Here Comes a Couple of People

This past Sunday, I volunteered to be a part of a group of EMAC students who were all collaborating to document the PAC-WE gathering. The idea behind the event was both a unique and noble one; one I was excited to be a part of. In brief, the idea was to gather all the Dallas area artists for both networking purposes but also to make a statement about healthcare. It is more difficult to obtain insurance when you work as a freelance contractor. Pretty cool idea, right? Unfortunately, the turnout was somewhat below expectations. I understood that something like three thousand ponchos were ordered for the participants and I would be shocked if there were more than two hundred and fifty people in attendance.

Why is this? Well, I bet that a lot of people who intended to show up didn’t because they were hung over or too tired or any of those other excuses we have for skipping out on our weekend obligations. Also, one may argue that we are in the conservative South and getting a bunch of liberal artists to come out and support health care reform is just not as easy as it would be in, perhaps, Chicago. Plus, being we are in Texas, let’s face it, Sunday morning is when “most folks go to church”.

Now, apart from these crass stereotypes, why was PAC-WE not a great success? I may be a terrible cynic, but I found myself more interested in capturing on film all the participants who were capturing the event on film. There was this great push to artificially manufacture something much bigger than it actually was. I would guess that of everyone who showed up and donned the yellow ponchos, fifty percent or more were walking around with cameras and interviewing their fellow participants. (“Okay, I’ll interview you first and then you can interview me…”)

What makes some “flash mob” attempts more successful than others? They took advantage of the primary networking tools in today’s communication landscape. There was a Twitter feed, a Facebook page, and of course, a website to drive the whole thing. Maybe it’s all perception, maybe to those whom orchestrated Sunday’s event, it was everything they hoped it would be. As the main organizer noted, “It’s a start.”

Clay Shirky touches on flash mobs in Here Comes Everybody, noting they have been a more recent phenomenon. We have new methods of organizing people in a relatively effortless and timely way. This kind of collective calls for no formal invitations or RSVPing, the time it takes to send the message out is instantaneous, all you have to do is have an idea and a couple of friends to help spread to message, and best of all, there is little to no cost. However, because of these attributes of flash mobs, the organizer can never know how many people to expect and perhaps that has to be considered when perceiving an event’s “success.” (That also may explain why there was about one police officer for every twenty people there, which is overkill if you ask me.)

It is probably worthwhile to consider just what sort of flash mobs we have seen documented. In the US the idea is really a novelty and that is what PAC-WE felt like. Regardless my feelings about the need for healthcare reform, putting on a poncho and trying to make a human Pac-Man in a parking lot in Dallas was basically a joke. To the few Youtube viewers this event might attract, I wonder what the arcane stickers on our ponchos will mean to them. I doubt they will take very much away from the experience that relates to healthcare.

By contrast, it was only a few months ago that thousands upon thousands of Iranians took to the streets in vocal protest of what they believed was a sham election. These people regularly organized, shared information and encouraged one another through “flash mob technologies.” That flash mob was not a joke, or something to do before free beer was served. It wasn’t hokey or something to do to “have a lot of jokes about later,” as I heard one girl remark to her friends. And above all, it wasn’t something that existed to be filmed.

On that note, I will close with what I thought was insultingly ironic: the main organizer, closing his debriefing pep talk suggested we read Guy Debord. Yeah, that’s right: the guy who is most famous for writing The Society of the Spectacle. Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I took his tone to suggest I read this book, if I haven’t already, so that I might better understand all of the manipulation that exists in our media and culture today. If he did, then that man is a hypocrite. If he did not, and he hopes that I buy this little book and suddenly realize that I spent my Sunday morning not saying a genuine word about anything, but manufacturing a spectacle, I would rather he keep his jokes to himself. Those people without video cameras were there because they cared about healthcare reform. The rest of us probably can intuit most of Debord’s thesis by our behavior on Sunday. But what a disappointing spectacle it was. . .

Oct 20 - Notes on Habermas, etc.

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone (I know I have a hard time reading other people's notes), but here are my notes from class this week if it helps fill in any gaps for anyone.....

Oct 20 - What happens to Democracy in the age of the internet/new media?

-rise of internet in post-cold war era. Internet will bring democracy everywhere. But provides both challenges and opportunities for both demo. And authoritarian regimes.

Public sphere – central idea for today. Conceptual, not physical.

- have to understand public sphere to understand demo. There is a public arena where people come outside of private life to discuss/debate ideas of the day

1. private – connected to political authority (government) thru public sphere.

- civil society is diff than what the government says is the needs of society. Public sphere mediates between government and private. A place where needs of the people can discussed and made known to government. (people in streets protesting; public lecture series; town-hall mtgs. No intervention from outside (autonomous realm). Think of this as how we go from individual opinions to public opinions. Reason.

Habermas – key figure in public sphere.

-central question – how despite growth of rationality, age of enlightenment, scientific method, historical trajectory toward large public sphere, one gets hideous social consequences. Ex. Holocaust.

-Enlightenment is an unfinished process, rejects post-modern notions.

-think about institutions that are unique to humans – government.

-key – communicative rationality – if we believe in universal impulse toward communication, than we believe in reason?

-says what we have now is not natural, its historical – like Marx.

-tells a version of history of the public sphere developing & production and transference of information.

-this was published before growth of digital. General negative toward it.

-public sphere cam to be out of bourgeoisie culture. Where 1^st time in history private individual came to discuss publicly the issues of the day, but not in political arena. Unlike feudal power, where head is sovereign, represents power. In democracy, people become caretakers of power and the ruler must come to serve the public. Pg 74.

-printing press makes info widely available to literate public. Pamphlets where people have opinion and then discuss. Rise of middle class – 1^st time you have people with no political power but have money – feel they should have power. Decline of religion as determinate. Rise of science. People question religion. And growth of salon culture – places that were private (not government owned) but public and affluent white men could come and talk about the issues of the day. And growth in human rights related discourse – John Locke.

- Hab. Position is that this culture reaches height in 18^th century, despite white male centeredness. Egalitarian and inclusive. The public sphere was mainly determined by political concerns of this subset. Public sphere was free from outside influence. But as commercialization increases, public sphere becomes more about growth in capital.

–pg 73 – idea behind freedom of information act. People have to have free access to information in order to form their own public opinion. Circulation of accurate information in primary.

-How do you know your “American”? culture and media produce a national togetherness. We watch the news and then know what an American sounds like. Ex. Watch 90210 and know what high school is like. We imagine ourselves as a group, separate from other groups – French. This starts with print culture establish nation language and sense of identity.

- Rise of mass media- negative role this plays in destruction of public sphere. Commercialization and entertainment take precedent. Ex. News networks moved from social service, making news at a loss. Now, what is in news is motivated by profit (ex. Goodnight & Good Luck). Primarily - not informing but entertaining. -Can see this in newspapers, too (Pg 76). Telling you how to interpret the news rather than just delivering it and letting public opinion form organically. Editorial decisions are increasingly moved to preproduction (the public wants to know about this...)

-Public sphere becomes a place dominated by advertising. Revenues drives the interests of the programming. Public relations manager – signifies death of public sphere. Everything becomes a sales pitch. One manipulates news to control consent rather than foster discourse.

- We now associate corporate identity over national identity (“what’s in your wallet?”). Becomes a public sphere in appearance only. Pg 78. Ex. Balloon boy. Not important news story but one everyone will watch, so it is covered. Media manufactures the event. Proven as farce, then media covers the covering of event, etc. The story is there because they covered it.

-even if we don’t agree with Habermas, use it to understand public sphere in relation to democracy.

- idea of digital utopia (we are all informed, log online and vote) vs. mass surveillance society (i.e. 1984, Smartmobs)

-could argue that internet is a poor substitute for public sphere. There is a huge diff in being involved politically and being involved with new technologies. Habermas’ public sphere is based of reciprocity and face to face. Despite growth in internet, we’ve seen decline in public sphere and rational public discourse (one has to seek this out). 80-90% are trolls “haha, I agree” stuff.

-do see increase in commoditization; more external influence from market into public sphere, more the ability to inform declines. The way to be on the internet is to buy. Often on internet, you just get series of choices (blue v. black background), rather than long discussion. Identities on internet are just as much about consumption as they are about political (these are my top ten songs to buy).

- freedom by internet is fictional. Élites maintain power. White affluent man can pose as something other than white affluent man.

-Now people can consume entire news cycles without knowing what going on worldwide. People share only with other people that consume what they consume. We don’t all tune in at same time, for the same news. But instead we have constant, breaking updates.

Poster-

-internet actual reinvent the way we think about community. pg 265.

-talk about public sphere, but distance ourselves from old idea.

-internet does not supplement, but creates something entirely new.

Oct 13 – Notes on Marx & Hall

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone (I know I have a hard time reading other people's notes), but here are my notes from class last week if it helps fill in any gaps for anyone.....

Marx & Hall

-harder to understand – b/c we don’t understand the specific cultural moment he’s speaking about

-language- complex/ contradictory

-nothing directly about media studies

-thinking about context, content, etc

-he’s performing intellectual critique; not looking for rioting in the streets

-materialist concept of history (historical materialism) – how man organizes society to produce things matters; affects other things (economics)

Basic thesis:

1. who owns means of production matters, enough that it can be considered above all else

2. social consciousness affects individual thought (seen as opposite before)

-broad interdisciplinary approach – philosophical, economic, political science, etc...

Theory of History (the history of economic struggle; history of class struggle): each successive moment in history is defined by who owns the means of production (factories, fields) & modes of production (capitalism, feudalism) – understand how economics are organized

How organized ultimately yields political

- history is a progression of economic systems - evolution

- tribal

- feudal

-capitalism – most concerned with this, this is where he is writing from.

What will come from capitalism? Will make a case for what will be fourth. Key to answer the end of capitalism – struggle between producers (laborers) and those who own the means of production (exploit laborers – have to in order to make capitalism work)

-exploitation- we produce $10,000 worth of stuff, but we cant take home all of this. We get portion and owner takes portion. Justify this by saying owner takes risks, puts forth capital, Marx does not argue with this. Says: fundamentally operates through exploitation. More exploiting, more profit for capitalist. Motivation to exploit more.

-classes develop. For Marx – bourgeoisie and proletariat. More and more people get put in labor class. Only thing proletariat can sell is their labor. Divide gets larger and larger – class struggle. Large pool of labor unhappy – have revolution, take over factory. Take away their labor. For the 1^st time in history, large collection of exploited people who are networked together. Industrialism – cities. They can fight back for the first time.-in this mode of production, people feel more free. Get to chose where they work, who they vote for, etc. part 4 pg 3. “thus, in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seems accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are more subjected to the violence of things.”

-history is not series of accidents and not driven by individual choice or nature (not natural) – history is a machine than operates according to its technological logic. Part 2, pg 8.

-This means we cant understand the internet separate from the global capitalism that fosters its growth and feeds off of it. Huge corporations that can be more powerful than countries.

-doesn’t mean internet is global capitalism.

-our interests on economic level affect interests on cultural level. Copyrights – Disney.

- base (economics) determines field of play – rules, structures.

-by looking at superstructure, we can better understand rules & terms.

-with division of labor, comes division of power. One class does not control the other, but one class benefits more from the structure. But class that benefits is not free to change the rules. Both classes are Equally subject to the rules. Difference of power can be seen in the media and art. Media reflects cultural logic of time and reproduces power relations – can sometimes see as transparent.

HEGEL –

history is progression on prior – progressing toward spiritual perfection. Young Hegelians were championing this idea.

-thesis – a way of thinking

-antithesis- the reverse of that way of thinking

synthesis – the conversation between these two things. Produces new thesis, then new antithesis, etc….

Marx: “Bullshit.” part 1, pg 2: all they young Hegelians are saying they are pursuing spiritual perfection but they are not actual getting there. They don’t know gravity.

-part 2, pg 3. Society works on man, not man on society. “circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances”

- there is no such thing as natural; only historical. They are developments of cultural. Applies way beyond economic.

- example: male homosexuality – men are effeminate. That seems natural, they are weaker version of men. But this is historical. But can imagine other world – “you are more effeminate because you sleep with women. I’m more masculine because I fuck men.”

- revolution not to change ideas but have one to change social relations. Marx makes fun of Hegelians because they are worried about ideas. Broader issue – individual thought is determined by social consciousness. Section 1, page 8. Consciousness is determined by the material conditions in which you live. (also a McLuhan argument).

-Adam Smith (wealth of nations) idea – people have natural moral ideas. People have natural propensity to truck, barter, and exchange. Marx goes the other way: because people live in capitalist structure, they develop the idea that its good to truck, barter and exchange. – the culture in which you live, determines the way you think. You end up with a contradiction though in capitalism – so many people still remain poor. The see this discrepancy, we have to look at superstructure (cultural) layer to understand base layer. Charles dickens comes to rise during industrial revolution.

-This means – everything is political. Sec 1, pg 12. – Marx focuses on language because artistic medium of time is the novel.

-ideology – part 2, pg 10. Doesn’t mean ruling class imposes their ideals, but rather that these ideals are taken as universal. Both classes participate in this universality.

- cultural is idea of politic rather than aesthetics (Benjamin) preferences about aesthetics are manifestation of stuff at economic level. Those that think are studying aesthetics sans politics are mistaken (critic of Bolton and Grusin).

- can not separate content from the way content circulates.

- no universal meaning. Must pay attention to historical moment.

- capitalism – demographic culture, rather than politics. Art is determined by economic implication.

Hall-

- hall is late Marxist theorist.

- look at how cultural context of message shapes its meaning.

-discursive production.

-can think of media as a question of consumption and production. But not as simple as saying how produced and consumed.

Media – production, circulation, distribution, and consumption.

-basic thesis – language or other media do not operate as transparent (coding of messages in art and decoding on other end) so message isn’t guaranteed. Get many different meanings.

- there is a range of interpretation from which we operate. Pg 164.

-166 – miscommunication happens, and is part of communicative exchange. Encoding moment and decoding moment are not the same moment. Absolute purity of message is never received. For an audience to understand message, it has to be within range of their understanding.

- violence in media? – media is not a way of programming people. Violence on television is not violence but a message of violence. Pg 166.

–to what degree can encoding and decoding be controlled. Advertisers would love to control decoding.

- pg 167. no such thing as connotative and denotative. Denotative (what everyone agrees upon – pass off as natural) is actually connotative that we have to investigate. Stuff we think is natural are the things that have to most power over us.

Habermas Lacking

What does it say about digital media that the Habermasian “digital commons” did not really get legs underneath it until 2004 (and only then as something heavily licensed and mined for profit)? Clearly, the ideal of the greatest good has yet again taken back seat to what earns the most money.

I think it is terribly shortsighted to excuse Habermas as something of a bourgeois apologist, and I feel the implementation of his ideas—stunted as they have been by a necessity of profit—betray the sort of idealistic marketplace of ideas that Habermas claimed to advocate. In short, the Habermas Commons is just as exploited and exploitable as any other marketplace, despite who he tries to leave as custodians.

Just as “the commons” in historical periods has been subject to appropriation by the “haves” (versus the “have-nots”), a similar sort of corruption is taking place in today’s “digital commons.”

Don’t get me wrong; I think that Habermas describes a really nice utopian society with a few ready-solved caveats. I would like to live in such a society myself. However, the means of production and the greed of individuals’ supersede any vaguely authoritarian body. Habermas never really explains why my giving him a few bucks wouldn’t garner me preferential treatment.

I hate to be the person regularly condemning efforts of shared intelligence and new-media commoditization, but I think essayist like Habermas prove my point in advance: we can really only conceive of a “communist”/ “shared”/ “egalitarian”/ “utopian” forum for ideas in vacuums where the implicit necessities of production are marginalized.

I appreciate Habermas’ ideas, but his work leads only to the sort of idealist apologetics of Poster, where real-world conditions of production are marginalized by high ideals where only if “what-if” were the case. It is certainly fun, but hardly productive.

Consider, for example the tale of Wikipedia. It has been largely regarded as a darling of new media concept, spawning books like “Wikinomics” that heralded the production of group content. I may be cynical but these sorts of texts seem to me to be exploiting the free labor of passionate participants, as though the Jews working for Ramses were not slaves because they believed in his deification. I will first admit that this is probably a rhetorical sleight of hand, but what is a dispassionate viewer to think when he cruises that back alleys of Wikipedia and sees so much distrust, power play and manipulation at work? We can’t debate the merits of “what really is truth” here, but let us not forget that lesson when we see viewpoints stifled out by controlling moderators. When/how did we decide what was truth worthy of Wikipedia? I would argue that in a certain sense a major quality of the website is lost when we can finally and summarily remove certain updates.

The reader no doubt sees all sorts of problems with such a militant egalitarianism. I agree. But what are we to draw from Habermas except such an ideal? We read Habermas with the understanding that we can no longer trust the Proletariat sentiments to reflect the most good and just ideals. Were we still reading Marx such a concept would be criminal. In a truly Marxian society, literally so. Thus I ask that we read Habermas with the same sort of credulity that any group of revolutionaries would consider new doctrine. I argue that his implications are vast and totalitarian. We are told to accept the will of the Bourgeoisie—why? Because they hold power. Because they develop content.

Why would we do this today? Because it is quaint? Because it is authoritative? I disagree wholly with Habermas and his ideal of the protecting Bourgeoisie. It lacks merit. I would rather struggle with an unanswered or frightening solution like the rise of the Proletariat, than rest on my laurels in favor of an easy answer where the “best and brightest” naturally hold sway. I have yet to see that historical condition. And I am still waiting.

Marx & Hall

It is clear from the reading, “The German Ideology,” by Karl Marx, that we are facing a time of upheaval not unlike that of Marx’s mid-19^th century. The whole premise of Marx’s work was to dispute the notions of the Young Hegelians of the day. The book is described as a collection of polemics. If you are like me, and did not know what that word meant, “polemics is the practice of disputing or controverting significant, broad-reaching topics of magnitude such as religious, philosophical, political or scientific matters. As such, a polemic text on a topic is often written specifically to dispute or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed to be beyond reproach” (thank you, once again, Wikipedia). So, this says a lot. Marx is setting out to dispute the, then, common German ideology of idealism.

Marx was making the case for materialism. He said that to produce and reproduce our material needs was a fundamental part of our existence. “Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing theirs means of subsistence mean are indirectly producing their actual material life” (1A, pg 4).

Marx identifies several different stages of production in relation to the division of labor and internal intercourse, including tribal, ancient, and feudal. In each of these social stages, people interact with nature and produce their living in different ways. Tribal refers to an undeveloped stage of production. Ancient society was based on a ruling class of slave owners and a class of slaves; feudalism based on landowners and serf. He says capitalism is based on the capitalist class and the proletariat. The capitalist class privately owns the means of production, distribution and exchange, however, the proletariat lives by exchanging labor with the capital class for wages.

He points out just how crucial production and the intercourse of society are to the material life and the structure of society. As society moves from stage to stage, the old ways of production are thrown out and a revolution occurs. In the same way, Marx is suggesting the German people throw out their old Hegelian ideas and search for a new truth. He did not belittle the ideas of Hegel, whom he claimed to be a pupil of, but wanted to turn them on their head.

We are entering into a similar time of ideological change. With regard to communication, we have to completely rethink what has been the commonly accepted.

The second reading, “Encoding/Decoding”, too, points out a need to change a commonly accepted viewpoint. Stuart Hall, points out that traditional research on communication has been criticized for being too linear. Communication has been interpreted as a “circulation circuit,” consisting of only a sender, message, and receiver. Hall claims that there is a better approach, that was actually originally conceptualized by Marx. This approach utilizes a more complex conception of communication that includes production, circulation, distribution/consumption, and reproduction. In this new model, each element, although connected, is distinct and has its own special modality.

He goes on to talk about meanings and messages in communication or language. He asserts that encoding and decoding are fundamental processes in the communicative exchange. The message in its natural form must be encoded by the source and decoded by the receiver so that a symbolic exchange is produced. Because the broadcaster makes assumptions about the audience in sending the message, Hall supports the view that the audience is paradoxically both the source and receiver of the message. So, we must take a new look at how the meanings and messages are delivered and interpreted. . If the intended meaning of the decoder contradicts the meaning of the encoder, a misunderstanding results. A ‘misunderstanding’ may consequently arise as the meaning of the decoder contradicts the meaning of the encoder. Also, it is possible for the viewer to understand the message but purposely interpret it in an alternative way. If we are to look at these ideas in terms of new media, we see how the encoding and decoding of the present becomes increasingly more complicated. We have a whole dialogue on the internet where every point or counterpoint can be interpreted “incorrectly.” Ideas about communication will be (and are) completely evolving.

Both Hall and Marx saw a commonly agreed upon idea and turned it on its head. With the drastic changes occurring in today’s communication technologies, it will be time, too, for us to find the illusions in the American ideology. Like Marx, however, a lot of Hall’s ideas have been reconsidered and further complicated. Stuart Hall might be said to describe a classic Marxist conception of communication, while others (Roland Barthes, notably) would fundamentally challenge the idea of ‘misunderstanding’ in favor of re-appropriation—a much more “new media” idea.

The Language of New Media & Hypermediacy

This week’s reading was The Language of New Media written by Lev Manovich.

In Chapter 1, Manovich discuses the different principles of new media. One of the attributes is modularity, which Manovich describes as “the fractal structure of new media.” I was unfamiliar with this term and if you are as well, the definition, as given by Dictionary.com, is:

frac⋅tal

–noun Mathematics, Physics.

a geometrical or physical structure having an irregular or fragmented shape at all scales of measurement between a greatest and smallest scale such that certain mathematical or physical properties of the structure, as the perimeter of a curve or the flow rate in a porous medium, behave as if the dimensions of the structure (fractal dimensions) are greater than the spatial dimensions.

I thought this was an unusual way of describing media; we look at media from theoretical viewpoints or historical viewpoints, but seldom from a geometrical one. However, as he expands on the assertion, we can see he is talking about the different elements that contribute to an overall medium. “These elements are assembled into larger-scale objects but continue to maintain their separate identities” (30). Wait a minute… that sounds a hell of a lot like hypermediacy. If we recall Bolter and Grusin’s description of hypermediate media, it includes: something you look at, with lots of windows, it creates a fullness (by showing multiple views and information on one topic), the knowledge is based on the opaque, it requires multiple glances (like a montage), it shows many perspectives or shifting views, and the media itself is present.

If we come back to Manovich’s description, we cal draw more parallels. He describes, “in short, a new media object consists of independent parts, each which consists of smaller independent parts, and so on, down to the level of the smallest ‘atoms’ – pixels, 3-D points, or text characters” (31). We are seeing, over and over, the strength of hypermediacy in new media.

Another way in which Manovich’s depiction of new media parallels to Bolter and Grusin’s idea of hypermediacy is the variability factor. “A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions” (36). I think this ability for new media to be liquid is another parallel to hypermediacy. Imagine the current way in which we watch football. The screen is crowded with stats and running scores from concurrent games. Similar to websites, in general, this screenshot has a template and the content can be interchanged depending on need. If a certain player scores, a bio of that player can be put at the forefront on the screen view. The ability to bring into play relevant knowledge is a huge part of hypermediacy.

However, infinite variability in new media is also laced with potential pitfalls. For example, the endless modalities available to every individual are dialectically isolating. In other words, the freedom to customize almost every experience quickly erodes the very sense of community that has been so heavily promised by writers like Manovich. I am reminded of another book, The Limits of the City by Murray Bookchin. Within, Bookchin charts the development of urban landscapes as they evolve beyond a concentration of human relationships, into the isolating, and alienating postmodern society where individuals relate to commodities more readily than they relate to each other.

In many ways, networked media is the ultimate fulfillment of urban planning, where countless cultures can exist in relative harmony within a small space. However, in entirely removing the spatial limitations of cohabitation, hypermediacy also severs the last socializing imperative: namely, the bumping heads of too many people in too small a space.

In its most extreme hypermediacy evokes in my mind the coldest corners of cyberspace. Where small groups of people cobble together esoteric affiliations by shouting over one another endlessly. Of course, much is to like about hypermediacy, but there is much that may well be a further source of isolation and social imprisonment in exchange for its superficially limitless mode of consumption.