Deliana's virtual cabinet of curiosities

Module 5 Paper Outline

2008-02-04T19:33:43Z

The Body and the Public

The Boundary Between Pornography and Art

1. In this essay I am going to focus on Nan Goldin’ s photograph “Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing” owned by Elton John, which, perceived as exhibiting an explicitly sexual content and categorized as a child pornography, was seized from an art exhibition by the British police, and subsequently gave rise to a tremendous public outcry.

The essay will examine the problematic boundary between art and pornography, which, I will argue, stems from difficulties with producing strict definitions for both terms.

- I will present some definitions of pornography (www.plato.stanford.edu) and some of the problems with defining it.

-I will briefly discuss what the traditional discussion on pornography centers on (Conservative, Liberal and Feminist arguments for or against it).

This case presents a new type of a problem with pornography and significantly adds up to discourses on the topic. Child pornography as a sub-category evades the clash of arguments and contrasting opinions that characterize the adult pornography genre - Conservatives, Liberals and Feminists unanimously agree that child-pornography is exploitative of children and are categorical that it should be banned. However, a new problem with child-pornography, as presented specifically by Goldin’ s work, arises- the difficulty of recognizing a pornographic material as such. According to some of the definitions of pornography provided, there are specific areas where pornographic and artistic content may overlap.

2. I will look at some of the forums for discussion that have been opened to present public reactions to the problem. They reveal a striking divergence on how the work is perceived- dubbed an “absolute pornography” by some, considered by others to be the image of just an innocent play, third grant it the excusatory (in this context) title of “art”. The wide range of opinions on the work, many of them contrasting, evoke important questions about the consequences of the overlapping of art and pornography elements : Can it be both an innocent (non-staged) play and still be used for pornographic purposes? Could you argue that just because it is art it could not be (ab)used to serve the functions of pornography? Could you have control on the way the art work (created with whatever intentions and for whatever purposes) will be perceived at the end: by some as an image of innocence and spontaneity, by others as a sexually stimulating material triggering sexual fantasies and impulses.

3. I will categorize the answers into positive and negative.

-The positive answers center primarily on content (the work is what it presents, no sex involved so it is not pornographic). This is highly problematic- content, I will argue, is not the sole factor that determines the way a work is interpreted and viewed.

I will talk about meaning as being socially and culturally constructed. I will use John Berger (Ways of Seeing) and Kenneth Clarke (on Nudity) to demonstrate how one and the same thing could be seen in two completely different ways.

Others argue that as an art work its meaning is determined by the intentions of the artist, and she obviously did not intend to create a pornographic material. Yet, here the vulnerability of content must be discussed- there can be no control on the way a work will be approached by the audience.

I will use Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” who discusses how the meaning of texts is constructed. This text is important for two reasons:

- it discusses the text as a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings blend and clash, writings drawn from many cultures

-it discusses the separation of the work from the author- a lack of a single “theological” meaning, the meaning is contingent on the viewer. In this sense Goldins work, which as a matter of fact includes the key material of every pornographic piece, could be given a meaning different from the original one and possesses the full capacity to also unproblematically serve a different, non-artistic function.

-here I might also include the implications of the original meaning of the work and its content being accessible only to the author- the scandal with the Bulgarian movie “Baklava” which features Bulgarian orphans. In one of the scenes two little boys are kissing. Only later, did the director explain that actually one of the kids is a girl and that they are a couple. However, this is not recognizable in the film, even from a second look. What acts stronger and is fundamental for our interpretation of the scene in this case: the reality or the impression?

- one of the participants in the forum, basing his argument again on content, argues that if this is pornography, then also all the Central European Baroque Churches adorned with naked playing putti also exhibit pornographic materials. Here, I will talk about the importance of the context in which a visual representation of exhibited- in terms of space and time. Goldin’s work is created and exhibited nowadays inside the parameters of a society facing the widely recognized problem of child-pornography/ moreover, the visual language of pornography could be recognized in the work, evoking immediate associations).

-The negative arguments present counter-arguments for the positive ones. They take into consideration:

-the importance of taking into account the diversity of the audience

-the fact that we are manipulated into, designed to, urged to (by the artist) to approach the work as gendered and sexualized subjects. We instantly recognize the visual language of pornography present in the work and we are forced to adopt the position which the artist has defined. One of the participants claims that this is just an allusion employed for artistic ends, but I will argue that if the allusion contains the capacity to serve the same purposes as what it alludes to then it is fundamentally the same thing.

-the awareness of the artist. She could have chosen a different angle in shooting the picture which would have created a different impression. She was fully conscious of the impact this view would create.

-(my argument) the work being called Belly-Dancing, not simply dancing or playing/this further narrows down the social and cultural context in which the work will be approached.

-the problem with the media- child pornography can be instantly recognized on the TV but what do we do when it is all left to our imagination.

-the establishment of a relationship between subject and object of view (I will focus a lot on this)

Douglas Crimp’s essay on Mappletorpe deals with that, The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing, The Body: Critical Concepts, The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality, texts that deal also with the importance of the historical context in conceptualizing the body.

4. By examining all the negative arguments I will attempt to explain how meaning of nudity is constructed in the public sphere. I will argue that understanding of the complex mechanisms of meaning construction and deciphering could be helpful in creating a clearer definition of child-pornography, and therefore a stricter and more explicit regulations about the creation of children’s images and their presentation in public space.

Module 4.3

2007-12-12T11:29:10Z

Problem Definition: How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?

It is our third week of research and the project now has a solid structure. We have formed a basic script and our first interviews have gone very well. In terms of research, we are completely focused on hotels and interior designers. The formulation of identity through architecture mixed with music within the modern hotel has become really intriguing. Following the interviews today, we are completely on track and up to date with out research. The interviews were informative, clear and useful, providing us with excellent material to use with our documentary. Thus far, all of our aims have been achieved. With the addition of our script (which we shall prepare in detail during the coming days), the documentary is on schedule and shaping nicely.

Extension and elaboration of the project

The most crucial aspect of this project is the script itself. This is the factor that binds everything else together. It was crucial that we organized a script early in order to give the project direction and structure. It is the building block. Seen as the documentary will last fifteen minutes, we decided to split our script into five different parts, each one lasting at least three minutes. This allows us to control our own input and keep track of various research material. It also eliminates any errors or mix ups of information.

Part 1

For the introduction, we had the idea to interview our fellow classmates about their views on identity construction with regards to hotels and musical architecture. The perceptions and associations of our culturally varied class will form the basis of our introduction, after which a more in depth and theoretical approach will become more central. The views of our fellow students on different music played in different hotels in various countries will form a nice introductory point upon which to expand. The placement of this point in the documentary will be subject to change as the final draught of the script takes shape. The particular question that we ask is “How do you imagine the person sitting in the lobby of a hotel playing this music? What is he wearing? What is he doing?” By asking these questions we aim to demonstrate the power of music to make us visualize the specificities of a setting. This is essential for the arguments we make in the rest of the documentary. Also, this approach allows us to combine theoretical information with practical demonstration on how the processes described in the readings we have done, actually work.

Part 2

The second part of the documentary will focus on music as an extension of interior design. This includes our interview with an individual involved in interior design who possesses an in depth knowledge of the industry and how it is intimately tied to music.

· Interview taken in the Coen Gorter Interieur Concepten

The manner in which the technical equipment used to generate music is placed inside a modern example of architecture is interesting. A CD player has now become a stylish accessory or addition to the private living space – maybe even a status symbol. Different music will generate a different atmosphere, in turn leading to various feelings about the space. This is especially important with regards to hotels where such an atmosphere can become the difference between customer satisfaction and revulsion.

Part 3

Part three of our research diary will deal with the historical aspect of background music. We will perform an in depth analysis of background music. This will include an overview of the development of such trends like Erik Satie’s “Furniture Music”. He was an avante-garde artist who experimented with music played during the intermission in the theatre. This is an important material for our documentary because it reveals important aspects of the development of background music. We will contrast today’s perceptions of background music with its initial reception. We will also use New York Times articles from the 40s and the 50s to analyze the growth of background music and the way in which it spread to factories and other public spaces. We will briefly introduce the history of the MUZAK corporation. Finally, we will talk about contemporary Muzak and it’s success. We will also mention “NO MUZAK”, an anti background music movement.

Part 4

Part four will be a comparative study. We intend to compare and contrast background music in two public spaces and how it affects customers in different ways. This will be achieved by observing music played in supermarkets and then comparing this to music played in hotels. The more relaxed music of the hotel environment functions in a different way. It constructs identity in a different way. Supermarkets tend to use more frantic or energetic tunes to stimulate their customers while hotels use relaxing music to allow their guests to feel at home. We will introduce the concept of “time inconsistency” in order to explain how music in stores operates.

Part 5

The final element of our rough script will be the interviews themselves. This means the people – the staff and the guests of the hotels as well as interior designers and other thoughtful contributors. Keep in mind that this is a rough idea of our script structure and it is highly likely that our interviews will be widely distributed throughout the documentary.

Research Strategy:

Our research strategy remains relatively unchanged from our last entry. We have tirelessly contacted hotels and arranged interviews as often as possible. Unfortunately, many hotel managers were unavailable but we managed to contact the most important ones. We introduced ourselves and asked our list of pre written questions, adding and querying whenever possible and appropriate. At all times, we made out subjects feel at home and comfortable, resulting in a large amount of accurate information. We have also searched the Internet and university libraries for sources on our topic and this led to the discovery of the New York Times articles dating from 1941. We are also trying to incorporate a technological aspect into our study and we will soon visit an interior design agency catered explicitly to technology mixed with lavish interiors. We are also working hard on our script but this is a time consuming and lengthy undertaking. The structure of the script was outlined above and we will continue to work on actual dialogue throughout the coming days. With regards to the interviews themselves, we asked several questions and they are outlined below. We altered the questions significantly from last weeks blog entry as objectives and aims became clearer.

Questions:

At what stage will you integrate music into your design plans?

Is there communication between the Interior Design artist and the music company?

Why do you change your CD every month?

What is the technical set up for music in your hotel?

Who determines the volume level and what are the factors?

How do you visualize the guests?

How has technology changed in your hotel?

Who communicates with the music company?

Research Results:

The results of our work cannot yet be analyzed but we are extremely satisfied with the way our interviews have transpired. We visited a hotel and an interior design office today and both participants gave lengthy detailed answers to our questions.

Hotels: Amrath Grand Hotel de l`Empereur, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Kruisherenhotel Maastricht

Interior Design Bureau: Coen Gorter Interieur Concepten

They spoke at length about their own feelings with regards to music and identity and how this is tied to interior design. The woman interviewed in the interior design office was most helpful and interesting, providing us with details of new developments in music and the interior, how her customers felt about music and the entire notion of musical architecture. She spoke about the finished product of interior design and how music can transform public spaces.

We also interviewed one staff member in a hotel. She spoke about different music being played at different times of the day and in different seasons. Additionally, she provided a thorough overview of the corporate process of music within the hotel industry and how different forms of music related to her guests. The research results were satisfactory. The sources are also excellent. The New York Times articles and the history of Erik Satie allow us to document the emergence of this unique form of music. Contemporary “Muzak” is present on many websites that we have found.

With regards to the technical work on our documentary we considered the following aspects:

-reflecting on our observations from Vincent van M.’s session we thought about the compatibility of our voices and considered using a different speaker in order to make the audio more harmonic and clear.

-As we are from different countries, we were worried that the unusual mixture of a Bulgarian and Irish accent may not function effectively and aimed to find voices with the most powerful effect on the listener. Reliability is important and a voice must be trustworthy. A listener must feel attracted to a voice and not distracted by it.

-Finally we decided that the documentary should be more personal and we decided to use our own voices.

-We also want to use background sounds to transport the listener into the world of our topic.

The literature, script and interviews must be combined however, for all of our research to bare fruit. At this stage, we are working well and on track. We plan several more interviews over the next few days and when these are completed, we will devote more time to the script and finally begin the editing process.

2007-12-05T18:47:26Z

Problem Definition: How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?

It has been one week since the submission of our basic proposal for the creation of a fifteen minute long radio documentary. Since then, the project has developed even further and the idea has become even more refined. After examining certain areas of the basic proposal, we decided to carry out our research in some key public spaces where the notion of identity construction is driven by different styles of architecture and interior design, intertwined with various forms of music. How do different kinds of music and interior design work together to forge different forms of identity? In order to answer this question we decided to look at some of Maastricht’s most popular hotels.

Places to examine:

-Amrath Grand Hotel de L’Empereur (interview appointed for Tuesday 11.12.07)

-Crowne Plaza Hotel

-Kruisherenhotel Maastricht (interview appointed for Tuesday 11.12.07)

-Novotel Maastricht

-Hotel Riche Valkenburg

While we intend to take interviews from the people in charge of the music selection in these hotels we will only use selected parts from two/three interviews as materials for our documentary. We will be careful not to overload it with factual information provided by various personalities. Instead, we will limit ourselves to presenting only two or three key figures introducing their experience to the listener.

Extension and elaboration of the project

During our visit in some of the abovementioned hotels, and as a result of the conversations we had with the representatives of the institutions, we observed several important details which made us re-consider the dimensions and some of the aspects of the project proposal we introduced last week. We came up with new ideas for the directions our documentary can take and for the issues to be discussed in it:

- We decided to focus specifically on the companies which provide the hotels with a selection of background music. Both in Amrath Grand Hotel and in Kruisherenhotel, CDs containing various music compilations are sent monthly.

- Therefore, in the interviews we have appointed for next week, we intend to find out more about the communication between the hotels and the companies in charge of preparing their background music. What are they looking for from a specific music selection to provide?/ What directions do they give to the companies in requesting music and what are their main requirements?/ What reasons do they have to adopt the monthly cycle scheme in the selection and change of background music (especially when considering that 1) this change will probably remain unnoticed by the guests whose visits, we assume, are less frequent, and that 2) the music is played so low that one can hardly hear it/focus on it/ listen to it and therefore notice that it has been changed). Who is in charge of communicating with the music companies and what is his position in the hotel? Do interior designers and music designers collaborate in constructing the experience of interior space? Or, do music designers complement the space constructed by interior designers being guided by the identity the latter have already created?

- We will attempt to contact some of the companies in charge of the background music in some hotels

- We will include a short presentation of the MUZAK company which first introduced this type of service in the United States: its history, strategies, concepts and aims.

Research Strategy:

In order to explore the manner in which identity is created through music in these hotels, we plan to interview the guests in order to document their thoughts on the role of music and how they are influenced by it. The next step will involve finding the individuals who are in charge of the music selection. We intend to ask them why they desire to play certain songs, how they act as an extension of interior design and of course, the desired effects on the guests.

We will also focus on the technological aspect of identity construction in these public spaces. We intend to ask questions about the audio techniques in use. What technologies are used in constructing the experience of interior space through music? How is music manipulated in order to produce a specific effect and to influence the experience of the guests in the desired way? Additionally, the notion of volume is very important. How do you choose between the adoption of music as an unostentatious background or as something immediate and having noticeable effects?

Questions:

What types of music do you choose to play in your institution and why?

What is the origin of your music?

To what extent can your music be considered and extension of the interior design of your institution?

Can you comment on the audio technology in use?

Do you alter the volume of the music?

What role does music play in constructing the experience of your hotel?

Why is music so low? And how exactly does it function if it is not designed to be listened to?

Do you think that your choice of music constructs a certain identity within your institution?

The script for this project will be presented in detail in the following entries of this weblog.

Literature:

“Time-inconsistent preferences and Consumer Self-Control”- Stephen Hoch and George Loewenstein

“Mood States and Consumer Behaviour: a Critical Review”- Meryl Paula Gardnes

Those will be useful in comparing the traditional purposes and strategies of Muzak as applied to places such as stores and supermarkets, with the employment of music in hotels. We will distinguish between two different types of Muzak in which the effects of music are designed to operate in different ways. We will compare the dynamics of these places as specifically determined by the music played in them.

(Chapter 12) “The Meaning of Music” in Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music- Simon Frith

-deals with the problem of the “meaning” of music/ aesthetic listening/ music and identity/ the application of adjectives in experiencing and interpreting music

(Chapter 12) “Visual and Acoustic Space”- M.McLuhan in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, ed. Ch. Cox and D. Warner

John Blacking!

“Musical Meaning and its Social Determinants” -Derrick Wright , Sociology 9(3) (1975) (paid article, not in the library!)

We will also focus on texts which regard the consummators of music as listeners and examine/challenge the notion of the listener in a hotel environment. What is the new position/role/meaning of music once it is not listened to?

Research Results:

Our project now has a solid structure and we want to visit these locations tomorrow in order to arrange interviews. Once this has been achieved, we intend to compile a series of questions. Once we have recorded all of the information required, we will then write a script and get to work on editing the radio documentary, putting together a comprehensive analysis of music's strategic role in constructing our experience of interior space.

Module 4.2

2007-12-05T09:59:34Z

How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?

It has been one week since the submission of our basic proposal for the creation of a fifteen minute long radio documentary. Since then, the project has developed even further and the idea has become even more refined. After examining certain areas of the basic proposal, we decided to carry out our research in some key public spaces where the notion of identity construction is driven by different styles of architecture intertwined with various forms of music. Do different kinds of music and interior design work together to forge different forms of identity? This is one of the key questions that needs to be answered and where better to begin than Maastricht's most luxurious hotels - places bearing 4 stars and the realm of the wealthy.

What role does music play within these establishments? Is it a factor that will lure guests into the hotel, reassuring them of their place in society and the quality of their accommodation? Or on the other hand, does a certain form of music upset the atmosphere and lead to discontent? In order to explore the manner in which identity is created through music in these hotels, we plan to interview the guests in order to document their thoughts on the role of music and how they are influenced by it. The next step will involve finding the individuals who are in charge of the music selection. We intend to ask them why they desire to play certain songs, how they act as an extension of interior design and of course, the desired effects on the guests. We hope to involve hotels like Amrath Grand Hotel de L`Empereur, Crowne Plaza Hotel, Novotel and Hotel Riche Valkenburg.

After researching the role of music in hotels, we intend to move in a completely different direction. How is identity constructed in the pubs of Maastricht? Do different types of music attract different types of people? We intend to analyse this problem in several ways - one of which will be interviewing staff in an Irish pub. These establishments are deeply associated with Irish identity and it will be fascinating to investigate the extent of the musical presence and its effects on cultural identity. The relationship between aural and visual aspects within the pub will be key to the construction of an identity, and it will be even more interesting if people feel detached from Maastricht and enveloped in Irish culture.

Module 4.1 Project Proposal

2007-11-28T10:03:50Z

In our first discussion from Module 1 we attempted to find out how music can be approached as a technology of the self. We talked about the power of music to evoke and heighten emotions, to shape or change moods. Then we focused specifically on the relationship between music and space, and established this problem as our primary learning objective. Music, as we all agreed on the basis of our personal experience, has the capacity to transform perceptions of space and time. Also, by taking our personal music collection with us out on the street via MP3 players or walkmans, music can be employed as a means of defining private and personalized zones (“bubbles”) amidst public space. In consent with Michael Bull’s observations on the influence of music on our perceptions of the world around and its “aesthetisizing” potential, we mentioned that music often produces a kind of a cinematic experience of the world, by serving both as a soundtrack and as a colour filter giving the observed the nuance of our own emotions. Our personal experiences with music, shared during the pre-discussion, also significantly overlapped with the personal accounts given by DeNora’s interviewees. The author prompts her subjects of investigation to define their moods and emotions, to analyze and deconstruct their experiences, to explain exactly how the impact of music feels and works, how a specific effect of music is produced in them.

Understanding of the ways in which the personal mechanisms of perception operate is central to the practices of various commercial organizations. In hotels, fashion stores and bars, along with the visually transmitted message of interior design, music is employed as a co-element in constructing the image of a place. Awareness of the set of subconscious associations linking various types of music with a specific group, community or a class, cement music as the founding element in creating the identity of interior space. Therefore, we will use the following problem statement as the basis of our documentary:

How is music strategically employed in constructing our experience of interior space?

In our investigations we will focus explicitly on hotels, fashion stores, supermarkets and bars. In places of this kind music often serves as a form of interior design in itself, a type of acoustic architecture which has the power to influence consumer behavior and to trigger an impulse for identification. Our explorations on this issue are centered on the realization that aural and visual aspects work in unison to define various cultural identities.

The materials for our project consist of a selected list of academic sources, as well as interviews from the Muzak decision-makers of Kruisherenhotel, the H&M store, Albert Heijn and random people. We will consider the different kinds of effect scaused by different kind of muzak within various surroundings.

Reflections on Module 3

2007-11-23T17:16:27Z

At the end of this module I am thinking about the issues raised in our discussion classes, which I would probably like to get back to in future.

First of all, I would like to think more on the discussion on socialization as afforded by online activities that we had in one of our classes. As part of both our pre- and post-discussion of Assignment 4 we outlined the main characteristics of online communities centered not only around the practice of gaming but also on various other interests. We briefly worked out a set of pros and cons, mentioning both advantages and disadvantages. Many questions have been raised, most of them of the sort of “Could internet relationships possibly be as “real” and deep as the real ones?” and “Isn’t there something missing in virtual contacts?”; most of them betrayed a conspicuous and palpable sense of suspicion. Thinking about this later, and attempting to formulate my own more or less categorical stance, I decided that the best way to put it would be this one:

The question whether to log in to the virtual chat room, a place providing the unique opportunity to meet people located often at the other end of the world, or not to log in, is essentially the choice whether to meet these people or not. Often, the chat room is the only way to connect to them, to get to know them, and, more importantly, to find out that they exist at all. The issue of limitations, I believe, is a secondary one and only comes next. Instead of being overly critical towards the limited possibilities for elaboration of human relationships that online communication provides, we can probably consider how other platforms for communication in internet and outside the virtual realm compensate for these limitations. We know very well by our personal experience that each platform satisfies a different need: emails predispose to one type of communication, Facebook messages to another one, Skype voice conversations to a third one, and so on. Not to mention that for me, personally, the chat room has often been the starting phase of a relationship which I would subsequently transfer to the “real” life. To make it even more convenient and responding to my needs, if I feel disappointed by my real-life encounter with a “virtual” contact, I can always bring it back to the internet realm and choose a communication type that allows me to communicate just as much as I want. The right word to describe i-net communication is, thus, not limited but variegated, it allows for flexibility in communicating and gives you the possibility to regulate degrees of proximity by changing various communication modes.

2 ) What caught my interest in the examination of game communities was the “self-regulatory” character of some social formations established within games such as the “guilds”. In future research I would like to pay more attention to the qualities and character of these virtual societies, the way they are structured and the principles on which they operate. It is interesting to know more about these in-game terrains in which new rules for communication and collaboration complementing the official rules of the game, are introduced and guarded by the players themselves (In-game control and corrective as provided by the games themselves). When I first heard about this, in one of our discussion classes, the first association to pop up into my mind was the collaborative construction of the virtual encyclopedia Wikipedia, based on the principle of user-generated content, where everyone bears the responsibility of not only providing but also controlling and correcting content. It possesses a similar self-regulatory character. Could this be further elaborated and used in understanding the principles on which virtual group centered around a common interest/aim operate, or is it a mere formal similarity between two virtual terrains otherwise completely different in terms of character, communication and aims?

3 )Equally useful for the purposes of this module would be to think not only about games themselves but also on the very books of games. To think about methodology and critical approaches, about the possibility for critical distance as well. Some of the books from the bibliography, in my opinion, displayed an overly positive and optimistic position about the character, effect and future of games. They seemed to be implicitly defensive in tone, aware of the aureole of suspicion surrounding computer games. One of the texts, for example, boldly stated that computer games have the potential to (even!) develop leadership skills. I would like to think more about the necessity to reconsider, reformulate, and adapt traditional terminology before transporting (applying) it directly to this non-traditional and still quite young field. Media theorist boldly produce radical statements about the ‘social” aspects of games by often assuming “socialization” to be the mere act of talking, typing, speaking: but what do you talk about? How do you talk about it?- this is not that extensively discussed.

In writing my essay on violence and aggression for this module, I realized that a more intensive dialogue between the disciplines of media and psychology is needed in order for both of them to work out in collaboration adequate analytical approaches and to increase the credibility and objectivity of the statements they produce.

Games and aggression

2007-11-12T22:09:13Z

MATERIALS:

ON HUMAN NATURE AND AGGRESSION:

-propensity for aggression (the impact of the environment)

-having the instinct or rather having a motive to kill?

-violence and aggression: inherent to human nature or manifested in specific circumstances

-motives for violence and aggression

Post-reflections Module 2

2007-10-23T07:13:41Z

At the end of module 2 I would like to return to the beginning on Module 1 and think more about art. I started my introduction with the statement that art does not make a difference and at the end of Module 2 I feel that a correction is needed, the realization of my own generalization and lack of precision being a testimony to the value of the material. It made me re-consider my stances. I am still ready to argue that much of the art produced in the 20^th century, while predominantly critical and oppositionist in its nature, was lacking in capacity to bring about change. I am equally inclined to think that it is precisely its oppositionist character that made it unable to produce a real effect. Much of the avant-garde art which I referenced in the introduction modeled its character upon the character of something/something else, employing the ancient Greek mode of self-definition "We are what we are not". Yet among the numerous works commenting on previous artistic traditions a new type of performance emerged whose aim was to explore and challenge perceptions, to reveal relationships, to rouse the senses, to produce awareness- the performance pieces of Gina Pane, Yoko Ono, Chris Burden. The digital art works that we examined in this module appear to provide the continuation of the same project- they do change something in the way we perceive the world. They make us re-consider the fixed notions we handle in thinking about it; they have a strong revelatory power. More about digital art and interactive installations you can find in my essay on Bubbles (Bubbles.doc). My personal position, however, is that by adopting the mode of interaction they significantly diverge in purpose and effect from much of the art of the 20^th century.

-So far I have been engaged in the examination of video as a time-based media. I have examined its capacity to produce meaning by handling time as an artistic material. Now I would be interested to focus on the various means it employes in commenting on the notion of space (the way the interactive installation "Bubbles" comment on real and virtual spaces).

Some of the things that I would like to go back in future are:

1. A contradiction that I found in the text "Online Games Grab Grim Reality" by Matthew Mirapaul. The 3 co-authors of the "9-11 Survivor" game stated that their goal in creating the game was to "re-interpret a historical moment". They "hoped an immersive, interactive version would restore an immediacy to the day's horrors". Yet, despite the serious intentions of the work ,the tremendous outcry with which it was greeted indicated that the audience could not disregard the very format in which the authors chose to realize their task. One can easily see how the very play element in itself could be considered disturbing. As comments indicate, for the majority of people it is clearly unthinkable to associate tragedy with play. What particularly interested me, however, is the juxtaposition provided in Mirapaul's text of this with another stance. Scott Leonard, the founder of the Dteam 3D Design Team comments on the game "Doom for Columbine": "we`re just trying to make a statement. We're trying to say, it's just a game." A question I would like to consider is "What counts as a pure game and what counts as an art project?" and "How do we distinguish between them?'. Does it matter if we are aware or not of the purposes of the author? The medium of game appears to reach a stage in which it parallels a tendency in conceptual art which invites us to read the label first in order to be instructed on how to approach the artwork. What are the consequences of this?The three students hoped to restore the "immediacy to the day's horrors": Why want to restore immediacy to this tragedy and how does one benefit from this? In what ways does putting ourselves in the shoes of the 9/11 victims run contra to sympathy?

2. I would also be interested to examine the impact of violence in games on users and would like to consider whether the ubiquitous representations of violence in various media do have their reflection on society as it has often been stated.

3. I would like to examine in more detail Huizinga's theory on play. I have partly commented on it in my art review on "Bubbles".

4. I would like to consider the question: "To what extent can we approach games as an art form?"

MATERIALS:

Yves Klein, Leap Into the Void, 1960

*To be examined with reference to digital photography and its potential to manipulate content.

* To be examined in the context of "reality".

* The "unreality" of the Klein's photograph constitutes a significant part of its meaning and message.

about symbols, the habituation to images and the impulse to document

2007-10-03T06:06:49Z

Yesterday, at the start of the "Real Virtualities" module we discussed the impact which media coverage of events of world-wide significance, such as the terrorist attacks from September 11, have on our perceptions of what is real. An interesting tendency that the text from Assignment 1 specifically refers to is the "habituation to images" which accompanies the process of dynamic circulation and rapid change of visual material in the coverage of important news. Initial shock and subsequent habituation are seen as the polar ends of the emotional gamut within which our responses to the television coverage of tragic events take place. In unison with this note acknowledging the lack of a single and universal reaction to images, and favouring instead a model of gradual transformation of attitudes, Patricia Mallencamp claims that while initially producing anxiety "television coverage of catastrophe also has a therapeutic effect"(quoted in King,2005).

Another aspect of media coverage that the text focuses on, and that I would find interesting to examine in future research, is the gradual transformation of the image into a symbol; the point where an image begins to encompass much more than what it visually represents. Only two years after the terrorist attacks in the United States, to give just one example and one not necessarily linked to the imagery-theme, 9/11 entered as an official term the Longman Disctionary of Contemporary English. This rapid transformation of a whole event into a byword provides the clearest illustration of the act of symbolization that the text refers to. The notion of the symbol considered in this context is interesting. While on the one hand, the symbol (or the sign, as it is traditionally defined by semiotics) suggests an expanded vision of the fragment of reality provided by the visual representation of an event, on the other hand, it refers to the flattening of the image: a single shot encapsulates a whole tragic event. In the course of time, we remember the images from an event and we are able to instantaneously recognize an event from its visual representations, but the real-life experience (even our own) of how it all happened and how it all felt fades away. By becoming accustomed to the images that media provides us with we become less sensitive to the pain, to the tragedy, to the real-life aspects and implications that we found so striking when first experiencing the event. Without elaborating too much on this question in my blog I would just like to consider whether the "deadening of the initial impact" necessarily has to do with the repetitiveness of images and media or is rather a naturally occurring stage of reconciliation with the facts as they are. Then, as a counterexample, the 9/11 Survivor game (www.selectparks.net/911survivor) pops into my mind: it turns into a game what only recently it was too hard to even talk about.

During our first class of this module we also considered important to examine the means by which media determines the proximity between news consumer and news material: how it influences our definition of ourselves as either participants or spectators in respect to the material we observe. I would be more interested to examine a different position and a different stage of the event: I would like to consider the very moment of action and the ones involved in it. This, I believe, is the moment most revealing of the scale and nature of the impact which media has on us. What is it that makes us think about media in moments of shock and of danger? What is it that makes us want to film (to document) an event while our life or the lives of those around us are endangered? Both in the attacks from 9/11 and in the bombings in the London Tube, people involved in the event either directly or as witnesses filmed it with their mobile phones. Only minutes after escaping death by miracle and witnessing the death of tens of others, survivors in the London underground filmed the scene of the tragedy while making their way out through the tunnel. It is in these moments that our involvement with media becomes most apparent. Media makes us think about media.

Of course there are important ethical and moral dimensions that can be considered here but it is the very impulse to film in moments of shock and of danger that, I think, deserve our attention. In it interesting in this context to note how the very notion of "being informed" expands with the development of media and its attempts to achieve immediacy in which it increasingly relies on eye-witnessed accounts and encourages amateur journalism. To what extent and how exactly does the filming of death ( and very often the individualized death of recognizable people such as those jumping from the burning towers and those dieing helplessly in the underground) enhances our knowledge of a given event? How is it useful as information? Is there an ethical and respectful distance to death which should be kept in providing visual representations of tragic events? I feel that through the popularization of "subjective" material as valued information disseminated along with the materials of traditional press death often becomes a curiosity.

Reflections on Module 1

2007-09-28T00:19:44Z

So, here is the end of Module 1 ! Four weeks of dynamic introduction into media and the transformations it has undergone so far. I have greatly enjoyed out discussions in class, which I quite honestly found very inspiring, and I often found myself thinking about the issues that we considered long after the end of the class. While, I am not sure that I can comment on each assigment that we have had during these four weeks ( like many of you have done and "hey, well done!"), I do want to mention an interesting tendency that I noticed this week. At a certain point I realized that, as a result of this module, I have not only accumulated a solid mass of information on media but also the way I react on the information that I constantly get from the news on media has changed. What only several weeks ago I would have passed as "curious" but irrelevant or unimportant, now I see as an occurance in a specific context. I see the problem in things (tendencies, practices) and I am able to link it to other problems in media culture. Thus, for example, in the beginning of September I read in Netinfo.bg a short "just to let you know" kind of an article on how the compromising pictures of a girl, found in her lost camera, were disseminated in You Tube. I would have normally approached this information as a tragic accident with highly dramatic consequences. Thinking about it now I approach it from the perspective, for example, of participatory culture (my first association). I think about the "vulnerability" of content, about the issue of authorship in practices such as blogging(which as all of us already know can be so problematic), I think about how participatory applications In Internet allow others to participate with you (you as a content) even without your own knowledge. And then we talk about "democratic potential" but how many texts from our bibliography talk about the right to protect yourself ("you" as an individual, not merely the content one has provided in Internet)?

Oh well, this is just an example illusrating what I mean. I`m curious to see what follows and I hope it will be as challanging as it has been so far! In the meantime you might be interested to read my essay on the Yerrow Arrow project, my last assignment and culmination of the first module :

Happy birthday "smiley"!

2007-09-20T09:00:29Z

Yesterday, Smiley celebrated its 25th anniversary! It was on September 19, 1982 that the happy face, composed of a bracket (smile), colon (eyes) and a dash for a nose, was first invented and put into use by the Carnegie Mellon University research professor Scott Fahlman. Since Smiley's first introduction into the virtual realm, numerous variations of the "happy" theme have been elaborated. The so called emoticons, now also comprising a sad, crying, confused and many other versions of Smiley, constitute traslations of human emotions into combinations of characters and numerical signs, which have now turned into an integral part of the vocabulary of the chat room, the text message and the email.

The need to give a most realistic representation of human emotions have resulted in the subsequent expansion of the series of faces and the creation of animated emoticons.They all testify for the attempt to augment the expressive possibilities of the internet user, who approaches the net not only as field of information but also as one of communication. Emoticons betray an impulse to "humanize" and make less abstract the virtual space.

The consequences of the visual

2007-09-18T09:57:45Z

There is a principle in science according to which the abnormal or impaired functioning of one of a person's senses leads to the increased acuteness of another sense. Thus, people who have lost their sight, for instance, become more attentive to the flow of aural signals the ear constantly receives from the world around and develop increased sensitivity to sound. I was reminded of this principle while reading the Introduction of Susan Douglas` book on the development of radio and especially American radio culture throughout the 20^th century- a sentimental (at times) and "romantic" (as she herself calls it) work which provoked in me an equally sentimental reaction. [...]

Introduction: my virtual cabinet of curiosities

2007-09-12T20:47:00Z

my "kaleidoscopic" virtual space of knowledge and inspiration.

I write about something that is here and now- Media Culture; a live and pulsating matter that is transforming itself in the very moment I am writing. And that makes a difference- both what I am saying and what I am commenting upon. Art, I have come to realize, does not make a difference- a verdict which at first sounds much crueler than it actually is, and which, it has to be stressed, by no means diminishes its value. The referential nature of art inevitably results in its alienation from reality and robs it of its capacity to bring about change. While art reflects socio-political, cultural and aesthetic processes and tendencies, attitudes and positions, it can not be a fully "here-and-now" phenomenon, nor can it be a starting point. Because reflection is always an end point and referring always requires a look back.

All this is meant to function as an introduction to this new chapter in my life- the passage from art history to media culture. I enter a field of perpetual transformation, guided (whatever the consequences) by the need to elaborate and improve...In a way, I feel that I do step into a more creative field.

Well, this weblog is all about me having fun and feeling inspired. Do not search for consistency! I enjoy the idea of constructing a "kaleidoscopic" space of randomly composed but precious bits and pieces, my little cabinet of curiosities, a patchwork whose pieces will be re-used and one day will probably form the nucleus of a more substantial work. Feel free to use my "bits and pieces", let`s all be bricoleurs and see how Deuze` s "bricolage" works!