This will be an attempted response to Wills' first chapter in Dorsality: Thinking Back through Technology and Politics, "The Dorsal Turn." This book is what you call hard. His first line says that he doesn't mobilize arguments; these arguments "mobilize themselves here."
One of the most important parts of the Wills' very dense first several paragraphs is this: "The technological turn describes the turn into a technology that was always there" (3). When Wills talks about technology, he talks about something very, very fundamental. Technology isn't simply the laptop I'm typing on. It is...something to be determined more precisely later on.
"As soon as there is articulation, the human has rounded the technological bend, the technological turn has occurred, and there is no more simple human. Which, for all intents and purposes, means there never was any simple human" (3). Again: very, very fundamental. As soon as what was before human became human it was no longer simply human. Clearly, our lackluster language here is at fault for making this confusing; the language--and thinking--we've inherited from modern conceptions of the human makes this confusing as all heck, hence the usual "huh?" when we have to resort to a term like posthuman, which is all types of confusing. I can see why Wills doesn't really use the term "posthuman" because the term "posthuman" necessarily inherits the language of our conceptual predecessors; when one talks posthumanism they inhabit humanism. Really, when we talk about a "posthuman," we simply mean "human." Wills, thankfully, makes this leap and avoids dredging through the term posthumanism.
Wills then asserts that articulation comes before the emergence of the limb; in fact, it comes through first in the self-division of a cell. Because of this, "we should think technology beyond the confines of a traditional concept of human-mechanical relation, as developmentally upstream from the articulation of a limb. We should think of a technology that grows, and of the bios in general as following the technological turn, as bending outside itself deep within itself" (4). Technology isn't simply the extension of articulation through tools (like my laptop). Technology, as Wills says, "grows." Its inextricably linked with the life that articulates. Articulation outside/inside...is technological/technology?
This is the first two pages of Dorsality. There will be more. These beginning thoughts form the basis of Will's arguments throughout the book. While Wills extends his arguments on technology to (as can be seen in the title) ethics and politics, I hope to mobilize (I'm mobilizing! I have agency!) his argument to understand the technological behavior manifested through selfies.
Friday, October 24, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
"Immediacy, Hypermediacy, and Remediation"
This is chapter one from Bolter and Grusin's Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Bolter and Grusin begin this chapter with the acknowledgement that they are not putting forward some "universal truth," but rather exploring immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation as "practices of specific groups in specific times" (21)--that is, contextualized (a good point for any argument ones makes, I would think!). Their main target is the cacophony of contemporary media, whose "twin occupations" are "the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity of media themselves" (21). This point is their overarching claim for the chapter.
They begin with a discussion of transparency in media. Most interesting and relevant to my project are their applications with photography. They describe photography as a "mechanical and chemical process, whose automatic character seemed to many to complete the earlier trend to conceal both the process and the artist" (26). The concealing of the process and artist is that desired transparency of the media. In this case, with photography, you get what you look at. They bring in Stanley Cavell, then, who claims that "Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting...by automatism, by removing the human agent from the task of reproduction" (26). Now, of course, self-portraits are extremely interesting in this regard! The subject is right there in front of the camera (or mirror). It seems like the subject (in selfies) is quite often trying to remove that mediation, the camera, when attempting to take that selfie. This could be something along the lines of trying to remove that technological influence on the self-identity.
Their thoughts on hypermediacy will become most relevant for any discussion on the publication and proliferation of selfies as individual photos and as a genre. They write that "In every manifestation, hypermediacy makes us aware of the medium or media and (in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways) reminds us of our desire for immediacy" (34). The space of hypermediation w/r/t selfies would be, I think, the Instagram/Pinterest/Twitter/Facebook pages where they are published. Though the overall attempt is to create a whole sense of unmediated "self" with these pages, the hypermediation is clear: there are pictures, videos, and texts everywhere, all linking together within these pages. The desire for immediacy is the desire for a direct communication with that identity we're looking at on Facebook, to get a "real look" into the real person--but that real look is hypermediated through a variety of media. In this is the logic of hypermediacy, as described by Bolter and Grusin, "which expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a "real" space that lies beyond the mediation" (41, italics mine). Hypermediacy will probably be very important in exploring how selfies are shared, presented, and interpreted.
Bolter and Grusin begin this chapter with the acknowledgement that they are not putting forward some "universal truth," but rather exploring immediacy, hypermediacy, and remediation as "practices of specific groups in specific times" (21)--that is, contextualized (a good point for any argument ones makes, I would think!). Their main target is the cacophony of contemporary media, whose "twin occupations" are "the transparent presentation of the real and the enjoyment of the opacity of media themselves" (21). This point is their overarching claim for the chapter.
They begin with a discussion of transparency in media. Most interesting and relevant to my project are their applications with photography. They describe photography as a "mechanical and chemical process, whose automatic character seemed to many to complete the earlier trend to conceal both the process and the artist" (26). The concealing of the process and artist is that desired transparency of the media. In this case, with photography, you get what you look at. They bring in Stanley Cavell, then, who claims that "Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting...by automatism, by removing the human agent from the task of reproduction" (26). Now, of course, self-portraits are extremely interesting in this regard! The subject is right there in front of the camera (or mirror). It seems like the subject (in selfies) is quite often trying to remove that mediation, the camera, when attempting to take that selfie. This could be something along the lines of trying to remove that technological influence on the self-identity.
Their thoughts on hypermediacy will become most relevant for any discussion on the publication and proliferation of selfies as individual photos and as a genre. They write that "In every manifestation, hypermediacy makes us aware of the medium or media and (in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways) reminds us of our desire for immediacy" (34). The space of hypermediation w/r/t selfies would be, I think, the Instagram/Pinterest/Twitter/Facebook pages where they are published. Though the overall attempt is to create a whole sense of unmediated "self" with these pages, the hypermediation is clear: there are pictures, videos, and texts everywhere, all linking together within these pages. The desire for immediacy is the desire for a direct communication with that identity we're looking at on Facebook, to get a "real look" into the real person--but that real look is hypermediated through a variety of media. In this is the logic of hypermediacy, as described by Bolter and Grusin, "which expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a "real" space that lies beyond the mediation" (41, italics mine). Hypermediacy will probably be very important in exploring how selfies are shared, presented, and interpreted.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
"Introduction: The Double Logic of Remediation," Remediation: Understanding New Media (prototype post)
Summary and Key Ideas:
I reach over my print book to type on my laptop through this blog, and the interplay of media suddenly becomes more apparent and clearer. In their introduction to Remediation: Understanding New Media, Bolter and Grusin lay down the fundamental logic for their work. People using and appropriating media attempt "both to multiply [their] media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them" (5). The medium should disappear if you're sending the message well enough. The reader should forget they're reading a letter; the viewer should forget they're not actually in early modern England; the internet traveler should think as if they're actually in south Moorhead. Thankfully, no mediation is so "perfect" as to allow one to be in Moorhead when they're not in Moorhead. (Interestingly enough, note the shadow of the Google-camera-car-thing: one part of the mediation coming through into the message! Very cool.)
However, our strive for "immediacy," i.e., being in the moment, really there, etc., seems to be very strong in the user, even if it's impossible to achieve. It's impossible because media and hypermedia are codependent; the authors don't give a precise definition of hypermedia (perhaps it's expected of a normal reader of this kind of book), but I take it to be the mixing of media because that's how they're talking about it. Our strive for immediacy drives us to create and propagate multiple media, resulting in hypermedia. I could not pick out a precise definition of "remediation" within this section, but in how they're using it, I imagine it to be the process by with we hypermediate media (a process not peculiar to the recent technological and media explosion). Essentially, no media exists in isolation; all media work with other media (remediate?) to produce hypermedia--all due to the drive for immediacy in the creator and viewer. More to come on the term "remediation" later.
Seemingly most important takeaway: People really want to collapse the media and strive for immediacy with the event; all media remediate (?) other media.
Important quotes:
"Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them" (5)
"Logic of immediacy dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented: sitting in the race car or standing on a mountaintop" (5).
"They are all attempts to achieve immediacy by ignoring or denying the presence of the medium and the act of mediation. All of them seek to put the viewer in the same space as the object viewed" (11).
"No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, and more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media" (14-5).
Questions:
What precisely is hypermediation? The mixing of media? Remediation?
I reach over my print book to type on my laptop through this blog, and the interplay of media suddenly becomes more apparent and clearer. In their introduction to Remediation: Understanding New Media, Bolter and Grusin lay down the fundamental logic for their work. People using and appropriating media attempt "both to multiply [their] media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them" (5). The medium should disappear if you're sending the message well enough. The reader should forget they're reading a letter; the viewer should forget they're not actually in early modern England; the internet traveler should think as if they're actually in south Moorhead. Thankfully, no mediation is so "perfect" as to allow one to be in Moorhead when they're not in Moorhead. (Interestingly enough, note the shadow of the Google-camera-car-thing: one part of the mediation coming through into the message! Very cool.)
However, our strive for "immediacy," i.e., being in the moment, really there, etc., seems to be very strong in the user, even if it's impossible to achieve. It's impossible because media and hypermedia are codependent; the authors don't give a precise definition of hypermedia (perhaps it's expected of a normal reader of this kind of book), but I take it to be the mixing of media because that's how they're talking about it. Our strive for immediacy drives us to create and propagate multiple media, resulting in hypermedia. I could not pick out a precise definition of "remediation" within this section, but in how they're using it, I imagine it to be the process by with we hypermediate media (a process not peculiar to the recent technological and media explosion). Essentially, no media exists in isolation; all media work with other media (remediate?) to produce hypermedia--all due to the drive for immediacy in the creator and viewer. More to come on the term "remediation" later.
Seemingly most important takeaway: People really want to collapse the media and strive for immediacy with the event; all media remediate (?) other media.
Important quotes:
"Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them" (5)
"Logic of immediacy dictates that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented: sitting in the race car or standing on a mountaintop" (5).
"They are all attempts to achieve immediacy by ignoring or denying the presence of the medium and the act of mediation. All of them seek to put the viewer in the same space as the object viewed" (11).
"No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, and more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media" (14-5).
Questions:
What precisely is hypermediation? The mixing of media? Remediation?
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