reading: Kroker, Arthur, and Marilouise Kroker. 2008. Critical digital studies: a reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

from the intro by both Krokers:

p. 19

“Critical Digital Studies approaches real-time culture with acute sensitivity to the impact of digital technology on human subjectivity. Thinking digitally implies the creation of a form of writing in which technology is interiorized with such intensity that thought itself begins to illuminate the digital future from the inside. In the age of mechanical technology, writing could still be from the outside, hovering around the edges of industrial technology in order to assess its consequences for patterns of social and cultural development. Even in the era of electronic technologies of communication, studies of technology permitted themselves the luxury of believing that thought itself was representational, still at one critical remove from the (technological) object of its investigation. No such illusions are possible in digital culture. When digital technology wraps itself around the human sensorium, when the human nervous system is invaded by software codes, when the ’soft’ matter of perception, imagination, and vision are worked over seductively and violently by the digital reality machine, then writing itself must become digital approximating its gestures, methods, and speed the (digital) reality principle that it wishes to explore.”

***

monitoring the performance of the digital reality machine

last night went to see “La Danse: Le Ballet de l’Opera de Paris” at the NW Film Forum with a.a. the film was great and we ate clementines and chocolate. the film is by Fredrick Wiseman, and a.a. is v. knowledgeable and told me he also made a film about maine. info here.

pic from indiewire here.

one of the ballets that was in the film was “Genus” by Wayne McGregor. and now i love him and want to see one of his ballets in person.

here is wayne thinking:

pic here. his company here.

they performed the ballet in shorts-unitards. in my opinion horizontally-cut shorts are never the way to go, more of an undies-cut would be more flattering. but anyway. their legs! from now on how bout no tights! legs are great. they have lots of muscles and tendons and dancers are beautiful.

pic by Laurent Philippe here.

but, still on the topic of the costumes, they had white forms silkscreened on them that i’m guessing were supposed to look like organs, and it totally worked. the organs on one guy’s unitard were a little too symetrical though, and kind of looked like 3 pairs of flip-flops. i can really see talbot’s kids making a shirt just like that with three pairs of flip-flops on it. so i got distracted then. want to see ALL of genus.

looking stuff up about him i read his bio on wikipedia here. um, now i love him MORE. there is a section in his bio called:

Technology/Science

McGregor started playing with computers when he was seven and it was natural for him to incorporate the cyber world into his own choreography. Collaborating with state-of-the art designers he experimented with projecting computer generated images onto the stage. In Sulphur 16 (1998) Random’s dancers were dwarfed by the presence of a shimmering virtual giant and danced with a company of digital figures who wove and shimmered among them like visitants from another age. In Aeon (2000) digitally created landscapes transported the dancers to what seemed like other dimensions and other worlds. On specific occasions McGregor has used technology to alter the conditions under which his work is viewed. 53 Bytes (1997) was created for simultaneous performance by two sets of dancers in Berlin and Canada and it was watched by audiences in both countries by live satellite link. In 2000 McGregor aimed for an even more global public by transmitting a live performance of his Trilogy Installation over the internet – envisioning yet more directions in which dance might be transformed by technology. Additionally, Wayne McGregor | Random Dance has been the vehicle for McGregor’s ongoing fascination with the mechanisms of the human body. In Amu (2005) he explored the functions and the symbolism of the heart, in Ataxia (2004) the connection between brain and body movement and in his most recent work, Entity (on tour 2008-2009) the links between artificial intelligence and choreography. During Entity rehearsals, he and the dancers worked alongside six international cognitive scientists and technologists from esteemed institutes including University College London, University of Cambridge, University of California, San Diego and Imperial College London. In January 2009 they travel to University of California, San Diego to create a new piece of work under ‘lab’ conditions; fuelling the search for new creative decisions on the part of McGregor and new findings in the brain/body relationship for the scientists.

in the pic in the post below you can see the edge of a tree. screenshot of full tree:

the tree DANCES in the vid. it is pretty great. i guess this video really struck a chord with me or something. but anyway.

i also think that this tree looks quite a bit like the fiberglass trees that used to be outside of mcdonald’s in the ’80s. here is one pic that i found. you get the idea.

pic courtesy paul here.

alright. i went to a presentation by Jessica Johnson yesterday. she was talking about pastor M. Driscoll of the famous (in those circles) seattle church Mars Hill Church.

so they are super tech savvy at that church and have flash videos on their site that promo certain sermon selections. Jessica showed a clip of one such flash vid.

here’s a screenshot:

i don’t need to remind any of you that i am no biblical scholar or anything. but hey. is pastor mark wearing some FUCKING sandals with his hoodie & jeans (so hip!)?!?! and is that- OR IS IT NOT- a mini-flock of tiny young sheep (a.k.a. LAMBS) clustered around those very be-sandaled feet?!?

so my question at the end of the prez was: IS THIS BLASPHEMY or is it just tacky?

feel free to weigh in. i’m gonna go with blasphemy*.

*yes, i know that my blasphemy is not your blasphemy is not his blasphemy. but still. this one seems like a serious no-no.

saw this sign. it made me laugh. a lot. and then got the song stuck in my head.

so yesterday i went to a presentation about mobile devices and accessibility for people who are deaf and blind. the presenter was deaf and blind himself. there were four interpreters in the room, which was pretty awesome to see, and there is enough there for six other blog posts. but there was this one really spiky moment for me. one of those things you just get hung up on because it is such a disparate chunk from the rest of the world that is rushing by. something you can’t forget. probably ever. and that is a totally correct thing and a sign that things are just how they should be.

someone asked the speaker what communication was like before the development of the technology to assist in communication that he demonstrated. and he spoke about how one of the ways he still communicates that is relatively low-tech is through a phrase book.

then he passed his own personal phrase book around. it was housed in the “memories” photobook with the crinkly plastic that less-classy grandmas buy to be their brag-book. instead of pics he had printed-out phrases, specific to his life, in the photo slots. then at the bottom of each page he had a braille strip (in cool clear tape format) so that he could thumb through and find the appropriate phrase to share with someone. A lot of them were about pointing him in the direction of the luggage carousel or asking for someone to tell him what stop the BART was at and stuff like that. But then I flipped to one that said “I can eat by myself and do not require assistance, thank you” which totally blew my mind.

it was an arch-personal window into his day-to-day stuff. something i never could have imagined on my own. the discomfort in a situation where people are offering you help that you totally don’t need and you need to politely tell them to stop. and his dignity just kind of came thundering down all around me, impressing me with its massiveness.

plus the fact that he shared this with us. i can’t tell what i think. that us reading it isn’t an invasion of his privacy in his opinion? that this happens to him so it is just real for him in a way that isn’t as raw as it would be for me the way i’m imagining it? that he also felt it personal, but that it would be an additional way to raise awareness of the intense need for humane methods of communication for people who are deaf and blind. methods that don’t increase the social tension that must always be there because people freak when they don’t know what to do in a given situation and often pick just the wrong approach.

and a lot of interactions felt seamless for a long while thereafter.

this dude just got a ROBOTIC HAND through which he can feel sensations and control with HIS BRAIN.

via charles’ post on SLOG.

it’s the saturday after thanksgiving. you all know that i don’t write free-form actual truthful stuff on here very often. but what the fuck. i’m in the mindspace.

it all started because of a paper about classification in the post-biological future. like if classification is a human practice will we create intelligent machines that will also classify or will they [or maybe us if we're lucky] create some new way of retrieving information that is just as much about being able to find all of the high-quality information about a subject that a cyborg could want as opposed to just finding enough to suffice.

and then i was there. at that bar. where the only good thing i can say about it is i have eaten breakfast in it with my dad a few times. because it isn’t a bar in the morning. yeah. and then one of my classmates got so pissed that i would even hypothetically design for a post-biological future. and i came to the, i guess, not-so-surprising realization that i think we are all doomed. i guess i just really do have to admit that i do think that machines will take over. but not for a good while yet. and there is still plenty to be done before then. and it will be fun to watch, i think, their takeover. there will be neat things to see and things that will be unbeliveable. and there isn’t enough unbeliveable stuff today.

but so back to the reason she got pissed at me. i said that my coping mechanism was that i had decided that i don’t want to reproduce. that way i don’t have to make any of those uncomfortable decisions about considering the fate of my progeny vs. making what i think is the right decision. like, if genetic engineering takes off. i would never engage in genetic engineering, but that is a more simple decision to make if you are making it from the position where it isn’t going to affect your own biofamily. so then she kind of accused me of working for the dark forces that are sending humanity to the wrecker.

so that’s what i’ve been thinking about over the holiday.

Reading: Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora’s hope: essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

p. 21

“When we talk about hybrids and imbroglios, mediations, practice, networks, relativism, relations, provisional answers, partial connections, humans and non humans, ‘disorderly messes,’ it may sound as if we, too, are marching along the same path, in a hurried flight from truth and reason, fragmenting into ever smaller pieces the categories that keep the human mind forever removed from the presence of reality.”

from n at the international desk:

n says “this is the first day of the rest of my life as a sad doll”.