Electracy

Unit III: Experience – Affect – Electracy 

Project 3: Screen Self Portrait


Week 13

M 11-Apr read to dis­cuss: “The Geneal­ogy of Elec­tracy (An Inter­view with Gre­gory L. Ul­mer)” Recon­struc­tion 9.2 (2009) PDF op­tion

  • fo­cus: appa­ra­tus the­ory, invent­ing elec­tracy, affective-aesthetic par­a­digm… (Unit 3 in­quiry)
     
  • dis­cuss: ideas from Ex­er­cise 4 Part 2
    → im­pli­ca­tions for ex­pe­ri­ence & iden­tity; aes­thetic po­ten­tial in Elec­tracy
    (con­nect with Ret­tberg & Knight read­ings?)
     
  • help­ful re­view / re­watch: “Ul­mer Tapes” videos (2010) 2.04 | 2.05 | 2.06





W 13-Apr hy­brid work :




F 15-Apr ac­tiv­ity: “per­sonal data­base” sam­pling for in­ven­tion & mul­ti­modal com­pos­ing (warm-up to project 3)

» Due: Blog en­try 5prompt be­low









» 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 (100200 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…?



Help­ful re­sources:

  • Use any ideas from the op­tional read­ing, “The Learn­ing Screen” (Net­worked 2009)
    — along with any videos from “The Ul­mer Tapes” 
  • Con­sult, ref­er­ence, dis­cuss Arroyo’s video Grow­ing Up with Elec­tracy” (2015)
     
  • like­wise, Ulmer’s talkElec­tracy: Writ­ing to Avatar” (2009)

  • Ul­mer — “ELECTRACY: Writ­ing to Avatar” from DWRL on Vimeo

    (Ul­mer talk be­gins @ 5:30)




    29 thoughts on “Electracy

      1. Duende is the mood of dwelling in infor­ma­tion, and po­etry is its logic.
        […] con­cept avatar is a thought of feel­ing as a dimen­sion of civ­i­liza­tion” (107)
        — Gre­gory Ul­mer, Avatar Emer­gency (2012)


    1. » 13-Apr On­line Dis­cus­sion:

      1. Com­ment: dis­cuss 2 videos (12 sen­tences each),
      1 by Reid and 1 by Ar­royo —
      note briefly a spe­cific idea (or scene), which helps you fur­ther un­der­stand Elec­tracy and/or the dig­i­tal ap­pa­ra­tus (in­sti­tu­tions; tech­nol­ogy & so­cial con­ven­tions; iden­tity ex­pe­ri­ence)


      2. Class­mate Re­ply (12 sen­tences): iden­tify exam­ple, in video(s) or from other obser­va­tions (or ex­pe­ri­ence), that re­lates to your classmate’s point
      — or, con­nect with your post, espe­cially in rela­tion to other video or Ul­mer read­ing

      *Be sure to ex­tend the dis­cus­sion by ad­dress­ing top­ics like inven­tion (dig­i­tal rhetoric) and ex­pres­sion; medi­ated expe­ri­ence & dig­i­tal iden­tity; aesthetic-affective par­a­digm
       
      → for op­tional sec­ond re­ply (bonus credit), try ad­dress­ing any of these top­ics — in con­text of Unit 3 in­quiry: dig­i­tal iden­tity & me­di­ated ex­pe­ri­ence, aes­thetic ex­pres­sion (avatar) in Elec­tracy ap­pa­ra­tus
       
       

      1. 1.) Reid: I found it par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing that we sort of “out­source” our mem­o­ries and knowl­edge to­day, with the con­cep­tion that the knowl­edge ex­ists al­ready on the in­ter­net, and it is only a few clicks away.

        2.) Ar­royo: This video I found to be in­cred­i­bly vague and pur­pose­less. I did not cap­ture any sense of an ar­gu­ment or point to be made, other than es­o­teric ram­bling about things I don’t un­der­stand. I felt that Reid did a good job of mak­ing a point. I did not feel that Ar­royo did that; it was more like, “here’s some food for thought,” which I didn’t find par­tic­u­larly help­ful in terms of this class.

    2. “Na­tion state and the on­line com­mu­nity have some­thing in com­mon, its that they are imag­i­nary.” This con­cept of a global world be­ing very closely re­lated to the on­line com­mu­nity is some­thing very in­ter­est­ing to me. The in­ter­net at times can feel so real that its this tan­gi­ble thing right in front of you, but in re­al­ity it is a vir­tual con­struct, it doesn’t ex­ist but it is out there. This idea that every elec­tronic cre­ates a sort of world in its own, when we pick up our lap­top, phone or even a game con­sol con­troller you are en­ter­ing that same vir­tual world. The idea that our gen­er­a­tion wants to free this in­for­ma­tion, we don’t even con­sider how much our gen­er­a­tion puts out onto the in­ter­net with very lit­tle thought the ma­li­cious in­tent oth­ers could have with this new in­for­ma­tion. the idea that we need to be aware of our crit­i­cal lit­er­acy, our ex­po­sure to the imag­i­nary com­mu­nity that can be cre­ated by the in­ter­net. We have the abil­ity to cre­ate iden­tity as well as re­shape our cur­rent one.

      1. I be­lieve that the con­stant avail­abil­ity of these elec­tron­ics, and of these al­ter­nate worlds, is only go­ing to con­tinue as we step into the fu­ture. It is be­com­ing a cul­tural norm to live with these elec­tron­ics and there­fore we are be­gin­ning to see an in­te­gra­tion of a new kind of liv­ing where we are the cre­ators and are able to vir­tu­ally cre­ate what­ever our minds can imag­ine.

        1. From the Ried Video, I liked the idea of one vi­sion, the be­lief that all of our vir­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion is seen in one vi­sion al­most by one en­tity like a god. You men­tion ” step into the fu­ture ” I am in­ter­ested in the fu­ture knowl­edge and be­lief of this “All see­ing eye”.

      2. I agree with Emily and Karl, I think that as this al­ter­nate worlds are cre­ated and vis­ited it can deepen a per­sons iden­tity. But I think that it as progress it im­por­tant to look at be­cause some peo­ple hide these iden­ti­ties from oth­ers, I think it also can be­come a form of bad in­for­ma­tion, which is why, you say, that we need to be aware of out crit­i­cal lit­er­acy, es­sen­tially our dig­i­tal iden­ti­ties and how we present and in­ter­pret that in­for­ma­tion.

      3. I re­ally liked this quote. It was one of the ones in this video that im­me­di­ately popped out to me as, “Yes. I agree. It’s a fic­ti­tious realm.” Un­for­tu­nately, we gen­er­ally live vic­ar­i­ously in that realm through pieces of glass get­ting lost in the il­lu­sion of re­al­ity.

      4. In light of all that peo­ple do on so­cial me­dia to­day, the her­mit who does not ad­ver­tise his or her life on the in­ter­net may be the one who truly “ex­poses” their iden­tity; that is, do we re­ally “ex­pose” our iden­ti­ties on the in­ter­net? Or do we take refuge in the ab­sence of phys­i­cal in­ter­ac­tion, like the per­son who is too afraid to call and texts in­stead? I know many peo­ple who bloom be­hind the veil of in­ter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but in per­son they are truly shal­low peo­ple. I can dis­play only the “good” pic­tures of my­self, the well thought words I’d like to post, and the ex­pe­ri­ences in my life I’d like other peo­ple to know about. But when some­one talks to me in per­son and I look noth­ing like my pic­tures, my speech is far from elo­quent, and the worldly de­tails of my life are bare for every­one to see and hear, only then am I “ex­posed” in the truest sense of the word. Par­don my philo­soph­i­cal ram­bling, but I do not buy-in to the the­ory of “con­struct­ing our own iden­ti­ties,” via the ul­tra im­per­sonal mode of dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I think this the­ory is be­liev­able only in­so­far that one wants it to be true.

    3. Af­ter watch­ing “Grow­ing Up With Elec­tracy” and “The Danc­ing Floor” I gained in­sight on how elec­tracy is be­com­ing a new cul­tural norm such as writ­ing and read­ing. While the danc­ing floor in­tro­duced me to the idea that pic­tures and words are used when we can­not ex­press cer­tain emo­tions in words.

    4. In the Reid video one man men­tions imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties in the dig­i­tal world ex­ist­ing on so­cial me­dia ver­sus ex­ist­ing our real lives; near the end of Arroyo’s video, a pas­sage stuck out to me…

      “Re­flect­ing on how your Dig­i­tal Rhetoric course has in­flu­enced my teach­ing has turned out to be a dif­fi­cult thing for me to do, be­cause I re­al­ize those in­flu­ences are not a sep­a­rately, iden­ti­fi­able part of me. In­stead, they are to­tally in­te­grated into the way I think, the way I teach, I mean, it’s not like there are a spe­cific set of strate­gies that I ap­ply on top of some other foun­da­tional knowl­edge for teach­ing com­po­si­tion. I guess I cre­ated my own knowl­edge out of the ideas that res­onated with me, and that now they are me” 

      This makes me think more about Elec­tracy in the terms of so­cial con­ven­tions and iden­tity ex­pe­ri­ence, as we have cre­ated these “imag­i­nary com­mu­ni­ties and iden­ti­ties” that aren’t some­thing that we present in our daily lives, but some­thing that we con­nect with on a more per­sonal and deeper level, or some­thing that we would as­pire to be.

      1. I re­ally like the idea of “cre­at­ing your own knowl­edge” as in today’s so­ci­ety, per­haps knowl­edge is not only at­tained through in­for­ma­tion but rather a col­lec­tion of sep­a­rate and dif­fer­ent things–just be­cause in­for­ma­tion isn’t present, it doesn’t mean that we still can’t ob­tain some sort of new and formed knowl­edege

      2. Good catch see­ing that we cre­ate our iden­ti­ties our­selves even though we don’t re­al­ize we are do­ing so. In a way we con­fine our­selves to the lim­its of our elec­tracy and there is no neg­a­tive to lean­ing the ad­van­tage of new sources of dig­i­tal me­dia.

    5. “I’ve got­ten to the point where I don’t even try to re­mem­ber things; I just Google it. It’s eas­ier to do that. And we kind of ob­ject at first say­ing, “Oh that’s awe­ful,” but if we think about the de­pen­dency we have on this other tech­nol­ogy called the al­pha­bet and writ­ing, we’re to­tally de­pen­dent on it. It’s trans­formed cul­ture. We can­not imag­ine our­selves with­out the al­pha­bet and writ­ing.”

      This quote is from one of the speaker in the Reid video. It kind of ex­em­pli­fies the ide­ol­ogy of the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion which echoes back to the idea from ear­lier in the se­mes­ter of “know­ing” and “know­ing how to look things up.” The In­ter­net has in­deed be­come a cen­tral­ized ma­chine con­nected to vir­tu­ally every screen in the world. 

      In “The Danc­ing Floor” video, the idea of in­ter­con­nec­tiv­ity through so­cial me­dia in­ter­ac­tion is high­lighted. A con­cept known as Chora is dis­cussed and how it in­flu­enced the pre­sen­ter in her aca­d­e­mic stud­ies and teach­ing ca­reer. Weav­ing this idea with that of the in­ter­ac­tions avail­able through the In­ter­net, the pre­sen­ter ex­plains, “The Brat Pack [in­audi­ble] mean, with its com­plex lay­ers remix and re-appropriation shows how me­dia that re­sists de­f­i­n­i­tion can in­flu­ence not only par­tic­i­pa­tion but world­wide col­lab­o­ra­tion, in­ter­ac­tion, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

      1. This point of Reid’s I also found par­tic­u­larly in­ter­est­ing. I think we all do the same thing: we don’t worry about “know­ing” things, only how to find those things on the in­ter­net. This rev­o­lu­tion of out­sourc­ing our mem­o­ries, in my opin­ion, gives grav­i­tas to the em­ployer who says, “what you know is all well and good, with your de­gree and all… but what can you DO?”

    6. In the Reid video, a man said “com­mu­nity doesn’t have a com­mon be­ing, a com­mon sub­stance, but con­sist of be­ing in com­mon, that is the from the start­ing point, shar­ing noth­ing, shar­ing the space be­tween” which I found in­ter­est­ing as it’s some­thing I’ve never both­ered to think about. The fact that you’re in a com­mu­nity doesn’t mean you have some­thing in com­mon, but rather than you share the space be­tween you and other com­mu­nity mem­bers. This can re­late to the idea of elec­tracy be­cause you are putting your­self to the world, through por­tals and screens, with the idea of “self sur­veil­lance” in which young peo­ple don’t think about putting their lives out to the pub­lic with very lit­tle thought. I feel as if this idea of self sur­veil­lance can re­late to “The Danc­ing Floor” where it states that “in any and all at­tempts to con­trol, con­struct mod­els in the name of lan­guage, we will wit­ness lan­guage turn­ing against the mod­els”, mean­ing that we, as the mod­els, con­struct the lan­guage, yet the lan­guage is turn­ing against us. This par­al­lel is very unique to (I think) the youth in present times, as it never seemed like a prob­lem in the gen­er­a­tions above ours.

    7. In the Ried video, I saw ex­pres­sions on peo­ples face’s of con­fu­sion. This con­fu­sion demon­strates both the in­fancy of vir­tual com­mu­nity and in­ex­plic­a­ble na­ture of the vir­tual community.From ” Grow­ing up With Elec­tracy” makes me think of odyssey and jour­ney. One of my fa­vorite ideas or feel­ings, the com­pletely free un­re­stricted join­ery into an in­fi­nite uni­verse both in size and com­po­si­tion. It brings me to one of my fa­vorite things: ” Buy The Ticket Take The Ride” We are here now be­cause where else could we pos­si­bly be?

      1. I think it is fas­ci­nat­ing to rec­og­nize that we are in the same place for elec­tri­cal me­dia that me­dieval monks oc­cu­pied for lit­er­a­ture. There is so much to learn that is hin­dered by our present tech­nol­ogy, and I can only look for­ward to the ad­vent of the next print­ing press or steam tech­nol­ogy to stream­line our ca­pa­bil­i­ties for pro­duc­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. There is much to learn, and much to in­vent in or­der to learn it.

    8. “Elec­tracy en­com­passes the cul­tural, in­sti­ti­tu­ional, ped­a­gog­i­cal, and ide­alog­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions in­her­ent in the tran­si­tion from print lit­er­a­ture to one pri­mar­ily dom­i­nated by elec­tri­cal me­dia” I find it in­ter­est­ing that we as­sume there is an in­her­ent dif­fer­ence be­tween print and on­line me­dia. Ob­vi­ously there are some en­hanced means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for both that the other does not pos­sess, but I think at the core there is a cen­tral ide­o­log­i­cal con­cept that both seek to com­mu­ni­cate. Our re­ac­tions to such will only dif­fer in strength of re­ac­tion to power of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, which re­sides less in the power of the me­dia, but more in the ca­pa­bil­ity of a cre­ator.

    9. “elec­tracy is to dig­i­tal me­dia what lit­er­acy is to print” This quote shows Ulmer’s con­cept of the im­por­tance of be­ing able to com­mu­ni­cate and op­er­ate mul­ti­ple sources of dig­i­tal me­dia. “I re­al­ize those in­flu­ences are not a seper­atly, iden­ti­fi­able part of me. In­stead, they are to­tally in­te­grated into the way I think, the way I teach” This quote shows how your re­la­tion­ship to me­dia be­comes a part of who you are, how you com­mu­ni­cate and the more elec­tracy you have the more re­sources you have at your dis­posal to broaden your abil­i­ties as a per­son. “The Danc­ing Floor” cov­ers inner-connectivity and how you are more likely to con­nect and re­late to peo­ple that use and un­der­stand the same sources of dig­i­tal me­dia. The idea that in the mod­ern world it is be­com­ing more and more im­por­tant to be able to find knowl­edge ef­fi­ciently on the web rather than be­ing ef­fi­cient learn­ing and stor­ing in­for­ma­tion

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