DMCT Week 15

The state of contemporary art is the result of decades of the reconfiguring of the definition of art. Artists like Stelarc, Orlan, and Kenneth Feingold rely on various changes and paradigm shifts engaged by artists decades (or sometimes centuries) earlier. How then, do the theories applied to contemporary art apply to these previous artistic innovators? This post examines how previous artists' work can be seen through the theoretical lenses of contemporary society, and exposes how new theories of society can help explain previous pieces of art.

In class we discussed the role of Cubism as an early example of hyper-text. Picasso (and Braque) take an image, cut it up, and then reassemble into a new reality on the canvas. This does sound like hyper text in many ways (the referential nature of the image), but it more properly sounds like Derrida's notion of deconstruction. By breaking the image down into its constituent parts, Cubists deconstructed reality and realism and reassembled the image in the light of contemporary notions of industry and modernity. Does then this deconstruction indicate something about hypertext? Is hyper text inherently deconstructive by nature, and if so, what does this mean for our current understanding about the nature of information online?

After class, Mark and I were discussing the role of Jackson Pollock in the development of hyper text. Mark argued that perhaps Pollock was portraying the increasingly erratic yet organized images that seem to look like what we now call networks. However, was Pollock envisioning these networks as sources of information? Not really. Instead, Pollock was channelling the shifts in the artistic marketplace and reflecting these shifts in his art. He recognizes shifts in societal thinking and paradigms and these changes are represented in the drastic changes of his art. His "networks" of paint drippings come to indicate a changing relationship between society, reality and art.

Pollock represents a strange time in the world of art history. He is at the tail end of modernism, but is not fully post-modern in many sense. That role is taken up by Andy Warhol. In our discussion, I called Warhol (and more specifically his workshop) a rhizomatic artistic entity. Deleuze and Guattarri argue that contemporary information and society as a whole should not be seen as a tree, but as a rhizome with many entry points and multiple sources of origin and completion. Warhol's workshop is a perfect representation of this concept. Warhol could even be cut out of his workshop, and it would continue producing art. His art was also spread across multiple platforms (paint, music, television, film). Like the rhizome, the Warhol workshop was horizontally stretched across media and maintained a multitude of origins. Warhols work continues to interest us today for this very reason. It tells us something about current society (a rhizome) through the art.

DMCT - Week 14

Is the Internet inherently a resistive and subversive medium? Lurie argues that "the architecture of the web, and the way the users navigate it, closely resembles theories about the authority and coherence of texts that liberal deconstructionist critics have offered by thirty years." He claims that the conservative domination of the primary branches of federal government will come under attack as the hyperlinks, frames and meta-tags of the web begin to provide information that undermines claims to authority. However, does it truly construct subversive citizens, or does it simply offer a new power dynamic that still oppresses some and denies rights to others? The answer must lie somewhere in the middle.

Much of the theory of deconstruction relies on the work of Barthes, who argued that the authorial vision of the text is no longer relevant. Instead, we see readerly works which rely on the interpretation, personalization and interaction of the user/reader. Barthes states that "the work of the commentary, once it is separate from any ideology of totality, consists precisely in manhandling the text, interrupting it. What is thereby denied is not the quality of the text (here incomparable) but it's 'naturalness'" (Barthes, S/Z, 15). Barthes "interruption" is later translated into contexts of deconstructions of texts. According to Lurie then, the medium of the Internet effectively interrupts traditional texts and relieves them of their naturalness and exposes their underlying ideologies. However, this is not an inherent quality of the web. Lurie accords the medium to much agency, when in fact it relies on the user base as a primary agent of deconstruction. If the user does not understand the deconstruction, the web is not successful in subverting traditional power structures.

Luries notion of hypertext still relies on the vision of information distribution and reading as a linear process. Instead, it looks more like what Deleuze and Gutarri call a "rhizome." There is no longer one dominant source of meaning. Rather, we see meaning develop from multiple sources and networks, and users fall into these meanings after following the architecture of the web. The Internet is not inherently deconstructionist, but it is inherently rhizomatic, and as such has the potential for subversion. This potential is seen in things like the Arab Spring, the defeat of SOPA and PIPA, and Occupy Wallstreet. There is indeed a strong indication of the subversive potentials of the Internet, but it is not because it permits deconstruction (which relies to heavily on the user). Rather, it promotes rhizomatic social structures that attack traditional power structures.

Week 10 DMCT

As digital media has expanded into cultural consciousness and popular use over the last three decades, the notions of identity and subjectivity have been increasingly fragmented. People construct different identities across a variety of platforms—from social media to MMORPG's—and engage with these identities in different ways depending on the publicness or anonymity of the platform. However, when engaging on an anonymous platform, how do standard markers of identity come into play? How do race and gender translate across digital media? 

Thomas Foster (1999) argues that digital media implicates a post-human ontology that presents possibilities of liberation from traditional notions of race. His analysis of the 1990's comic Deathlok offers textual examples of how race becomes problematic in the image of the cyborg. When Michael Collins is transformed into a cyborg (Deathlok), his traditional identity as a black man is not longer a primary indicator of his self. Instead, identity becomes a fluid state. Deathlok appears to his son in a video game, and in entering the virtual, becomes man again. Foster (1999) states that "the cyborg and the racial thematics converge around the possibility of intervening in the ways that cultural constraints take the form of limitations imposed on particular types of bodies, with those constraints coming to seem 'built-in' or 'hard-wired' to those bodies" (p. 161). Through the fragmentation of identity provided by the disembodiment through the cyborg, traditional markers of identity like race become maleable and dynamic. They are no longer inherent to our being. Instead, race becomes yet another transmutable identity marker.

However, the digital age doesn't provide an arena for negotiation of identity unproblematically. Everett (2009) sees several problems with representations of race in video games. Specifically, she sees benefits of inhabiting other racial identities, but does not this this is inherently beneficial. Rather, video games often reinforce existing stereotypes and provide little critical context for the gamer. Games like Read to Rumble, Tekken Tag Tournament and Imperialism reinforce existing colonialist and orientalist discourse. She does mention the game series Civilization as a game that may differ with regards to race. In an attempt to control the world, the player chooses a civilization (Roman, Chinese, Zulu) and tries to dominate the rest of the civilizations either through force or diplomacy. The wide variety of races available to play provides the possibility of defying traditional colonialist roles. I also see a variety of new games (The Fallout series,  The Elder Scrolls series) that allow the user to choose their race. They can choose anything from a green-skinned wood elf to a black-skinned female. This affordance of choosing and designing your own identity provides an arena for negotiation of identity.

This is not the case for most games. Many still rely on outmoded stereotypes and colonialist hegemony to create their content. Theorists like Foster see the liberative potential of digital media, while those like Everett seem more skeptical of these possibilities. Marshall McLuhan was particularly utopian with his image of the global village, but as Mark Poster (1998) notes, "McLuhan's position, developed mainly in the early 1960's, was limited by, among other things, its focus on the broadcast media, appearing before the dissemination of computers and their communication networks" (p. 198). Poster sees computer networks as a definitive new development that allows for a global village, but its not necessarily a good thing. Many cultures would prefer to remain separate from such a village. Some like to maintain their racial markers rather than converge and erase these markers through cyborgization or video games. These complex questions are vital for understanding how race functions in the digital realm.

Week 9 - DMCT

Lacan's conception of the mirror stage as the initial point of human identification provides a jumping off point for a variety of theories regarding identity in the contemporary world. These issues have become even more important in the digital era due to issues such as anonymity, switching genders, and association with animals. Virtual worlds like Second Life provide such a forum for the productive negotiation of identity online. Second Life allows users to be flexible in their identity, allowing different genders, animals, robots and vampires to be chosen. This variation of identity mixed with the essential anonymity of the world provides users to experiment with new identities, sexualities and personalities. 

Turkle (1999) argues that the fragmentary identities constructed online stress a "decentered subject." An individual's body is no longer the central focus of identity. Instead, identity is stretched out across various media outlets and media objects. You are not just the identity constructed in your personal body, but also the identity of your Facebook page, Second Life avatar and Reddit account. Your identity is flexible and different depending on the medium in which those meeting your are going through.

Many do not know the other parts of your identity because it is hidden behind the anonymity of the internet. Anonymity provides avenues for free association with identities and sexualities but also provides forums for individuals to "troll" or "grief" other members of the virtual world or community. This is a sort of psychosis that can be evidenced online. Kunkle (1999) argues that the lack of a centered subject provides new avenues for psychosis to exposes themselves. I think this is evidenced by online trolls, who, in "real" life, are pleasant people, but in another, anonymous, identity are assholes. Take a notorious example from Reddit. Forum moderatore "violentacrez" was notorious for hosting multiple pornographic subreddits and being a consistent troll, hosting subs like "r/hitler," "r/creepshots" and "r/picsofdeadbabies." He was specifically famous for running "r/jailbait" which posted clothed pictures of underage girls. Gawker's Adrien Chen went out of his was to expose violentacrez as the  military father and cat lover Michael Brutsch. Brutsch was consequently fired from his job. Although Brutsch was clearly investigating aspects of his identity behind his anonymous screen name, he also was negatively affecting others senses of respectability and experience on Reddit, and the reputation of the site in the real world community. 

The violentacrez story is an example of the paradox of the Internet. Here is a forum available for self expression and identity construction, but it can also be abused. At what point to we stop people like Brutsch from posting indecent pictures of young girls? Can we without infringing on his rights as a digital citizen. He was technically not doing anything illegal, but at the same point it clearly made many uncomfortable. Do we trade decency for identity exploration? What if what we see reflected in the mirror is the worst in us? What if we hate our reflection?

Week 8 DMCT

Judith Butler's work on performativity and embodiment during the 1990's (as well as Foucault) was part of the discursive turn in philosophy and social theory. Butler (1991) argued that homosexuality and heterosexuality were social constructions established ideologically. Homosexuality is not simply a mimicry, parody, or copy of the heterosexual norm. Rather, it is established on its own terms and people identify with the concept naturally. Butler insists that heterosexuality is not the original. I was confused for a while because I kept thinking "wait, before there can be any homosexuality there must be heterosexuality. Before there can be anything there must be heterosexuality because without heterosexuality there can be no humanity." However, I think I was going to far back. Butler is not talking about the beginning of humanity, but the beginning of society. Her vision of a non-mimeographic homosexuality relies not on the start of humanity (which does indeed start with heterosexuality) but with the start of society. But that time heterosexuality and homosexuality are indeed equal. There is no inherent privileging of one version of sexuality over the other.

Many have taken up Butler's queering of spaces, language, ideologies, histories, and normativities through the examination of queer theory. Randal Woodland's discussion of online queer communities focuses on four different versions and examples of online queerness. Woodland determines that defining identity online is strengthened through these communities and queer communities are similar to straight ones. However, virtual communities involve initiation rites and often crystalize around crises. The act of coming out acts as currency within the communities that serve as spatio-temporal metaphors for determining sexuality.

These themes are also taken up by Foster in his discussion of transgendered performance in cyberpunk. His discussion of recent cyberpunk literature indicates the relationship between queer theory and spatial analysis. Online discussion and traditional novels offer potential sites of identification for homosexuals who are "still in the closet." It also offers a potential "new closet" through which a homosexual can communicate with his peers and construct a gay identity, but it might also allow escapism and a failure to come out in real life and construct identity in real life. 

DMCT - Week 6

Feminist social theory has had an indelible impact on media theory since Laura Mulvey published her seminal essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" in 1975. Drawing on psychoanalysis, Mulvey argues that narrative film perpetually establishes the "male gaze," constructing women as always "bearer of meaning" rather than creator. This problematic means that viewers of film are perpetually assaulting the female by watching her on screen and females in film rarely achieve agency or importance. However, Mulvey's argument has come under critique by third-wave feminists because it disregards the homosexual gaze and the oppositional reading by the audience. Nevertheless, it stands as important intervention by feminists in the realm of media analysis.

Mulvey's insights into film proved influential for a multitude of scholars, but other feminist interventions may prove to be still more important for insights in digital media. Toffoletti provides a nice little breakdown of the history of feminist discussions of technology. She specifically looks at the role of Heidegger's concept of gestell (enframing) in how we understand our relationship with technology. Specifically, gestell destroys notions that humans are differnet from nature and their surroundings, including technology. Thus, almost everybody is in some sense engaged with technology at all times. We are all cyborgs; combinations of human and technology. This destruction of traditional binaries such as human/nature and human/technology is a feminist move because it exposes the constructed nature of these distinctions; distinctions constructed by patriarchy.

DMCT Week 5

Ah, cyborgs. Haraway's influential essay "The Cyborg Manifesto" offers a unique perspective on the changing conditions in late modernity. As civilization progresses, it has become clear that machines and humans are interacting in ways as never before and as such, we are all cyborgs at this point. We all interact with technology and media on a daily basis. Haraway argues that cyborgs operate through irony, and that irony is "a rhetorical strategy and a political method" (272). It is through the cyborg that we understand the world. The cyborg is our ontology.

Haraway's argument rests on the deconstruction of traditional binaries. She points to the erosion between human/animal, organism/machine, and physical/non-physical binaries as signals of a shift from patriarchal and gender norms. I want to specifically mention a separate binary that has also been eroded during the dawn of postmodernity; the binary of information and entertainment. Standing at the center of this deconstruction of a traditional binary are the two TV programs The Daily Show (TDS) and The Colbert Report (TCR).

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert run their fake news operations out of Comedy Central. Their two programs critique media, politics, and religion (among numerous other things) through ironic, parodic and satiric humor. I argue that Stewart and Colbert are the epitome of the cyborg political movement, seeing the political struggle from both sides of the aisle at the same time because "each reveals both dominations and possibilities unimaginable from the other vantage point" (Haraway, 276). Colbert spot-on parody of conservative commentators has led some to believe that he is promoting a conservative agenda, while others maintain he is a liberal. Although more outspokenly liberal, Stewart often takes stabs at President Obama, the liberals in the Senate or ridiculous liberal policies set in place at a state level, while also taking the conservatives to task on a regular basis.

This is then the working thesis of my paper for the semester. I want to examine TDS and TCR as cyborgs (including the critiques of the cyborg manifesto). I want to look specifically at the rhetorical and technological techniques engaged by the show (redacted video, interviewing, cross-editing, mock journalism, satire, parody, irony) and show how they are engaging the audience in a cyborg's view of contemporary media and politics and how both programs promote the cyborg agenda.

Long live the new flesh!

DMCT Week 4

It seems as though human kind has always tried to craft new, virtual worlds. From the cave paintings in Lascaux, France to the hyper-realism of Chuck Close, art represents ways through which humans can craft alternate realities and attempt to immerse themselves within them. Since the rise of digital media, virtual realities (VR) present opportunities not only for immersion, but also for interactivity. However, the ideal of full interactivity still presents a variety of problems that I wish to briefly discuss here.

Ryan (1994) offers definitions of immersion and interactivity. In analyzing VR as a semiotic phenomenon, Ryan (1994) argues that Steuer's notion of "telepresence" offers us a way to look at the interactions between immersion and interactivity. However, in order to truly become immersive the computer itself must become transparent so the user can fully present in the mediated environment. This transparency is problematic for interactivity.

To be fully interactive would mean that the user could enter the code and reprogram how the system of the virtual reality functions. Ryan (1994) discusses a virtual golf game and says 'if the user ... hits a golf ball he wants it to land on the ground, and not to turn into a bird and disappear in the sky" (26). However, in a fully interactive game, the user could turn the golf ball into a bird or even a dinosaur. Full interactivity is in some ways the opposite of the Platonic cave. Plato talks about those chained to the wall, escaping and moving to the world outside the cave. A fully interactive game would have the user move from outside the cave to inside and manipulate the shadows on the wall. The user would become the force creating the shadows on the wall, while also totally immersed in what was being created.

So full interactivity presents an opportunity to become completely in control of the VR process. It also presents problems because to be in control of the VR, means that one cannot be totally immersed in the process. It also means that a serious knowledge of computers is required for the manipulation of the code. If the interface becomes invisible, only those who have a superior knowledge of how computers function could continue to manipulate it while those who have now knowledge would continue to be manipulated by the VR spectacle. The power relations between video game producer and high knowledge user would change, but those without specialized knowledge could not use the full interactivity. Instead they would become fully immersed in the VR spectacle without any authorial controls. They would continue to be manipulated without recognition of said manipulation. Knowledge (of computer processing) would become power.

The concept of a video game that is fully interactive has yet to come to fruition. However, if one were designed and the user were able to fully manipulate the code and structures of the game, the concept of fully interactivity may be presented and used. However, full interactivity does not just mean that the game is successful. Instead, it presents a whole new set of power relations that still derive from the commodity spectacle of the video game itself.

DMCT Assignment 3

While adventuring in cyberspace in Neuromancer, Case find himself talking to a young Brazillian boy on a beach who turns out to be the title character of the book. Neuromancer has created a virtual world for Case to convince him to stop his quest to merge Neuromancer and Wintermute, and live the rest of his (potentially immortal life) with his lady love on this beach. Case refuses, and returns to the real world to complete his quest. Neuromancer creates (in Baudrillard's terms) a simulacrum of the real world for Case. However, Case refuses Neuromancer's offer and returns to the real world to finish his mission.

Nevertheless, the image of a virtual world that is a simulacrum of our world has continued through other creative works (The Matrix, Tron, ExistenZ) and the role of virtuality in culture is a hotly debated topic. Grau (1999) argues that virtual reality has existed for thousands of years through artistic representations of reality. Berger (1990) argues that mythological oil paintings were expensive and desired by aristocrats, but were empty of true meaning. Instead the were references to idealized behavior—a mere simulacrum of the morals, emotions and heroics depicted. Although the drive of painting to represent reality changed with the development of the camera, virtual reality in our current sense began to take place.

However, Baudrillard's vision of the simulacrum is not the only conception of contemporary virtual reality. Baudrillard sees the virtual as a fake—a simulacrum of reality. There is no referent for cultural productions leaving the consumer as a passive agent. On the other hand, Pierre Lèvy argues that virtuality provides an argument for the benefits of virtuality. He does not see the competition of reality and virtuality that Baudrillard sees, and instead sees humanity as learning "to live, work, and play with the fluid, the open, the potential. In contrast to Buadrillard, Lèvy does not seem alarmed by this exponentiation of the virtual because he sees it as a productive acceleration of the feedback loop between the virtual and the actual rather than as a loss of territory for the real" (Ryan, 37). The virtual and the real are not a binary. When one gains ground, the other down not necessarily lose ground.

DMCT Week 2

            The rise of the cyberpunk aesthetic in the 1980’s often is seen as foreshadowing the development of digital media in the age of the Internet. Specifically, William Gibson’s Neuromancer describes in vivid detail a world in which people can jack into cyberspace and access mountains of information at the click of a button. Cavallaro argues “in cyberculture, we encounter an eminently postmodern culturescape wherein tecnoscience challenges the western tendency to conceive of the real as fixed and of scene as the means of quantifying and representing it” (Cavallaro, p. 36). The cyberpunk aesthetic focuses on the hyper-reality and constant reproductions of simulacra that is often described as part of the postmodern world-view. Furthermore, Cavallaro relates the movement to both Lacan’s psychoanalytic parable of the mirror stage. He also brings in Althusser’s concept of interpellation through which ideologies hail subjects into existence and requires us to adopt mythological and archetypal identities. The cyberpunk aesthetic and virtuality interpellate their subjects through fiction and fantasies. Thus, we see Neuromancer as a point where the postmodern ideology engaging with modern society through fictive and fantastic storytelling to provide a larger view of the rise of the digital age.

Digital Media and Critical Theory

This class is of upmost importance for my studies. Currently, I am working on a graduate certificate in Critical Theory and my dissertation will focus on new media and the role of information distribution in the digital age. I was a little worried that the readings in the class would not be strenuous because it is a hybrid with an undergraduate element, but as Dr. Winokur stressed, the readings will be difficult. Looking through the syllabus I already see some authors I am familiar with (Adorno, Barthes, Bakhtin) and some who I have been meaning to get better acquainted with (Foucault, Lacan, Zizek). I am also planning on taking the Linguistics class, Language and New Media with Dr. Kira Hall (assuming I get off the waitlist). I think that these two classes will mesh quite well and create a beneficial pairing. Overall, having seen the syllabus, I am very excited for this class and how it will inform my dissertation work.