Feminizing Games

Throughout McKenzie Wark's vehement defense of video games as a legitimate form of entertainment, and the debate in readings over whether video games constitute an art form, I was reminded of earlier notions applied to TV and even film as exerting a "feminizing" influence over its viewers. The stereotypical gamer is pale, soft-bodied, physicaly-unfit, and spends exorbitant amounts of time and money buying and playing games---feminized by the addiction to sedentary activity, and by constant, untempered consumption. (I remember reading an article about South Korean boot camps for teenage boys who'd become obsessed with video games. The camps were boyscout-type outdoor excursions, clearly re-masculinizing their pliant, stumbling campers into alert and active boys.) However, as we've also read in relation to TV, the feminization of the viewers of this new medium are in danger of hyper-masculinization by the overflow of violent characters and plotlines, which (it has been argued) normalize violence, and, in the case of video games, literally require simulated violence by the gamer.

Games as escapes, games as reminders

While dealing with the idea of people creating 'alternate universes' by immersing themselves within either games or MOOs, I was reminded of the game Passage.

The game itself is very simple in nature, its graphics herald back to the original Nintendo, as is the gameplay. The objective of the game is to walk along a passage, finding treasure chests which increase your score, this seems like a standard diversion, an easy thoughtless game that allows people to take some time out of "RL" and mindlessly collect treasure. However, the game reveals its true meaning as time goes on. Although I didnt notice at first, my character was slowly aging the entire time, as was the female sprite who i took to be my wife when i accidentally bumped into her, creating a love heart.

I was so wrapped up in trying to find treasure that it took me a while to recognize the changes, as they are incredibly minute, but eventually it became clear that my tiny pixelated sprite was balding, and my virtual bride appeared to be getting fatter. Undettered, I kept looking for more treasure, and sadly my wife eventually turned into a headstone and left me as a decrepit old man walking slowly around a virtual world. Then I turned into a headstone too and it was all over.

The game's author stated that he created it as a way for people to look at their own feelings and beliefs regarding their very meaning of life. Regardless of your actions in the game, it still ends the same way, with both of you dead (your points are not even displayed after your death, the logic being that your dead anyways, why do you need points?).

I thought this seemed similar to Dibbell's essay, as both use the apparently frivolous to echo real life. Although Passage does it in a very different way, I have been wondering about how much of a statement a massively multiplayer game would be able to make about the way we function as a society. Still theres no "A-ha!" moment in these communities, and people would likely continue to spend their time yelling at each other, racing to 'be the best', or focusing on sex. Then again, that could be a statement about society in itself.

You can download passage here if your interested: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=17004

when I became an avatar, I felt very silly

So my first reaction to the proliferation of bodies via cyberspace was, "What happens when the batteries die?" Or:

In regards to cyber-rape, I set out to do the reading in a state of self-conscious, highly self-policed open-mindedness, aware of how absurd I would likely find the material and seeking to move beyond my initial reactions. I sat in Blue State, laughing out loud at phrases like "cyber-rape survivor." My reactions were  because I saw cyberbodies as farcical, a virtuality whose ontology was game-like in origin. What fascinated me, however, was that I came to understand the validity of a cyber-body, and of cyber-rape. Still, though, I was plagued by questions of reality. Specifically, I accept (and even embrace) that the (neo)human exists through multiple media on multiple platforms, and yet I can still be dismissive of cyberness. Why? 

I think it is related to a valuation of the corporeal over the virtual~ again, notions of the body being "realer," or of more impact to the "self" than any external(?) projection or manifestation of identity. Maybe it has to do with the seat of agency-- I am my body, I do my avatar; in light of the notion of performative identity, however, this has little ground.

In the end, I realized that virtual bodies seemed ridiculous because they are so finite, separate, capricious... again, they cease when the batteries die, and we persist beyond them. However, the corporal body is no different. The body, too, dies. The physical avatar--the body--is just as thin as the virtual avatar. Final realization: virtuality, in its ontology rooted in phenomenological (read: not the philosophy, just the adjective) limitation, reflects human mortality. I think that virtual bodies, then, offer us a paradox: the chance to proliferate ourselves, to embody multiplicity, as well as address and embody finitude and mortality.

Play

Well, I originally intended to write about "The Death of LambdaMOO" and "Signs/Links," but my post ended up very long and showed no signs of ending any time soon. So, rather than presenting an incomplete text, I'd rather write some notes on Wark's "Gamer Theory."

I take issue with Wark's notion that "Games are places where Ideological promises are kept" and that "the gamer accepts a system as given and attempts to score within it." This is because Wark defines Play as play within the rules of the system. However, this Play is impossible without playing with the rules themselves. This means that games are in a constant state of flux, equally defined by the coder and the gamer; the coder creates the rules and the gamer plays with them, finding stress points and pressing them in order to open up the original intent to new possibilities. Take, for example, Donkey Kong; Gamers analysed the rules of the game, figured out ways to use them, get around them, and otherwise manipulate them, and proceeded to set scores thought impossible by creators, as evidenced by the "death screen" found at the end of the game, which simply kills off your character and ends the game. To pull a quote from http://www.scifi.com/sfw/screen/sfw16918.html:
One prominent story element involves a bit of video-game lore previously unknown to this reviewer. It turns out that Mario's quest to save his girlfriend from the rampaging gorilla is not merely eternal, as it seems to casual players, but by design doomed to failure, as there is, well past the point where anybody but a total obsessive could ever play the game, a feature called "The Death Screen," where the game software hits total overload and Mario himself dies for no reason, the in-game explanation, I guess, being that he's suffered a massive coronary from vaulting all of those barrels the gorilla has been raining down upon him. Mario's girlfriend is, by default, doomed to remain in the gorilla's clutches, suffering the fate King Kong's Ann Darrow so narrowly avoided. I consider this a major bummer, in context, but the gamers don't feel that way; to them, it's a substantial achievement just to last the more than two hours it takes for Mario to keel over and die. —Adam-Troy

Gamers have pushed the system so far that it eventually collapses. While current games seem to be aware of this, providing ways for the true gamers to express this desire to play with rules without fundamentally breaking the system, but this means that the "system" itself is subject to continual change as the gamer plays, discovering new tricks unintentionally hidden within the code.

To conclude, let me say this: I really enjoyed this section, and the discussions held within. Thank you all for the excellent exchanges of ideas and concepts, and thank you Jeremy for directing our conversation, for providing context in many cases where a knowledgeable interpretation was impossible without which (especially concerning Freudian analysis).

What the hell is cybersex?

Dibell's article "A Rape in Cyberspace" especially interests me because of the question of physicality in this "cyberworld." The whole idea of cybersex takes technophilia to a new level, as well as offering an interesting perspective on voyeurism, agency, vulnerability, safety in the suppose anonymity and detachment offered by the internet. Also, where does this idea place the body within this space? It occupies a mediated position; as Dibell writes, "No bodies touched. Whatever physical interaction occurred consisted of a mingling of electronic signals sent from sites as distant from each other as the eastern seaboard of the United States and the southern coast of Australia" (14). However, these experiences are exceedingly real to those who experience them: "Small wonder, then, that a newbie's first taste of MUD sex is often also the first time she or he surrenders wholly to the quirky terms of MUDdish ontology, recognizing in a full-bodied way that what happens inside a MUD-made world is neither real nor exactly make-believe, but nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true" (17). Where is the difference between what is "real" and "make-believe/VR"? I think perhaps it lies in the sharing of that experience with others. Communities grow around these virtual realities because there is an element of reality in the contact made with other users. But where is the body in this? Does anyone else see a striking similarity in this cyber-rape to the scene of Corinne's "confession" in Weekend?

Fictionalization. Re-evaluation and/or Annihilation

Hypothesis:

In the lecture on Wednesday, Prof. Chun posed the question of what and how do media – and the theoretical accounts more or less associated with them (and with what, for want of a better word, I will call the “postmodern” world, even though I have come to realize how problematic the term “postmodern” is) do.

One approach to this question that I would like to explore in my post – particularly in light of the readings for the past two weeks – is the issue of the re-evaluation and/or annihilation (and/or possibly “convergence”?) of the categories of “the ethical”, “the political”,“the aesthetic” (even “the economic”, by implication) – traditional categories of “dividing” and understanding reality – that media and their theoretical (more or less) counterpart might induce and which might be consonant with the (yet incomplete, I would argue) triumph of postmodernism as “a world view” (Jencks, C. (1991) “The Postmodern Agenda” in Jenks C., ed. (1991) The Postmodern Reader, New York: St Martin’s Press). Suggestive of this phenomenon(/a) is, to some extent, McKenzie Wark's re-reading of Plato's allegory of the Cave and his apparent “upside-down” paradigm (relative to Plato's), according to which games are closer to pure Forms than reality – representation becomes the matrix of reality.

Specific points - “evidence” of a necessity to re-evaluate the categories under scrutiny:

- In his essay A Rape in Cyberspace, Dibbell points to a disturbance of “the ethical” (and not only) in our “late-modern “ world: “And perhaps most challengingly it asks us to wrap our late-modern ontologies, epistemologies, sexual ethics, and common sense around the curious notion of rape by a voodoo doll” (p.12). Should the same system of values in operation in “real” life – if, indeed, we agree with Jenkins that “We have learned to care as much about creatures of pigment as we care about images of real people”, an alternative “fictional” one, or no one at all be applied in the case of the “virtual rape”? A danger that I would particularly like to point to in relation to potential answers to this question is that the application of the un-altered category of the “ethical” to/in the fiction that is the cyberspace (without differentiating between “the fictional” and “the real”) might perhaps fictionalize the category – relocate it into the realm of representation (in the Platonic sense). At the same time, abolishing the good/evil mode of evaluation for fiction (the cyberspace, the digital), situating it (cyberspace) beyond good and evil, might undermine the status of this category for/in the “real” world. If the good/evil divide is not universally applicable, why should it be applied at all? So, it seems that neither option is a desirable solution (or a solution at all).This complex apparent aporia is, in my view, a paradoxical ethical dilemma concerning the re-evaluation of “the ethical” necessary in the contemporary world.

(And, yet, wouldn't it be great if all rapes happened in cyberspace?)

- Danah Boyd – in her Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life – puts forth the argument that the participation in public networks creates “good citizens”. The issue that I am interested in is the notion of “good citizen” in the media-dominated contemporary world. As Prof. Chun indicated, Boyd's argument operates on a Kantian and Habermasian account of the “good citizen” as the informed citizen, fully involved in information production and consumption. As the status of information itself is being called into question, however, I believe that the notion of “good citizen” also needs to be re-evaluated and redefined in order to remain relevant. Could Wark's “gamer” (ultimately a fictional identity) perhaps become the paradigm for the “good citizen” of the (post-?) postmodern world?

- Thirdly, I would like to briefly address the aesthetic status of games that Jenkins also engages with in his article (Games, the New Lively Art). In my view, an “official” acknowledgment of cinema as “the seventh art” is connected to an acceptance of the postmodern paradigm of fragmentation. But what would the acknowledgment of games as “the eighth art” entail?

Granting aesthetic value to games, I would argue, could mean the ultimate subjugation of “the aesthetic” to “the entertaining” – an inversion that is – in a sense – in the same line with Wark's reversal of Plato's (metaphysical) theory. This acknowledgment would perhaps also put into place a model of “impotent” inescapable participation (implying playing the game while at the same time being played by the game) as a norm for engaging with art.

A (provisional) conclusion:

Perhaps the media – “pure” representation (in the Platonic notion of the term) – actually relocates the above mentioned categories in or within the realm of representation. In other words, the media somehow fictionalizes these categories, with the result of a (necessary) radical re-evaluation and/or annihilation that, for the moment, remains generally not-explicitly-and-fully-engaged with (from a theoretical standpoint).

Attempting to assess the difference that MCM 0100 made in my mode of thinking, I would claim that the realization of this induced and required re-evaluation and/or annihilation is one of the most significant discoveries that I have made in this course.

Imagine all the Lovely People

This is how I would like to express my feelings as to my experience with LamdaMOO:
:feels alienated
Lavender_Guest feels alienated
Only one person talked to me, because I thought it normal for some reason to
Look in cardboard box in Animu. [I suppose this is how you learn social skills by making these awkward mistakes...]
When I tried to say
“Hi, I’m new here
the MOO responded with
I don’t understand
By the time I could respond and try again to say
“Hi, I am new here
(Maybe the apostrophe messed something up)
Animu leaves room and door resolutely shuts behind him
: feels incredibly socially awkward
Lavender_Guest feels incredibly socially awkward

(but don’t we already know that when we communicate we put ourselves out there to be vulnerable)

(And isn’t this text format quite annoying an hard to read)

Not such a normal, social skills building experience. Nor is encountering 101 cyber characters in a hot tub. I now know how to navigate a MOO after my long tutorial though. That might turn out to be a useful like skill

But to be less cynical...
The article by danah boyd was quite fascinating. Never would I have thought that social network sites were linked to the labor movement and compulsory schooling, but that is all in the social import of these pervasive sites. Nor would I have ever thought about how they were helping me to prepare for the real world. But I sympathize totally with the girl who tells how she created her blog with pictures and descriptions of her vacations so that people would be her friend. As a 14 year old, of course I thought that having the latest music and the most insightful blog posts would cause some one who I “liked” who probably wasn’t even aware of my existence and had no reason to frequent my page. I guess that was how I made the mistake of expecting things to happen on their own.

One networked public I know very well is the Brown Class of 2012 group. As the creator, I started it because as as someone who was deferring her admission to the class of 2011 to go abroad, I didn’t fit into the 2011 imagined community. I also wanted a way to visualize the group of people who were also deferring. I watched the 2012 group transform from a small, close-knit group of seven people into a vibrant, hopping group of thousands by the time the semester started. Although I barely read any of the content of the page, because I had my own community with which to interact in Israel (and the fact that our internet sucked), others used it to find their future roommates, discuss what clubs they were going to do, and form bands. Now, the group page is totally dead. The group served as a community when it needed to be imagined but now that we no longer have to imagine it, no one but 2013 prospectives and people who are looking to advertise for their various websites and campus events use the group.

Admining a dead group takes a little bit of the pressure off of my shoulders... except when I use my admin powers to send messages the entre freshman class
:grins guiltily
Lavender_Guest grins guiltily

The Death of LambdaMOO/The Relative Nature of Signs

I wasn't considering putting this up, but hey, I've got it typed out and placed in a post already, might as well. My post entitled "Play" has a bit of an explanation as to why this is so unfinished, but hopefully you can get a sense of how I imagine the text will look like when completed.

1) The Death of Lambda Moo
LambdaMOO was eerily quiet. I wandered through the rooms, examining and playing with the various objects found within, transporting myself into odd places (at one part walking through a mirror into a Pub), yet never running into any avatar awake and aware of my presence (I even waved at a few people marked as "asleep," hoping they were they on the other side of the network, waiting for someone to wander through and "wake" them). Eventually, desperate to find an opening that would allow me a glipse into the community of LambdaMOO and perhaps passage into the interior of the community, linking me with LambdaMOO despite the small period of time spent within, I typed @who and cued up of a list of the 99 avatars. Looking at which were awake (indicated by small idle times), I decided to transport myself into a room containing people conversing (perhaps transporting myself into the conversation as well), but "La Cantina," the site of the only conversation I could find, would not allow me enterence, instead throwing me out as soon as I entered.
I was left stunned and rather frightened: how has a community once numbering 10,000 been reduced to somewhere between six and twelve active members, 87 members logged on but not active, and somewhere between 1000-2000 members completely absent from the system? What happened to the network of interactions described by Dibbel? Unsure of a response, I turned to another network, the world wide web, for an answer. I found this:
LambdaMOO -- an open letter to students and researchers
I'd like to focus on particular implication of this letter, summed up nicely in the section entitled "The Moral":
"There were some tragic incidents many years ago, which the world will not let us forget. . . . This, it seems, is our best advertisement."

This statement seems rather disturbing; the very necessity of notifying the outside of its presense in order to assure the growth of the community eventually created the events that led (or rather, are leading) to the eventual death of LambdaMOO. But keep in mind that part of the problem lies in the representation of LambdaMOO; in the minds of the "world," LambdaMOO is defined by "A Rape in Cyberspace"; the myth that has developed has fundamentally defined LambdaMOO by the rape that occured there many years ago. While Professor Chun seemed to be aware of the dangers of this myth, notifying us of the contents of the rest of the book, trying to highlight the tension between the "real" and "virtual" explored within, it is already too late: the community has already been redefined and destroyed as a result. In this case, I believe this is because the chapter we read was originally published in several magazines before the publication of the whole book; since those who had spent all their life in "RL" did not have the "background" (that is, they had not constructed signs with which an understanding of "VR" could be reached), they seized upon the one sign they did possess: rape. Thus, students, unprepared and unwilling to enter the world of LambdaMOO (or rather, to attach a new sign to their definition of themselves) found themselves asking anyone they came across about rape. LambdaMOOers found themselves attempting to resist this forced definition by continuing to foster the growth of culture within the system, closing it off to those newcomers unwilling to leap through a giant series of hurdles (thus, my experience with the locked room), but without newcomers, without some sort of connection to the exterior, the community begins to wither away, drawing ever closer to death.
Now, there are a few problems with that argument: for starters, I applied for a username, hoping to revisit later during peak hours (whatever those might happen to be, and what I assume are not the hours during which I visited) and begin to investigate, and I eventually got it, but when I first applied I was number 3 on the waiting list. Now, the other two may have been from our class, and neither of them may have any intention of giving themselves over the the community, spending hours there helping to build the culture, but there's no way of knowing. There are a couple other points of contention I can see from where I sit, but again, I'd rather choose an element of the argument and explore its meaning.
In this case, that element happens to be the nature of the definition of LambdaMOO; I want to focus on the nature of its definition by association.


Notes:
Well, this post began as "The Death of LambdaMOO," but ended up very very long and unfinished. I decided to hold onto it in order to fully give it the time and energy it needs for construction. I've posted the first section; the second section, "Linking (Hypertext)" was half-complete and has been taken out here; it is a discussion of the structure of the Internet and the nature of hyperlinking; the final section, which I am/was planning to title "Deconstructing Revolutionary Speech; Relations/Signs; Within/Without" would have looked at Barthes' admittance that myth is impossible to escape, fundamentally collapsing the notion of the separated semiological systems, meaning that it is impossible to consider the sign without the myth placing it within culture, within ideology (as the fundamental base of the sign cannot be separated from myth), meaning that signs are fundamentally relations/connections/links. I did write this: "Like hyperlinks, signs are that which bind together bodies; signs provide us with a way to relate ourselves to the external, the Other; signs are connections, and it is only by examining these connections along with the individual bodies that we may find meaning/definition." I feel as if there's more needed to really complete that statement, but it's the basic point. I've also been thinking a lot lately about Web 2.0's assertion of "separation of form and content," but I'm not sure if (or how) that fits in to my argument yet. Hopefully, what I have just said is sufficient for the creation of an understanding of the intent behind what is above.

Open source and Communities

Terranova's essay certainly raises an interesting point, but has several flaws that appear obvious to me (most likely because of my historical position). First of all, the comparison of open source labor to "AOL community volunteer" labor is a problematic one, and ultimately breaks down. We must remember that AOL is a company, and has invented the title/myth of "community volunteer" that AOL users are free to identify themselves as. Open source certainly operates on ideological levels, but almost operates counter to AOL; volunteers do not recognize themselves as subject to a company; instead, they recognize themselves as subject to a community. This idea of community as Subject is something that runs through all of open source and even (to a limited extent) Web 2.0, and is further revealed by the fact that it is often the community, not the company, that controls the evolution of the web site/service/product (take for example, the Digger's revolt over the removal of a story revealing the HD-DVD encryption key (09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0) (also see: http://blog.digg.com/?p=74, where the power of the community over the company (or rather, the inclusion of the community as controllers of the company) is made incredibly clear), or the Monome community's forum theorization of the definition of Open Source Hardware (http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=2646&page=1#Item_34; note that this is something done collectively, creating a synthesis out of diverse opinions in an almost Hegelian manner, and while the operator of the Monome 'company,' Brian Crabtree (aka Tehn) offers opinions, he does not control the debate) (and on another side note, I realize that this theory is lacking without proof of concept from the Linux community, something I am unfamiliar with and don't entirely understand (except to say that the fracturing of Linux distros has served to create communities rather than subjects of Linus Torivald). The community, through expression, revolt, and use/abuse of the construct of the community/product/software created by the controlling company, is able to control the company's (and the software's) development Other examples can be found within communities such as Wikipedia. Of course, this interpellation is drawn into question by the events of Yahoo's takeover of Flickr (which prompted a mass exodus from Flickr, and caused Yahoo to make little change, but did not actually affect the original point of contention; that is, the switch from a Flickr ID to a Yahoo ID for signing in), or in the recient failure of the Facebook community to 'roll back' Facebook to the "old" state, cases in which a company managed to overcome the community formed by their service in reasserting their ideology. Essentially, my theory is limited in the fact that while Web 2.0 communities can use their voice to control the evolution of the community/product/software, it still ultimately rests under the control of the company. Another problem comes from the fact that many open source projects are "managed" by Foundations or Corporations (in the case of Linux, the "Free Software Foundation," in the case of Firefox, the "Mozilla Corporation"). However, I again stress that my knowledge of these particular communities/projects/productions (Linux and Firefox) is limited.

It all makes sense now....

The article by Ien Ang that we read this week reminded me distinctly of a book I read a few years ago by Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49. In fact, the concepts raised in both works are exactly the same. Unfortunately, I don’t remember very much of the book, not nearly enough to propose a thorough analysis by any means. It was recommended to me because I had, at that point, taken to a strange fascination with entropy. When I read it, I really had no clue what part entropy played in the plot of the novel. All I could tell was that it was about the breakdown of communication and a crazy lady who was hallucinating all the time. Now I see how it all comes together. It was written during the sixties, a time of much turbulence and uncertainty. One of the subplots of the book is about this subversive, secretive courier service whose members often send meaningless letters to one another, leading the receiver, not the sender to create the meaning of the message, and showing, as Ing says, effective communication is not simply getting the message from sender to receiver. The courier service’s symbol is a muted post horn, depicting the failure of communication. And this group contrasts and is opposition to the USPS, who is trying to impose a structure upon communication.

Voyeur

I would have to agree that the artist group of scenes in voyeur was by far the most intriguing and chilling. When I first looked at the scene i was uninterested as it looked relatively normal, but watching it a while certainly changed my view.
What I found interesting about it was the way that the project made me notice the inferences that films force us to make. Just as a our eyes automatically take a series of quickly flashed images and make it into motion, our minds fill in the blanks (when the characters are not in the rooms, what the people are saying that we cannot understand). This was accomplished by offering us a omnipotent point of view, one that goes through walls, yet leaving some parts of the plot to take place in an arena invisible to us. Violence takes place behind the walls, yet I can only see the anticipatory stage and the phase after it, not the part i actually DO want to see.
At the same time, this small flaw in our sweeping view also sets the media up to shock me, as I cannot take in inputs that i normally can in the sounds. This was especially poignant in the part where the artist is tapping on the wall to lure one of his other audiences towards the wall. I couldnt hear or see clearly what he was doing, but was suddenly hit with the shock of seeing him with his gun. It seems strange that in film one can portray a variety of different views, so why should we only be able to see one field at a time, or what criteria should be used to decide WHICH fields we do see.

That wasn't how it was supposed to have ended

I made the initial mistake of watching all of HBO’s voyeur forefront building’s storylines simultaneously. Immediately oversaturated with things to look at, the individual story lines required my gaze yet I could only offer them at most my glance. I ended up zooming in on a single story and focusing on that, acknowledging that I was not only missing the other plots, but also the way my story line was interwoven with others.

I then progressed to other parts of the city -- the Housewife scene in particular. While interacting with this story I was struck at how much was left unsaid. Snippets of lives were presented for our judgment, leaving me falsely feeling that I had more agency in determining their destinies. When the husband ended up getting killed (shown only by the wife dressing up the kids in black for the funeral) I felt frustrated at the lack of input I had, perhaps subconsciously confusing my desire for voyeurism for that of intervention.

I couldn't stop spying on imaginary people.

When I first experimented with HBO Voyeur, I found myself a bit bored. However, after a few minutes I quickly became engrossed. In trying to figure out why, I came up with four tensions which kept me interested in these people's arguably mundane affairs:

1) My freedom in contrast with the characters' containedness.

2) My hyperawarenness in contrast with the characters' naivety.

3) My absolute invisibility in contrast with the characters' explicit and constant visibility.

and, differently,

4) My immobility in contrast with the characters' mobility.

I particularly enjoyed the scene where I was spying on two men who were spying on their neighbor, as well as the one where the corpse was being photographed. I could try to connect these to notions of viewership that we've discussed in class, but frankly I think HBO Voyeur is just plain fun-- indulgence in voyeurism and the novelty of a new media object? Yes, please.

Collective Intelligence

Computers and computer networks have been argued that they enable the emergence of collective intelligence. Collective intelligence is intelligence that is distributed and constantly enhanced to enrinch individuals. Collective intelligence can also be defined as a form of networking enabled by the rise of communications technology, namely the Internet. Computer networks highlight the unique value of human intelligence as the true creator of value in gaining knowlegde for oneself, and an economy as a whole. Our country is always striving for new technology, new ideas, and more knowledge. The internet is a way to increase the well-being as a whole.

This statistic is from "Principles of Economics" (pg. 523)

COUNTRY LIFE EXP. LIT. RATE % INT. Usage %

USA 77 99% 55%
Germany 78 99% 41%
Japan 81 99% 45%
Mexico 73 91% 10%
Brazil 68 86% 8%
Indonesia 67 88% 4%
Pakistan 61 42% 1%
Nigeria 52 67% <0.5%

Although there is no cause and affect response to internet usage and life expectancy, there is a corrollation between the two. There is a sigificant drop off between 1st world countries and 3rd world countries and there related life expectancy and internet usage. The more "developed country" or the country that allows its citizens more access to the internet is also a country with a higher life expectancy rate. A more developed country also has more investment and productivity of capital. The internet is away to extract as much capital (knowledge) as it can and use it for value. As a user of the internet, how else would we be able to post on this blog? Let alone have a blog if it weren't for the internet. Long distance communication can be made instantly within the realms of internet as long as almost every question one may have. With the internet, ideas are channelled into a single space of framework for almost everyone to see. Our society is quickly conforming with the masses into cyberspace and creating a social phenomena.

Wired in

On the subject of HBO Voyeur, I was wondering what everyone’s favorite show was. Being unfamiliar with Voyeur, it took me a little getting used to, but eventually found the Artist at West 34th Street. I wasn’t too convinced beyond the general draw of crime drama until I noticed one thing: the canary in the Artist’s apartment; seeing that made me better understand Barthes’s idea of the punctum. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The detail of this project is incredible. At the same time, I think it’s interesting that aside from the details, until the viewer gets to the action, this is, in all honesty, pretty boring; but sitting it out is rewarded. The Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance style moment where the Artist kills the police officers took me by surprise. Here I am sitting at my computer, but I feel like I should be calling the police. The watcher is both incredibly active, choosing who to follow at what time, and irrevocably passive, incapable of the changing the actions which we voyeuristically witness and are entangled with. Even more shocking is the moment when the Artist picks up binoculars and looks at the viewer, echoing Rear Window. Watching this show, my first thought it: What have I gotten myself into? And why am I here? There’s a painting psycho-killer holding a gun and coming through the streets of New York to find me, and I’m trapped in my desk chair, wired into an LCD display. The sense of both expansiveness and claustrophobia in this convergent world is fascinating, but even for a blog-reading web 2.0er like me, this particular dramatization is a little freaky.

Uncertainties

1) No way out?!

All the texts read in this section of the course thus far – and particularly those by Ang and Terranova – seem to take it for granted that participation in the media is a universal experience, virtually positioning the entire humanity inside a media-dominated and media-regulated realm of existence. Terranova, for example, uses such general(izing) notions as “human intelligence” – suggesting that the status of participant in the media is universal when she discusses the relation of "human intelligence" to the media – with the Internet, more specifically – (p.38: “the Internet effectively functions as a channel through which ‘human intelligence’ renews its capacity to produce”). Ang, implying participation in the media as “the way things are”, poses the question of resistance and its correlation to power – power as connected to the media –, looking at multiplicity of meanings and at diversity as possibly consistent with the logic of power as well as generated by it (multiplicity and diversity are “in the script”). Situated within the “capitalist postmodernity as a chaotic system” (Ang, p.163) and thus within the media, the human subject is – so these theorists appear to suggest – incapable of resistance, since resistance itself is created/inscribed by/in the “logic” of the media. But couldn’t non-participation in the media be a valid and perhaps most effective mode of resistance? Is non-participation – or, at least, reduced participation – in the media (for example, refusal to watch TV, to use the Internet,…) still an option? Even though I am aware that what phase of media–dominance the contemporary world has reached and whether the line beyond which there can be no return to the un-media-tized has yet been crossed cannot be assessed, I would argue that non-participation in the media is the only true form of resistance available in the contemporary world and still possible at the level of the individual (and perhaps even of the community). However, I am not certain about what the consequences of this deliberate non-participation might be for the individuals – or collectivities - who take this option…

2) A question of importance

In his “Introduction: ‘Worship at the Altar of Convergence’”, Jenkins states: “In the world of media convergence, every important story gets told, every brand gets sold, and every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms” (p.3). There are two aspects that I find particularly disturbing in this assertion. Firstly, what are the criteria for assigning/determining (the) importance to/of the “stories” – and to/of everything, in fact – in a “convergence culture” in which the arbitrary, the “unpredictable” (p.2) appears to be the sole ‘reliable’ criterion? What does it mean to be “important” in the culture of convergence? Secondly, I am intrigued by the repetition of the term “every” in this formulation, which apparently calls attention to an interest in the individual, in the particular. Isn’t this rather implausible focus on “every” thing essentially the ideology of the “convergence culture” – the “story” it tells in order to camouflage the very erasure of individual value/ the value of the particular?

3) "Down to Earth"

Could the present-day economic crisis be the correlate of the essentially un-productive (on the material level) digital economy functioning on "immaterial labor" (p.41, Lazzarato cited in Terranova) that Terranova refers to in her essay?

These are some of my uncertainties in a world that seems to operate on the principle of uncertainty at all its levels (are we to blame Heisenberg for being the first to formulate it scientifically?). Intrigued and de-stabilized as I am by them, nevertheless, I still have (at least) one certainty left as a point of reference in my positioning towards the contemporary political, social, and cultural contexts: however freeing and promising an ‘organizing’ principle it might be, uncertainty is a limitation. Postulating uncertainty as a mode of existence (as “the way things are”) – as Ang seems to do in her essay – appears to me, in light of this, to be a mode of not actually addressing the matters at stake as well as a potentially self-refuting thesis (if everything – including meaning – obeys the principle of uncertainty, then the theory claiming uncertainty as a universal principle is itself uncertain). Which is not to say that uncertainty should not be taken seriously: a world whose very existence is defined by uncertainty might just as well be a world that has reached its limits. I am uncertain if there is/can be anything beyond these limits.

Viewer Freedom Vs. The Lens' Gaze

I was struck by a comment on a message board from IMDB's page on the HBO Voyeur program. What's the point of this? Asked the anonymous user. What do they want us to get out of this? What are they selling? I think it's rare for users to immediately question the marketing strategy behind pieces of entertainment; the commenter's jump seemed, to me, to be less indicative of a general cynicism and more a result of the confusion of positions of spectatorship that this internet-narrative creates. Unlike the televised component of HBO Voyeur (which received lower viewer exposure than the website), where the viewer's gaze is directed by the camera (which is always framed by the rims of binoculars--much like parts of The Rear Window), the online program has no set direction for the gaze, or fixed duration for viewing specific scenes. The viewer's gaze is completely unstructured, forcing them to direct their eyes along their own narratives--thus the program's intriguing interactivity and sense of realism, thus also the confusion that led some viewers, like the IMDB message-board commenter, to balk. I think this feeling of uncertainty in position of spectatorship led the commenter to jump immediately to a more obvious structuring of viewer/content--forget the confusing endeavor of establishing one's one optical narrative, let's just look at the ad.
Of course, though, there is a larger narrative that the individually-structured sequences of viewing are supposed to uncover. The fascinating second-step to the HBO Voyeur program is the littering of false web pages over the internet, created by HBO for the fictional characters shown in the computer program--Flickr and Photobucket accounts, fake blogs, all with clues to the interconnectedness of the characters and more information about the situations in the original program. This way, the entire internet becomes the setting for a narrative that becomes less about the stories discovered and more about the circuitous, viewer-established sequence of discovery; the viewer's choice of web pages to view replacing the traditional guidance of the camera's eye.
One last, potentially unrelated thing--I'd like to point out the genius of the lack of sound in Voyeur. Hitchcock played with the realism that street sounds and overheard snippets of song can contribute to a feeling of "being there," observing. While also interested in creating a position of voyeurism, I think the scenes viewed through the Voyeur program really divorce themselves from TV programming and film with the use of silence. It really places the viewer in a physical relationship to the scenes viewed--definetely close enough to see, but not to hear.

Seems related to what we discussed in section...

I just got this headline and mini-article from the New York Times. It seems related to what we talked about in class today.

COMEDY, FILM

America’s Funniest Found Videos

The Found Footage Festival, born of discarded exercise tapes, unintentionally hilarious corporate training videos, mind-bogglingly weird home movies and late-night infomercial clips, finds a home at the 92nd St Y in Tribeca this weekend. Expect themes like pet massage and cheerleading, special guests (David Cross made an appearance at a recent screening) and a few sing-along homages.

Privacy is a state of mind

I think that it is interesting the way that people react to the notion of people monitoring their conversations as an afront to their privacy, when many of them go out of their way to spread the details of their personal lives to others.

For example the social networking comment wall serves the same purpose as the social networking message, the only difference is that one is visible to everyone and the other to only you two (or at least a number of people closer to that). Why then, would anyone willingly choose to use the wall post? Why would anyone bother with twitter, telling people not only about your location and current activity, but even what surveillance technology cannot, your thoughts and feelings as well. How can someone act shocked and appalled that the government can monitor their lives in the name of national security when they release their personal lives to people who are interested just for the sake of voyeurism? I of course dont support increased government control over my privacy, but I still find it strange that there is such a double standard.

Nerds

One thing that was interesting to me about both of the films this week was the capacity of techno-philes or "nerds." Those we see making use of this surveillance technology are insiders. They are skilled and can navigate the technology which enables this level of intrusion into the public sphere, and as such, have a level of immunity. Jack Black and Jamie Kennedy are some of the few NSA operatives left standing at the end of Enemy of the State, and they have a level of distance from the "bad" things that were done throughout the film. Gene Hackman struggles with his role in survelliance. He doesn't know what his level of agency is, beyond his ability to gather information. So, what is the role of this skilled professional in this technological world where surveillance is an art, a craft and a trade? Is the NSA operative a voyeur, or simply a scholar or a technician? It seems to me that this role depends in large part upon the individual; the act of struggling with the transfer of information, a moral dilemma on seeing how this invasion of so-called privacy is used is enough to redeem those who gather the information. However, how would an NSA operative, private detective, corporate spy, etc be seen in our world? How does that compare with the treatment of such a person in the narratives we have seen? The voyeur in these characters seems to resonate with the voyeur that each viewer knows exists within herself, but how would a person with this role in society be treated? What does voyeurism mean in society in comparison with its meaning in narrative?

Leopards & $3.50 water

As I was reading Lizzie's post, I remembered a story I recently read on BBC news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7696188.stm

This year's winning entry to the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2008 award was a snow leopard hunting at night. Except that instead of the photographer personally having taken the photo, he set up surveillance cameras and waited for the leopard to be snapped when it triggered motion sensors. Where does the art in this lie? Is it staging of the cameras? Or the positioning of the lighting? Or the fact that he just got very lucky with his photograph? And what is to be said that the picture actually won the award?

I also enjoyed Park's point in her TSA airport article regarding the 'odd economies of re-distribution that have emerged as an effect on the war of terror'. If the travelers are the so-called losers (being stuck in security lines and having to pay $3.50 for a bottle of water) then who are the winners? Al-Qaeda? The security companies paid to instal CCTV cameras in airports? The TSA staff taking home your new bottle of after-shave when passengers forget they can't take liquids on-board? These new markets deserve to analyzed, in relation to both surveillance and media.

Google Earth

I find myself taking issue with Lisa Park's interpretation of Google Earth, mostly because she ignores one main thing: the central philosophy behind the operation of Google. In an article in Wired magazine, Chris Anderson writes that "Google's founding philosophy is that we don't know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that's good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required." Namely, Google doesn't use models, but rather a "brute force" method to 'improve' results. While this may be able to work (to a certain extent) with advertising and search results, the issues with this method become very clear with humanitarian benefits.
First of all, Google Earth (as far as I know) does not serve ads. The only way Google earns money off the program is by offering extra features in a priced "pro edition." However, the one thing Google can do is "brand" their service. They want to create as much positive information as possible about their company in order to attract new customers (after all, they do believe that the more they are linked to, the better). This is what I feel lies at the center of much of Park's argument but remains unspoken: namely, both that Google wants to draw as much attention to itself as possible and that it measures its success in "number of hits/downloads/links" (which is represented by the media's declaration of the "success" of the 'Crisis in Darfur' layer), both of which stem from the operating ideology Google maintains.
However, there's another part of Google's ideology that seems to run counter to this notion of "brute force"; namely, the company motto, "Don't Be Evil." While its methods ignore culture, its handling of internal affairs and decisions certainly don't. They want to generate attention and links, but they seem to be concerned about the nature of these links. The reason is rather obvious; while the organization of search results should be (according to Google) objective, the nature of these actual results cannot be. It's why Google's various failiures have been humorous; typing in one word only to be asked if you actually meant something else completely antithetical, or the massive widespread linking of a website using derogatory terms (like the association of "George W. Bush" with "Fail," or something like that; I don't remember the exact terms). Google realizes that, while its methods must be objective, the results of the method are subject to interpretation, and thus moves to prevent as much negative publicity as possible; that the cliche "all publicity is good publicity" is not true. Efforts like the 'Crisis in Darfur' layer serve to undermine potential criticisms of the company; by casting themselves as "good," they will not just draw attention but customers who actually try out the services after reading about them. This, to me, is about as far as Google participates in "disaster capitalism."
But, let's assume, just for a moment, that Google, regardless of any monetary gains or potential markets, actually does want to end the genocide in Darfur. This would be impossible for the company to do. Google focuses on links and information, not so much on real world action. The "Don't Be Evil" motto even focuses on these two things; if people see a link that is described/interpreted as "good," they will click on it; it is still contained by the digital realm, the world of media. It doesn't take into account interpretations of viewers; their ability to interpret information and compare it to information they already know, as well as their ability to act on it. Google only takes into account the first of these three steps, ignoring the other two (which are essential for actual action to occur). The one thing I truely do agree with Parks on is that the use of a "future imperfect"; this would theorize a reaction for the viewers to take, building it into the interpretation and pushing them to take action. It is still ultimately up to the viewer, but I believe that this method is much more effective.

Panopticism

While watching Enemy of the State, I was interested most by how hyper-visibility was used to discredit Will Smith's character. In a Keenan-esque fashion, light penetrated Smith's life, exposing the darkest corners. In connecting this with Parks' wonderful essay on airport screening culture, a trend emerges. Airport screening, in rendering us transparent, seems to purify us. It ensures uniformity and safety, granting a sort of nebulous wholeness to what was previously compartmentalized and restricted. All of this reminds me of the Panopticon, which used the omnipotent and omnipresent gaze to remedy criminality. This Puritanical ideal of the transparent, homogenous individual, rendered flat and fully readable seems to have persisted throughout the centuries. Even in the case of Will Smith, panopticism seems motivated in this way; the only way surveillance is able to hurt him is by exposing immoral sectors of his life for which he is rebuked. The panoptic gaze seems to provide a collective superego, perpetually scolding us, reminding us of pending (or instantaneous) judgement, and venerating the pure or aligned.

What-is-going-on

In her essay Information, Crisis, Catastrophe, Mary Ann Doane argues that “television’s conceptualization of the event is heavily dependent upon a particular organization of temporality” (p.223) that insists on “present-ness”. In light of this assertion, I would now like to address the potential implication of such a dominant (in the contemporary world) temporality for the human beings – turned – TV viewers’ (general) perception in/of time. As starting point for my exploration I will use the Kantian postulate that (consciousness of) time is an a priori intuition (together with space) – and, thus, that all human perception happens in time (and space) – as it is dis/proved by the mode of perception ("out" of time) that the temporality associated with television generates.

By insisting on “present-ness”, by putting everything in the present tense continuous (“this-is-going-on”) – even if it happened in a more or less distant past – , television, I shall argue, radically distorts its viewers’ perception in/of time – if it does not erase it altogether. In a certain sense, this phenomenon accounts for a sort of “indoctrination”, as a result of which the TV viewer becomes unable to “locate” (the temporal equivalent of this term is what I mean here) events in the past, present and future - depending on the situation –, and to position him/herself at a (critical) distance from them – as Barthes and Bazin’s category of “that-has-been” allowed him/her to do. Associated with this inability to perceive in accordance with a tripartite structure of time is also an erasure of (in my view, personal and collective) history, as Doane also indicates: “Television, too, has been conceptualized as the annihilation of memory, and consequently of history, in its continual stress upon the “nowness” of its own discourse.” (p.227). This phenomenon suggests a decreasing value attributed to the past – as well as to the future – by the television viewer, with multiple potential social (threatening the very identity of societies), political (non-engagement in political action, passivity), and, most importantly, ontological (the human being becomes another type of perceiving-machine than he/she used to be) implications.

Thus, when everything “happens” in the present, the category of time (in the Kantian conception of it) ceases to frame human perception. Metaphorically put, television blunts the a priori intuition of time.

Notes

1) In his essay Rhetoric of the Temporal Index: Surveillant Narration and the Cinema of “Real Time”, Levin states that “films teach us how to see the world and register a sense of how culture is doing exactly that” (p.584). Extrapolating, I would suggest that this is the case with television as well – perhaps even more so than with films, possibly because of the goal of television - as identified by Altman (that of keeping people from turning the TV off). Paradoxically, even though time is the “major category of television”, television affects precisely the human perception in/of time.

2) Another important implication of the mode of perception (“out” of time) that television generates is the substitution of information for knowledge that characterizes the contemporary world. Information, in my view, is perfectly compatible with the “blunting” of the "intuition", whereas knowledge requires a perception in/of time (with its tripartite structure).

Televisual Catastrophe

In Doane's essay, one key statement she makes is that television's greatest technological prowess is the ability to be there. (pg 238) The ability to be there at the scene while being in your living room is the edge television can bring to the viewer. Without televison, how would the 9/11 coverage have been? Or any other crisis or catastrophe? It would be like we were living 150 years ago. Another aspect televison brings to us from catastrophes is the loss of life aspect. As human beings, we usually connect death with catastrophes. As viewers it bring us closer to the reality of death. Especially knowing that people who have died may have been around the same age as the viewer and had a whole life to live.

Doane argues that televisual catastrophe is everything it is said not be, expected. She argues that catastrophe magnifies death over and over again and it becomes the norm of televisual practice. I totally agree with this statement. Flipping through CNN how many times have I heard about death in the world by some terrorist attack, earthquake, or some other event? Too many too count. As a spectator to this, I have become somewhat used to it. The only way us Americans as a whole react so strongly is when something happens to one of our own. When terrorism happens in Israel or Pakistan do we sit glued to the tv hours on end? Maybe some do, but not nearly to the magnitude of an event like 9/11, Hurrican Katrina, or Columbine.

Pat! Riot! Act!

The idea of surveillance in association with cinema reminds me of Rear Window. When the naked eye wasn’t enough to keep Jeff up to speed on his surveillance, he brought out new technology: the telephoto lens of justice. And when that couldn’t provide enough, they sent in the spies. It is that compromise of privacy in order to catch criminals. Although justice was served, I really doubt Jeff’s Rear Window ethics. We wonder why Jeff thinks its okay to look into people’s windows, but his actions are justified when he indirectly witnesses a murder, or even when he attempts to save Ms. Lonelyhearts. Once surveillance thwarts danger, we can’t touch it. It becomes something that saves us and we certainly should not be ungrateful to that.

[Disclaimer: I am going to sound like a neocon... don’t judge me]
This leads me to reflect on my most recent travel experience: spending the past year in Israel, a country where security measures are far more prevalent, visible, and arguably more necessary than in the United States. But without the metal detectors in every entrance of train and bus station, the multiple step scanning process in the airport, border patrol checkpoints, the country would not be as safe. Israel is a country that has a long history with terrorism and thus is a superstar in the security and intelligence field. Maybe that is why I felt more inclined to cooperate and put up with security on our way to and from Israel than say, if I were traveling to Canada (who wants to blow up Canada?). That is why I was willing to put up with the hassle of getting my bags X-rayed whenever I want to take an intercity bus in Tel Aviv and give up some of my right to privacy whenever I wanted to take a train from Akko. I probably would have put up with x-rated x-rays and interrogation, because I know that Israel needs to assure that I don’t get blown up and that I don’t plan on blowing anybody up. Israel has always been a country where national defense and national security, as Parks discusses, are one and the same. In America, an armed guard on every bus would not fly, but is a common thing in Israeli cities. This probably stems from the fact that it is not as threatening to Israeli citizens because they all have or will serve in the IDF.
Then the question is why do I feel okay about this and not about having my wires tapped, not even in Israel (although I know that the Israeli government probably has better things to exert their energy on than my phone) It is the consent. I control what I put in my bags and I know ahead of time that they will be x-rayed. In relation to the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and tracking every time I use the word bomb on the Internet (whoops!), on principle I think it is a violation of my privacy. A line is crossed when the surveillance intrudes upon the private, to be Kennanesque, into a space that someone assumes is safe, like into the home, private phone conversations, internet history, even public bathrooms and fitting rooms. It is scary when people cannot even rely on these spaces to be secure.

Auteur

The direction that advanced technology takes the position of the artist is pretty disturbing, and confusing too. The position of authority offered by surveillance technology, and arguably by photography to a certain extent, is the lack of human interference in capturing the real. Where is the artistry? When it comes to surveillance technology as an art form, the artist is more of an orchestrator, his auteur-ship more a practice of securing means of production than guaranteeing accurate depiction. I think its interesting that, in this way, the auteur seems to attain a higher level of importance and authority not as an artist but as exerting some kind of economical or maybe even political control through the possession of technology, rather than a traditional definition of artistic talent.

9/11 is boring

I should probably qualify my title at the risk of sounding insensitive. After watching the marathon coverage of 9/11 in the screening, I truy did become bored of seeing the same footage repeated ad nauseam. At first it seemed strange to me that such a horrific event, with such emotionally stirring images that go alone with it, could lose its emotional effect on me. Yet this seems to be what Barthes was describing when he says that the reproducibility of the image, the way that it is brought closer to the listener through its reproductions, also causes the original to become less significant. Im not sure the concept entirely covers this situation, but it seemed that we were being brought to look at the similarties between the different networks coverage, that across the board the newscasters were saying the same things, and everyone was showing the same footage over and over. Maybe the disinterest I felt was more a result of desensitisation, but that in itself is distressing. It has always been a question regarding the media if the constant barrage of horrific images serves to stir us to take action, or if instead, as in Keenan's arguement regarding the Sarajevo riots and the general lack of arousal within the viewers. Of course, in a situation as traumatic and heavy as 9/11, everyone WANTS to see the explosions and the people running, a voyeuristic desire to rubber neck without being at the scene that the news networks are more than happy to indulge.

Law and Order: Network Intent

Watching a Law and Order Rerun on TNT...

I started watching at 3:21 PM

Show....
Lorraine Dillon turns herself in for the murder of Patrick Sullivan

Commercials:
Season Finale of “Raising the Bar”, another show on TNT-- very much like L&O
ad for another TV show- fantasy
Glade Fabric and Air-- family
Kirsten the Talking Cow “auditioning” for a “Real California Milk” commercial
Lysol Neutraair-- very much like the commercial two before
Direct TV-- content of commercial totally irrelevant to what is being advertised
Network Television Premire: Da Vinci Code-- playing on TNT
Coming Up Next on TNT: Charmed “TNT: We Know Drama”

Law and Order:
Characters try to prove if Lorraine was telling the truth
Interview Sullivan’s ex-lover, Ms. Dillon, in a court room (?)-- Sullivan raped her daughter April at the age of 14 and that is why she didn’t marry him. She was being attacked by him and he had a gun. “The next thing I knew Patrick was dead and I was holding his gun.”
Mr. McCoy: exposes fraud... subtle suspenseful music... evoking emotion from the spectator and Ms. Dillon

Cut to courthouse steps and McCoy and a female lawyer talk about exposing potential lies in the April story

Cut to April being interrogated on the stand by McCoy and the female lawyer. It comes out that April and Patrick were consensual lovers. Lorraine killed Patrick out of jealousy and forced her daughter to lie for her.

So one of the women is lying.

Lorraine tells a story about how she was actually protecting April with her story and April is really the murderer

Cut to Jury’s ruling: Lorraine is guilty

Commercials:
Season Premiere of “Leverage” on TNT
Florida Orange Juice-- vitamins and minerals! “pure and simple”
Vonage “get more” “first month is free”
Raisin Bran Crunch-- sports guys
IHOP-- Strudel Pancakes...
Toaster Strudel
associatedtaxrelief.com --- “real stories, real results” in green in corner of screen
“Raising the Bar” Season Finale

Law and Order:
Conned
April was sent away because she was pregnant
Facility cook drove her to the hospital, but never reached hospital. Birth in the car
They were having sex
April buried the baby-- there was something wrong with it [suspenseful music]

Commercial
“You’re watching Law and Order” sponsored by IHOP
IHOP-- same commercial as before
Binder and Binder
Netflix--Snowing Popcorn
AARP Health Care Options-- choices! free...free... easy! endorsement by AARP!
NBA on TNT

Law and Order...

3:55


Comments:
First off, my favorite little tidbit of flow was going from the IHOP commercial for strudel pancakes to a commercial for Toaster Strudel. Brilliant! (though probably just a coincidence). I was also amazed by the flow from the first segment of Law and Order I watched to the first commercial: a crime/lawyer show to another one of the same type. It took me a few moments to register that there was indeed a seam between the show and the commercial. I also never noticed before that the segments of show get shorter and shorter and the commercial breaks become more frequent, until I read it in this week’s readings (despite thinking time and time again that there are too many commercials...). I did notice it this time!

Within the show itself, what was interesting was that even though I started watching one-third through the show, I was still invested in the plot by the end and stuck it out until the end to see how the story played out. And even though I was typing away, keeping track of the plot, the soundtrack at certain times, whether it be the suspenseful music or the distress in the characters’ voices, did indeed draw me in to actually paying attention to the scene.

Commercials and the Super Bowl

In relation to television, a newtwork competes for spectators with a flow. A flow replaces programming to an extent that competition for spectators is allowed to regulate broadcasting. When television ratings, or the amount of viewers, is increased so is the revenue. A good network will always have the most viewers, and as an advertiser, I would want my product to be promoted at a time and on a network where alot of people would see it. What better place to display your product than on one of the most viewed events per year; the Super Bowl. In 2008, 97.5 million people ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/04/AR2008020401109.html) watched the Super Bowl. NBC, who will be covering the 2009 Super Bowl, has been selling 30 second commercial spots for around 3 million dollars. Rights to the Super Bowl roughly cost around $1 billion, so the extremely high price for advertisements is almost justified, and the fact that advertisers are willing to this pay much shows they're willing to promote their product at any costs just to be shown for the Super Bowl. In my opinion, that's why the ads have to wow us, or how they have not evolved, to make us laugh. Companies know that in order to increase revenue by the $3 million dollars they spent on the ad by increasing their business production, they are going to need one hell of a commercial. In fact, some people ONLY watch the Super Bowl for the COMMERCIALS. The ads give the companies a chance to present a 30 second show to wow the viewer in to buying their product. This may seem like a tall task, but it must work, if they're still willing to pay $3 million for a 30 second slot...........

Reality

Bazin's unilateral privileging of photography's ability to capture reality is a similar line of thinking that underlies the equivocation with TV's supposed "liveness" with real-ness. Photography's capability to capture a historically "real" moment does guarantee its ability to give a viewer a feeling that they are witnessing some kind of truth, just as live television is in no way an un-mediated transmission of reality. While the critics of TV we've read write as though TV has duped all viewers into this misreading of "liveness," I would argue that Iona's and other's articulations of the alienation they feel while watching American TV is just such an example of "liveness" and immediacy failing to absorb the viewer. Similarly, photography's legitimacy as historical evidence (which is also, I think, a highly unstable claim) is different its ability to make the viewer feel as if they are witnessing "virginal purity" (15). Not every photograph carries Barthes' punctum. It is inaccurate to define art as a successful capture of reality--if this was so, every photograph would be a piece of art. Reality, defined as physical accuracy, cannot be confused with a feeling of emotional truth. Bazin agrees with me on this, but doesn't point out that photography, like painting, can fail to resonate with emotional validity.

Advertisements

Raised in Europe, my previous television watching experience has relied on being in a small welfare state. Before coming to America I had never been exposed to the vast quantity of medical ads that run on TV here simply because healthcare is something European states provide for – no need to advertise drugs, the state picks your blood pressure reducing drug. This can also be applied to education: the proliferation of regional commercials advertising community colleges does not have a European counterpart. Furthermore, I have found the combination of both national and region-specific commercials entertaining, simply because the latter are so often atrocious. These points relate to the quality of advertisements, but the sheer quantity of them on American TV needs to be noted. A typical 30-minute show in Holland will have one four-minute commercial break and would never have a commercial break before the credits. In fact, when American shows are brought over to Europe, it’s noticeable when American audiences would cut to commercials (but in Holland the show just keeps on running).

TV(s)

CNN US, 29 October 2008, From 7:08pm

I Travel Guides

Announcer: Now is the perfect time for Americans to travel.

Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and travel expert. Announcer: What might be the reasons for this phenomenon?

Travel Expert: The dollar is stronger than other currencies (the Euro, the Pound, the Australian Dollar, …)

(currencies compare-contrast chart)

Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and travel expert. Announcer: Means of transportation. What is the situation with air-travel?

Travel Expert: Airlines are quietly discounting.

(film: airport, planes,…)

Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and travel expert. Announcer: Other means of transportation?

Travel Expert: Deep discount on cruising.

(chart of prices)

Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and travel expert. Announcer: Hotel prices?

Travel Expert: Low-cost lodging. Hotels give deals

(slide)

Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and travel expert. Announcer: Are Americans taking advantage of these opportunities?

Travel Expert: No. People still uncertain about how they should use their discretionary income. Current financial crisis – also a factor

II Still image: name of travel expert and cnn website. Voice briefly presents travel expert.

III The cnn 2008 Hero Honoree

Announcer: Meet one of the candidates for the cnn 2008 Hero Honoree

Film: brief presentation of candidates.

Shift to another studio (2): Announcer: Meet one of “our Heroes”: Maria Ruiz from Mexico, founder and coordinator of JEM Ministries

Pattern – repeated several times with slight variations: Juxtaposed “window-frames" of announcer and Maria. Announcer welcomes Maria; asks questions about her project, her motivations

Maria: answers

Film of Maria at work OR still images – photographs of Maria and the children her organization helps OR page from JEM Ministries website

Announcer: comments on Maria’s answer and/or asks new question

Back to studio (2)

Das Erste ARD, 29 October 2008, From 7:37pm (US Eastern Time)

Weather Forecast for Germany

Announcer: The weather in Germany will continue to be chilly and rainy this night and tomorrow.

Shift to the Weatherwoman. Weatherwoman: Very chilly tonight. Snow in the mountains.

Film: people skiing in the mountains

Rain/storm/sun map for Thursday. Weatherwoman comments.

Temperature (degrees Celsius) map for Thursday. Weatherwoman comments.

Three juxtaposed temperature (degrees Celsius) maps for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Weatherwoman comments.

Back to studio. Announcer: “Have a good night!” and the time of the next program on ARD.

Still image: “Kurze Unterbrechung” (short interruption) against blue background.

BBC World News, watched over the Internet at on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/default.stm (One-Minute World News) on 29 October 2008, From 7:44pm (US Eastern Time)

Image of a rolling globe. Program ID against image of the globe moving: BBC News

Announcer: (without (!) introduction) The latest headlines from BBC World News.

Voice of announcer: Police in Afghanistan said three people – including two foreigners – have been shot dead in Kabul. (simultaneously) Film: Afghan police, Kabul; photo of a woman.

Fade out

Voice of announcer: UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon calls for drastic measures to protect developing countries against the financial crisis. (simultaneously) Film: Ban Ki Moon in session at the UN (?)

Fade out

Voice of announcer: The mother and the brother of the actress Jennifer Hudson have been found shot dead in their home in Chicago. (simultaneously) Film: house in Chicago, ambulance, police; Jennifer Hudson at an Oscar ceremony

Announcer: These were the latest headlines from BBC World News.

Comment(s):

- it appears to me that European TV news programmes (still) have a different “rhythm” (flow?) from the US ones. Their simplicity, clarity, and precision struck me. By contrast, the US news programmes I watched and their specific “arrangements” (of their components) puzzled (and even confused) me to a certain extent with their extremely fast rhythm (flow?), their numerous – repeating – patterns, as well as an excess of information. The US programmes brought to my mind Ockham’s principle (“razor”) – entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum (entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity) – which, in my view, they utterly disregard (I realize, however, that I am now extrapolating and “adapting” the principle, but I think this formulation very well captures my reaction). For me, such an excess generated alienation, rather than “absorption” into the diegesis.

Flow/Fracture

Flow is undoubtedly an important aspect of our current construction of "television"; the sequence of seemingly unrelated events, each thrown one after another with no space marking the separation of the two events, nothing holding them apart, nothing that allows each segment to stand on its own in televisual form, or events interrupting and cutting into other events (such as commercials placed in breaks between scenes of a television show or segments of a newscast). But the flow is only one element of the current televisual landscape, as it only takes into account time, that is, the way segments are located in relation to one another temporally. It does not take into account the instantaneous, the nature of a single segment, or more specifically, a single moment/image within that segment.
But what interests me about the instantaneous image does not lie in any sort of wholeness or purity; it is rather that, like the continuity of television, the single image (for the purposes of this argument, the image referred to here (the complete image projected by a television screen, whose boundaries are the edges of the box) will be from here on out referred to as "screen") is fractured into multiple. Each screen contains multiple images, multiple frames and boundaries that take up separate sections of the screen and are meant to convey separate sets of information. Yet, unlike flow, the fact that all these images are being throw at us at a single moment in time means that we cannot attempt to separate the groups of information and process them separately; we must either read a connection between each individual fracture or process them separately of one another.
The coverage of 9/11 provides a very simple example, yet one that is incredibly important to understanding television: the display of a station logo, a sort of "watermark," while "live" footage of "breaking news" plays behind. This "watermark" is the most common fracture; almost any program watched on a network or cable station will be broken by the station logo displayed transparently in one of the corners of the screen. It prevents you from ignoring the economic foundation of the television industry; no matter what you watch, you're always choosing one particular network, one brand over the others. The "watermark" serves both as a way to impose the myth of network branding upon the viewers, and also "mark" recorded video, clearly identifying bootleg copies and holding them captive within the framework of television; there is no way to access the "pure" program (without, of course, buying a copy of the work from the same company, which, by forcing you to repurchase media, forces you to give in to the myth of the network brand in the extend of the capitalistic system such that the watermark is no longer necessary).
There is one other fracture present at the beginning of the 9/11 footage: that of the headline: "BREAKING NEWS: WORLD TRADE CENTERS COLLAPSE". This element refers directly to the "live" image being displayed on screen, and both provides an interpretation and understanding for those already watching as well as immediately informing those just tuning in the nature of the situation being covered. While both these roles/acts seem different, there is one key similarity: the giving of interpretative powers from the audience to the network. While this first headline portrays something very factually, the headline eventually transforms into "AMERICA UNDER ATTACK", with the lines boxing off the fracture transforming into an American flag waving in the wind. In this case, the headline has been transformed by the network's ideology; it has been mythologized; it alters and transforms the viewer's interpretation of the "live." While this mythologizing does not fully stem from the network (in this case, the revelation of the terrorist nature of the attacks had become apparent, and the government had released briefs and reports detailing the attacks as mythologizing them as such), the power of the fracture to alter the interpretation of the live is something that is clearly dangerous. While I do not mean to insinuate that the 9/11 attacks were not, in fact, an "attack on America" (I'm not a 'truther' and do not take 'truthers' incredibly seriously), I am very against the Patriot Act, which was passed in the aftermath of 9/11 and was very much helped by some of the mythologizing that occured on the day itself, and am also against the Iraq War, which the Bush administration was able to force authorization of partially through the creation of a myth surrounding Iraq with the manipulation of fracturing and flow. The destruction/restruction of said methods is nowhere near as clear cut as the alternative cinemas of multiple writers, due to the determinance of the capitalist system in the creation and commodification of televisual networks; while some cable channels are able to offer alternative representations and interpretations of the news (see Current), they have nowhere near the same reach as mainstream networks. Also, even networks like Current, as well as "Internet television," seem to depend upon use of fracturing and flow to convey information, holding the same possibilities as mainstream television news.

The liberation of the plastic arts

Bazin's definition of the dual aims of art as psychological realism and aesthetic realism-- and how their fundamental clash caused a crisis in traditional plastic arts-- really resonated with me. I think that the use of "traditional" plastic media to produce aesthetically realistic works is sort of like sticking your finger in the hole in the dike. That is to say, prior to photography, the use of these media was an imperfect manipulation, and arguably distortion, as a way to satisfy the desire to produce aesthetic likenesses. However, as Bazin intimates, this was not a use which maximized the plastic media-- rather, the natural qualities of these media were subjugated for the sake of representation.

The notion of photography relieving the other plastic arts of the burden of capturing aesthetic reality, thus liberating these media for more "appropriate" artistic tasks, fascinates me. The plastic arts, according to Bazin, were freed up to focus on the psychologically real. If I continue this train of thought, it seems to me that, just as photography is the most desirable medium for achieving aesthetic realism, conceptual art is the "medium" which allows for the purest achievement of psychological realism. It seems that there is a second liberation wave for the plastic media

For me, the implications of these new media (photographic and conceptual) are enormously encouraging for the continued evolution of traditional plastic media. For very long, these media have been used as "best fit" options for the dual goals of art as stated by Bazin. Now, however, it seems that these media may, for the first time, be in a position of absolute freedom from the traditional goals of art. 

Far from rendering these media irrelevant, I believe that this is a tremendous opportunity to expand the goals of art-- it seems that a third category, at least, of "realism" will have the chance to emerge. Now that paint, sculpture, drawing, and so on do not have to stretch to fill old media voids, to transubstantiate into what they are not (aesthetically real or psychologically real), they are free to express in a completely unpressured way. I'd like to hypothesize "media realism," or a return (or first arrival?) to the unadulterated nature of these materials as what may come from this new and exciting liberation.  And, as a side-note, how fascinating, that this revolutionary new aim or nature of art may be borne of the oldest artistic media!

Life, Representation, and Truth

There are several questions which Camera Lucida raises for me. Here are two ...

1. Barthes talks about life and death and the subject’s relationship to these two states as bestowed upon him by the photograph. He seems to say that the photograph bestows life upon the subject, makes him immortal, but also emphasizes the fact that he is going to die or is already dead. I am having trouble reconciling both points into one coherent view.

2. “Ultimately a photograph looks like anyone except the person it represents” (102). This is confusing because it follows a list of features which Barthes says are characteristic of the people



The concept of truth in photography that Barthes discusses all throughout CL is really interesting, and I agree with it. Everything that is shown in a photograph actually happened. I kept trying to think of instances that would disprove this very basic tenet of Barthes’s philosophy but I could not. Professor Chun brought up the concept of the fulgurator n lecture, but even so, the instance with the cross on Obama’s podium actually happened and there is no denying it, even if the cross was not material. And once we photoshop an image, it is no longer a photograph, but an instance of art, like a painting. It is something beyond capturing the essence of a subject, alters what has been, and therefore steps over the boundary of being photography.