folk revival movement on its own terms. But one of the most interesting things about Smith, in my mind, was the depth at which he’d dive into an area, and then once he felt complete, the speed at which he’d abandon everything. There’s a new book out from the Getty that attempts to bring together Smith’s various collecting and collection-making impulses, but I wonder, if in the context of collecting tools, Smith’s own disposition, his own two hands and his inimitable mind, were the only throughline that could connect such an eccentric assortment. Certainly the collector is always present behind a collection (or maybe not always, but there is an implied direction that guides its changing parameters), but I know of no more extreme case than Smith, who used a variety of tools, and amassed many, very rich archives, but himself was the only connecting point that could link them.
Library of Comics
Like my interest in soccer, cartoons and sketch comedy television programs, I inherited comic book collecting from my father. The issue to the right is the first comic that I had ever purchased, in November of 1990. As a ten year old with surplus income from a paper route, my father insisted that I find a wholesome hobby such as my brother's baseball card collecting, which I found inane. I continuously collected X-Men devoutly, along with other X-titles as well as Spider-Man, Batman, Punisher, Daredevil, and various others (only Marvel or DC-I suspected the other independent publishers were lame knock-offs, like shopping at JC Penny's or Payless Shoes), until around 1995, when I needed money for other things, and felt that comics were for kids. Later, in college, I would sporadically go to a comic book store and splurge on both current issues, as well as as many back-issues as I could afford, to fill in the last five years of story. Finally, in 2006, I decided that having a wholesome hobby was a good idea, and began subscribing to the x-titles again, and I currently receive 6 titles in the mail each month. My collection is currently contained within 3 large comic book boxes, 2 of which are in New York, thus splitting the location of my archive into 2 physical sites. Although I had previously rabidly collected back-issues, internet fan sites such as uncannyxmen.net have allowed me to catch up on the story without having to pay anything, although depriving me of possessing the physical object, as well as the visual pleasure of most of the art-work contained within the pages, as these sites tend to summarize the story into paragraphs, depriving the reader of the full experience and sensation of different artist's styles, colors and dialogue. I do not really hope to collect X-Men in its entirety, as I enjoy the feeling of being lost in the story line, and having to google names and places to figure out what is significant that I have missed. So as far as I see it, there are no real limits to my collection, but objectively I could collect every Uncanny X-Men, X-Men, X-Factor, X-Force and New Mutants comic ever published-the story was always more important to me than the physical objects. While there is a market for comics, and I'm sure a few of mine may be worth a bit of money, I have no real interest in exchanging them. Strangely, I at once could never throw them away, but also take very little care of preserving their integrity as art-objects or possible commodities to be traded in for money. As far as use value, I like to think that one day I will write a compelling paper about the Mojoverse, comics as political and social critique, or the rise and fall of Chris Claremont, but when it comes down to it, the narrative universe of X-Men has occupied my absent mind for so long that sometimes I just like to look at old comics again, allowing me to enter parallel universes and alternate time-lines, re-visiting sheets of the past which allow me to recollect my actual thoughts/sensations while I read the comics the first time. My archive of serialized comics allows me a path at once into my past and into the narrative universe of a group of people who are at once branded "gifted" and "cursed"-an allegory for both intellectuals and queers.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
An Arab's Head
Sekula's "The Body and the Archive" reminded me of my run-in with the French system of criminals' photographs a few summers ago. I had met a guy at a club whose name was Karim and who was from Algeria. It's been my experience that the easier he is to fetishize, the riskier it is to get involved. In this case I was proved right. He was completely drunk and so I drove his car to my place but never jotted down the license plate number. He might have put something on my drink or maybe I'm just trying to remember it that way so that I am not completely to blame for what happened.
Karim, who showed surprise at my showing surprise over the fact that he wasn't French, said "Look at my Arab head." Which reminded me of the biologization of prejudice against people from Northeastern Brazil. One wouldn't say "so and so looks like this" or "like that" or so so "is" this or that. One would, like Karim, refer to one's "head" as the evidence for one's inferior social status ("flat heads from the Northeast"). By the end of the night we had set a date for the following night and I fell asleep. When I woke up, several of my belongings were gone. And so was Karim and his head (no sexual pun intended). So I walked to the police station to report the crime. "Was he Arab?" was the first question the policeman asked me. Then he said he was going to have to do something very pointless, but that was the law, so he had to do it. This pointless thing was to show me photographs of previously booked criminals on a computer. He didn't even pay attention to my looking at the images, 99-percent of which were "Arab heads". "Can I get these guys' phone numbers? They are hot", I told the policeman. And he laughed, and said he had been at the club where I met Karim (but not because of him, "because of a friend who wanted to go.")
Why did the policeman ask me if the thief was Arab if almost all criminals in the archive was Arab? The "average-ness" conceals the crime, so what was he trying to confirm?
This inheritance of the criminal photographic archive struck me because the policeman announced it as fruitless even before I had a chance to access it and because, all photographs did look alike. I can see, then, the allure (Galton's Bertillon's...) of trying to discover the physical link among these Arab criminal bodies. And the probing and measuring, perhaps akin to the queer assessment of "str8 acting" evidence in online photographs (checking for a lack, a lack of signs of femininity, or "gayness"). And the alikeness -- in the French criminal photographs and in this queer search for seamless hetero-mimicry -- isn't borne out of anything inside the photograph, but out of the looker's own investment.
Punctum metro passes
The timing for this particular assignment comes at a rather uncanny point in my own Ph.D. application process. I can’t help but think of this notion of “collection” and “materiality” in my own relationship to presenting a sort of archive of my academic and personal life. I went to a book talk the other day with Kaja Silverman on her new book Flesh of my Flesh. I’ve only had a chance to glance through the introduction, but some of the more memorable moments of her talk centered on this notion of self and her own relationship as a theorist and spectator/participant to her work. In her own search through the Berkeley Art History archives, Silverman also opened up a very “real” approach in having a personal stake in the materials and artists she has come in contact with. It’s a seemingly simple concept. However, I am constantly reminded of my “place” within a theoretical investigation, and this element of the personal in creating a space for my academic development.
So, I know the personal is deeply “looked down” upon in the world of academia or near past of academia, and I try not to be too much of an offender, but I felt the homework assignment allows for this space- this collection or rather embodiment of the personal (that’s why we blog, right?). So, here I am theorizing the personal.
I lived in Prague for a year after finishing up my undergrad work. I took very few pictures during my time there. More so, my actual “documentation” consisted of a journal, postcards, and receipts of my public transportation travels throughout city. Evoking the language of photography from Roland Barthes, perhaps the resistance of my own personal picture taking lay in this impossibility in understanding this notion of “punctum.” Barthes is able to “prick” or rather, feel this prick of the picture from his viewing position in relation to the image as an object. In many ways, the image transforms the notion of inanimate objects, to something felt alive and “experienced” in the flesh of the viewer/participant. Kaja Silverman goes into more detail about this position and specificity of photography within her book. Barthes poses to himself and addresses his mother through an essential question: “Did I recognize her?” In essence, Barthes asks this question in relation to his own being or pre-history on earth (his ability/inability in recognizing his mother before his own existence). It’s a strange thing being in the present position of the picture taker and consumer/observer. I realize Barthes notion of the “punctum” is always after-the-fact in a sense of both capturing a moment, and giving (or feeling) the details of the image as a product. In personalizing this question, did I or could I in fact, recognize myself as the documenter- a spectre of myself? Did I even “want” to recognize myself in this act of documentation? As an expat and English teacher? In a strange sense, holding those travel receipts, marked in one-day and week-long passes continues to evoke this stranger, and a stronger sense of self in my experience of moving through the passages of a city- my body riding the escalator, rubbing shoulders with “strangers”, the act of traveling between teaching venues/schools, and the constant unraveling my own forgetting. It’s not even the dates on the passes that remind of particular moments (which I could never figure out where the Metro Police looked in determining if the pass had in fact “expired”). It’s a similar sense of remembering in looking through my various English-language lessons, notes, student’s written work and drawings. I feel a strong sense of my once present state in laboring over lesson plans- at one time a currency in my own employability as an English instructor.
I am curious about this need, or rather, obsession with documentation. In our readings for the week, this notion of the archive and its linguistic roots in “secrecy” and privacy as described by Rolena Adorno. Adorno is more interested in a scholarly relationship between the University and the royal archive, including a layering and collection of knowledge. As with Lucas Hilderbrand’s text surrounding Youtube and cultural memory, there is also an underlying theme in renegotiating the bounds of an accessible internet site, and looking more closely as how privacy is accessed through a public domain.
The element of language becomes even more important in borrowing from Derrida this “quasi-illiteracy” of images with a textual analysis. This “in-between” space emerges (as discussed throughout this semester) in categorizing within the archive (and being able to effectively “search” through it). So, coming back to my own ideas around the archive and my time spent in Prague, I could never fully “collect” myself while living there (not to overly romanticize). I remember my cousin came to visit me while I was there and ended up making a “photo album” on facebook of the experience. I never managed to download one of my own, though. At the time, I didn’t think about it. It’s funny looking at the pictures now- I recognize landmarks (the Prague castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town area, the streets surrounding my neighborhood in Andel). I see my cousin and I, posed like many similar tourist pictures, occupying a sense of Prague.
There are visual markers, cues that cause me to reflect upon my time there, in that moment. It is also this inability in recognizing myself positioned within Prague. In many ways, I think back on my “unofficial” status as an undocumented worker. My language school paid me in cash once a month. No receipts. No documentation of my 60 plus hour workweeks. In many ways, like I’ve attempted to address earlier in this ramble of a post, my presence never could be fully recognized by the Czech government, including my own positioning in the sub-culture of English teachers in Prague. I never “belonged” and not that I desired or refused this sense of connection, but perhaps I could sense this transitory existence, my own replacement in an endless crop of expat English teachers.
So, hear I am left with dozens of metro receipts, all in various increments of Czech crowns. I can’t seem to throw them out. It’s my collection. Maybe the closest thing to remembering myself three years ago.
So, I know the personal is deeply “looked down” upon in the world of academia or near past of academia, and I try not to be too much of an offender, but I felt the homework assignment allows for this space- this collection or rather embodiment of the personal (that’s why we blog, right?). So, here I am theorizing the personal.
I lived in Prague for a year after finishing up my undergrad work. I took very few pictures during my time there. More so, my actual “documentation” consisted of a journal, postcards, and receipts of my public transportation travels throughout city. Evoking the language of photography from Roland Barthes, perhaps the resistance of my own personal picture taking lay in this impossibility in understanding this notion of “punctum.” Barthes is able to “prick” or rather, feel this prick of the picture from his viewing position in relation to the image as an object. In many ways, the image transforms the notion of inanimate objects, to something felt alive and “experienced” in the flesh of the viewer/participant. Kaja Silverman goes into more detail about this position and specificity of photography within her book. Barthes poses to himself and addresses his mother through an essential question: “Did I recognize her?” In essence, Barthes asks this question in relation to his own being or pre-history on earth (his ability/inability in recognizing his mother before his own existence). It’s a strange thing being in the present position of the picture taker and consumer/observer. I realize Barthes notion of the “punctum” is always after-the-fact in a sense of both capturing a moment, and giving (or feeling) the details of the image as a product. In personalizing this question, did I or could I in fact, recognize myself as the documenter- a spectre of myself? Did I even “want” to recognize myself in this act of documentation? As an expat and English teacher? In a strange sense, holding those travel receipts, marked in one-day and week-long passes continues to evoke this stranger, and a stronger sense of self in my experience of moving through the passages of a city- my body riding the escalator, rubbing shoulders with “strangers”, the act of traveling between teaching venues/schools, and the constant unraveling my own forgetting. It’s not even the dates on the passes that remind of particular moments (which I could never figure out where the Metro Police looked in determining if the pass had in fact “expired”). It’s a similar sense of remembering in looking through my various English-language lessons, notes, student’s written work and drawings. I feel a strong sense of my once present state in laboring over lesson plans- at one time a currency in my own employability as an English instructor.
I am curious about this need, or rather, obsession with documentation. In our readings for the week, this notion of the archive and its linguistic roots in “secrecy” and privacy as described by Rolena Adorno. Adorno is more interested in a scholarly relationship between the University and the royal archive, including a layering and collection of knowledge. As with Lucas Hilderbrand’s text surrounding Youtube and cultural memory, there is also an underlying theme in renegotiating the bounds of an accessible internet site, and looking more closely as how privacy is accessed through a public domain.
The element of language becomes even more important in borrowing from Derrida this “quasi-illiteracy” of images with a textual analysis. This “in-between” space emerges (as discussed throughout this semester) in categorizing within the archive (and being able to effectively “search” through it). So, coming back to my own ideas around the archive and my time spent in Prague, I could never fully “collect” myself while living there (not to overly romanticize). I remember my cousin came to visit me while I was there and ended up making a “photo album” on facebook of the experience. I never managed to download one of my own, though. At the time, I didn’t think about it. It’s funny looking at the pictures now- I recognize landmarks (the Prague castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town area, the streets surrounding my neighborhood in Andel). I see my cousin and I, posed like many similar tourist pictures, occupying a sense of Prague.
There are visual markers, cues that cause me to reflect upon my time there, in that moment. It is also this inability in recognizing myself positioned within Prague. In many ways, I think back on my “unofficial” status as an undocumented worker. My language school paid me in cash once a month. No receipts. No documentation of my 60 plus hour workweeks. In many ways, like I’ve attempted to address earlier in this ramble of a post, my presence never could be fully recognized by the Czech government, including my own positioning in the sub-culture of English teachers in Prague. I never “belonged” and not that I desired or refused this sense of connection, but perhaps I could sense this transitory existence, my own replacement in an endless crop of expat English teachers.
So, hear I am left with dozens of metro receipts, all in various increments of Czech crowns. I can’t seem to throw them out. It’s my collection. Maybe the closest thing to remembering myself three years ago.
More fun at Machine Project
Mignonette Game Kit: Soldering Workshop
Saturday, November 21st, 2009
12pm – 3pm
In this workshop, each participant will assemble their own Mignonette Game kit, and learn to solder in the process. The Mignonette kit is a perfect introduction to soldering and electronics, with challenges for intermediate skill levels too.Taught by Rolf van Widenfelt, SF Bay Area engineer and co-designer of the Mignonette Game.
The Internet as Playground and Factory Conference
Ways to follow an interesting conference kicking off in NYC:
The tweet tag is #IPF09. Play the conference Twitter game, designed by Local No. 12 (http://twitology.org/).
Program: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22379814/Program-IPF09
The tweet tag is #IPF09. Play the conference Twitter game, designed by Local No. 12 (http://twitology.org/).
Program: http://www.scribd.com/doc/22379814/Program-IPF09
We will live stream one track of the conference. Tune in 11/13 and 11/14 10am to 5pm (EST). WNYC will record parts of the event and feature it on their website. (http://streamingculture.parsons.edu/)
A video welcome letter is on Seesmic.tv to which you can respond
(http://seesmic.tv/threads/dzijUisaPo). We are filming short video statements, "Voices from #IPF09"
(http://vimeo.com/user2103510/videos/sort:plays). Major credit for that goes to Assal Ghawami!!
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