Unit III: Experience – Affect – Electracy
Project 3: Screen Self Portrait
Week 12
M 04-Apr Discuss: Aimée Knight, “Reclaiming Experience: The Aesthetic and Multimodal Composition” (2013) PDF in Drive
- focus: experience, aisthetikos, empirical, media
→ examine section 3 most closely (sections 2 & 4 more for project 3)
» Quotes Doc below
- intro: Exercise 4 (Instructions page)
→ Overview Video
W 06-Apr hybrid work :
- Discuss Knight article plus Vaidhyanathan chapter: “The Googlization of Memory: Information Overload, Filters, and the Fracturing of Knowledge” PDF (Drive & D2L)
→ focus: experience quantified into information/data…?
- participation: Comment & Reply in discussion thread below
→ see Prompts here
F 08-Apr Discuss: Experience Quantified & Sensory (Knight & Vaidhyanthan readings)
- activity/focus: Exercise 4 composition
» Exercise 4 (due 04/09): Sensory Experience Quantified & Unclassifiable (10 points)
W 06-Apr Online Discussion in comments below — Prompts:
» Comment (due 1215pm) — both prompts required (1−2 sentences each)
1. Reviewing Knight’s article, start with a quote (short passage) — one that is thought-provoking or elucidating for you about experience and “the Aesthetic Paradigm.” (qualify this briefly, in a sentence or two, along with the quote)
2. Reference specifically a term/concept or quote from Vaidhyanathan Chp 6; connect to our inquiry about experience (if not identity) and forms of knowledge (in Unit 3 and perhaps for Exercise 4)
→ consider in terms of experience, memory, information, knowledge — overloaded, quantified/quantifiable, encoded, “legible,” personal, collective?
(in other words, how Vaidhyanathan’s chapter, particularly the concept/term or quote you’ve noted, helps enhance your understanding through its specialized discourse, connections, example, perspective, etc.)
- *remember, these can be brief and conversational comments. For the most productve discussion thread, please be sure to review all comments before posting, in order to avoid referencing the same quotes.
→ also, you need not directly discuss/contrast the Knight & Vaidhyanathan readings explicitly in your first comment; considering the respective perspectives of information & aesthetics regarding experience makes for a good response…
» Classmate Reply (due 1245pm) — options (1−2 sentences):
a. propose an example, from experience or observation, to make the concept/term referenced more concrete
b. connect/discuss one of the references to a passage or idea you noted
— from same author, or another reading like Rettberg chapters.
c. extend the discussion by looking ahead to Exercise 4 — speculating how Knight or Vaidhyanathan might help inform our approach and question of experience quantified or unclassifiable (specific ideas or general perspective, for Parts 1 or 2)
- *this last suggestion would be particularly good for a 2nd optional reply (for bonus participation credit)
» Quotes doc from Knight article:
An everyday rhetorical approach to the aesthetic is past due. As early as 1934, John Dewey addresses the state of the aesthetic. Dewey (1934) asserted that the major challenge for a genuinely useful aesthetic theory would be “to recover the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living” (p. 10). Speaking in broad terms of philosophies of aesthetics he claimed “the system in question has superimposed some preconceived idea upon experience instead of encouraging or even allowing esthetic experience to tell its own tale” (275).
Referencing Dewey, ” to recover continuity of esthetic experience” invokes mystery about experience and what is real. Knight’s reference to Dewey implies that information is ever changing in a sense that we can never perfectly translate, import, and comprehend information. From its origin information is changed as it moves through consciousness.
“I have the potential to connect myself to an abundance of very odd and useless things. But ultimately I chose what elements to remember and comfortably ignore the rest.”
This connection and ease of access to abundant information creates an interesting situation. We take what we think is valuable and important and we communicate it to others, but this communication of information works like the game telephone. Pure information is diluted as it travels between individual conciseness, this battle we fight everyday in our quest to feel something that is real or true.
Referencing the spread of information like the game of telephone is a perfect metaphor. I’m sure many times people have overheard something and repeated to someone else, that’s how rumors get started, and whether someone chooses to believe it is what is then translated to their personal knowledge. ” Knowledge…involves what, at least pragmatically, is true and good, beautiful, and useful. ” Quoted from Vaidhyanathan, things can be misperceived between information and knowledge, I guess the situation at hand is what can distinguish between the two, which makes it really difficult. It is the same problem we had in the last project, distinguishing the two, but what I’ve learned is that information and knowledge are different for each discipline at hand.
“It is clear that our understanding of meaning making is being reworked, in step with our changing times. Part of what is at stake here, as we move toward more visual and interactive means of communication is in understanding how audiences create meaning via their mediated experiences. This includes media that is newly created, which employ multiple sources of information and representation, but also old forms of media that an audience can’t help but see newly, from their evolving positions and perceptions.” (Knight, 148 )
This made me think about how professors alter their class lectures to fit the millennial generation that is making their way to education right now. Some semesters I have have a professor who is not tech savvy and they just stand at the front of the class and lecture to large groups of students while writing key points on the chalkboard. Versus other professors who are keeping up with technology and incorporate videos, slideshows, etc. to help further our learning. From my personal experience I find it harder to learn with just lecture and no media dimensions to further represent what is being discussed.
“The standard description of the difference between knowledge and information des not fully describe our current condition. Knowledge, as Neil Postman explained, involves what, at least pragmatically, is true and good, beautiful, and useful. Information always requires interpretation — some form of processing — to be judged so and thus to begin to serve as the basis for knowledge. Too much unprocessed information interferes with the generation and utility of knowledge: it can generate anxiety, wasted effort, and paralysis. It can obscure the valuable and beautiful. It can also diminish respect for the carefully crafted containers of knowledge.”
For me this passage says what we chose to look at as knowledge comes from personal experience, which then can transform into information as we choose to interpret it. In that way it evokes forms of experience and memories. But not in the way that we are learning academically as this article goes on to discuss that sometimes we remember not to remember; but in the way that we have personal experiences and life lessons.
→ we definitely need more GIFs, this unit especially!
I find it so interesting that you bring up the idea of professors at our university using either a modern approach or a traditional approach to teaching students. It’s enticing to think about what school was like before the innovation of powerpoint and even the use of the internet and computers–basically, listening to someone, as that’s it. In the quote, “can’t help but see newly, from their evolving positions and perceptions”, we can relate back to your notion of professors not being able to evolve with the students, and thus imagining what our future will be like. Will our generation of teachers use technology or will there be a different method that surpasses even ours.
http://www.proconit.com/img/questions/3497.jpg
I too have professors who both incorporate technology, and those who do not bring in a computer themselves. I have found that the teachers who do not use technology as efficiently as they could, choose to do so because they have found their teaching style and believe it to be the most successful way to conduct their class.
→ the focus on traditional classroom teaching & learning(?) is a bit narrow, especially given the rich quote Jheadeux included:
“Part of what is at stake here,
as we move toward more visual and interactive means of communication
is in understanding how audiences create meaning via their mediated experiences”
— using media that involve “multiple sources of information and representation.”
This relates to our inquiry directly, connecting with Rettberg (re: “representation”) and Vaidhyanathan (“information”) readings as well. About classrooms/education, whether for teachers or students we can recognize how the digital retrieval/display of information is hardly the engagement or production of knowledge, as in Jheadeaux’s second quote.
Similarly, when Knight discusses aesthetic meanings created by “audience” (ergh; maybe “participants” better?): this is not necessarily knowledge in the traditional, rational category of meaning in Literacy (writing)…
→ as we’ll explore in Exercise 4, and further in Project 3, there are dimensions of experience and identity that can not be “captured” (translated) into information or even writing — whether legible for humans or machines.
Likewise, we have identities that exceed legible information, maybe as “unprocessed” experience or diverse representations of self (Rettberg) — we’ll test the potential of aesthetic expression (even if not “meaning making”) as a form adequate for composing, performing, and reflecting our digital identity; indeed to reflect back and reflect upon our mediated experience.
(“sneak preview,” looking ahead next few weeks; but good to grasp the separate, if not necessarily conflicting perspectives discussed here re: information & aesthetic paradigm)
The aesthetic in traditional English studies is usually located in a finite object (such as a literary text, which assumes a reader reading). Today, making such an assumption or appropriation of “text” is rather unproductive. There are more generative possibilities open for aesthetic consideration, and according to new media scholars, we should be considering them. (Knight 149).
I find this passage interesting because I am curious to see what other “aesthetic consideration” options as text we may find it today’s society, because I believe that sometimes literary text can be seen as aesthetic. In this, I think about twitter, in which the literary text is both finite in description, but as well as the limitation of characters that are allowed.
In terms of the other reading, I find the parallel between knowledge (being defined as “is true and good, beautiful, and useful) and information (where as it’s “always requiring interpretation to be judged so and thus to begin to serve as a basis of knowledge”) Personally, I find that this relationship can be reversed, as I believe that sometimes it takes knowledge of a certain thing or area in order to connect back to information of another certain thing or event and thus, going in a continuous loop. We can then ask the question of which came first, knowledge or information? (Vaidhyanathan 175). Our experience is determined by knowledge of that certain even that may have taken place, leading us to be knowledgeable about the future, and perhaps this can tie in with the idea of learning from our mistakes
→ interesting view, another look at the knowledge — information distinction.
Your last point makes me recall the nature of narrative knowledge, in sequence, which seems particularly human. What is the sequence of event & narration? or effects & causes? In our “timeline” thinking & communicating, our narrating almost needs to precede the event in order to understand it (knowledge through narrating); like knowledge of causes, starting with effects and looking “backwards” to construct a timeline…
(this is a bit “philosophical,” sorry)
Back to our inquiry and activities: you mention experiential knowledge (term?), which Monday we recognized distinct from Knowledge about and definitely Information.
For Exercise 4, Part 1 will try to capture data/info of experience (event) in slightly non-human ways, in addition to our perceptions if not even understanding; maybe knowledge about the experience, but not even to interpret in this thought exercise — especially so that we can contemplate what can not be captured as legible information (or conventional knowledge).
“Living in an era where technology drastically shapes the ways we communicate, teachers and scholars of composition need a better understanding of audience experience with media in order to render more transparent the ways in which an audience creates knowledge—or takes and makes meaning.” I believe that this statement completely summarizes what is happening in our schools systems todays day in age. I know that some schools are incorporating the use of up to date technology in their classroom so that they can better understand and connect with their students. Many students today are absolutely glued to their cell phones. We are very technologically oriented and that trend probably will not go away for some time. I think it would be a wise decision for teachers to try to incorporate more technology into their teaching styles if they want to be able to successfully reach out to this new generation of students. Teachers must study that these students respond well with technology in the same way that some students respond well to pictures and sounds over simple lectures. Tapping into the technological aspect of teaching could make a large impact for students who learn that way.
“The ease of retrieving information with Google might make us too lazy to remember things on our own.” After reading this quote, it has come to my attention that Google is really a double edged sword. It contains more information than we could even dream about and allows us access to it 24/7, however too frequently, people use it to answer small questions that they do not want to answer for themselves. I do believe that used correctly, Google is an amazing source of knowledge that we should be taking advantage of. However, overuse of this luxury could mean the beginning of a downfall of humans thinking for ourselves and becoming lazy on an intellectual level.
I completely agree with this, as a student who has learning disabilities i have had technology involved in my learning since i can remember and teachers always react differently to how i should use it and if it is at all beneficial. But the truth is if teachers found ways to keep us present and use technology they could related to students so much easier. These things are simple as just turning off the internet so students can’t browse reddit and facebook while in class, proxies and blocked websites work too.
Google is a strange tool, one that we use constantly and a tool i remember always using to try and learn more. But it doesn’t always give you the facts or explanation but vague answers that fit the search request. While at the same time it has provided the easiest way to learn small things without having to take classes, such as to tie a tie or cook a turkey, or learn to brew beer.
I think that the danger of Google is less based upon intellectual sloth and more upon the use of the information we receive. Answering smaller questions with Google in pursuit of a larger answer is often just an abbreviation of meandering through a textbook, and can help keep individuals on target rather than letting minds wander while looking for references. The human mind routinely absorbs more raw sensory data than it can actively process, especially consciously, and must sort through that which is relevant to the thought at hand while also processing the environment and the background, which leads to information being left out, discarded, or ignored, often for no consequence, but occasionally with unfortunate results. It is what we choose to do with the information we absorb, and why we chose to pursue it that makes a difference.
I think that the fact that we highly use google for information is a way where it limits a person’s knowledge and diverse out bringing whereas, a person using Google is only limited to the word phrases and such topic relative to word(s) we search within Google. What I am trying to point out from exercise 4 is the concept of what information we use to transcribe such new information we encounter and provide within our writing.
→ to follow and underscore Hunter’s last point, in context of Unit 3 and our broader scope (“worldviews”):
we previously recognized — and some traditional institutions still do — information recall/recitation as knowledge, even though our brains are not the best storage-retrieval processors
Just like data legible & communicated by machines (Rettberg chp 5), we’re “off-loading” information to networked databases (“Google” somewhat names this historical development) as prosthesis…
and while this has its own form of “thinking” (algorithms; recall Idea Channel video) and “decision making,” I’d like to focus our attention on new forms of knowledge and identity experience emerging.
For instance, just like deciding & performing what to do with information (example: consider any traditional academic assignment) in writing —
what about deciding & performing with information in social/public contexts? and with cultural forms (perhaps along with, or in place of Info), to perform or express new knowledge or identity experience…?
“Latour sees the dilemma clearly, the aesthetic has been deduced to empty shadow play, bouncing back societal and cultural influences to such an extent that it’s become impossible to speak of having one’s own aesthetic experience. Indeed, the modus operandi has been to “explain away” the aesthetic by addressing the social and ideological factorshidden behind it. Yet, this unapologetically a priori “way of knowing” serves to create a narrow, limiting conception of what the aesthetic is and how it is experienced—privileging mind over body, theory over experience, and universals over particulars.” This specific quote shows the struggle to put such amazing information from people’s personal; observation and analysis which are usually categorized into a lower level of signifance than theories that are based on a third person stand that show an unbais trail of thought from the author.
“The practice of determining the value of a work but it’s appearances in other citations (bibliometrics) is a controversial and troublesome topic within the academic culture…the expansion of the principle to measure the presumed “impact” or “value” scholarship within the humanities has generated criticism, because much of the best work is published in books, rather than in a stable set of indexable journals” (Vaidhyanathan 6, P. 15). This quote shows a similar way of filtering knowledge within the Academia of professional literature from the quote I posted above.
Last remark, both Knight and Vaidhyanathan show a similar view on how information within the professional writing are filtered and highly structured by aesthetics and acceptable knowledge that is considers “real” information to students and people of the Academia.
→ on this last point, we do indeed want to think further about Institutions in this unit, even while focusing on experience and identity.
Perhaps in parallel or analogy (helpful to think this way):
Academia — Writing/Literacy — Information — no aesthetics = no experience (not personal experience, wisdom, subjective meanings; but disciplinary knowledge, discourse for “everyone”…)
//
Networked Society — Electracy — Aesthetics = express experience & identity
(more focus of next week, but we’ve already seen the Apparatus Theory chart…)
“Throughout the next two centuries of Western European intellectual thought, inquiries into the aesthetic continued to demonstrate concerns regarding the source and status of knowledge. Notably, theorist Louis Althusser’s work located the aesthetic firmly in the context of ideology—that is, in society’s dominant beliefs and values.
“What art makes us see, and therefore gives to us in the form of ‘seeing’, ‘perceiving’ and ‘feeling’ (which is not
the form of knowing), is the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from which it detaches itself as
art, and to which it alludes.”
Althusser’s words almost echo back to the ancient Greeks—that perceiving is not really a form of knowing.
He contended that the aesthetic reveals only ideology—not reality.”
This really speaks to me the idea that perceiving is not really a form of knowing. I grew up a large portion of my life overseas in places such as Hong Kong, Shanghai and England and it has been the hardest thing to try and explain to others what it is like to live in some place. In fact i developed a bad habit of not telling people about the places i lived because deep down i knew that they could never know what i was talking about unless they lived it and spent time in those locations. These places i lived are so much more than their outward names, seeing and “perceiving” aren’t enough to understand a place, you have to bath yourself in it, to really know what it is. Not observe but participate.
I find the idea that perceiving only produces an ideology interesting because ideologies are the basis for people’s decision making but they are also falsifiable. In a biological sense, some of us are color blind and those people technically perceive light in different colors.
“Latour sees the dilemma clearly, the aesthetic has been deduced to empty shadow play, bouncing back societal and cultural influences to such an extent that it’s become impossible to speak of having one’s own aesthetic experience. Indeed, the modus operandi has been to “explain away” the aesthetic…”
This passage notes the fact that the aesthetic is largely ignored today in scholarly study and reflection, leading to difficulty in recounting an experience exclusively from an aesthetic perspective. I think that this is largely an outcome of improved learning about how one thinks, reacts, and processes that which they experience on a day to day basis. A person does not act based upon the experience alone, their minds take in all the information, process it, highlighting what is relevant in the moment, storing other things relevant, and sorting out all the flotsam and jetsam in between, whether consciously or unconsciously, and reacts based upon that instantaneous sorting of relevance to irrelevance with respect to the circumstances. This makes the aesthetic relevant only as a building block to the human mind, relevant for its contribution of data, but relatively underwhelming in significance when there are things like reactions and concepts born from the sensory data upon its analysis.
“Yet he was incapable of thinking clearly about many issues, blinded by his perspective and position. Me? I can Google with the best of them and inform myself about a vast range of topics. So which one of us was the more capable thinker?”
The author compared his memory and access to memory to his grandfather, who had hundreds of Hindu prayers and works memorized from childhood to death, and noted that having a great memory and superb understanding of the information contained is not the same as being a great thinker. While the author’s grandfather could debate Hindu scripture and translation, he was incapable of understanding other concepts, like gender equality and physics. This highlights the fact that information, until it has been analyzed and processed, is irrelevant to the human mind. Sometimes analysis renders information unusable, or too complicated without other knowledge, and the information given to an individual is rendered inert, but if someone is capable of taking in knowledge, processing its usefulness with previously learned information, they can choose to act, speak, or ignore that information and its implications and applications, making them a broader thinker.
From Knight:
“What art makes us see, and therefore gives to us in the form of “seeing”, “perceiving” and “feeling (which is not the form of knowing), is the ideology from which it is born, in which it bathes, from which is detaches itself as art, and to which it alludes” –a quote from Louis Althusser’s influential essay “A Letter on Art in Reply to Andre Daspre” (2001)
What I find interesting about this and aesthetic experience is how closely information has become intertwined with hitting multiple senses at once in order to captivate our attention. Since so much information is readily available at our fingertips, without integrating some “art” and hitting multiple senses it is unlikely to be noticed by our increasingly short attention spans in this day and age.
From Vaidhyanathan: The concept about remembering without forgetting due to the googlization of knowledge I find particularly interesting. Whereas in the past we had to research and memorize information to have knowledge of it, nowadays we can pretend that we never forgot that information while ultimately choosing what elements to remember while ignoring the rest. So now we can seem to have greater knowledge than we have a true understanding of information simply by “googling” a topic and stating the information retrieved. In this way, experience has changed vastly because now instead of needing to find a niche of people with knowledge about a topic we can easily learn about a vast quantity of topics readily, making the world we experience much more integrated than is was a mere 20 years ago.
I like your insight from the Knight article. I see this in how nearly all companies have interactive and highly visual websites that attract consumers and keep them on their site for a longer duration. Now a days if we go to a website that does not have the familiar features we are used to we are likely to leave and look for another useful website that is easier to operate.
This relates to my example of how a customized search engine limits our ability to discover new and unfamiliar information just as a boring website deters visitors from coming back to staying on the site.
“the role of the aesthetic has been disembodied—due to the “established” ways of knowing, which frame the aesthetic as a highly intellectualized pursuit based on the idea that
knowledge itself is a historically, culturally, and ideologically imbricated process.” This quote from the Knight article shows how in our current society we dont value our base emotions and instincts anymore, but rather immediatly filter that information in our brains and react or act in a way that is pleasing based off our cultural, historical, and idealistic view of what is acceptable in society.
“However, if search results are more customized, you are less likely to stumble upon the unknown, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar. Your web search experience will reinforce any interests, affiliations, biases, and opinions that you already poses.” This quote shows how we limit our growth as people when search engines are customized to our preferences. This customization makes our searches more effective for a large percentage of the time but also limits the amount of information we are likely to stumble upon which would help us become more well rounded people.
I agree that it limits our growth. As uncomfortable as some information might be to us, it is important to be exposed to ALL kinds of views. We cannot exceed our environment.
“It is clear that our understanding of meaning making is being reworked, in step with our changing times. Part of what is at stake here, as we move toward more visual and interactive means of communication is in understanding how audiences create meaning via their mediated experiences. This includes media that is newly created, which employ multiple sources of information and representation, but also old forms of media that an audience can’t help but see newly, from their evolving positions and perceptions.”
This immediately made me think of the Daredevil series on Netflix. Over the past 2 decades, there has been a growing trend in films and television to not only cut the transition time between frames but also to direct in this sort of “reality TV-esque” style that is, at this point, annoying. Daredevil, on the other hand, has two scenes in particular that break this trend–one in the first season and another in the second. In short, the scenes are several minutes long and consist of single, continuous shots.
“The ease of retrieving information with Google might make us too lazy to remember things on our own.”
I’m reminded of the article earlier in the semester that differentiated “knowing” and “knowing how to look it up.” Vaidhyanathan says that it “might make us too lazy” but I think that it has more to do with social values, or lack thereof.