vog blog::vlog

::structuralisms::

that are useful for today and last weeks lectures (modernism, postmodernism, structuralism and poststructuralism). well, last week was structuralism. so this week i'm starting with a potted introduction to modernism and then into postmodernism. i'll probably use some local architecture to provide examples and the theory of postmodernism i'll use is jenck's double coded theory (this turns up a pretty decent list). i use this because it does seem to me to be approachable, students can understand it, and it does seem to account for the manner in which postmodernism is received (that is how readers read/use it).

emphasise that modernism is about the rational, international in ambition, rather top down in its assumptions, has a normative agenda (usually progressive) and has a fascination with formal properties and qualities (sort of 'art for arts sake').

postmodernism is the rediscovery of the contingent and local, is bottom up (sort of), may still have a normative agenda but is now aware of the terms of the creative contract (hopefully - in other words what it might mean culturally and politically to write in english if you're a postcolonial african author). some of this stuff seems to be sketched out at http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html.

then i'll move into poststructuralism. last week i got quite nitty gritty into saussurean semiotics. stressed how meaning is arbitrary, generated by absence and that a key feature of structuralism is the ismorphic granularity of the parts (well, i didnt' quite describe it like that). but that the priniciples that allows words to be built is more or less the same structural principles that allow sentences to form, and so on into larger structural units.

tossed in langue and parole (there is an overview of structuralism at bedford st. martins, a united states college text book publisher) and discussed how parole requires langue but that langue is only ever produced in and by parole (always liked that one). moved that into a discussion of genre which helps give the theory some meat.

finally did a structural anthropology thing on kinship and its relation to the social categorisation of animal species showing how the incest taboo informs animal dietary taboos, and teased that one out a bit more in terms of land/air versus water and then the possible roll of lollies (sweets) in that particular economy. always a winner that one.

so that was structuralism (somewhere in all that going to have join it up to hypertext aren't we?). so here comes poststructuralism.

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem11.html and there's a frame page at http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/semiomean/semio1.html which seems useful.)

here i want to touch on the linguistic turn in theory, the contextual nature of meaning, the role and privilege of the unconscious in the role of identity formation, how the indvidual loses their centrality in the idea of the subject, and the way in which this work problematises humanism. from here i'll introduce derrida as a key figure of poststructuralism and that deconstruction is one of the key terms of poststructuralism. i'll describe deconstructive practice as that which identifies the inadequacy of any text's claim to closure and self sufficiency (the logic of the supplement is good here). describe deconstructive practice as that which identifies this moment of fracture which is always present within any text and how this moment undermines the self presence of the work.

http://www.geocities.com/kristisiegel/theory.htm has a good range of material.

i need to find a decent example of différence as a key deconstructive term (to defer and to differ) and it's problematisation of saussurean semiotics and the implications of this for contemporary critical practice. this will need to go through derrida's work on presence and i'll use thought - speech - writing - new media as the series to make this concrete.

http://pratt.edu/~arch543p/help/Derrida.html and john lye again: http://www.brocku.ca/english/courses/4F70/deconstruction.html

books

Descombes, Vincent. Modern French Philosophy. Trans. L. Scott-Fox and J.M. Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 1982.

Weedon, Chris. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989.

Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Methuen, 1988.

Selden, Raman. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 2nd ed. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1985.

they're all old books because i probably stopped reading about deconstruction in 1990 or so. there are obviously much more recent ones.

structuralisms
::29 Apr 2002 11:29::

::year zero one::

the blurb:

year zero one
::26 Apr 2002 9:00::

::new cinema project::

its obvious and i'm not sure why i haven't seen it before. i'm going to run a cinema studies subject that basically uses a blog with a vog. it will be a close reading of a film, or perhaps a director, or perhaps a genre. the students will be able to incorporate the relevant parts of the film into their project within their blog.

i'm already using blogs with my students in honours, with great success, but being able to add film in there is obvious and really useful for them.

new cinema project
::26 Apr 2002 9:00::

::more tindertips::

is a new feature on the eastgate site for collecting and commenting about uses of tinderbox.

more tindertips
::26 Apr 2002 9:00::

::netzwissenschaft::

netzwissenschaft is a german portal with a rather large pile of links to researchers, projects and stuff in new media. i'm in there, so must be doing something right.

netzwissenschaft
::22 Apr 2002 10:24::

::national museum::

the national museum in canberra. mmm. found it emotional, confusing, and somewhere in there like i've gone through a propaganda machine that is in fact a celebration of australianess.

[and this could just be me fulfilling australia's tall poppy syndrome, where something very good needs to be cut down to size.]

a collage of history, culture, ecology, aboriginality. layer textured images, objects, signs, artefacts, sounds, people, screens, buttons.

invisibilities: explanation.

saturated mircronarratives that are about the experience of an idea of australian-ness that come oh ever so close to celebration. do i mourn the loss of the always already pseudo objectivity or empiricism of the old museum. ostentatious collections of everything catalogued? why am i suspicious of museum as ikea?

national museum
::21 Apr 2002 22:11::

::idea for a new curriculum::

in hypertext theory and practice develop a creative project that students do, and then the follow up work is to write a critical (theoretical) piece on their creative work. if possible would be good to then do a third work which is creative again.

this is to let students find the relation of practice and theory.

the creative work is to use image and text with significant constraints. the first one i can think of is an image work and the first set of readings afterwards would be scott mccloud.

idea for a new curriculum
::19 Apr 2002 11:19::

::rewriting2::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra

the smafe project is a set of applied tools that put the reader and writer in new positions in relation to the object of study.

the potemkin engine is a simple content analysis tool that has applied metadata to the odessa steps sequence from "battleship potemkin". this lets you find specific content within the sequence, though the only content we have encoded for are specific graphic elements (more or less as defined by eisenstein in his writings).

the searchers engine frames a specific claim around john ford's "the searchers" and has encoded the film, this makes the smafe engine a hermeneutic engine, knowledge engine. and we intend it to be student driven.

rewriting2
::19 Apr 2002 10:28::

::rewriting::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra

a vog is video writing. interactivity is always inside the video. text and image is bought together to be bought apart. it concentrates (at the moment) on documentary and analytical critical work.

documentary because the rules of combination and continuity are much easier than in fiction.

analytical critical work because it provides a set of tools to do things like annotate the digitised film in itself (write on the film surface). this is a current work in progress.

by using a vog, for instance on a specific film, the object of study (film) is incorporated into the space of writing. this incorporation is often misunderstood as an inclusion that literally incorporates the film. however this is not the case, by bringing the film and the writing about the film into such proximity the distance between each is exacerbated.

it also suggest another methodology.

rewriting
::19 Apr 2002 10:27::

::vog literacy::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra

to be literate in a vog is to recognise each of these as basic givens or conditions of the medium. these are immanent to the environment, that is they are not imposed as artificial constraints from outside of what it might mean to be vog literate (to be literate in desktop networked interactive video).

the screen is a domestic space: someone elses

the content is distributed

content is collaged

the domestic computer screen is collaged

content is montaged

the domestic computer screen is montaged

bandwidth (time and file and attention) poor

editing becomes deferred to somewhere else

to write like this is not about inspiration

there is something that is posthuman about writing like this (a writing that removes the egocentrism of thinking that an 'i' writes)

traditional notions of narrative pleasure are radically problematised (where is narrative pleasure if there is no closure?)

this then leads into a specific academic/pedagogic practice with one, no two, aspects...

vog literacy
::19 Apr 2002 10:24::

::hypertext::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra.

i usually work in hypertext. i work on hypertext, in hypertext, about hypertext. i teach hypertext. i teach hypertextual literacies (using the definition of literacy i've already described)

obviously multilinear, decentred, rhizomatic, open, plural. dissolves boundaries and also assumes certain rights and requirements of or for the reader. [the open and n-1.]

what might it be to take this sort of work (what i would call a hypertextual writing practice (which is not html authoring)) and apply it into video?

i end up with vogs

and vog literacy

hypertext
::19 Apr 2002 10:17::

::neologism::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra

there are various words that i'm currently using to name the research and crtical practice that i'm currently undertaking.

interactive cinema, interactive video, networked video, networked interactive video, desktop cinema, desktop video, distributed networked interactive video, domestic interactive video, kinecriture, videcriture, video blog::vog

and the slogan goes something like "dziga vertov with a mac and a modem"

i'm interested in what it might mean to be vog literate.

neologism
::19 Apr 2002 9:33::

::literacy::

sketch for the cameo conference at the university of canberra.

i'm going to assume that we're all cinema literate.

literarcy is often considered (even when we pretend it isn't) as about reading. the example of the internet (email, community, html) is that it is not. it is about writing.

so digital literacy is made up of

computer literacy (software/operating systems)

network literacy (using the networked nature of the network)

digital (rhetorical) literacy

students (and staff) need and ought to be literate in all of these and this is digital literacy. and they need to be domestic literacies (literacies of the everyday).

and then...

literacy
::19 Apr 2002 9:33::

::startup dot com::

watched chris hegedus and jehane noujaim's 'startup.com' (produced by da pennebaker) on dvd.

startup dot com
::15 Apr 2002 9:00::

::really::

some spam that arrived today:

Dear Writer,

MultiSensory Technology Corporation is developing a software engine that can automatically extract and rank over 130 unique emotions from plain text! - Improve your writing - Determine if your work expresses what you intended - Get new ideas and stimulate your creativity Try it out for FREE! (for a limited time only...) http://www.mstcorporation.com Please tell us what you think too! We would love to hear from you. MultiSensory Technology Corporation
31841 Via Coyote Trabuco Canyon,
CA 92679
(949) 713-2869
info@mstcorporation.com
=================
To be removed from our list please reply with "remove" in the subject line. We will immediately update our list accordingly.
=================

i am, as they say, gobsmacked. but you'd have to worry about any company that writes that it can can rank over 130 unique emotions. i mean, if they're unique how can they be ranked? and does it mean 130 different emotions? since all my emotions are already, well, unique. would be fun to write a story with it, to let it write the story...

really
::12 Apr 2002 21:41::

::losslessvideo::

Don't have a url for this, so this is the email thing i saw:

LOSSLESS VIDEO also posts events, seminars, festivals and media art grants.

LOSSLESS VIDEO exists as both, a Message Board on the BBS and as a mailing list. Interested parties have the choice to subscribe either to the list, OR just to follow the threads on the site which is located in the "Threads" section of THE THING at http://bbs.thing.net

+++++++++++++++++ HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: ++++++++++++++++++

SUBSCRIBE: send a mail to majordomo@bbs.thing.net with no subject, write subscribe losslessvideo into the message body.

losslessvideo
::10 Apr 2002 16:22::

::future rule::

there's a symposium on next week which i'm organising. i'm also participating in it as a contributor. this is a mistake. there are a 100 + 1 things that need doing for the symposium to make it happen but i'm spending my time working on what i'm presenting, how, etc. i can't do both, i'm not able to do both, and one gets in the way of the other. i am not going to do this again, and if it weren't so late in the day i'd actually withdraw from being a participant.

future rule
::10 Apr 2002 11:20::

::poemsthatgo::

i have a new vog in the current issue of poems that go. this one is part of a series that i've been working on that are largely an exploration of the 'la jetee' effect. deleuze in cinema one has defined the cinema as made up of movement images. these express or are a qualitative change in a whole (the experience of time as qualitative change). this suggests that movement in cinema is not the perceptual representation of movement but is the qualitative change of, or that is, duration. this is why la jetee is a film and not, for instance, a slide show. (if you don't know, la jetee is a film by chris marker that is nearly completely made from filmed photographs.)

so, the vog in poems that go is part of a series i've been working on that instead of using video as their source material i've relied on digital still images. i've imported these into imovie and then generally exported them adding some film noise to the quicktime (they're usually obviously not cinematic, but it's part of the questioning of what is or isn't a movie and movement). i slice them up as usual.

this particular one is actually a series of photographs of a sketch that i did, a woman's face with stars and then tears. sort of like what what chagall have made if he were an animator. there are 4 soundtracks and 3 text tracks added. the text tracks all run right to left across the screen, and as you mouse into each text track the current soundtrack is unloaded and a new one loaded.

this is completely different to my collins street movie, where all three soundtracks are contained in the one movie. here i've got one movie with one soundtrack, and then three soundtracks that are all stored externally and are only loaded if and when they're requested. the soundtracks simply narrate what the text track writes, but as you play it you produce a tissue of sounds as you mouse over the tracks. the movie loops, so that it is possible to hear each soundtrack in its entirety (after all a movie with 3 soundtracks which doesn't loop becomes problematic in terms of reading, though certainly appropriate in some contexts).

poemsthatgo
::10 Apr 2002 10:08::

::4.4 videoex::

swiss based annual festival/competition and symposium on experimental video with a digital concentration.

4.4 videoex
::8 Apr 2002 15:47::

::4.4geobodies::

site dedicated to work on gender and geography, by ursual biemann. includes video work.

4.4geobodies
::8 Apr 2002 14:27::

::8.4 lecture::

for today's lecture in hypertext i'm talking about 'what is hypertext'. have bought a copy of cortázar's "hopscotch" to show and will also of course mention dictionaries, encyclopedia's and the like. none of which i actually think are hypertexts.

as part of the process based teaching i'm going to get them to write a short answer to "what is hypertext" and then at the end of the lecture get them to answer it again, so that the difference (if there is any) between their first and second answer ought to be some indication of what they've just had to think about. and if they don't have any differences or no new answers then i want that bought to the tutes this week and that will form the basis of the tutes.

i'm way behind with my teaching, haven't been able to develop resources for them (online for instance). been rather buried in organising events around mark's visit, school holiday's with my kids, and writing conference papers and book chapters.

rather than lament and whip myself here i'm going to work out a strategy to ensure that students do what i've been suggesting they needed to do all long - learn how to find things for themselves. so the first thing i'm doing this week is inviting all students to make a list of the articles/essays/web sites they've been reading/finding to help them with this subject and to hand this in so i can compile a list for everyone else. i could use the email list for this but it's too easy for them to slip through there, these students have a lot respect for paper and the authority of the author so that's how i'll approach it.

i wonder when one of them will find this vlog and share it round?

8.4 lecture
::8 Apr 2002 9:40::

adrian.miles@uib.no | adrian.miles@rmit.edu.au

vogwurk + werdwurk
glimpsed: [] melbourne time

innland

akademic werds

linklists

utland

vogs

archives

4.2002

vogwurk + werdwurkglimpsed: [] melbourne time

innland

akademic werds

linklists

utland

vogs

archives

4.2002

vogwurk + werdwurk
glimpsed: [] melbourne time