M 29-Mar Internet Invention Chp. 9 (246-60). Discuss: Part Five “WideScope”
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» key topics: Wide Image, haiku reason, “themata,” emblem;
“cultural literacy,” readymade, “appropriation,” (Modernist / Pop Art);
— Remake: Ad form, VALS, conduction
“the irreparable” gap (Agamben); “void”; “feeling of our being” (mood/disposition?)
→ closely read: Assignment & all four “Comment” sub-sections.
W 31-Mar Internet Invention Chp. 9 (261-77). Discuss: “Template”
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» key topics: wabi-sabi, nostalgia, Haiku poetics (mood → aesthetics; expression)
Tarkovsky: cinema-poetry, punctum images, emblems; chora(l) directing (auteur);
— Template: Material & Spiritual Registers (p. 267-8); “condition of singularity”;
Ulmer’s Emblem (271-5) & Mystory: Noon Star
→ closely read: Office & all four “Comment” sub-sections.
Due: Weekly Blog Entry (normal schedule) — Prompt: “Patterning” (p.248)
R 01-Apr Screening: Synechdoche, New York (Dir. Kauffman, 2008)
F 02-Apr Discuss: “cinema-poetry” Relays (Tarkovsky & Kaufmann)
- Due Sat 03-Apr: Exercise 4 (“Lyric” p.223 & “Being Singular” p.241)
Pages on Ulmer’s supplementary site for Chapter 9
Exercise 4
- Due: 03-Apr (posted by 11pm); 500 words min.; 10 points
— Review Assignment criteria.
- Part I: “Exercise: Lyric” (p.223) — 150-200 words (about 1/3 of total)
Part II: “Exercise: Being Singular” (p.241) — Tips below.
As a group (presentation arrangement),
Make a 0:30 advertisement using a film in the “readymade” style:
— any details of childhood film (from project or memory)
as “structural portrait” (figure = poetic logic = implicit),
— promoting the value of well-being
— as defined by the career/major field of your popcycle.
Form: virtual and visual (“multimedia” & “multimodal”)….?
Rules: “haiku design,” “wabi-sabi,” poetic (no explanations permitted!); need either slogan or brand (image/icon) or both — compression for “Internet speed” transmission to audience.
I was wondering if you can post a few extra directions for the Being Singular part and maybe an example.
Exercise: Being Singular
Try to sort out your experience and behavior along the lines of the predominant mode associated with each apparatus,
to notice group feelings (oral), individuality (an inner private self, “character”), and what Agamben calls singularity” (behaving as an image?). (p. 241)
The perspective is reflexive, like the “patterning” prompt, in that we now have a better idea of our position within each apparatus: Orality – Family & Community; Literacy – School & Career; Electracy – Entertainment & Web/Digital paradigm. When identifying your experience in each, consider and describe in terms of identity, practices, and disposition (or mood associated with a “state of mind”). Need not compare/contrast; just present your insights about your role within each apparatus, enabled by this type of examination.
A helpful analogy to think through first (although not to explain in response) is the “gap” in our experience regarding advertising and consumerism (259), as we discussed this week — in Agamben’s term of “the irreparable” gap (also see p.240). We want to avoid the “domination” that advertising performs (captialist ideology) by “taking over” the gap; instead, to strictly understand in the fashion of Agamben’s “Irreparable.”
Ulmer writes, “The history of the emblem shows how the irreparable gap in being (the incompleteness of an individual or a society) has been stopped up, plugged with God in the Baroque Era, and with the Commodity in the modern period” (259).
A separate view of the prompt, by analogy, is the transformation that occurs during the historical progression of apparatus development:
Daimon (spirit) → Individual Genius → Avatar
Finally, the Chapter 9 Office sections #3 & #4 (p. 277) might also provide insights — although this exercise is leading to the creation of the emblem discussed here.
In the present assignment, we want to explicitly identify our “Stimmung,” “attunement,” “default mood” that emerges when we examine our identity, behavior, position, and “experience” (objective and subjective) within manifestations of each apparatus.
Note on Part I from Friday’s class:
— leave out interpretation process as well as lyrics; present insights in precise and concise response
(i.e. 1/3 of total exercise = all purposeful, revised for efficiency).
Feel free to embed the song if you would like.
Recommended tech experimentation (for future work):
You might also “trim” the track to just the particular instance that you analyze
(music & lyrics, point when it “hits” you) using software like
Audacity.
— Then, upload your new file (edited, not original song) to Soundcloud or a free file storage site.
In latter, case, use the WP “[ audio http:// ]” code in your entry.
—
Now that everyone has begun thinking reflexively about creating an emblem, I can share, FYI,
my “patterning” entry toward an avatar (if not quite a wide image) — re: my wordpress icon:
ghink emblem
In addition to “icon,” “symbol,” and “logo” this week, worth noting the crucial distinction in rhetorical tropes that I mentioned today, for creating our emblems:
Metonymy (and synecdoche)
vs.
Metaphor
— simplified rhetoric web page by Richard Nordquist, Armstrong Atlantic State University
cf. extensive discussion by Abraham Orden, University of Chicago