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» Reminder — Project 2 tasks due : Rhet. Analysis, Reflection, Proposal
Stage III Assemblage Testimony
Project: “MemeMorial”
M 03-Nov Discuss Electronic Monuments Preface + “Introduction: The EmerAgency”
- Re-read/review for overview (PDF in D2L)
- New focus + method (Project 3) introduced
W 05-Nov Read/discuss: Electronic Monuments Chp 1 “Metaphoric Rocks (Founding Tourists)”
- Focus: EmerAgency; “target” (project) — MemeMorial
- Discussion leaders:
- 028: Tyler & Meagan
- 034: Zach & Kenneth
— Method for invention: “CATTt” (from Introduction))
→ for blogging, shift “network witness” focus (from group to individual concern, social problem)
F 07-Nov Read/discuss: E.M. Chp. 2 “The Traffic Sphere (A MEmorial Prototype)”
- Focus: Disaster/Accident; MEmorial “peripheral”
- Discussion leaders:
- 028: Tamarah
- 034: Iris
» Due: Blog entry — begin “network witness” (comment optional)
» Network Witness (blog tasks)
- “Monitor the daily news” — and social network(s)? — to “find a report or story that troubles you or stings you in some way.
Document the story and do some research on the background of the problem and the policy issues related to it.” (65)- “gather details” — material signifiers (as discussed from Chp 2)
- “The feeling aroused by this story constitutes the call to a consultation on behalf of the EmerAgency” (Problems B Us)
- “start an archive of pictures and text [and other media] found on the Internet that could serve as a vocabulary of stock representations of your news event as a scene.” (71)
- “the Internet is a collage engine.“
“a substitute image (picture or text) works just as well as the actual one, since the point is generative, to trigger or cue the atmosphere or mood, not the empirical reproduction of a past reality.” (71)
- “the Internet is a collage engine.“
On wednesday I will start of discussion with the idea of how tourism could be applied to EmerAgency and electronic monuments.
— Boosterism
— Theoria (tourism & theorists)
— Physical monuments such as Mt. Rushmore helping form collective identities.
pg 19
The “popcycle” “the matrix of languages and administrative orders that every citizen learns, and that serves to interpellate (hail) or socialize people into the cultural order of their community“
It sounds similar to what we have been in our projects by adopting the natural, common language of social media
“The EmerAgency approach is to intervene in tourism at the level of practice, and to propose not more promotion of what already exists but to produce a new kind of tourist destination and behavior, around which might form an electrate civic sphere” (Ulmer 4).
The EmerAgency is not promoting what already exists, but trying to use tactics that have similar results in order to create a civic sphere; to promote electracy.
Tourism
Boosterism – Miss America is the embodiment of our national womanhood, Mt Rushmore is the achievements of the United States
Chora – the space or region in which being and becoming interacted
Monumentality
Theoria – the combination of theory and tourism
Rhizomatic/Rhizome – to make collective idea (tourism offers a possible point of access to a group subjectivity)
The Popcycle – the circulation of ideas and memes through all institutions
Chapter 2 The Traffic Sphere
MEmorial has a quality of “as if” speculation. A proposal.
As related to chapter 1, Monuments play a large role in maintaining the relationship between the public sphere and private citizens. Helps form a preserve a community.
The idea that mourning forms communities.
Traffic Sphere, the crossing of chance and necessity (chora) pg. 39. sorting chaos into order.
The Genre of Memorial Pg48.
Wreck-thoughts, consist mostly in pictorial situations. pg 51.
When discussing what is a memorial and how we can generate our own based off an ongoing social problem, i pictured myself in an interactive museum. Modern museums target various senses and different mediums. The holocaust museum in DC gives each visitor an identity card when they enter the museum that tells the story of someone who actually experienced being a Jew in Europe during WWII. There are personal narratives, videos and reconstructions throughout the museum that try and give visitors the sense of authenticity. While this was an event in our recent history, there is still the opportunity for survivors to share there story to be added to the collection. Similarly, the 9/11 memorial in DC has a room dedicated to recording people’s stories who witnessed the events.
Chapter 2– The Traffic Sphere (A Memorial Prototype)
discussion points:
–problem accident: (p.36) the negative side of invention also has an important function.
ex) an automobile accident = a link between two options/crises. It is the material basis of electronic monumentality: it is an accident, but also teaches us something (future inventions).
*however we decide to mourn accidents/crises, we could always learn something from them but we don’t always decide to
–Wreckwork: a space for thought– an interface within which people and machines mat communicate (p. 41)
–Traffic sphere: (p. 39) a work of chora concerning three catergories of being and discourse: mythos, logos, and genos.
*musical
*maps a relationship b/w an individual and those places that reveal a category within society
–dissemination and distribution of ideas: how ideas spread through cultures and history
*through the mail– from plants to weeds
–sacrifice: (p.41) a way to understand society
*reveal continuity through death of discontinuous beings (monumental function), those who witness sacrifice experience continuity
*ex) a photograph shows us sacrifice
* traffic fatalities are a sacrifice on behalf of some “value” that is more imortant to the society than the annual loss of motorists
–Goal of the traffic sphere: to make highway fatalies perceptible, thinkable, recognizable as “sacrifice“
*to shift them form the private sphere (indiv.) to the public sphere of collective values
–Peripheral monuments: (p. 46 + 47) the peripheral established a connection between an acknowledged value (ex: Vietnam Wall) and the unacknowledged but lived value of the loss in the private sphere (traffic fatalities)
ex) missing person posters around ground zero
ex) AIDS blanket: individual loss to collective sacrifice
–Abject Genre example: disaster=traffic fatalities
*select existing monument (Vietnam wall)
* select organization/agency associated with the disaster (MADD)
*select a theory of the rationale informing the consultation (Bataille)
* place an electronic devide at the site, designed to link symbolically the established sacrifice with the unacknowledged sacrifice (computer listing traffic fatalities)
*represent this all on a Web site, including links to relevant sites and organizations and a simulation of the peripheral
= juxtaposing traffic victims with war dead
I think it is really interesting how he connects the idea that when we invent a new technology or product, we are also inventing the accident. We can develope a new product of idea without having some sort of negative backlash. I also appreciate the concept he developed on page 52 that there is multiple different ways to view or prevent an accident. He had many different examples of how people view a car accident which is similar to how we should view all “accidents” or a crisis. When someone views the accident or dies in the accident, there is sacrifice being made to help others improve through witnessing it. This shows the idea that we are trying to narrow our focus onto what we view is “more important to our society”.
I find particularly interesting about CH2 is not only the retrospective look back on inherent sacrifices with our societal ideals (ex: freedom of driving sacrifices lives to maintain), but Ulmer also makes the push to get one to try and imagine the consequences of future ideals/technologies as they are developed, which requires a significant self-knowledge about our societal values.
In the discussion today,I had thoughts regarding American ideals. As a country that values individualism on such a vast and high level, I feel its difficult to categorize the American identity as anything more than general, arguably, shallow terms.
Perhaps I’m just an optimist who believes Americans obey the speed limit mainly because they do not wish to be the cause of someone’s death. Maybe its egotistic to believe many Americans hold the same ideals and motivations I do.
In chapter two, we discuss this idea of the Traffic Sphere. We are connecting our own normal habits that we obtain from the community in order to show our own autonomy and freedom. We use this example of texting and driving and why is this okay to do in society. It’s part of our identity to follow the herd but at the same time we want our own freedom to do whatever we want. We really want to collectively see as a group what is important to society and how we deal with each and every situation.
What exactly does the term Wreckwork mean? And how does it connect to our civic concerns?