favicons

Here's the link to create favicons (those little icons on the left of the url bar):

http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/favicon/

Writing Opportunity

Please treat this nicely:

Deleuze works through several theories on language early in Cinema 2. I liked his framing linguistic communication in terms of movement: that individual words cannot be taken as image objects since much of their sense derives from their place in the movement. (In some ways this recalled for me the Derridian concept of differance-that which cannot be accounted for between sign and signifier, here it is that which cannot be accounted for between part and whole).

I started taking issue with his ideas separating linguistic and semiotic (page 29). While we can posit that images exist outside of linguistic systems, we can only encounter / analyze / theorize them in signifying terms. I do not buy the argument that movement images are a-signfying. In the margins of that section I scribbled the following:

Analysis of the a-signmatic is impossible. Although Deleuze articulates a theory for the objective and material existence of the image as a signifying (and even this is debatable since the objects very existence marks it as a signifier that must be translated/incorporated into my own frame of reference), I see no such use in this theory.

Laurel offers a far more agreeable account of thinking about images and signification. In her first piece she develops ideas on elements in nonverbal works that constitute language and extends this discussion to include HCIs. I find this method more agreeable because the conversations are still framed as signmatic (user/computer emits message to be interpreted by other entity). I wish she gave more examples of such interactions.

We'll probably say better stuff in class.

Origins of time and space in effecting movements and new media

As I was reading deleuze this weekend, I thought about the invention of time and the conception of space in related to what is considered "New Media". Our discussion today about the origins of new media brought me back to an essay written by Crosby about the origins of Time and Space (see link below). I am curious how the origins of time and space effect our framing of movements. I thought that people might have time to look it over since it is a light reading class for Thursday and the PDF I have included is a short and easy read. Crosby_Measure_of_Reality.pdf

(Oh, and sorry about this as an attachment, but I do not have administrative privileges at home for my ftp account and, therefore, couldn't set up a link.)

Testing the link icon

www.purdue.edu

Hellfire....

....I forgot to actually LINK those links....stupid technology always geta the better of me.


NPR site

assemblage site

Oh, What's one more

In total violation of Dr. Bay's instructions I'm posting this link here without any deeper thoughts than "this seems kinda cool." I stumbled across it looking for more info on assemblage. I wanted to post it before i forgot but i don't have anything to say about it at the moment. I'll get back to it.

The opening paragraph begins: "This international gathering of women's voices is a showcase of new media art being created on and off the World Wide Web. I call this show space an 'assemblage' because it is a multiplicity. It is a coming together of languages, skills and visions, a collection of art texts, and an exhibit showing the act of fitting disparate pieces together under the umbrella of gender. It is also a unification of art parts into a new gallery and a new work of art in its own right made of found objects."

http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/traced/guertin/assemblage.htm

Digital Culture Link at NPR

Hey folks,
Waking up to NPR in the mornings (as any card-carrying, liberal, Academic will claim to do) I hear the technology segment on Morning Edition. This morning's was about personal DVD making and the like. Overall the report was rather hollow but I got to a-thinkin' about the increase in accessibility our culture has to writing 9and re-writing) our own narratives. We can edit and splice recorded images of our past (and that of our families) to create any story we like--Holloywood-esque or otherwise. I've also been thinking about the concept of accessibility as a whole. Those with the means to resord themselves will do so. This isn't any different than it's always been for humanity which means the same old "ethical" should come with it. But I wonder if they do. Do we (meaning makers/users/consumers of New Media) consider our power to represent our selves and to represent others? To document and record ourselves but not others? Does our visual+ record make us more valuable to history? I wonder if this is a motivating factor behind so many blogs and other forms of personal expression--either people are looking for their 15 minutes of fame or they're hoping to prove they were here. Of course there are other possible reasons for our trends in using this Medium but I've got a huge bruise on my brain right now shaped like a Postmoderism Course Pack and it shades everything for me.......
Here's the link to the NPR Digital Culture/Technology page. I couldn't get the audio to stream--probably because I'M doing somthingn wrong--flawed human that I am......


http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1049

Video Games vs. Cinema

After I sign out of my hotmail account, I briefly take a look at the “top” stories on MSN. Most of the time, I read the funny, entertaining bits. Today I saw the link for Are video games too much like movies? on http://slate.msn.com/id/2112744/?GT1=5987
I’m not into video games, so I do not relate to what he writes or have many rebuttals of any sort on this topic. Unlike Thompson, I would have more interest in video games with a narration. When thinking about playing PACman versus Super Mario Brothers (sorry I’m not familiar with the current game trends), I would much rather play Mario Brothers, follow along with the storyline, and save the princess. But that’s just me. My interest in literature probably has quite a bit to do with that preference. I guess I point out this article because it seems to relate to Manovich. While he addresses video games slightly, he concentrates more on cinema. Video games seem more like new media than cinema. If narration becomes the main focus of video games, does the interaction decrease and they become more like cinema than games? That seems to be where Thompson is going. I’m not sure…

Media's future

I encourage everyone to watch this Flash movie:

EPIC 2014

It is ~8 minutes. Some people find its conception of media in the future horrifying, probably because it is extremely likely. But then again, the world in which we live is horrifying to many people, as was the industrial age before it.

[INSANE RANT]

We may not realize, as we are easily dazzled with the products of digital technology, as we marvel at the new "power" we have been granted, that we are being simultaneously subordinated. I mentioned the industrial age, because we are in a similar situation; the machines own us as much as they serve us. Humans are exceptional at filtering content. Our brains, which function through exclusion, grouping, and hierarchy, are being put to work in our blogs, in our recommendations, and in our social bookmarks.

In films like the Matrix and the Terminator there are violent uprisings of conscious machines. However, the machines don't have to fight us, we've already joined them. We have been trying to construct AIs that replicate human cognition, and unsurprisingly our perspective has been myopic and anthrocentric. Such an AI already exists, and we are its neurons. When we install our websites, blog, link to similar content, and post comments, photos, and movies on the web, we are giving birth. Our child is genderless, weightless and omnipresent.

This isn't paranoia; this is the world we are opting to construct. Welcome to the machine.

[/INSANE RANT]