- » Note: revised schedule (as announced 25-Feb).
M 01-Mar Internet Invention Chapter 7 (180-209): “History (School)”
-
» key topics:
Narrative, “Donor,” Sender, Receiver, focalization; “Value,” “interpellation” (190);
“Ficelle,” “quilting,” conductive inference/logic, Syncretism, fragment;
“secondary encounter” (“untimeliness”), retroaction, insight/attunement/endocept, Stimmung (& Voice)
→ closely read: Office, “On the Premises” (191), & all “Comment” sub-sections.
Discuss: Project Two Part II “Community Discourse” (review: pp.191-2)
W 03-Mar Clips: Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (Dir. Gondry, 2006)
- Weekly Blog Entry: optional (due Friday, for e.c.)
— suggest Exercise (p. 191) or prompt from last week.
Due: Inventory Update (weeks 7 & 8; 5 new items)
R 04-Mar Due: Exercise 3 (“High Concept” p. 198) — Guide/Tips below .
F 05-Mar Spring Break (no class, away at conference)
Pages on Ulmer’s supplementary site for Chapter 7
Exercise 3
- Due: 04-Mar (posted by 10pm); 500 words min.; 10 points
- Exercise: High Concept
Select one person or character who appears in the documents for each discourse and [present] their relationship in the style of high concept. (p. 198)
» Prompt clarification (from students’ Q thus far):
This refers specifically to the 3 dimensions of popcycle, from the 3 Assignments in textbook thus far: Career, p. 21; Family, p. 86; Entertainment, p.127 (also see “On the Premises” p.191).
- (additional answer) This parameter is flexible in that you are not bound to the individuals explicitly discussed in your Project 1 sections; however, maintain the same “career domain” (your field), memory context (time/place setting), and a media narrative (movie, TV, book) from “childhood years” (K-12).
» Tip from reading: review pp. 195-7.
- “Ficelle,” “Riddles of Sense,” “Example: High Concept”
(key concepts: “syncretic,” narrative “displacement”; “logic of riddles,” “conductive sense,” “metaphor’s dynamics”; “nth degree,” “hook,” “Hollywood haiku.”)
» Composing Guide:
- Organization: Fragments, (prose, narrative “clips”; not literally “haiku”); not coherent story or even paragraphs. Tip: think of mode as “sketching a scene” (TV logic?).
- Comment: formal appearance parameters deliberately unspecified in order to promote inventive/innovative composition approaches; in other words, experiment stylistically in your writing — especially organization. (learning from but superseding “creative nonfiction” in our method.)
- Style: Expressive, by putting into relation unlike “characters” in assemblage fashion (juxtaposition logic); leave relation implicit (expressed), rather than explaining or defining. (i.e. remove descriptive frame of explanation, which essay form requires of examples).
- Analogy from Project 1 poetics —
for essay, Argument/Claims : “Support Evidence” :: for syncretic ThreadWork, _______ (Stimmung, resonance?) : _________ “Support” (media, culture, concrete figures?). - Composition: concise & precise points/phrasing (“haiku logic” of efficiency); concrete description (like example “Medicine Ficelle” pp. 198-9)
- Tip: Try “middle voice” if you can, or at least leaving out yourself as sender/receiver.
- Haiku Design (Ulmer’s aesthetic example, chapter 2)
- Formal/Design: Feel free to use an image for one of the three dimensions (ideally, edited for your purpose/context, yes?); not required to post images for any/all three, though.
→ Strongly suggest incorporating at least one (multi)media element, particularly audio/video clips.
- Comment: this is especially important if you’ve not attempted, both in technical and poetic aspects; and in “haiku logic,” cultural elements can express much quite efficiently, both with connotation and aesthetic qualities, (e.g. song, character, “style/signature,” logo/icon).
Try using media as expressive mode, rather than as “empirical documentation” (referential, representation mode; review Project feedback on this).
This is “warm up” for Project 2 in certain ways — experimenting with both aesthetics/design & writing.
Review course method for “tuning” & “warm up” in blog as “band rehearsal.”
» Relays: :
- Ulmer’s example: May Stevens “Ordinary Extraordinary” (pp. 193-4)
- Brick — what is the X-Y operation here? (most have identified in their Inventory notes)
- Block Party (“Dave Chappelle’s”?) — X-Y-Z formula? (in general, “Entertainment” + “Community” = Style Expressing “Stimmung“; but more specifically, for these 3 categories?)
- Potential Relay (key textbook instructions): “Alice in Cyberspace” (173)
- review: “inventio” (173); “Meetings in Wonderland” (174) — riddle logic, conductive reason.
- Comment: indeed, Deleuze writes The Logic of Sense as theory composed in the style of modernist literature: his “high concept” pairing is Stoic philosophy + Lewis Carroll, to discuss paradox.
— always remember our contrast, the argumentative essay; electracy is invented in Entertainment (Ulmer “argues/proves”), not the ENC 1101/2 classroom after all!
- Comment: indeed, Deleuze writes The Logic of Sense as theory composed in the style of modernist literature: his “high concept” pairing is Stoic philosophy + Lewis Carroll, to discuss paradox.
» Method / Theory Q. (rhetorical; consider for presentations):
- similarities / distinctions between our ThreadWork, Collage, and Mash-up?
(in aesthetics, obviously, but more so logic)
Word of the Day
Dictonary.com
Sunday, February 28, 2010
quixotic \kwik-SOT-ik\ , adjective;
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; foolishly impractical especially in the pursuit of ideals.
2. Capricious; impulsive; unpredictable.
Hi Gary,
I did not see any hints on how to execute the High Concept Exercise. it says review the documentation for the three main assignments treating the discourse of Career, Family, Community History- what assignments is this exercise referring to? And the second half said to select one person or character who appears in the docs for each discourse and state their relationship in the style of high concept- would that one person be myself?
I just need some direction and clarification. This would be greatly appreciated.
peace
(reply to a student’s questions, with additional clarification & elaboration)
» the first key clarification is that you will not “talk about” any of the three characters, or their relation to you. This is what I mean in the instructions by “leave the relation implicit (expressed)”; note how the films do not explain (“talk about”) their high concept pairing, but simply show us. In the case of Brick, these contemporary teenagers act (and talk!) as if they are in a detective film (noir genre, Hollywood 1940s); but this is not explained.
» If Jolie’s character in this film is your Entertainment selection, you’ll present her exclusively in this way — quotes, scene/summary (of narrative), concrete description of her key “characteristics” (what makes a “signature style” in the actress + fictional character formula?). We can take creative liberties composing new scenes with the same character or setting faithful to film; (relay: “sketch” comedy on TV, manipulating actual persona in new way) — but this is not the entire exercise (composition).
» Don’t forget the other two dimensions of your popcycle, from your choice of contexts in Project 1 (Parts I & II). The key goal and strategy of this exercise is less about the film than the attempt of “putting into relation” (juxtaposition) these unrelated individuals in order to produce a new instance of expression (Stimmung, resonance generated by the assemblage of fragments).
» So, take “one step back” from the film, and use the character (with all her “signature style” and connotation) to work for your purpose of expression. This is the principle of last week, a single figure (character, avatar) economically expresses a complex combination of meanings (connotations and “third meanings”) in the style of haiku — which uses images in poetic construction of language.”
(reply to another student’s question)
We are identifying and using the “signature style” of each individual (“character”), which can be implemented efficiently, for our purpose of expression — the new tune/tone produced by the high concept relation.
We would be utterly confused by the “nonsense” of Brick’s high concept, or sketch comedy for example, if we decoded in terms of “actual” instead of “virtual” mode; but we “get” the formal/aesthetic expression because we don’t ask if it is “actually true.” The relay of comedy sketches helps additionally with the technique of “re-deploying” characters (in terms of their persona, including public figures): new or revised scenarios are composed featuring the persona and her/his “signature style” (regardless who is “playing” the role, e.g. SNL technique) for the resulting effect of humor. The “rules” hold based upon the character’s diegesis (story world) — specific to time/place context, whether a celebrity (during their “cultural moment”) or a fictional character (their film world). For example,
Reggie Bush & Kim Kardashian can not confront the Red Queen & Jabberwock any more than Alice & the Mad Hatter could attend the Superbowl or the Oscars this weekend. (These are the “actual” empirical rules for these characters, not the virtual mode of electracy in which we compose high concept assemblage.)
Our work is similar to a mash-up song in its logic if not necessarily aesthetic output, in that multiple audio clips spliced together still form a song composition. In high concept ThreadWork, the result will not be formally homogeneous — not to worry about classifying the “product” of mashing up images, quotes, songs, multimedia clips, scene descriptions (invented or actual), phrases, or whatever “materials” for quilting. The patches are not sewn together in digital composition, as the connecting threads are left implicit, functioning with resonance if chosen with logic of attunement / Stimmung.
In a haiku, the collection of concrete images (sensory) is left to function like this, hence its “abstract” quality (yet impressionistic, particular; “glimpse”) — expressing resonance far greater than denotation of phrase economy.