about learning…

We’ve been reading Viola in preparation for this week’s New Media Seminar. So much of it is swirling around in my head; the way Facebook edits “our year,” edits our life, the way we rely on the unseen data space, the way we move through nonlinear formats in our linear ways. All this has been on my mind.  (And let’s say that is the reason this post is so… unedited.) The re-directing of my thoughts towards the question (below) was helpful in steering me down a different path of connecting the dots in Viola’s work.

Given this framework, I suggest we also understand the parable of the porcupine and the expository sections of the essay as equal outward expressions of the same underlying thing. What is that/the thing?

The thing that is the parable of the porcupine, the mantra, and the geometric diagram (after much thought) is spacial, but not necessarily specifically temporal which compels me to propose it is a type of movement; not to be confused with progress, but a different type of movement… perhaps simply motion. This interpretation is (of course) founded in my preoccupation with space and time and place, (or, movement and location), but I feel there is an argument to be made for the way we perceive movement and are perceived to move.

Being able to move through and with technology opens up new conceptual and literal doors; however, the motion can still happen without the technology. The porcupine made it across the road in the dark.

I also read echoes of Barthes in this text—the space, altered by the words on the page does not apply to computers and Viola reads that as freeing. I have always found the movement of my mind to my finger to the motion (or movement) to the key, the sound it releases and the immediate projection of the known sign on the white (blue) screen is powerful and  empowering. I am back again, to the power of motion.

Bonus question: Is data space a sacred space, a secular space, or something else altogether?

http://southerndocumentaryfund.org/projects/the-mantra-trailer/
This text and question lead me to focus on the power of the mediated mantra. I first experienced it’s power around 2006 while interning for a documentary film team.

http://mantratrailer.com/

The space made by the sound of words emitting through the air, occupying the space around total strangers, and the way it connected to the intimate, self-reflective moments of introspection I had in the mantra trailer as a 20 year old trying to figure out what to do next… this is powerful and I would dare to say sacred. However. I am not sure what the implication of deeming the space sacred over secular is… does it alter the form of the space to suggest that it’s function is bound by the separate spheres of sacred/secular?
Perhaps it is a third space… similar to Foucault’s heterotopia or Marc Auge’s nonplaces… something between the here and now serving as a space between… I would assert, a space for movement.

The 99% Invisible podcast focusing on the work of Doug Engelbart and the differences between his technological creations and those of Steve Jobs led to questions of effectiveness. Even before watching the clip of the monome (see below) the discussion was reminiscent of conversations regarding musical instruments.

What changes when we think of computers as effective instruments? Do we have a goal or function for the instruments we use? If it is to create more collaboration and effectiveness within groups, should we not address the affect of such instruments as well. Thinking of technology as instruments was very helpful– thinking of both the pragmatic functions as well as the (more) unseen possibilities seemed to change the way I have previously thought about my phone, kindle, computer, etc. Rather than focusing on the compulsion to check emails and take photos, I am now thinking: what can these instruments do, create, change, etc. for me? This is a much more empowering way of understanding my relationship to the plastic objects I am in constant contact with.

In the readings, the importance of human intellectual effectiveness was stressed. Streamline, simple functions open doors and broaden possibilities. In my reading, this is all in relation to production. What if production is not the (conscious) goal or ideal function of the instrument?

[I guess my “nugget” from this week is found in the discussion of the monome!]

“Before the pervasive influence of network broadcasting, federal regulation, and commercial homogenization, the radio dial was an instrument of fantastic sweep and power, which could convey the listener aurally from region to region, city to city, and voice to voice, and even in effect move him about in time at the speed of light, establishing in his imagination far more effectively than a geography book a sense of the larger society to which he belonged, with ceaseless activity, prodigious strength and variety, even its “fleetingly perceptible form.”

– Robert Cantwell, Bluegrass Breakdown

Above is an excerpt from a reading students in my course on bluegrass music have been grappling with this week. Not so distant, are the readings for our New Media Seminar and there relationships have been exciting. I have been interested in technology and new media through a very specific lens since 2006/2007 when I first discovered Black Mountain College and the relationship between form and function. It may seem a strange path—and interest in technology via the form and functionality of textiles and domes, but the relationships that materials evoke and connect, amputate and extend (to evoke McLuhan), are theoretically similar whether we are discussing smart phones or blankets. My foray into ethnomusicology and cultural studies have only re-introduced me (again and again) to the relationship between technology and power, people and time, in short; form and function. Reading about the different anticipated technologies in the readings, I was struck by the romanticized future functions and the ways in which they maintain violence yet offer hope for possibilities.

My “nuggets” for this week deal with such functions and are from Vannevar Bush’s article “As We May Think” (found here), and read in conjunction with Vannevar Bush’s “Science, the endless frontier; a report to the President on a program for postwar scientific research” from July 1945.

One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and comments. Time is automatically recorded to tie the two records together. If he goes into the field, he may be connected by radio to his recorder. As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. His typed record, as well as his photographs, may both be in miniature, so that he projects them for examination. –Vannevar Bush, As We May Think

This made me think of an argument a fellow student made about household appliances, such as the washing machine—productivity is increased, but actual “free time” is not necessarily increased by the ownership or ability to utilize such a technology. Similarly, I am interested in this vision of the free, unanchored (always male) investigator.

Of what lasting benefit has been man’s use of science and of the new instruments which his research brought into existence? First, they have increased his control of his material environment. They have improved his food, his clothing, his shelter; they have increased his security and released him partly from the bondage of bare existence. They have given him increased knowledge of his own biological processes so that he has had a progressive freedom from disease and an increased span of life. They are illuminating the interactions of his physiological and psychological functions, giving the promise of an improved mental health.

–Vannevar Bush, As We May Think

Later, Bush seems to look to the future, to the utopian possibilities of technology and science:

Presumably man’s spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important. (emphasis added)

These readings have caused me to think critically about my own use of new media and my hopes for its function—am I desiring control or hoping to disrupt the control of previous technologies? How do we critically and honestly evaluate the functions of new media and the technologies we choose to use?

[below: an Anni Albers textile piece]

test post for the New Media Seminar…