The Media Boycott: Would you call this a documentary?

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Would you call this a documentary?

The Borges documentary was unlike any documentary I have ever seen. It not only interviewed the subject and those that knew him, but it also attempted to recreate some of Borges' works. To me, this approach felt like an episode of "The Unsolved Mysteries," as the film felt much more about the reenactments than Borges himself. Then, suddenly, we find Borges actually penetrating those very scenes he had earlier constructed. It is no longer about Borges or his work, but rather a philosophical take on what Borges' work represents, and posits the sorts of engagements Borges is currently having with it.

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New Media Timeline

Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau, Ari Luotonen, Henrik Frystyk Nielsen, and Arthur Secret-1994-The World-Wide Web-had not yet achieved the hypertext dreams of earlier thinkers
Critical Art Ensemble-1994-Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance-demolished the idea that it is impossible for power to co-opt network and hypertext technologies, that such technologies have a manifest destiny of freedom-argued that the power elite are now the primary beneficiaries of network technologies, that these technologies allow them as well as the sites of industrial production to be so mobile as to make resistance in physical space ineffectual, because of this, cyberspace becomes the only point of resistance and that it is only effective if 'disturbance' via the sabotage of information technologies-despite this, protest movements use communication technologies so to better resist in the physical space
Espen J. Aarseth-1994-Nonlinearity and Literary Theory-developed general powerful theories that apply outside of new media but are based largely upon the study of new media works and those unusual aspects of text that they highlight
Philip E. Agre-1994-Surveillance and Capture-contrasts tow cultural models of privacy 1. surveillance model=currently dominating in the public discourse of at least the English-speaking world, is built upon visual metaphors and derives from historical experiences of secret police surveillance 2. capture model=manifested itself principally in the practices of information technologists. it is built upon linguistic metaphors and takes as its prototype the deliberate reorganization of industrial work activities to allow computers to track them in real time.-argues they are contengent
Scott McCloud-1993-Time Frames-rigorously analyzed comics as a media-all art forms have conventions are rules- defined comics as a "sequential art"
Robert Coover-1992-The End of Books-teacher of hypertext writing
Stuart Moulthrop-1991-You Say You Want a Revolution? Hypertext and the Laws of Media-noted several qualities of hypertext using McLuhan's four part media interrogation-hypertext does not replace the book, its more likely to replace the TV
J. David Bolter-1991-Seeing and Writing-an understanding of new media can only come when truly novel elements can be divided from those which are imitative, using scrutiny of the sort Bolter applies
Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer-1991-The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat-developed the virtual space of Habitat-provide lessons for perspective cyberspace architects-#1 Lesson=a cyberspace is defined more by the interactions among the actors within it than by the technology with which it is implemented-at the core of their vision is that cyberspace is necessarily a many-participant environment. What is most important to the inhabitants of a cyberspace are the capabilities available to them, the characteristics of the other people they encounter there, and the ways these various participants can affect on another
Pelle Ehn and Morten Kyng-1991-Cardboard Computers/Mocking-It-Up of Hands-On the Future-Utopia project=takes the approach of working with users, from the outset, on the design of a new media tool-believe that new media tools should be designed for the quality of work they produce
Lynn Hershman-1990-The Fantasy Beyond Control-created "Lorna"=considered the first interactive video art installation
Bill Nichols-1988-The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems-his project is to update Walter Benjamin's famous essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction-outlines the shift to new media in how it represents a shift from a fetishization of the object to fetishization of the process of interaction, of simulation
Michael Joyce-1995-Siren Shapes/Exploratory and Constructive Hypertexts-distinguishes and names "exploratory" and "constructive" hypertext environments-constructive hypertexts are those processes of creation by the user/author, they are flexible representations of thought, stories, arguments, and everything else for which we use media-exploratory hypertexts are former constructive hypertexts, now being experienced by a user/reader who is not an author of the work-the web has yet to include most of these forms of hypertext
Lucy A. Suchman-1987-From Plan and Situated Actions-makes distinction between the planning and situated action perspectives-outlines a view of what interactivity means, and how the artificial intelligence version of it can be seen in a historical context
Langdon Winner-1986-Mythinformation-points out the complete lack of a coherent social program on the part of self-styled computer revolutionaries-demolishes the mythology that 1. people are bereft of information 2. information is knowledge 3. knowledge is power and 4. increasing access to information enhances democracy and equalizes social power-outlined the three most concerning issues in new media 1. the surveillance state and accompanying self-surveillance now often called panopticism 2. the alteration of patterns of human sociability 3. the mobility and unlocatability of power that is now often called "rhizomatic"
Jan L. Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam-1986-Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services-considers the social role of various digital media, surveying new media from a fundamentally different perspective than the individual, sensory one, and placing these media within a more tightly defined schema-the basic technology employed does not determine the category of service a telecommunications system provides
Brenda Laurel-1993-The Six Elements and the Causal Relations Among Them-uses Aristotle's Poetics-the computer can be studied from a rigorous humanistic perspective, using well-defined models established for other forms of art
Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores-1986-Using Computers/A Direction for Design-argue that computers will never develop human like intelligence-suggest we focus energy on designing computers as tools-have turned away from the goal of machine understanding, they have developed a model of human specification and machine support, in which the rigid structures developed in artificial intelligence research can be appropriately used-advocate a design strategy they call "ontological design" which examines the fundamental human communications underway in a situation-combine science and cultural studies-their approach works to avoid the destructive "computerization" that frustrates pre-computer coping strategies and leads to an overall drop in the quality of effective communication-"The computer is a machine that provides new ways for people to communicate with other people"
Richard Stallman-1985-The GNU Manifesto-wants to develop a free and open source alternative to the Unix system-develops a new style of copyright, which he entitles “copyleft”, that will ensure that his work and the work of his team will remain to be free even after others have modified the original code-the effects of the copyleft idea are seen in the contemporary Creative Commons licensing agreements
Donna Haraway-1991-A Cyborg Manifesto/Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century-makes an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction-discusses the rise of Artificial Intelligence in light of the feminist movement-deals with the blurring of societal boundaries that has come about with the advent of computing technologies and the newfound responsibility of the re-construction of new, more appropriate social roles
Sherry Turkle-1984-Video Games and Computer Holding Power-discovered that videogames play a social and psychological role-people take on different roles that are important to them psychologically-computers dont simply accomplish tasks, they are objects that enter our individual and social lives, how we interact with computers influences our outlook on the world and our perspective on ourselves
Ben Shneiderman-1983-Direct Manipulation/A Step Beyond Programming Languages-beginning of the move away from the command line towards graphical user interfaces for computer applications-empowering the mouse as a tool for control on the computer screen-emphasis on immediate visual feedback systems-visual programming languages rather than text-based programming-direct manipulation of data with clear and obvious response-
Ben Bagdikian-2000-The Endless Chain-predicted increasing media concentration and narrowness-recognized that an understanding of new media requires some understanding of the traditional media business with which it is colliding and converging
Bill Viola-1995-Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?-one of the highest-profile video artists-his work represents the tendency toward the lyrical in art
Theodor H. Nelson-1981-Literary Machines/Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing System and Archive-his most complete outline of his Xanadu project and the concepts behind it-foreshadows the ever-changing face of the the internet, information that previously existed in one space may be moved or deleted or altered from one moment to the next, there is a need to link information in order to create a trail to backtrack from page to page, similar to Borges’ story The Book of Sand
Richard A. Bolt-1980-Put-That-There/Voice and Gesture at the Graphics Interphase-precursor to multimodal interfaces, combining speech and gesture input-important concepts of embedded computing and of a computer interface that is more like spoken conversation-shows preference for speech over typing
Seymour Papert-1980-Mindstorms/Children,Computers,and Powerful Ideas-developed a philosophy of education based on Piaget's work called "constructionism" which looks more closely at the idea of mental construction-sees computer as a powerful tool for supporting children's learning(learning in a self-directed, self-motivated way, in the course of programming
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari-1980-A Thousand Plateaus- evoked NeoFreudiMarxiPostructuralist writing production- Challenges reader to reconsider dualism
Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg-1977-Personal Dynamic Media-predicted the coming of the notebook computer-Kay thought computers could be used by children and could be used creatively-rejected time-share computing
Myron W. Krueger-1977-Responsive Environments-worked in fields of "responsive environments" and "artificial reality" including "virtual reality"-feels the design of intimate technology concerns both engineering and aesthetic, warning that we will alter our reality through our inventions
Computer Power and Human Reason/From Judgement to Calculation-Joseph Weizenbaum-1976-programmer of the infamous chatterbot ELIZA - performed a programmed set of scripts called Doctor that would impersonate a psychiatrist depending on a user’s input to the system-first example of a “thinking machine” in terms of Alan Turing’s test of machine intelligence vs. human intelligence
Soft Architecture Machines-Nicholas Negroponte-1975-Founded the Architecture Machine Group at MIT in 1967-dealt with managing data spatially rather than in the form of numeric or textual lists-worked with technologies more advanced than businesses will consider, and more unusual and yet more relevant to everyday life than the typical academic lab will
Theater of the Oppressed-Augusto Boal-1974-Boal is a Brazilian performance artist focusing on human interaction, with a particular interest in the politics of human interaction and the essence of the human body as a vehicle for performance and expression
Computer Lib/Dream Machines-Ted Nelson-1974-the most important book in the history of new media-challenged the popular notion of what computers were for-conceived the computer as a personal device-thought computer design should be creative and done with the audience in mind-founding document for the field called human-computer interaction
"The Technology and the Society"-from Raymond Williams's "Television: Technology and Cultural Form"-1972-conceived of "FLOW"=televisions organizing principle of the fluid combination of program segments, commercials, and other material that make up the experience of watching and watching and watching of TV- attacks McLuhan's concept of "Technological Determinism" which frames questions about technology around its effects on culture
"Requiem for the Media"-Jean Baudrillard-1972- a response to Enzensberger's essay- argues that society will not improve by making everyone a producer, but organized reversible circuits is not enough, therefore the problem lies in our inherent understanding of communication (transmitter-message-receiver), so we need to transgress this model and use a method of joint production through genuine interaction-blogs can be said to have achieved this
"Constituents of a Theory of the Media"-Hans Magnus Enzensberger- deals with Marxist theories of base and superstructure-Deals with the medias position in the social structure-argues that media is a business to make money and convinces us to accept an unjust society, therefore perpetuating injustices- says we should not turn away from the media to fight it, but work at the point of the media where the unjust culture is vulnerable in terms of consciousness and income-he is proposing a new organization of media and of those working to change capitalist society-calls for a method of reversibility where consumers can respond to producers, creating two way communication as opposed to the one way communication we see today
"A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect"- by Douglas Engelbart and William English- 1968 - essay documents what is called the "mother of all demos" when "demo or die" was the philosophy in centers for new media research- discusses the purpose and inner-workings of Augmentation Research Center (ARC) -> experimental lab that works with interactive, multi-console computer display system-> purpose is to develop a system that can augment intellectual capacity-> utilized User Systems which included individual file space, work stations (tv displays, typewriters keyboards, mouse, and chord handsets), structured files for organization in hierarchal order, the studying of files was done within user systems, files were modified/changed, files sent to output devices, files compiled and debugged, calculations done, and on-line conferencing utilized-> service-sytem software as well as service-system hardware were studied and developed at the lab
Nam June Paik-1932-2006-first video artist-coined the term "information super highway" (1974
E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology)-founded in 1966 by Billy Kluver, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Whitman, and Fred Waldhaur-advanced possibilities of technology and art-formulated art/engineer relationship-began in 1960 with the sculpture "Homage to New York" which enacted its own deconstruction in a half hour performance at MOMA-inspiration to the field of New Media- more "interactive" art than the participatory happenings
Marshal McLuhan-"The Medium is the Message"-1964-"The Galaxy Reconfigured or the Plight of Mass man in an Individualist Society"-1964-predicted a shift from book culture to a culture of electronic media-"the medium is the message" means medium overwhelms the content-conceived of hot and cold media (TV is cold as it has little information and we must fill in the gaps, Books are hot media as they contain much information)-argued that because of media transition, culture was moving back to tribal configuration-pop philosopher (thought popular media should be studied)
Oulipo-Six Sections-1961-1967-about POTENTIAL literature-created the "choose your own adventure" story-formed by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais in 1960-experimental approach to literature using mathematic (probability, geometry, algebra) in the creation of texts
Theodor H. Nelson-"A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate"-1965-coined the term "hypertext"=not "link" but connotes extension and generality
Roy Ascott-"The Construction of Change"-1964-remaking art in view of Wiener's cybernetics-founding doc for fusion of procedural technology and aesthetics/design that is new media-interactive vs. participatory
Ivan E. Sutherland-"Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System"-1963-early graphical software
Douglas Engelbart-"Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"-1962-inventor of mouse-conceived of the display window, word processor, mixed text/graphic display, video-conferencing, the internet-need new way to solve problems due to growing complexity of the world
William Buroughs-"The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin"-1961-describes method of cutting up and rearranging existing texts to form new ones-"text collage"-challenges nature of art and artist
Allan Kaprow-"Happenings in the New York Scene"-1961-invented happening=impromptu performance art by early beat artist-blurs line between audience and artist by having audience participate in art
J.C.R Licklider-"Man Computer Symbiosis"-1960-deals with notion that man and computer can work together in critical decision making-concept that the computer/machine is an extension of man-notion of computer working in "real time"
Norbert Wiener-"Men, Machines, and the World About"-1954-founder of cybernetics-devoted to the social responsibilities of new technologies
Alan Turning- "Computing Machinery and Intelligence"-1945-conceived of the "memex"=precursor to the modern computer (easy information access)-calls for need of information to be easily shared amongst scientists-coined the term "military industrial complex"
As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, 1945 --published in Atlantic Monthly, 1945 --Bush main creator behind the US Military Industrial Complex during WWII, 1940 --Bush developed first analog computing projects at MIT --Bush developed new ideas in information storage, "MEMEX" --MEMEX is a mechanized personal library in the shape of a desk
The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges, 1941 --Helped develop concept of hypertext novel (def. Novel can be read in many different ways) --greatly influenced the first hypertext novel Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar, 1963