Electracy

Unit III: Experience – Affect – Electracy 

Project 3: Screen Self Portrait

 
Week 13

M 11/16   dis­cuss: “The Geneal­ogy of Elec­tracy (An Inter­view with Gre­gory L. Ulmer)” Recon­struc­tion 9.2 (2009)

 

 
 

W 11/18   hybrid work :

 
» Indi­vid­ual Con­fer­encessched­ule using this form

 
 
 
F 11/20   Due: Blog entry 5: “per­sonal data­base” sam­pling (warm-up to project 3) — prompt below

  • also instruc­tions for optional addi­tional entry — for bonus blog credit (post Fri-Sat)

 

    » Optional Exer­cise — com­pose over Fall Break (prompt com­ing soon)


 
 
 


 
 

» Blog entry 5: “personal database” sampling (warm-up to project 3)

  • As a first attempt of sam­pling from “per­sonal data­bases,” post at least one selec­tion from each:
      — auto­bi­og­ra­phy / family
      — school / career (discipline)
      — com­mu­nity / social
      — enter­tain­ment / culture

     

  • No need to explain/discuss your selec­tions! (This is not a writ­ten entry.) Just post — as media in any form, or references/quotes in text frag­ments — these signifiers/mediators of your identity.
     
    In addi­tion to sam­pling: add a cap­tion (or epi­graph) to the entry, selected from any per­sonal data­base (or composed/remixed on your own).
     
  • Prepa­ra­tion / guide for sam­pling:

  • think about how we medi­ate expe­ri­ence through cer­tain avatars/icons and “frames of ref­er­ence” — and how we express our­selves, par­tic­u­larly dig­i­tal iden­tity, through these as “ready­made” or objec­tive medi­a­tions. Your selec­tions should be “leg­i­ble” (if not “tan­gi­ble”) in this regard, sensory/empirical images or ref­er­ences that you feel a strong sense of “iden­ti­fi­ca­tion” with: avatars/characters (peo­ple), places, objects, quotes/phrases, ref­er­ences, mate­ri­als, gestures/actions (pro­tip: GIPHY — or make a GIF from YouTube)…
    → This is the first warm-up to project 3, explor­ing how we think with/through images and “frames of ref­er­ence” that medi­ate our sense of self (and sen­sa­tion of iden­tity) — includ­ing the sub­jec­tive dimen­sions (affect) that are not nec­es­sar­ily rep­re­sented / vis­i­ble “pub­licly.” Thus mak­ing the “sam­ples” poten­tial mate­r­ial to com­pose with when mak­ing the ScreenSelfPortrait…
     
  • The video below illus­trates (as sim­u­la­tion) the process of explor­ing by association/intuition and sam­pling from my 4 “per­sonal databases”.
    (these all are medi­a­tions of expe­ri­ence, signifiers/references I think with/through…)
    note: you do not need to cre­ate one com­pos­ite image! (like in the video) The entry can/should be sep­a­rate sam­ples (1 each min­i­mum) from the 4 per­sonal databases.
    — Also poten­tially help­ful to con­sult video “Grow­ing Up with Elec­tracy” (Arroyo 2015) 


 
 

» Optional Blog Entry (bonus participation credit)
  • Spec­u­late in dis­cus­sion (100−200 words) the impli­ca­tions and poten­tial for Project 3 approach or tech­niques (poet­ics of praxis) — con­sid­er­ing your warm-up sam­pling, not to explain con­nec­tion but to con­sider as way of work­ing unique to Elec­tracy (unlike Oral­ity & Lit­er­acy). In other words, the mode of cre­at­ing via Inven­tion + Dis­cov­ery, to com­pose the Screen Self Portrait.
    Be sure to include at least one reference/idea from Ulmer inter­view (or optional read­ing) — and dis­cuss your first attempt, per­haps in rela­tion to one of the videos viewed this week.
    How might “per­sonal data­base” sam­pling, or avatars (medi­at­ing), or chor­ag­ra­phy work uniquely as a way of composing-communicating medi­ated expe­ri­ence? How has this activ­ity (blog entry), using intu­ition & asso­ci­a­tion, dif­fered from other modes (belief-story, information-argument) — per­haps as “par­a­digm rhetoric” for experience…?

 
 
 


 

Videos for Wednesday 18-November



 



  • Sarah J. Arroyo and Bahareh Alaei: “The Danc­ing Floor” (2012) Abstract

 


 
 


 

70 thoughts on “Electracy

  1.  
    » W 11/18 Discussion

     
    Com­ment: iden­tity spe­cific part/reference in one video that helps you under­stand elec­tracy, medi­ated expe­ri­ence, dig­i­tal iden­tity, aesthetic-affective paradigm 

     
    Reply: note exam­ple, in video(s) or from other obser­va­tions (or experience)
    — or, con­nect with your post, espe­cially in rela­tion to other video or Ulmer reading

  2. Con­cern­ing inven­tion in the online com­mu­nity, I liked and related to the exam­ple of the col­lab­o­ra­tive music video effort for “Liz­to­ma­nia”. To me, that is one of the clear­est exam­ples of a col­lab­o­ra­tion that absolutely wouldn’t be pos­si­ble with­out an inter­net that spanned the entire world, and puts that col­lab­o­ra­tion into a visual rep­re­sen­ta­tion which shows pro­gres­sion like a con­ver­sa­tion. Although the effects of a world­wide web are clear in any man­i­fes­ta­tion of the inter­net, it is not always clear that such com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­duces some­thing both beau­ti­ful and new — an inven­tion, a cre­ation. This relates to “The Danc­ing Floor”, which speaks about inven­tion as a small rec­og­nized instance within a greater field of bod­ily expe­ri­ence, sep­a­rate both from sen­sory input and log­i­cal thought, where the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing some­thing dis­cov­ers some­thing new. This relates closely to video in terms of com­mu­ni­cat­ing the very process of inven­tion. Sep­a­rate from this, how­ever, I won­der how this the­ory of inven­tion changes very much with the onset of elec­tracy? If inven­tion is so inter­nal­ized, then has the way that we invent actu­ally changed at all? Or through video are we sim­ply given a greater field of expe­ri­ence in which to invent?

    1. I also loved the exam­ples that you looked at. It is beau­ti­ful that online media can demon­strate sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in cul­tures to learn new aspects to change one’s world­view. This could be a response to your inven­tion ques­tion as it may not be innate in a sense but may be more closely related to chang­ing con­ven­tions of inven­tion through see­ing how other cul­tures are doing some­thing dif­fer­ently. A lim­i­ta­tion of this would be that the com­mu­ni­ties that are able to eas­ily access the inter­net are some­what sim­i­lar in their social stand­ing our pos­si­ble worldview.

    2. I com­pletely agree! When you think about how we col­lab­o­rate on the inter­net, it’s pretty over­whelm­ing! Con­ver­sa­tion­ally, it’s clear to see where these aspects come to play online. Com­ments on youtube, tum­blr, twit­ter, face­book, exc. por­tray how we col­lab­o­rate with each other through con­ver­sa­tion. One thing that I find inter­est­ing is that often times, if a tum­blr post becomes pop­u­lar, it typ­i­cally will be because of the com­ments that follow. 

      I really like your thought­ful ideas about inven­tion. I think there are a lot of dif­fer­ent terms we could use to define inven­tion and it might vary depend­ing on your field or life-style. But, in gen­eral, I do think inven­tion has become more of a tech­no­log­i­cal experience.

      1. I like how you men­tion the pop­u­lar­ity and com­ments on a cer­tain post on a social media plat­form. Draw­ing from the Reid video, these posts and com­ments and pages where you find these things, all cre­ate com­mu­ni­ties. You access these com­mu­ni­ties through your devices, and can become a part of any com­mu­nity you would like. When a post becomes pop­u­lar, and you like it as well, you become a part of a com­mu­nity of peo­ple who share the sim­i­lar inter­est or stance as you do.

  3. Both videos dis­cuss the good and bad of the dig­i­tal world and how it impacts our cul­ture. They both touch on how the inter­net con­nects us. How­ever, the Vir­tual com­mu­nity video stresses this in more depth by using the anal­ogy of com­put­ers being win­dows into a sin­gle con­nected sys­tem. This gives this infor­ma­tion such great influ­ence because it reaches thou­sands of win­dows at the same time cre­at­ing a “com­mu­nity” that is never actu­ally together in per­son in most cases. It becomes more com­plex when this is applied to how this affects us cul­tur­ally. The Danc­ing Floor ana­lyzes this more by show­ing a stream of videos of peo­ple doing a cer­tain dance all over the world. This is a huge impact because before the inter­net this is such a rare occur­rence except for in the case of mass pro­duced media (very famous music/ movies/ films). We have more in com­mon now than ever with other cul­tures due par­tially to the internet.

    1. I agree. This was an inter­est­ing argu­ment stated espe­cially in the Vir­tual Com­mu­nity video. It is pos­si­ble to con­nect this to the Ulmer read­ings and his propo­si­tion that the inter­net is an insti­tu­tion for Elec­tracy. The inter­net is the appa­ra­tus which is used to per­form many of these col­lab­o­ra­tive tasks.

    2. I def­i­nitely agree with your post although maybe we don’t have more in com­mon with cul­tures, but just under­stand them more? I think that just the real­iza­tion that there are peo­ple who can take some­thing and expe­ri­ence it com­pletely dif­fer­ent then us is excit­ing. With the inter­net we can be more aware of this and see how glob­al­iza­tion is truly cre­at­ing a more com­bined world. Not that we have to be sim­i­lar or have things in com­mon, but rather cel­e­brate the dif­fer­ences and embrace them because we can learn so much more from dif­fer­ences then from similarities.

    3. I agree with you. Elec­tracy is allow­ing the vir­tual com­mu­nity to think together and share infor­ma­tion on a global level. Also, allow­ing us expose our­selves to observe or cre­ate more com­mon inter­ests with other cultures.

    4. Grace, I think you are really onto some­thing with you inter­pre­ta­tion of these videos. We see the effect of these vir­tual com­mu­ni­ties con­stantly in our lives, through Face­book and Insta­gram. The con­cept that is dif­fi­cult for me to com­pre­hend is the sheer size of the com­mu­ni­ties these avatars are a part of. For exam­ple, a celebrity post­ing on Insta­gram could have a 100,000 peo­ple like a post in 20 min­utes. The inter­net and these com­mu­ni­ties can be used as a pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive force.

  4. In “The Danc­ing Floor”, the con­cept of chora, which “aims to pro­voke, reel us in, and gen­er­ate response … both in tex­tual and video for­mats” (Aroyo) helps us to under­stand Elec­tracy. Dig­i­tal for­mats evoke more reac­tion from audi­ences and pro­mote action in a way that the writ­ten for­mats of the Lit­er­acy par­a­digm were not quite able to do. This is more affec­tive in nature. The aspects of video that allow the whole body to be included (such as when dancers are per­form­ing a piece) are more able to evoke a response from the viewers.

    1. With con­cern to your note about how watch­ing dancers can evoke more than, say, read­ing about dancers, I find it inter­est­ing that the speaker in the video seemed to speak­ing more about what the dancer her­self is expe­ri­enc­ing, rather than the per­son watch­ing the dancer. To some extent, I think that elec­tracy has its lim­i­ta­tions in that what­ever expe­ri­ence it evokes for a per­son, it can­not entirely give a per­son that expe­ri­ence. Watch­ing a dancer will never feel the same as being the dancer; pre­tend­ing to be a medieval knight within a com­puter game will never feel like actu­ally being a swords­man. I think we should be care­ful to rec­og­nize that a video expe­ri­ence is not nec­es­sar­ily less real, but it is cer­tainly dif­fer­ent from a bod­ily expe­ri­ence. Our expe­ri­ence is made up of much more than our brains, and our sen­sory expe­ri­ence is more than sight and sound.

    2. I really like what you said about the danc­ing video. I also liked how it involves the entire body and can be more affec­tive than lit­er­acy. When you see a photo, a reac­tion is instan­ta­neous, mak­ing it very raw and mov­ing to the per­son expe­ri­enc­ing the reac­tion. When it comes to lit­er­acy, your reac­tion is slower, and more thought out. You do not feel the instan­ta­neous emo­tion in your inner core as you would from some­thing written.

  5. In the “danc­ing floor” it spoke about the con­cept of a social remix. Indi­vid­u­als use dance and them­selves to cre­ate a shared cul­ture. It is inter­est­ing that within this we can help under­stand medi­ated expe­ri­ence a lit­tle bit bet­ter. It brings to light how peo­ple can use youtube and Face­book to spread ideas about cul­ture and the iden­tity of that part of the world. Our expe­ri­ence will be dif­fer­ent as a viewer, lis­tener or dancer and what will we get out of it? I feel like we can all expe­ri­ence some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent and that one is not bet­ter then the other, but rather helps us cre­ate more out of that difference.

    1. I found this idea inter­est­ing in the way that they showed all the peo­ple danc­ing from around the world to one song. It shows that even though we all have dif­fer­ent views and styles, we are all not that much dif­fer­ent from each other in the emo­tions that we have. Maybe that’s why it’s so much eas­ier to express emo­tion through emoti­cons or GIFS and it comes across a lot clearer than words can express.

      1. I made a sim­i­lar con­nec­tion, that maybe like dance and music we us emoji and gifs to tran­scend the dif­fer­ences in cul­tural con­texts, norms or per­haps even expec­ta­tions. We all have the need to express our­selves and emo­tions are some­times bet­ter described using an image or sound instead of words. Using these images we can cre­ate both false and true pro­files of our emotions.

    2. Yes, this is a very inter­est­ing con­cept because in my opin­ion it is eas­ily over­looked. What I mean by this is that we use these social media sites every day of our lives, but we prob­a­bly dont even real­ize exactly what we are con­vert­ing and por­tray­ing. But we are leav­ing behind a media trail, and everyone’s trail has its own iden­tity linked to it.

    3. Yes, this is a very inter­est­ing con­cept because in my opin­ion it is eas­ily over­looked. What I mean by this is that we use these social media sites every day of our lives, but we prob­a­bly dont even real­ize exactly what we are con­vert­ing and por­tray­ing. But we are leav­ing behind a media trail, and everyone’s trail has its own iden­tity linked to it.

  6. The way that Punc­tum was described in “The danc­ing floor” stuck out to me, because it point out how it dis­rupts the studium and “it’s sting can­not be artic­u­lated by some­thing that can be defined” (2:09). I think this is impor­tant in under­stand­ing this aes­thetic par­a­digm in the sense that images have the abil­ity to pro­voke in ways that words can’t. In the images that stick out and leave an impres­sion, the Punc­tum is obvi­ous and can­not be over­looked. If images have a pur­pose to express some­thing in ways that words just can’t do, then the Punc­tum is the rea­son why.

  7. In the video “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure,” explained that the vir­tual com­mu­nity opens a new point of expo­sure. To me this helped me under­stand elec­tracy because dig­i­tal media wouldn’t exist with­out the vir­tual com­mu­nity. The vir­tual com­mu­nity has evolved over time; in the 20th cen­tury we couldn’t pub­licly broad­cast a mes­sage, now we have a mar­ket, which allows the com­mu­nity to move towards the mar­ket. The ref­er­ence that elec­tracy is to dig­i­tal media as lit­er­acy is to print, was evi­dent in this video. I found that the ref­er­ence can be linked when explain­ing our behav­ior as a vir­tual com­mu­nity, we can no longer see our­selves with­out tech­nol­ogy, it allows us to think col­lec­tively and share infor­ma­tion; in the video they brought up the fact that we can’t imag­ine our­selves with­out the alpha­bet or writing.

    1. I agree. I think that the com­par­isons this video makes when it comes to the inter­net and literacy/ print are spot on with the ideas of elec­tracy. This video talked about our depen­dence on Google as being sim­i­lar to our depen­dence on the alpha­bet and writ­ing allow­ing us to fur­ther our com­mu­nica­tive poten­tials while also gain­ing a bet­ter under­stand­ing of how forms of elec­tracy have been around for many years.

  8. The demon­stra­tion of Dance in Arroyo’s video demon­strates inter­pre­ta­tion and the con­nec­tion between the author of dancer and the one watch­ing the video. This is a demon­stra­tion of elec­tracy in media. Ried and Arroyo seem to dif­fer on the view­point of how vir­tual media is expressed. Reid says that this is a reg­i­mented form of expres­sion based on “cred­its” while Arroyo real­izes the chang­ing aspect of relata­bil­ity and cul­tural world. While these seem oppos­ing they can be inter­twined as a the “cred­its” of rep­utabil­ity are socially chang­ing in the need for said cred­its or how one gains their rep­u­ta­tion through expres­sion in artic­u­lat­ing dif­fer­ences that Arroyo points out. Both of these videos were inter­est­ing expla­na­tions of lit­er­acy turn­ing into elec­tracy through the expe­ri­ence paradigm.

  9. The “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” video brought up an inter­est­ing point about how the acces­si­bil­ity of dis­trib­ut­ing infor­ma­tion has changed through­out time. At around the 7 minute mark, the video dis­cusses how, in the 20th cen­tury, only big­ger cor­po­ra­tions (in charge of the media) could dis­trib­ute ideas widely whereas com­mon, every­day peo­ple had rel­a­tively no voice. This has changed in today’s soci­ety. With social media like Face­book, twit­ter, youtube, etc. every­day peo­ple can voice their opin­ions and have access to share infor­ma­tion all around the world. An even wider audi­ence is reached when top­ics become trend­ing or videos become viral. This reflects how our soci­ety changes and how infor­ma­tion is becom­ing more wide­spread and avail­able to peo­ple every­where. This helps peo­ple to assert their dig­i­tal iden­tity in ways that were not avail­able in the past. Their dig­i­tal iden­tity is every­thing they choose to post on social media and what infor­ma­tion they con­sume from other posts from other peo­ple as well.

    1. I found that part of the video very inter­est­ing as well! It is weird that these vir­tual com­mu­ni­ties didn’t exist back then. If you had some­thing to say to the pub­lic, you couldn’t. These peo­ple were seen as weird, and their word didn’t get spread. Now it is as easy as a sin­gle click of share this on Face­book to spread your mes­sage and thoughts. This does alter peo­ples dig­i­tal iden­tity. Their dig­i­tal iden­tity can be based on what they choose to share, or what they choose not to.

    2. I thought that was inter­est­ing also. Media has really changed the ways that we are able to rep­re­sent our­selves. With­out it we would not have nearly as many con­nec­tions as we do now. I think that this, while it can be harm­ful to share too much, really helps peo­ple to become who they are, at least in the way of shar­ing what they believe, and find­ing like com­mu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence these beliefs with.

      1. I think it is also impor­tant to note that expe­ri­ence is more valu­able than read­ing because it is much harder to con­nect to some­thing when read­ing a book (as we all know). That is why hands on expe­ri­ences are val­ued in the work place. Even an account of a danc­ing expe­ri­ence is more inter­est­ing or cap­ti­vat­ing to an audi­ence than an account explain­ing how one dances. Media has enabled us to be able to expe­ri­ence this new per­spec­tive and rep­re­sents peo­ple and activ­i­ties in what I think is a much more real and gen­uine way.

  10. In the “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” video, it talks about the con­cerns about our con­nec­tions with imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties and form­ing our imag­i­nary iden­tity. We form these iden­ti­ties online, and it is not truly who we are as a per­son. As we develop these online iden­ti­ties, our real iden­tity is being lost. When we don’t remem­ber some­thing or want to know some­thing, we can just type it in to google to retrieve our answer. It is so easy and part of our daily lives. This gen­er­a­tion is so used to these online fea­tures, that is hard to imag­ine a life with­out it. Soon, we wont be able to imag­ine our­selves as peo­ple with­out this dimen­sions. It will be the same as the ABC’s, and how they are put into use daily, and nobody can imag­ine a lifestyle with­out them.

    1. I think this is an inter­est­ing point, espe­cially when you say, “We form these iden­ti­ties online, and it is not truly who we are as a per­son.” I think this con­nects well with what Knight says on page 152 in sec­tion 4 about how “not only does the user actively go into new media, but the user also actively cre­ates the image—the image is a process which takes place within the users body.” She also men­tions how infor­ma­tion is fil­tered and manip­u­lated to fit our needs. These iden­ti­ties are ones that we, our­selves, have cre­ated and it is how we want the world to per­ceive us, rather than who we truly are.

  11. From the “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” video I was able to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of elec­tracy and the use of the inter­net to pro­pel our com­mu­nica­tive poten­tial. In this video, the inter­net was described as a means for find­ing new and more impor­tant ways to col­lab­o­rate while main­tain­ing a bal­ance between work and play and our expo­sure when using it. I really liked the anal­ogy between our depen­dence on Google and how that directly par­al­lels our depen­dence on the alpha­bet or other lit­er­ary means. In this video, inter­net is also described as an instru­ment for think­ing. All of these exam­ples, I think, coin­cide ver nicely with the idea of elec­tracy and how we can use media and the inter­net to really drive for­ward our com­mu­nica­tive potential.

    1. I like how you men­tion that the inter­net (and thus Google) is a method of thinking/learning, mainly that I find this to be fairly accu­rate; with the inter­net har­bor­ing vast amounts of infor­ma­tion and read­ily avail­able at our fin­ger­tips, it is eas­ier to look up a bit of trivia than it is to sim­ply remem­ber it. If one for­gets a minor detail of some thing a quick search on the inter­net will remind the per­son of said detail; sim­i­larly, if one for­gets how to spell some­thing, one can quickly turn to Google to see what it con­sid­ers accurate.

    2. I thought the same thing when watch­ing this video, we really are depen­dent on the inter­net these days in how we com­mu­ni­cate via text or just send­ing a photo try­ing to describe your emo­tions. I can relate to the video when they talked about using the inter­net as an instru­ment of think­ing, I find myself being able to find out a lot more than I intended to know by just using google and doing my research. There is a lot that comes out of the inter­net and the ben­e­fits of it, but I believe it has its dis­ad­van­tages too.

      1. I think it’s sad that we can are as depen­dent on Google as we are on the alpha­bet. The alpha­bet is objec­tive… whereas I believe Google and other inter­net search engines should be sub­jec­tive! What I know as “A” in the alpha­bet will always be “A”. How­ever, I don’t think the same can be said about every­thing that we read or see on Google.

  12. Reid’s “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” hit on ideas that I’ve already been dis­cussing with myself and my peers as well as ideas I hadn’t really given much thought to. Ini­tially, the video starts by focus­ing on how this gen­er­a­tion is dif­fer­ent than gen­er­a­tions of the past in terms of tech­nol­ogy usage and the results of it. The truth is this gen­er­a­tion is extremely dif­fer­ent, the age at which expo­sure to media plat­forms such as Face­book, Insta­gram and Twit­ter is becom­ing younger and younger. When I look at chil­dren nowa­days, they’re play­ing with their own or their par­ents iPhones, iPads, etc,. That obser­va­tion alone tells me that we are chang­ing dras­ti­cally in terms of expo­sure, tech­nol­ogy aware­ness and usage. When I was the same age as the tech­no­log­i­cally adept and laden kids I see today, I was play­ing in play­grounds and cre­ated my own games to pass the time. It’s true that this expo­sure to tech­nol­ogy cre­ates a “self sur­veil­lance that young peo­ple don’t think about in terms of polit­i­cal issues”. So much of our inti­mate lives are broad­casted on media in detail to for­ever be there as a part of an exten­sive “imag­i­nary com­mu­nity”. A lot of par­ents use the scare tac­tic of threat­en­ing their kids about never being able to get a job due to their social media presence/content. I won­der, how many of my peers (includ­ing myself) will be at risk of that type of judge­ment (based on our social media iden­ti­ties) if we all have some sort of his­tory? Will will be all be cast off as unde­sir­able for cer­tain jobs?
    The sec­ond idea men­tioned in this video is one that I hadn’t really thought of before. Instead of social media being used as a means of per­sonal human, open ended self expres­sion, it has now become a way of suc­cumb­ing to reg­i­mented, con­formist expres­sion. I see more and more indi­vid­u­als online, chang­ing opinions/views/standpoints/identities at a whim and I really do believe that is is because tech­nol­ogy has the power to cajole us into ren­der­ing our­selves up to the market.

  13. The con­cepts of studium et punc­tum, as dis­cussed in ‘The Danc­ing Floor’, stand out the most for me: Studium, which is Latin for ‘zealotry/eagerness/enthusiasm for someone/something’ (or, in gen­eral, ‘a study’), seems to stand for the com­mu­nity in gen­eral; the gen­eral beliefs, gen­eral actions, and gen­eral iden­ti­ties of the dig­i­tal com­mu­nity. Punc­tum, how­ever, mean­ing ‘a prick/pierce’ (and thus ‘wound’), is a small, short action, either dis­rupt­ing or dis­pers­ing the studium; it is, by no means, a major action, a quick, barely notice­able event that dis­rupts and pauses, a detail that causes one to stop and think, to ponder.

    1. I thought this was inter­est­ing as well. Espe­cially, since studium was likened to a type of “sta­sis,” while the punc­tum implied move­ment, which seemed to assert the idea that punc­tum was a “higher” form of infor­ma­tion pre­sen­ta­tion. At the same time, that seemed a lit­tle biased to me bc the author cer­tainly seemed to con­nect sta­sis with the past and punc­tum with cut­ting age dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But, think how rev­o­lu­tion­ary the alpha­bet and the writ­ten word were at the begin­ning stages of lit­er­acy. Just because some­thing is tra­di­tional does not mean that it is less mov­ing. At least for me anyway.

    2. What I get from this, is pos­si­bly the human desire to explore and dis­cover. Maybe the two terms could be used as one, (pierc­ing eager­ness?) to describe a human atti­tude towards new fron­tiers of knowl­edge such as social media, mul­ti­me­dia, ect. It’s another ref­er­ence to the “human­ness?” of peo­ple, an ele­ment that can­not be quan­ti­fied or shown through num­bers or even pos­si­bly words.

  14. Wow! I thought that both of these videos really helped me con­nect to this idea of elec­tracy. I par­tic­u­larly liked the idea of the “social remix” in Arroyo & Alei’s video “The Danc­ing Floor.” When I was watch­ing that part of the video, I thought to myself, “hey, I think this might be exactly what our next project is going to be.” Social Remix was defined as: “using shared cul­ture as a lan­guage to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing to an audi­ence.” So, dig­i­tally, we can use music, quotes, avatars, pic­tures of celebri­ties, per­sonal pics, etc, and by past­ing them together in an “orig­i­nal mash-up,” they become a mes­sage, a nar­ra­tive. At the same time, I was inter­ested in what Reid had to say in his video about “crit­i­cal lit­er­acy” and whether or not elec­tracy was bring­ing about a crit­i­cal lit­er­acy or whether it was actu­ally dulling our crit­i­cal func­tions. I found Rushkoff’s argu­ment about the mar­ket dri­ven tra­jec­tory of the inter­net very inter­est­ing, espe­cially his point about the “devo­lu­tion” of the net from “quirky and per­sonal home­pages to com­pletely for­mat­ted and mar­ket friendly Face­book pages.”

    1. I really thought that the Danc­ing Floor video helped a lot with the under­stand­ing of our project also! The way we are able to express our emo­tions, atti­tudes, and thoughts is very inter­est­ing and exactly what I thought of when watch­ing this video. For exam­ple, like what we talked about in class, the memes we see on social media or wher­ever else goes to show that we can relate to exactly what the meme is show­ing or por­tray­ing to us.

      1. So inter­est­ing that you bring up memes! I was think­ing the same thing. It’s funny that we can take a phrase, mes­sage or even a sin­gle word, match it with a photo from a movie, youtube video, vine, etc., and relay a meaning/message that huge amounts of peo­ple are able to relate to. I think that that is a pretty pow­er­ful affect for an image like a meme to cre­ate. Memes are shared on every sin­gle social media plat­form. Not to men­tion apps that keep on re-creating and cre­at­ing new ways of indi­vid­u­al­ize the media we are edit­ing on it.

  15. I was really draw into the Reid video and how the ideas or iden­tity cre­ation were being talked about. Since the begin­ning of time we have relied on real lived social con­texts, sit­u­a­tions, his­to­ries and rela­tion­ships to con­struct our iden­ti­ties social or oth­er­wise. There was no real way to cre­ate an in-genuine iden­tity or lived pro­file for ones self as there was an ana­logue paper trail, rela­tion­ships or his­tor­i­cal record of your actions. Fast for­ward to today’s world, we can 100% arti­fi­cially cast an image our our­selves for the world to see. In some ways I see this abil­ity as the great social equal­izer; I mean that any­one can call them­selves x with­out need­ing to back it up with any real tan­gi­ble evi­dence. While this notion or prac­tice can level the social land­scape in terms of net­work­ing and con­nect­ing with peo­ple on a transcon­ti­nen­tal global scale, noth­ing n my eyes will ever replace or out­weigh the ana­logue and tan­gi­ble expe­ri­ence of meet­ing a friend face to face. Regard­ing the idea of net­work­ing, I also found the “danc­ing floor” video intrigu­ing in the way that a sin­gle song was able to tran­scend many social con­texts and bring peo­ple from all walks of life together and dance. I guess that music can be thought of a sort of social net­work­ing expe­ri­ence or tool in its own right.

  16. Wher­ever there is a sys­tem, total­ity, unity, there is the trace of the excluded.” I find this pas­sage from the begin­ning of the danc­ing floor inter­est­ing, because in a way it sort of cleanly sums up/ is par­al­lel to this idea of Elec­tracy. If you look up a def­i­n­i­tion for Elec­tracy, youll find that: “Elec­tracy is to dig­i­tal media, as lit­er­acy is to print.” In this sense, the danc­ing floor is to danc­ing as Elec­tracy is to dig­i­tal media. What is con­crete is the media, the soft­ware, the lit­er­a­ture, what is left out and up to human interpritation/experience is the elec­tracy, the literacy.

    1. I’m still try­ing to wrap head around the notion of Elec­tric­ity as well, but I find the analo­gies used to be a great way of look­ing at the def­i­n­i­tion. What per­haps strikes me as a poten­tial down­fall to using analogies/metaphors etc. is the poten­tial to loose the con­crete­ness of Elec­tric­ity in the vague medium of the prior. Or is that poten­tially the only way in which you can make the def­i­n­i­tion of Elec­tric­ity rel­e­vant? Elec­tric­ity, is per­haps most defined as an intan­gi­ble matrix of the phys­i­cally unex­plained phenomenon.

  17. I found the con­cept of “chora” to be absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing. I feel that this idea of an “open-ended” grasp on real­ity is essen­tial to the cre­ative mind. As “chora” is explained in, “The Danc­ing Floor,” it is what stops us from sim­pli­fy­ing. Chora enables us to embrace the unat­tain­able, max­i­mize on every­thing we can to cre­ate and invent, and not set­tle for per­cep­tions of “real­ity” as we know it. “Chora” pushes us to know more, to under­stand more, to invent, and cre­ate more. From what I gath­ered in, “The Danc­ing Floor,” “chora” pushes us to reeval­u­ate are sense of understanding.

    1. *****I found the con­cept of “chora” to be absolutely fas­ci­nat­ing. I feel that this idea of an “open-ended” grasp on real­ity is essen­tial to the cre­ative mind. As “chora” is explained in, “The Danc­ing Floor,” it is what stops us from sim­pli­fy­ing. Chora enables us to embrace the unat­tain­able, max­i­mize on every­thing we can to cre­ate and invent, and not set­tle for per­cep­tions of “real­ity” as we know it. “Chora” pushes us to know more, to under­stand more, to invent, and cre­ate more. From what I gath­ered in, “The Danc­ing Floor,” “chora” pushes us to reeval­u­ate are sense of under­stand­ing. The idea of chora allowed me to bet­ter under­stand “elec­tracy, medi­ated expe­ri­ence, dig­i­tal iden­tity, aesthetic-affective par­a­digm” as these con­cepts exist in a world that we can only glimpse, what we know of the tech­no­log­i­cal uni­verse is min­i­mal, our grasp on it only goes so far. A medi­ated expe­ri­ence or dig­i­tal iden­tity, exist only in some phys­i­cal sub­stance in the cyber world, a world we can only begin to scratch the sur­face of. Much like chora, a con­cept rooted in broad­en­ing one’s grasp on real­ity, these tech­no­log­i­cal con­cepts can only be under­stood by a broad­ened grasp on reality.

      1. I agree. The last sen­tence really caught my atten­tion and i think that the broad­ened grasp on real­ity in the future could be dif­fer­ent from all ours. Real­ity could become more about false tech­no­log­i­cal worlds. I thought that maybe the videos were point­ing in this direction.

  18. In the Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure video, I liked how they talked a lit­tle bit about how these media com­mu­ni­ca­tion web­sites are any good for us. A man men­tions the mul­ti­ple top­ics of how is it chang­ing the way to com­mu­ni­cate, iden­tify our­selves, and com­mu­ni­ties and how they shape our rela­tion­ships these days. This helped me under­stand how much of our iden­tity shapes who we are today and how it has made us either have no voice or a dif­fer­ent voice than we actu­ally do in per­son. Danc­ing Floor video helped me under­stand elec­tracy in media mostly. The way that the audi­ence and the per­former con­nect whats hap­pen­ing. In the video they say, “IN tex­tual and video for­mats”, I thought this made a lot of sense in how dig­i­tal media can be expressed in many ways like we talked about it class. Our emo­tions, atti­tudes, and thoughts can be shown through visuals.

    1. I also found that the “The Danc­ing Floor” helped me to bet­ter under­stand elec­tracy (specif­i­cally in media). The expla­na­tion of youtube, and how mod­ern soci­ety val­ues “spread­abil­ity” over all, but that some­how this value of spread­abil­ity has cre­ated inter­con­nect­ed­ness across the globe in a unique and rev­o­lu­tion­ized way really stuck with me.

      1. I agree! I really like the quote they use, ” Chora both unset­tles us and moves us to respond”. Chora, video cul­ture, is such an inter­est­ing con­cept to me! It’s not only focus­ing on spread­ing a mes­sage and cre­at­ing inter­con­nect­ed­ness but about prompt­ing a reac­tion. I thought the video was really inter­est­ing because you could really see how they were chal­leng­ing things.

    2. The way that we con­nect is a lim­i­ta­tion to not only our per­cep­tion but also the per­cep­tion of those we tell. Our voice online may not be our true voice. This expands beyond our lim­i­ta­tions and broad­ens our hori­zons, if you will. There are no ways of know­ing the lim­it­less options and ways of think­ing if we never explore beyond he walls of our own com­fort. Enter sub­tweets and fake pro­files and iden­ti­ties that we wish we had…

  19. Both videos are weigh­ing the pros and cons of the upcom­ing dig­i­tal age. They are a view from all peo­ple who are kinda of over the hump. Given every gen­er­a­tion will become more tech­no­log­i­cally inclined, i would still like to see a video from the future PhD’s who are to come 10 years from now. I bet they would have com­pletely dif­fer­ent views from the ones pre­sented in the videos.

  20. …the ille­git­i­mate nature by which cora must be grasped elic­its a wider per­cep­tion of clutch­ing and hold­ing that involves more than the hands…” This caught my atten­tion in the first video. There is such a wide vari­ety of ways to per­ceive some­thing. This hs never been bro­ken down to me before, but this por­tion of the video, unlike some of the other parts really got me think­ing about what is real. We only per­ceive what we want how we want and how we know how. But that is a lim­i­ta­tion of our­selves cre­ated by our­selves. Media and dig­i­tal Modes are cre­at­ing the path to allow so many more per­cep­tual cat­e­gories and modes because we have never been able to explore them before.

  21. I found it very inter­est­ing in the “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” video that they com­pare the inter­net now to how it was in the past. In the first few min­utes of the video it was brought up that nowa­days on the inter­net we share every aspect of our lives with­out really think­ing to much about who might see it. I thought this was also inter­est­ing because my grand­mother always insists that we do not share her pic­ture on the inter­net because they don’t need to see her. Its weird how our men­tal­ity has changed since then. AS they were talk­ing about later in the video, the inter­net used to be a way to express our­selves, but now we use it to gain pop­u­lar­ity and to con­form to the stan­dards of society.

    1. I feel that this helped to explain elec­tracy because we are now bet­ter able to under­stand how to com­mu­ni­cate thor­ough media than we ever were before. This also greatly depicts our dig­i­tal identity.

      1. I like this per­spec­tive of us being bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tors because of our abil­ity to actively par­tic­i­pate in net­work­ing. I think the con­cept is a per­fect start, but also I think this idea that peo­ple are not capa­ble of keep­ing them­selves from overus­ing this net­work­ing source is a big prob­lem. The fact that your grandma has that men­tal­ity is also inter­est­ing, I think that is a big exam­ple of how the vir­tual world shapes the way we as humans per­ceive the world. Cool.

  22. I thor­oughly enjoyed “The Danc­ing Floor”. They ques­tion why some pho­tos evoke cer­atin emo­tions and oth­ers are “just there”. For me, the pic­ture of the fly­ing man from 9/11 evokes a lot of emo­tions and I think that it prob­a­bly does for most Amer­i­cans that know what it is from. Hav­ing a shared expe­ri­ence, com­mon knowl­edge of an event makes it more per­sonal and real. Cul­tural is a huge aspect of this. They com­ment that this abil­ity to “spread” images, ideas, notions all over the globe can actu­ally cre­ate a sense or value of inter­con­nect­ed­ness. One thing that is really inter­est­ing to me is that again, this is a cul­tural notion. Liv­ing in a first world coun­try, we have con­stant and con­sis­tent access to the inter­net which gives us the abil­ity to look into other cul­tures through this par­a­digm. But, there are cul­tures in third world coun­tries that do not have any access to the inter­net even though their pic­tures may be float­ing around. This is a bizarre thought to me. Are we really more inter­con­nected or do we just think that we are?

  23. I felt that “The Danc­ing Floor” did not speak as clearly to me as the “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity” video did. I related to the first video’s numer­ous speak­ers which all had their opin­ion on whether a vir­tual por­tal that we all enter every day is pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. In some ways, it allows you to build your con­nec­tions, but can also act as an imped­i­ment. For exam­ple, peo­ple make con­nec­tions on social media and then build a rep­u­ta­tion for what they post. If peo­ple enjoy what they have to say, it gives them extra oppor­tu­nity for work or to pro­pose more imag­i­na­tive ideas. Inversely, we can become so enveloped in the social media that we for­get the neces­sity of face to face inter­ac­tions. I would argue that this post I’m cur­rently writ­ing is ben­e­fi­cial to my rep­u­ta­tion because it’s rel­a­tively straightforward…But would my lis­ten­ers receive a dif­fer­ent effect if I were stand­ing in front of them, speak­ing this?

  24. The “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity, Vir­tual Imma­nence, Vir­tual Expo­sure” video talks about an imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties cre­ates an imag­i­nary self. This is inter­est­ing because our imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties could and do con­sist of groups on Face­book, or on Twit­ter or really any­thing. These are not tech­ni­cally real groups but they cre­ate an imag­i­nary self because of the iden­tity that one feels in this com­mu­nity. Vir­tual and media iden­tity is an inter­est­ing con­cept because of how dif­fer­ent peo­ple can be in real life than behind their “cyber wall”.

    1. I too notice his cor­re­la­tion of a “cyber wall”. I also think this aspect of the vir­tual world is a lit­tle less scary than actu­ally putting per­sonal infor­ma­tion onto these sites. I like the idea of this lit­er­acy where peo­ple find a line between putting too much infor­ma­tion for oth­ers to see, and in turn mak­ing ones vir­tual self safe.

    2. What fas­ci­nated me about the part of the video you are refer­ring to is the notion that imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties have a pres­ence in and of them­selves. Yes, they are a col­lec­tion of thou­sands if not mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als and their self expressed points of view, but to think that the greater “imag­i­nary com­mu­nity” is an entity in and of itself (a sin­gle Inter­net with presence/and agency) is quite profound.

  25. The Reid video was very inter­est­ing. I really like the main con­cept that they wer talk­ing about, which is this idea of a lit­er­acy. I feel like I have some­what thought about this sub­ject, but I never really ana­lyzed it from the point of view of the speak­ers in the video. Back in the day the idea that some­one could their voice out there no mat­ter how much they wanted too is crazy to think about. I think it is even more upset­ting that now that we have the oppor­tu­nity to speak, we do not uti­lize it in the right way, instead we find our­selves exploited by the mar­ket. I was just think­ing, how much of this was the object of the per­son who cre­ated this “machine”. Peo­ple believe they want pri­vacy, but then put every­thing about them­selves freely on this social site, because they feel like they are mar­ket­ing them­selves. I think this whole con­cept is fas­ci­nat­ing, much like the tv show “per­son of inter­est” lol.

  26. I really liked the idea of com­mu­nity in the reid video. Com­mu­nity is a shared space, and we use devices to access this space which is pretty much a whole dif­fer­ent world. Then, within the com­mu­nity of the inter­net, there are sep­a­rate com­mu­ni­ties you are a part of depen­dend­ing on your inter­ests, polit­i­cal iden­tity, insti­tu­tions you are a part of, things you find funny, and the list goes on. It was really inter­est­ing to me when they started talk­ing about how every­thing is now a mar­ket place, and because we are always mar­ket­ing some­thing, our per­sonal lit­er­acy is going down. How­ever, I liked the Danc­ing Floor video even more because it talked about the reac­tions brought from things that occur in the world whether it be pho­tos, posts, etc. As a pho­tog­ra­phy geek, I find that cer­tain pho­tos evoke emo­tions that feel like they incor­po­rate the entire body, so I really con­nected to this video. For exam­ple, when I see a photo from a ter­ror­ist attack, I expe­ri­ence a surge of emo­tion that seems to engulf my entire body. I was a vic­tim in the Boston Bomb­ings, so I can iden­tify how pho­tos can also bring up a surge of emo­tion felt dur­ing the time that you are remem­ber­ing. Pho­tos and videos are cre­ated to evoke some sort of reaction.

    1. Do you think per­haps there is a rea­son that the inter-web has deformed into a mar­ket arena? I’m still try­ing to wrap my head around what could lead to this tran­si­tion from the pre­vi­ous thought of web space that was more expres­sive in nature. Could it poten­tially be a result of out­side influ­ences, say the state that our mar­ket is in, the debts that are being wracked up in our per­sonal lives as well as in our com­mu­ni­ties and gov­ern­ments? I believe that it has to be some­thing along the lines of a col­lec­tive expression/our desire to feel sat­is­fied by atten­tion or eco­nomic success.

  27. The “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity” video was really inter­est­ing to me, it talked about the dif­fer­ent lev­els of expo­sure peo­ple expe­ri­ence online and the vast net­work of information/communication we can access on the inter­net. Vir­tual com­mu­nity has become a medi­ated form of expe­ri­ence. Vir­tual com­mu­ni­ties are a way for peo­ple to expose them­selves and their iden­tity online. Avail­abil­ity of infor­ma­tion is chang­ing con­stantly and the numer­ous por­tals we can access it cre­ates a lens to look through. Cer­tain infor­ma­tion can be used neg­a­tively in these spaces, and peo­ple often are not con­scious of the true num­ber of peo­ple that can access it. Online pro­files are a result of an indi­vid­u­als direct exter­nal por­trait of them­selves that they share and change depend­ing on the community.

  28. I find in the video “Vir­tual Com­mu­nity”, the notion of estab­lish­ing a lit­er­acy to help medi­ate how we see ourselves/form our iden­ti­ties in the vir­tual com­mu­nity to be a unique thought. I didn’t quite see how the evo­lu­tion of our­selves from free expres­sion­ary peo­ple to a per­sonal mar­keted self could be made until the point was about the evo­lu­tion of social media from the pre­cur­sors to Myspace->Myspace-> to Face­book was made. In response to the notion that the blo­gos­phere has per­haps changed us to a more regimented/framed sense of indi­vid­ual iden­tity, I believe that it is a result of our inner dri­ves for power, pres­ence, and pres­tige rather than a result of a vir­tual framework.

  29. I thought it was inter­est­ing that Arroyo and Alaei com­pare the con­struct of lan­guage to the con­struct of dance model. It puts some­thing that is less con­crete into per­spec­tive when you relate it to some­thing you do every­day. The danc­ing model is con­structed from ideas where as lan­guage is con­crete which applies to elec­tracy as well. Lan­guage is the foun­da­tion for elec­tracy just as steps are the foun­da­tion for dancing.

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