or, the perpetual need for binding and boundaries in discourse
“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
The book has not, and will not, die. But it will shift forms. This is because a book is not wood pulp glued together or something that resides exclusively in leather clad coverings. The book is not the codex, for it has been the scroll, the manuscript, and the tablet far before it opened right to left (or left to right) in convenient sequential pagination. The codex, to be clear, has always been merely an avatar or a permutation of the book idea. The book is greater than the form it takes. The book is (or ought to be) defined as an object of boundaries, which is no doubt why books must always be “bound.”
At its most abstracted, the book is very much akin to the Saussurean sign. It is everything that it is not. It is this writing and not that writing, these maps not those charts, this writer not those writers, it is these ideas and not those ones. The book has always been defined by its aspiration to be discrete and differentiated from other objects, most importantly other books. This emphasizes the book’s boundaries (both conceptually and literally) as definitive of what the book is, or what it does/is about.
A book is bound, bounded, and bound up. It is made complete physically, complete in its arguments (discursive binding if you will), and complete in its existence as a discrete object in a world of objects/things. Because it is bounded in all of these ways, readers have learned to consume it in a certain way: they enter the book expecting that it is not a intellectual black hole from which there is not escape. They expect to move through it, as sojourners perhaps, or detectives on a case. The metaphors for reading always treat the book as a subject that somehow, somewhere has limits. And inventiveness and exploration within the limits define the pleasure of reading and writing as invention and play. Roland Barthes famously advocated for the re-invention of the “readerly” as a type of play activity. Like the playing fields of a sport, the limits of books are not to their detriment, but just the opposite: the boundaries beget a marked-off space of inquiry and play. Books are their own worlds and territories as we have celebrated for hundreds of years.
Now we have been incorrectly drawn into a great debate about books defined too narrowly. We have been warned of the death of books, by people who see books only as the codex, the woodpulp tome, the paperback novel. We have been led to see books as publishers see them. In the process, we have forgotten the “book idea” – the idea of binding a discourse or several discourses together, such that they become a bounded object.
People have not stopped writing. They may write differently and in new electronic environments, but they are still fundamentally attempting to produce the same sort of semi-permanent scribblings that form the “content,” which is to say, purpose of books. Born into electronic environments, “digital” writing proves flexible and fast. It can cross massive geographic gaps quickly, and can be manipulated/adjusted/truncated/distorted/improved with equal ease. Electronic writing seems to have no boundaries. It exists in a vast web of connections and discursive vectors. Movement is so easy between electronic texts that one can become lost in them, and can lose sight of the purpose or initiative. The readers of electronic/digital writing are accustomed to be sidetracked, misdirected, and lost. Electronic writing, in short, begs for binding. Not just to arrest and preserve digital content that can be easily lost, but also to chart a path through content. To curate and select and bind material together such that it becomes a new discrete object. Electronic writing, the loosest form of the book idea, can be given more defined edges.
It is not surprising that a publication tool that makes an intervention into the scattered world of digital writing should be the conclusion of such a gathering and such a fast-paced collaborative process. In fact, it is incredibly telling and significant that at this moment in history of literary, intellectual and cultural work, twelve humanists should motivated to build a thing they would call Anthologize. Motivated in equal parts by fears over digital decay (data loss), the need for light free and flexible book publishing interfaces, and the eternal need to actually curate and bind material together into anthologies, Anthologize must be read as a celebration and not a detournment of the book idea. Indeed, even while Anthologize promises new life to electronic writing, and progresses the coming age of the ebooks and ebook reader culture, Anthologize is fundamentally about binding. It is about allowing individuals to create their own boundaries and bindings, to delimit a world that has grown overcrowded with information. It is about marking out, if only for ourselves, the boundaries of what we know, want to know, and hope to know.
There were 36,218 people in a stadium East Hartford, Connecticut on May 25th, 2010. It was impossible to park, as thousands arrived with hours to spare before game time. Inside the stadium, almost everyone in attendance was wearing some form of official apparel. Jerseys, t-shirts, scarves, and goofy Uncle Sam hats attired the crowd to look something like a Memorial Day cook-out on Long Island. And when the first goal went in, off a corner kick in the 17th minute, there was no mistaking the deafening chant of an eager fanbase shouting USA! USA! USA!
This is what international soccer has become in the United States. Just four years ago, writing my second assignment for the Mercury, I traveled around Newport asking if bars, cafes, and restaurants intended to broadcast the upcoming World Cup tournament. Many of them told me no. Several mentioned that they would show the games only if there was not something else on: something like the Red Sox, or College Baseball. As a concession, some bartenders told me they would show the final.
Four years before that, I was in eighth grade. The tournament was being hosted by Korea and Japan meaning game time was only a bleary eyed 2 am. To make matters worse, few American channels were willing to broadcast the games. So I got up, at 2 am, and watched the World Cup on Telemundo and Univision, loosely improving my Spanish while watching the United States advance further than it had ever gone before. I could not afford a jersey, and even if I could, there was no one to purchase one. Falling asleep in class, my teachers demanded an explanation. When I told them I was up late watching the World Cup they either laughed in disbelief or asked what it was. Out of patronage, I printed a US Soccer shield and laminated it at a hardware store. I pinned it to my t-shirt every morning exhausted from watching soccer all night.
Eight years later, and the long promised enthusiasm for soccer has finally arrived in America. ESPN has promised unprecedented American coverage of the tournament, and I have countless chances to buy a US National Team Jersey. I bought their blue Away kit, the handsomest Jersey the team has ever worn, and wore it to East Hartford on May 25th.
I was not alone.
The first sport my parents ever let me play was soccer. Baseball happened two years later. Basketball happened a year after that. Like millions of my peers, soccer is neither odd nor foreign, but refreshingly familiar. On the US Men’s National Team, Jay DeMerit, Landon Donovan, and Clint Dempsey are all men of my generation. They have all played in Europe, where the competition is highest, but unlike previous generations they do not believe that soccer in America is an oxymoron.
And why should they?
When they scored in East Hartford on May 25th, a full stadium rose to salute them.
Shouting the name of the nation, these fans let the world hear that America has come to play soccer.
i will off to ireland it just a few days to shoot a documentary on gaelic games. the documentary is sponsored by an at&t “new media” fellowship and was organized by the watson institute at brown. i’m thrilled to be off to ireland (it is a birthright trip in many ways) but i am almost more excited to be a given a chance to dig into the practice of media humanism that i have been playing with on a personal philosophy/production side. inspired by that and the arrival of a sweet hd canon vixia, i decided to a shoot a ton of stuff in newport this past weekend and edit it all together. the result, i hope, reminds of both man with a movie camera, and jazz on a summer’s day, an underappreciated documentary on the newport jazz festival.
the kino-eye (an early soviet film collective) believed that the camera could supplement and augment the vision (and thus perception) of the human being. i found this to never be true in watching film, but in producing it, it does seem present. in reviewing my clips, i found my perception augmented and expanded. why? because captured in a reviewable format, the moment was given many lives and almost a certain immortality. barthes of course talks about this through camera lucida, but he did not stop to consider how much moving pictures complicate the capturing of time. siegfried kracaeur did. an his theory moves from the film as a photograph made several in tracing the cinema’s unique ability to vivify what is only promised as living in static photographs.
anyway, with these things swirling about, i captured a few days of video of newport life, then cut it all together. included is the newport bermuda race, a nice bonus!
there’s been a lot of smack (trash) talking going down over the upcoming USA – England match up in the soon to be started 2010 World Cup. fate would insist/force/require that i be in the midst of a wedding when the game kicks off, but i will be a living example of those commercials where men watch sports in inappropriate locations. but, in the spirit of loving (and living for) this game i now present the meaning of the game’s outcome in any of the the circumstances that should present themselves as reality when i check the game’s progress on an iphone during i-do’s.
0-0
f that.
1-0 Eng
we have learned nothing. england is supposed to win. they get it done. but there is nothing that says May Day for Team USA. a totally acceptable result.
1-1
american soccer ain’t nothing to mess with. prepare to see the british press start panicking. capello will call it a hiccup, and the english will crush the next game, but the us will be looking into the round of 16.
2-1 ENG
the most likely result. the three lions will have some confidence but the us will feel vindicated. nothing is in disarray for the americans. now they just need to win the next two.
2-1 US
totally possible. and it would be so glorious. the brits would start re-thinking their defense. maybe a goalkeeping change will be in order. and the pressure would build on the english. the americans meanwhile will have something to hang their hat on.
2-2
damn that would be a good game. i’d love it to be a 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2 progression. everyone (fans, players, coaches, pundits) would be content.
3-2 ENG
mmmmmm good. and acceptable for everyone. scoring won’t be the problem. the americans will be thinking about defense and endurance. so will team england.
3-2 US
capello will be flipping out. america will have some new offensive hero (even if it’s donovan/dempsey again). ratings for the rest of the american world cup games will be out of control.
ENG victory by 2 or more
ummm, ok, maybe england is a legit contender. everyone in the uk’s gonna be getting STOKED on that kinda result. buy your rooney jerseyz now.
US victory by 2 or more
england in roo-ins. the british press corps are about to go CRAZY. america will never let the british live this down. f*** bp. REVENGE OF THE GULF! t-shirts. tattoos. monuments. ESPN will be calling it an instant classic. i will call it SARATOGA 2 or SARATOGA IN SOUTH AFRICA.
3-3
well boys, that’s what we call soccer (unless ur british in which case that’s what you call football).
the divide between physical reality and the “second,” virtual reality of cyberspace has been overexposed and polarized, constantly imagining the 21st century citizen at first one end of the spectrum and then dramatically shifted to the other. but this is hardly the case in practical experience, by which i mean the experience of that same “21st century citizen” in an observed daily routine. instead of shifting between virtual identities and physical necessity, the 21st century citizen inhabits a compressed reality that is at once physical and virtual, lived and mediated, screened and viewed. it has become what some theorists have called augmented reality, and its key tool is the smart phone which makes the web mobile and in that mobility, ever-present.
a recent art projec by Schuyler Maclay, Al Urim and others foregrounds the impending crisis of augmented reality. in the project Maclay and a fellow artist build a 10 by 10 by 10 foot cube, open at the top that seals them in along with a host of raw (de)construction materials. two webcams survey the cube’s interior, streaming the artists live to the web.
the cube was placed on Brown University’s Main Green on May 1st, 2010. it was a part of a broad curation of outdoor art pieces comprising a second student project called “Green Screen.” the cube was one of the most successful pieces on the green, because it was big, loud, and literally/figuratively opaque. when visitors drew near the cube, they often walked completely around it, looking for something to see. instead, they were directed to a computer monitor, forcing them uncomfortably to mediate their immediate physical experience of the cube. in their desire to see inside the cube, and understand the project, visitors were forced to look away from it, into an entire different object. theoretically, this was to keep access to the cube as an artistic site consistent across experiences (online and in person) as the project was offered for the two communities of physical and virtual reality.
in practice however, these tactic forced viewers to confront the growing mediation of physical events. it suggested the capitulation of society to mediation (what guy debord would have called his “society of the spectacle”) and forced visitors to live in the world they are creating- where direct access has become impossible because of our fascination with it being “everywhere” rather than “somewhere.” the global aspiration of local events like the cube erases and ignores their position as a locality at all. the artists in the open cube are neighbors you cannot speak to, or knock on the door and say hi.
because there is no door, and they won’t speak to you.
responding only to messages and instructirons posted live on their website, the open cube artists were compelled to not make a home of their cube, but to raucously destroy it. like a gamer who shoots up his environment, shooting friends to see if they will die, and throwing a grenade at his own feet to see if he can kill himself, the avatared-artists of the open cube were forced to rip up pillows, cut a couch in half, and graffiti the walls.
then some one (pretty sure it was me) told them to cut a whole in the wall so the spectators outside could see in. this proved a terrible mistake. for once the walls were rendered porous, attention shifted away from the problematic experience/foregrounding of mediation and instead became artists-as-zoo-animals. in the future, disallowing commands for interior views other than from the webcam should be added to the project’s instructions.
it’s been a few days since i was on the main green, typing commands to my friends in the cube. but the project is still working its way through my thoughts. i think its a wonderful project to have travel, for it seems to fight travel and local specificity by aspiring to just being somewhere in the non-space of the internet, but it is somewhere, and the people that comment on it will surely change depending on its location.
who knows, maybe some people won’t want the artists to destroy themselves or the interior space. maybe they’ll ask the artists to write poetry, or take a nap, or become home-makers. and that would be quite interesting.
Stop cheaping out on the young ambitious people of the world by offering only “unpaid internships.” It’s class warfare anyway you cut it, and unless you are quite literally a mom and pop establishment, I think you can afford to shell out $3,000 for a summer of exploitative work.
Don’t even try to defend yourselves. You are the Museum of Modern Art. The cost of an intern doesn’t even equal the cost of mounting a single painting. What do you expect me to do? Live in New York City for a summer without even my housing costs covered? Perhaps in your cushy life as a curator you’ve forgotten how expensive your fair island is. Imagine trying to live here, eat here, all in o
rder to simply work here. I will be that reminder: its f***ing expensive.
And we’re just talking about costs. We’re not talking about students who need to make enough money to cover tuition, or school housing, or books. No, we’re just talking about being able to make an internship in New York City, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Chicago a reality.
The unpaid internship is everywhere. It’s become a common facet of the student workplace. And I can see the attraction to employers. A whole summer/fall/winter/spring or even a year of work provided at no cost? All you need to offer is a place for someone to work? Perhaps a letter of recommendation somewhere after the fact?
What a deal indeed. From an employer perspective it’s a steal.
Yes, truly it is theft. It steals opportunities from all students or workers and gives it only to the students who can afford it. Students or workers from secure financial backgrounds. Students or workers with private wealth. Which means that the unpaid internship always acts a social filter, reinforcing the idea that jobs in the arts, in print, in museums, in broadcasting are continually reserved for those in the middle class who can afford them. And students from other backgrounds are kept from even considering these positions.
Employers of the world, stop being socially thrifty. Stop confusing saving money with preserving the class-orientation of higher employment.
It may be true that merit is considered among an applicant pool for unpaid internships. No doubt, the most qualified applicant is selected for the job. But what can be said for the applicants who are not present because they cannot afford to even consider such a position? Their merits have not even been considered. Their perspectives, talents, and qualifications have been erased by a financial bottom line. Your financial bottom line.
So what can you do? It’s quite simple: fund your internships. Here’s the minimum equation: find the average cost of housing in your immediate (10 mile) vicinity for a summer. Add $100 for food a week for the duration of the internship. Then add the cost of a monthly pass for local public transportation. You know have a working idea of how much an internship should promise in terms of funding. It’s probably around $3,000.
If you are charitable soul, consider adding money for tuition/books. It may be a small thing for you, but it will mean the world to your intern. S/he will work harder, and think higher of you.
we are tired of division: media, culture, society, law, meaning, humanity, and so on. these are interconnected terms, defined by one another. they must be re-united.
explication has been held prisoner by written language for too long. as if we only understand words. as if true meaning were only possible to produce there. we do not throw away written language, we add to it. images. animations. film. interactive software. code. meaning through all forms, not one alone.
the media humanist flows into the format that serves his/her message, s/he does not force it into a medium.
we seek the multiple over the single, several over the individual, collaboration over competition.
in the age of the global network, we believe in sharing rather than hoarding. do not shut away your work, for it will die if left alone, if left unable to breathe through movement in the network.
the media humanist must share his/her work with the world, and let the world make things anew from it.
the media humanist thinks about form and content in the same instance. neither is primary. neither is secondary. they are complimentary and co-producing.
media humanism believes in the inherent humanity of media: made by man it is of men, for men, imagined by men. when it forms it is always the touch of some humanity in a machine (language, computer, projections, etc.) even when the touch is the trace on its reader/viewer/participant.
the world needs media humanism because the world is mediated by humanity.
media does not have to be educative, though it is wonderful when it is. instead, media must only provide a place for people and people’s ideas to meet. it is in this way that media is society and media is law and media is culture and all those things are, of course, media.
we believe in production, and consumption in its ability to be productive.
we are not a rupture or an end, we only ask for a new direction. we are not a break, we believe in books. but we also believe books can get better.
the media humanist is not opposed to existing forms, s/he is not an alternative to the journalist, the scholar, the critic, the lawyer, the judge, or the priest. s/he is not a isolated type, but an attitude available to any and all.
the media humanist wants media humanists.
the media humanist is a friend to the past, a person of the present, a promise to the future.
It has become completely impossible to ignore the massive social, economic, and cultural implications of video games. It is an industry that has outsold cinema and publishing for years. Its myths and characters have escaped consoles and computers for popular culture at large. And more and more people are becoming “gamers” everyday. Revolutions in casual gaming through the Nintendo Wii and the iPhone have ensured that games are not just for geeks anymore, they are for everyone, and everyone is finally giving into to the joys of games.
Such a moment in the history of the video game offers a wonderful opportunity: why not begin an initiative to get people to think critically about games. By critical, I mean think about games as society expects us to think about films or books: to ask questions about how they are made, why they are successful (or fail), and what the reflect about us as players and society as a whole.
This “critical gaming” is hardly new, or even novel. Fantastic scholars exist in the United States (such as Ian Bogost at Georgia Tech, or Nick Montfort at MIT) and from around the world (McKenzie Wark and Jesper Juul) who have pushed the academic world to accept the vitality of games as spaces for study. But I am really trying to advocate for a more broad consideration of criticality in games. I am hopeful that gamers around the world could consider becoming “critical gamers” by committing themselves to thinking about games as exciting social texts.
What should a critical gamer do? Well, s/he should enjoy video games, and enjoy thinking about what they have to say and how they say it. The critical gamer should not be afraid to “think” about games, they should not fear “academizing” the activity of game play for fear of losing some sense of innocence, escapism and distraction. To the contrary, the “critical gamer” will love the conversation of games and the analysis of game texts. Which does not mean they have to write papers or read theory or have degrees in video games (though that might be nice) but rather that they communicate in language comfortable for him/her.
The Critical Gamer wants to play and think about play.
This midnight idea wants to change how people think about games, and how gamers think about themselves. I’ve chosen to call this a “critical gamer initiative” because it is about people not institutions, its founded on gamers not colleges or consoles or even countries. It is an international idea for individuals to be united under a common commitment to play games critically. So if you fancy yourself a critical gamer, link to this article, and/or send me an email, and let’s see what we can build together.
Terry Gilliam is the last surrealist. His latest film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, confirms such an assertion with its dazzling and disorienting visual effects. In “the imaginarium” Dr. Parnassus brings visitors into a world of the dreams, an inversion of those intimate possessions as they are made an entire, external world. These spaces are disproportionately “surrealistic” in that they askew proportions and employ color schemes right out of a Dali. Though supposedly the dreams of the individual, all of Dr. Parnassus’-assisted-dream-spaces bend toward the surrealistic, complimenting the aesthetic and narrative predilections of Parnassus who is really just a proxy for the vision and desires of Terry Gilliam.
This landscape, from the work of Rene Magritte, is clearly emulated by Gilliam's scenograpy.
Terry Gilliam has a long history of perpetuating the surrealist paradigm. As a foundational member of Monty Python (and the author of its iconic animations) Gilliam participated in the invention and popularization of surrealist humor. He complimented the zany antics of Python humor with bleak, dystopian, unexpected, and often Jungian dream animations where the unexpected was always the protagonist and a sort of Victorian stiff-upper life was brought down to mere bathroom humor.
From Python, Gilliam became an independent director with film adaptations of Jabberwocky, and Baron von Munchausen, works of literature some bizarre and fantastic, so cryptic and unnerving that they suited his surrealist proclivities perfectly. Later work, like Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys, and his Criterion Collection edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas simply perpetuated a certain aesthetic status quo. To say nothing of his immortal Brazil, which is firmly Orwell made surrealist, all of Gilliam work plays out like a dream you didn’t want to have, but can’t look away from. His penchant for the absurd, the grotesque, and the weird lends itself to new hybrid genres of narrative entirely his own: medieval surreal (jabberwocky) victorian surreal (Dr. Parnassus, Munchausen, Monty Python) and retrofuture surreal (12 monkeys, Brazil).
It’s not a great film this Dr. Parnassus, but it is proof that Terry Gilliam truly is an auteur, and one keeping lit a century old flame of surrealist art. In his veins pumps an aesthetic style conceived of by Dadaists and discontents, Dali and the French school, and made cinematic by Gilliam’s unique vision.
Parnassus tells a story of stories- claiming that if stories are no longer told, the world ceases to exist. And that may be the secret mantra of Terry Gilliam’s own production. For if he stops telling his stories, surrealism with its signature aesthetics, proclivities towards mirrors (how Freudian), and narratives that lack syntagmatic sense, will fade into a thing of the past, killing a whole approach to life and its creative subversion.
If Avatar has changed anything about then movies, then it has changed everything. Let’s begin by considering what depth means to cinema. Historically, depth has only existed as a perspective, the idea taken from painting and camera optics that all viewed reality merges at a ‘vanishing point’ somewhere behind the picture plane. The whole notion of a picture plane is something that has been foundational in Western art and visual regimes for nearly 500 years. But the idea of “depth” has only existed as a sign- a trick that suggests but does not manifest. Spectators, aware of the contradiction (how can depth be translated in a plane?), have willing participated in this signifying of depth, imagining some things “further back” than others even as they were represented on a single plane. Film scholars like Sigfried Kracauer have joyfully praised the idea of depth in films as something that makes narrative more complex. With “deep focus” techniques, two or more “levels” of narrative can share a single shot, thus relating two scenes that previously required montage. Deep focus has been a major part of cinema, and suggested that depth of vision complicated and improved the cinema’s ability to represent nature, and tell stories whose events might occur simultaneously.
Avatar changes the history of depth in Western visuality because it problematicizes the assumption that depth can occur in two dimensions. With the single hovering water droplet above our protagonist at the very opening of Avatar, we know that we can no longer believe in the technique of depth in two dimensional images. We can no longer let depth occur where it has not been earned by this new high technique, where our eyes are truly employed (as a biscopic mechanism) to preceive depth. It’s not that this technique is not also a trick, for indeed it is, but rather that it progresses a long stultified evolution of perspective that begins in the West with relief drawing and moves into a whole science of vanishing points. The depth of James Cameron’s Avatar changes our way of seeing, in that it creates new ways for the cinema to be seen, and thus re-informs our expectations of what is possible. This technological urge, to pursue new possibilities in the age of the digital, is something that the 21st century has been thoroughly caught up in, and now we have a film to mythologize our transition to digital culture. For Avatar’s plot is simple and its meaning translucent- in a world of new images and new technologies we are all the closer to identifying with images- the avatar of Second Life and other digital domains has entered cinema, where the out-of-body experience has long been present and is now re-invented.
Three dimensions also means that Avatar’s cinematography provides texture to the spectator in ways never before conceived. In one scene, Jakesully and his attractive love interest, swim beneath a neon brook, and we know they are swimming because the water is dimensional, with so much depth detail, that it feels real. It is some form of kineaesthesia or a visual tactility. We know it’s water because it looks like water, not because it is a imagic sign of water. Depth changes the image, because depth escapes the picture plane, exploding its limitations however superficially.
Watching Avatar, I came to the conclusion that when 3D filmmaking becomes cheap enough for the avante-garde to try it, we will have some truly incredible objects of cinema. What would Godard do with 3D filmmaking? How best to unravel its techniques? How best to subvert the spectator in a world of depth?
Whatever the avante-garde does with 3D, the history of the image is changed, the expectations of the cinema spectator challenged, and the nature of cultural production complicated. For as powerful as 3D will be in producing new immersive worlds, even the 2D world changes now as it may take on a patina of authenticity and simplicity that black & white film continues to exert in a color world.
