Arts
The Arts section of Orient Lodge
Proles, Nietzsche and the Desperate Slacktivists Passive Interactivity
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/05/2012 - 15:12Recently, I stumbled across the article, What if Interactivity is the New Passivity? by Jonathan Sterne at McGill University. It is the sort of media theory stuff that I suspect many of my friends looking at how to monetize their social media activity tend not to read. It builds on the criticism of people passively consuming broadcast media, and asks if the interactions that we have now, liking pages, following friends, maybe even retweeting, or playing a game in Facebook, is really all that different than people watching television a generation ago.
It is an interesting question, and my thoughts quickly drifted to 1984, “If there was hope, it must lie in the proles”, or at least with those who are engaged in social media. Yes, I feel the ghost of Marshall McLuhan standing over my shoulder, whispering in my ear, “the medium is the message”.
Yet, perhaps, McLuhan isn’t all that far off. Perhaps what Sterne is saying is that interactivity, at least in terms of Slacktivists signing online petitions, isn’t really that much warmer of a medium than people a generation ago cursing at the news on the television.
Perhaps, the new, passive interactivity, reflects an even older idea; Henry David Thoreau’s “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. That paragraph, goes on to say, “A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.”
So, how do we transcend this desperate slacktivists passive interactivity? Sterne’s article starts off by talking about Malcolm Bull’s essay, “Where Is the Anti-Nietzsche?” Perhaps there is more of a relationship between these questions than the analogy that Sterne suggests. However, that should probably stand as a blog post on its own.
Internet Avatar
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 20:27Hardware, Software, Pixels, Sound. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when marketers from the Pixel Nation tried to take over the Internet.
My daughters love the show, Avatar the Last Air Bender, and are eagerly awaiting the The Legend of Korra. Through the fan site, my eldest and youngest daughters watched the first two episodes. Afterwards, I told Fiona that she needed to work on her pixel bending. Later, I talked more about it, and it occurred to me that following the four elements of Avatar, there were four elements of the internet and video games.
Hardware, Software, Pixels, Sound. A good internet experience, or video game experience, is likely to be based on most, if not all of these elements. As I thought more about it, it seemed that each of these have long histories.
The Hardware Benders, are the craftsmen and artisans of ages ago. They were the blacksmiths, shoeing horses, later, creating sculptures, moved over to gear heads, ham radio operators, and folks building computers in their garages.
Then, there are the Software Benders. These are the writers, the poets, the bards. They've gone from creating experiences with words in ancient languages to using new languages like Java or C++.
The pixel benders are the painters, from the caves of France to the post-impressionists, and on through photography, videography and animation.
And of course, the sound benders are the musicians from their didgeridoos to their digital synthesizers. The internet experience and the video game experience brings together all of this.
Perhaps this provides a useful way to help get youth to work on their pixel bending and sound bending.
Dominic
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 03/26/2012 - 19:33Dominic (Black paint on White Canvas) from a poem by e.e. cummings as set to music by Vincent Persichetti.
Recently, I was driving to work, listening to the news on the radio, when a nice turn of phrase caught my ear. It made me think about words as art. Words have always been my preferred media, and much of my writing can be seen as a sketchbook.
When I think of art, I think of form and I think of function. It seems like most words these days are focused on function. Make money online. Try to convince someone of a point of view, or at least preaching to the choir, but where is the form, where is the beauty?
Yes, there is poetry, which is perhaps the closest we get to words as form over function. e.e.cummings was a master of this. It was probably in junior high school that I was in a chorus that performed the poem Dominic by e.e.cummings, put to music by Vincent Persichetti. Mixing media even more, I imagine it as black paint on white canvas.
Today is Robert Frost's birthday, another poet I grew up on. His words have often caused me, not to stop and think, but to stop and ponder, the way I've pondered great paintings in a museum. Trying to use words to describe those words seems to bring us to literary variant of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.
Perhaps the closest I can get of bringing together all of these thoughts is the seventh proposition of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
Dominic.
The Hunger Games
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 03/25/2012 - 13:19I clicked on Google News and found the top Entertainment story today to be "The Hunger Games", raking in over $155 million on its opening weekend. I glanced at other news. The shooting of tribute Trayvon Williams by tribute George Zimmerman was up at the top of the list, followed by the shooting of at least 16 civilians by a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Also, fourteen members of the rebellion, err, Occupy Wall Street, were arrested in New York. (Would that be in the 13th district?)
No, I have not read the books or seen the movie. I've just read enough of the reviews and heard enough discussions to mix things up a little bit. Yet this gets to the bigger question, why is The Hunger Games resonating in our society the way that it is? Likewise, as I mentioned in a previous blog post, why is the book being banned by some teachers?
Is it gratuitous violence that is desensitizing tweens to violence, or is there something more pernicious, a strong woman (what Limbaugh would call a slut), coming to recognize oppression and seeking to find ways of beating the oppressors at their own game?
Is it really like the reality television shows that some have compared it to, a twenty first century version of the panopticon? Or, is there something bigger going on, akin to social media where we all become both the watchers and the watched, where our status updates, tweets and blog posts become a performance in which we seek to outwit the oppressors the way Katniss seeks to outmaneuver her oppressors?
So Much Depends upon a Rusty Blue Trike in Baltimore
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 03/21/2012 - 20:12This morning, a friend posted a picture of William Eggleston's photograph, "Memphis (Tricycle)", asking "Is this photographic art worth $578,500?" The overwhelming response seems to be no. I took a very different view, which a co-worker summed up nicely, reflecting that the picture captured very nicely the 1970's suburban zeitgeist.
With that, I'm trying to capture some of my reactions. One thought is of William Carlos Williams famous poem, "Red Wheelbarrow" which starts off simply, "so much depends upon a…". It is a very simple poem that captures a compelling image. In Williams' case, it was a red wheelbarrow. In Eggleston's case, it was a rusty blue trike.
The tricycle is from Memphis, but it also made me think of a great song by David Glaser, "House in Baltimore".
our days fled like a passing summer storm
In that little house in Baltimore
The song, like the imagist poem and the image from the photograph beautifully captures the 1970's suburban zeitgeist.
Doing a little more research, I found an article about the auction where the photograph fetched over half a million dollars. Christie's auction of Eggleston prints nets $5.9 million.
Benefiting the trust, the rare public sale of Eggleston’s work marked the first time his photos have been sold in an oversize format. Combining some of the 72-year-old photographer’s most famed works, along with selection of lesser-known images, each was produced in 60-by-44 inch size and utilized a new color printing process allowing for high quality reproductions
There is a big difference between a rare 60-by-44 inch print and a 607x419 pixel image embedded in a Facebook page. And how much does knowing the place of the photograph in history change the perceived value? The Wikipedia article about William Eggleston provides important additional context to the place of Eggleston's work in the history of photographic art.
The discussion drifted to another dimension. Catherine asked, "Does it help you look at the way you live or see the world?" That is the interesting question to me, along with variants. I asked, "what aspects of the photograph bring it the most value?" Another person had a curious comment, "Art has nothing to deliver to recipients!". They went on to talk about the folly of asking "an 'Off-Art'-Public about the 'Worth' of Art".
I was uncomfortable with these comments. Is art only for an elite cognoscenti, and if art has nothing to deliver, does it have any purpose or value?
Yet returning to Catherine's question about helping people look at the way they live or see the world, I think Eggleston photograph, as well as Catherine's Facebook post, helps people with these issues. Perhaps this blog post, too, will cause someone to stop and think.
