Bateson Warning

Maybe ya’ll have been down the Bateson road before, but this was a 1st 4 me—The folksy, unquantitative style here is clumsy in part, perhaps, because the material is dated.  No longer would most critical theorists be as ready to imply that blame for schizophrenia so directly falls upon mothers. No, Bateson does not equally point at fathers and psychotherapists, although he briefly visits their potential enabling behaviors.  I would argue that the behaviors of power figures such as fathers—who wielded, at the time the article was written, an even greater imbalance of economic power than they do now in addition to their constant physical intimidation—probably did more to produce the mothers’ mixed signals than did any inherent evilness on the part of the mothers. My argument does not require rocket science, Bateson’s does. Physicians (the four behind the article were male) heal thyselves.  Nor did Bateson subpoena power figures such as professors and priests who have perpetuated a society of mixed signals and unequal communication structures in order to perpetuate their versions of sanity. Present company excepted, of course, jes’ sayin’… This article is a good example of how not to use theory to argue your project.  It doesn’t hold together and, if taken seriously, could produce terrible consequences.  Perhaps the theory somewhat reflects Baudrillard’s later media gripes; but the application here is bad.

Prompt for Jesse's Work

If you’re unfamiliar with my Ad Takeover project (it was shown the first week of DANM 211), please read through my Rhizome Commissions proposal at http://jessefulton.com/ad-takeover-rhizome to familiarize yourself with the project, and the basics of how it works. And imagine the experience of actively using it, or simply browsing the web with it installed (I’m sorry I don’t have a working version anymore, still working on Firefox 4 compatibility…)

Then, in conjunction with Jean Baudrillard’s Requiem for the Media, please consider: Critical Art Ensemble’s The Electronic Disturbance, primarily focusing on p. 23 through the end of the chapter; and at least the first few pages of Michel De Certeau’s Spacial Stories. Both of these readings may be found at http://danm.ucsc.edu/~jesse/public/danm202/prompt/

 

Prompt -- Emily

Hello friends,

I will be presenting some collaborative work I did with my friend Mike, from 2007-2010.  

From the class readings, we can probably use all of these, so go crazy: Foster - “The Return of the Real”, Fredric Jameson - “Post-Modernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”,  Deleuze - everything, and Beth Coleman -“Race and Technology”

Please consider:  these 20 pieces + installation 

Please also read:  Walter Truett Anderson, “Democracy’s Dilemma”

Some background on our work can be found here and here.

 

A note on the use of Christian symbolism:  

We focus a lot on dominant western religions’ insistence on the inaccessibility of “god” (the sacred) vs the mystical traditions who all say, “No, dude. It is accessible. We don’t need a middle man. It’s in you”.  For us, the sacred/spiritual is a philosophy, practice, and experience that has more to do with realizing one’s potential, depth of forgiveness, compassion, empathy, ethical responsibility, and respect for all life, than it does with the parts of those teachings that get scrutinized instead, because they don’t fit into the category of the “rational”, and because they have been exploited to an overwhelming degree to cause harm and maintain certain structures and systems of control within the dominant cultures where these ideas thrive (i.e. all of them!).  While we are highly critical of this abuse, and make plenty of reference to it, our use of Christian symbolism is both a commentary on its over-saturation and perversion, while at the same time speaking to the ideas of salvation and self-realization as intended by those core teachings of the NT that make more difficult requests of us, reaching for levels of compassion and integrity for ourselves and our fellow human beings far beyond what the previous OT model would have ever considered — cause when it all comes down to it, if you take away all the stories/myths of creation/afterlife, what we are left with is a system of values that is very real, very human, and very much in trouble.  This current stage of capitalism is in part, the manifestation of all those things distorted, repressed, denied, coming to this cataclysmic point of crisis, unraveling, and indeterminacy.  What compels us to make this work, and leave it open-ended is precisely this breadth of possibility, both realized and unrealized…

(read into it what you will) 

 

p.s. The Last Suppers are a nod to Andy Warhol, who was Catholic, btw.  Some people have interpreted these pieces as “mocking” or “degradations”, but we love them, truly.  We also entertain the possibility that the communion wafer was most likely a psychedelic substance (soma) - the dilated pupils (googly eyes) can be read in this way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prompt - Daniel

Working with the participatory culture project group, the Harrisons encouraged us to propose an ecological artwork and conduct relevant research. As many of my peers know, I am fascinated by fungi, however, in the project group, I was instructed to research the Pacific Ocean. After contemplating the garbage patch in the North Pacific Gyre, I proposed a work based on mycoremediation - launch aquatic mycelial networks to decompose loose plastics into nutrients in the upper water column.

 While leading group discussions, I am interested in debating the ethics of species (re)introduction (re-introducing a native organism into the eco-system and/or introducing a foreign organism). In addition, if you would like to orient yourself with the Harrison’s body of work, check out Green’s article (starting in the middle of the first page), which helps explain why their activist, ecological works are considered to be art.

With respect to course material, this discussion can be connected to Grosz’s discussion of Architecture and the Frame - I think it would be interesting to discuss the emergence of the frame (as well as the “territorialization of the uncontrollable forces of the earth”) with regards to land/eco art. There is also some crossover with Dewey, who is mentioned several times in the Ecological Ethics reading.

In terms of readings, there are two essential and one optional. 

 

Essential

(1) Except from Minteer & Collins’ Ecological Ethics (p. 1808-1810, section “Ethical Tools for Problem Solving)

(2)Except(s) from Paul Stamet’s Mycelium Running (find on my MobileMe account)

 

Optional

(3) Except from Charles Green’s Third Hand (find on my MobileMe account)

 


Prompt - Jolie Ruelle

Choice is a stop motion animation short exploring the human relationship with fear and anxiety. In this animation the viewer watches the main character and its response to an abstract feared element. Choice will be animated using a combination of puppet stop motion, object animation, and compositing techniques. The main character is made from a ball and socket armature with a magnetic tie down system. The body is built out of foam and fabric, while the hands and head are molded out of Super Sculpey. The hands will be animated using the replacement technique, a collection of gestures which can be swapped from one frame to the next. The face will have photographs of the artist’s eyes composited directly onto the character to create a dynamic range of emotion. The set will consist of both fabricated props, and found objects, completing the characters world.

Please View:

Animation Sample & Storyboard 

Please Read:

Suzanne Buchan: The Animated Spectator: Watching the Quay Brothers’ ‘Worlds’

Optional:

skim this article on Facial Expressions for Empathic Communication of Emotion in Animated Characters:

http://journal.animationstudies.org/category/animated-dialogues/andrew-buchanan-facial-expressions-for-empathic-communication-of-emotion-in-animated-characters/

 and think about it in relationship with Peirce’s What is a Sign: 

http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/ep/ep2/ep2book/ch02/ep2ch2.htm

Group Prompt from Sudhu

 

I’m interested, now, in making “living machines”. I’m using this class is a means of exploring my motivations are for wanting to create this sort of thing (and what constitutes the thing in question, a “living machine”).

I was set off, somewhat, by a manifesto written by Michael Schippling, which seemed to sum up how I felt and shed some light on my interest in pursuing projects such as PPPPs (Prepared Player Piano Pinball system), a project in progess.

Also look at spinner and tower, past projects that relate to the development of my ideas of free, autonomous, living machines. If the work doesn’t say enough by itself, some of my semi-codified ideas in English are available in the form of a prospectus draft.

Rosalind Krauss on (specific) objects has some interesting bits that may be related to my work, I’ll make more solid connections between our current readings and my work as I get to actually reading the readings. So far, I’ve been able to connect some aspects of this machine making to Grosz’s concept of the frame on chaos and Dewey’s experiences. I’m interested to hear what you think.

 

For giggles, here’s an old recording of an improvising trio, I’m sure it sez something about me and my work.


 

Reading Suggestions -- Emily

[Note: If the links provided don’t work, all of them are accessible if you login to cruzcat/library]  

 

I’m really into Varela right now, but I think any of the essays in this book could be relevant to our seminar for a hundred different reasons (I’ve attached 2 screen shots of the table of contents): 

1. Science and Cultural Theory : Emergence and Embodiment : New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory Bruce Clark (Editor), Mark B. N. Hansen (Editor), 2009 

Contributors. Linda Brigham, Bruce Clarke, Mark B. N. Hansen, Edgar Landgraf, Ira Livingston, Niklas Luhmann, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Protevi, Michael Schiltz, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela, Cary Wolfe

http://site.ebrary.com.oca.ucsc.edu/lib/ucsc/docDetail.action?docID=10379879&p00=francisco%20varela

 

 

 

Also, anything from these two books: 

2. The Embodied Mind Francisco J. Varela, Evan T. Thompson and Eleanor Rosch

http://cognet.mit.edu.oca.ucsc.edu/library/books/view?isbn=0262720213

3. Steps to An Ecology of Mind  Gregory Bateson 

http://www6.ufrgs.br/horizon/files/teoria2/bateson.pdf

 

Bonus: Inventory of the Gregory Bateson Papers  UCSC Special Collections and Archives 

http://www.oac.cdlib.org.oca.ucsc.edu/findaid/ark:/13030/kt029029gz

All his stuff is in our library, like right there ——> O.G. <—— In case anyone has a decade ahead with nothing else to do.

 

Prompt for Natalie's work/readings

This prompt is for a presentation May 11th.

 

Some pieces of mine to consider:

Unfolding - this was the piece I had in Fall Open Studios/Project Design class.  There is no online documentation of the video at this time, but if anyone needs to see it I can bring in my hard drive to screen the work.

 

and the place between - this is a three channel, large scale projection

http://www.nataliemckeever.com/placebetween.html

 

Single String most likely displayed on a small scale screen, as a personal object.

http://www.nataliemckeever.com/singlestring.html

 

Please read and consider Deleuze:

Deleuze, “First Series of Paradoxes of Pure Becoming”

 

and any or all of the following:

Olafur Eliasson - “The Weather Forecast and Now”

Jean Baudrillard: “America” - chapter “Vanishing Point”

Lynn M. Herbert - “Spirit and Light and the Immensity Within”

Prompt for May 5: Kristeva, Lovecraft, and revelation: taking the abject beyond disgust-- Duncan Bowsman

Additional source unlisted, available in print:

  • China Miéville’s foreward to At the Mountains of Madness

     The abject itself is unwanted, but not necessarily horrific on its own merits.  H.P. Lovecraft’s short horror story “The Outsider” demonstrates certain aspects of Kristeva’s notions of the abject with regards to this.  Specifically, it demonstrates the powers of horrific revelation to take abjection beyond mere disgust and into the realm of horror.

 

     In “Powers of Horror,” Kristeva speaks at first of the abject in food loathing, specifically in loathing milk, but this defines only disgust in the abject rather than the horror of it.  Distaste does not make one lactophobic.  One does not suddenly fear milk, or if so only for that second in which it comes into one’s taste or smell.  There is no horror in this reaction, one merely ejects the abject thing in a spit take and is done.  One can still open the fridge without thinking of the thing’s terror, one does not avert gaze from it when the refrigerator door opens.  The object of disgust is neither pervasive, nor persistent to the disgusted.  Thus is milk safe.

     Kristeva says the abject is “elaborated through failure to recognize its kin; nothing is familiar, not even the shadow of a memory” (233).  In “The Outsider” specifically, Lovecraft defamiliarizes the protagonist’s history with a form of amnesia.  Within this amnesia, however, is the perverse desire for knowledge, the lure of the abject.  For the unnamed protagonist, the setting forms “a land of oblivion that is constantly remembered” (235) which is never totalizable— its time and space, like in its endless forests, are tantalizingly undefinable.  They may be explored, but never charted or understood.

     It is to the effect of defamiliarization, too, that Lovecraft uses the occultatio.  Naïve critiques of Lovecraft often cite his purported overuse of this literary technique as though the author had intended the device itself to be horrific, rather than the revelations they signify about their material reality Lovecraft attempts to represent diagetically.  Kristeva, in keeping with the unrepresentable nature of horror reflected in the Lovecraftian occultatio, tells us that “[t]he abject is not an object which is named or imagined” (229).  Miéville elucidates the point in reference to HPL, saying that, “his materialism means it is not just in his creatures that horror lies” (xvi).  Rather his horror, in “The Outsider” as in other stories, is, like Kristeva’s, one of “realization” (xiii) or “revelation” (Kristeva 236).

     True horror must push the abject beyond disgust.  The non-object subject in the mirror does not signify self to the deject, rather it defines its opposite: non-self.  In “The Outsider,” the mirror’s entanglement with conceptions of self erupts the protagonist’s amnesiac non-memory with knowledge when the tactility of the object forms the joining of an alien, animal other with recognition, kin, and, most horribly, self.  According to Kristeva, “forgotten time crops up suddenly and condenses into a flash… The time of abjection is double: a time of oblivion and thunder, of veiled infinity and the moment when revelation bursts forth.”

     It is in revelation, in filling or completing the knowledge withheld by lack of memory that the deject comes into horror— a pervasive, persistent abject knowledge that cannot be unremembered.  In “The Outsider,” Lovecraft builds disgust for the protagonist’s body and history by defamiliarizing them, but these things do not immediately become horrific or create horror.  It is only the moment of revelation, when meanings are revealed and the abject becomes significant, that this abject emotion mutates from mere disgust into the haunting that is true horror.

A few reading suggestions & prompt | Helen Park

In general / for the class / may be of interest:
1. “Race as Technology” & “Digital Technologies and Generative Production: Art in the Age of Intelligent Machines,” both by Professor Beth Coleman
3. Some part of The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre

How to structure a presentation

I am now suggesting a new, more specific format for how the presentations should go — not as dogma, but as a likely scenario that will help us make the most of them. Hopefully this also clarifies that the presentations are short, and easy to prepare!

A. 5 min introduction to some key concepts (ideally with cited excerpts of text, made visible to the whole seminar) in a reading or two.

B. 5 min demonstration, with some focus, about one aspect of your creative work.

C. 10 mins observations, Q & A between members of the presenting group

(A’B’C’. Possible repetition of the above for a second creative work.)

D. 10-20 mins + follow-up conversation for the whole seminar.

The above could be modified freely according to the particulars of the material… and could be extended to include aspects of two of your projects, rather than just one.

Possible Reading

Roland Barthes is referenced in a lot of the works I’ve been reading and yet he has not been mentioned by any of my profs so far.  I haven’t read him, too busy reading those whom I am assigned to read, but very curious as to what he has to say about art, music, etc.

Prompt for Heather Logas's work

For this prompt, please have been a player of Heather and Alexei’s Wishland or play Heather’s game demo of Before you Close Your Eyes  at this link:

http://grou.ps/bycye/83911 

 

1. Review John Dewey’s “Having an Experience,” (Ch. 3 of Art as Experience)

 

2. Read Celia Pearce’s The Aesthetics of Play http://lcc.gatech.edu/~cpearce3/PearcePubs/fluxus-pearce.pdf

 

3. Consider games as experiences and how those experiences impact their players, using Wishland and/or Before You Close Your Eyes as touch points. 

 

Thanks!

Reading List Suggestions

Use this space to indicate works that you think would be useful for our group in general, in the context of this seminar’s goals, and especially our goal to connect contemporary critical theory and philosophy to our creative work, and to practice writing about that connection.

This would be an excellent place to venture broader suggestions too, about how we might develop our conversation the existing readings in a new direction, how conversation might be differently conducted, or how conceptual frameworks other than those emphasized in this seminar might be equally beneficial for MFA candidates trying to develop their writing and their dialog with critical arts communities.

Presentations: 4/20/2011

Robin, Sudhu, Beth, Emily, and I will present this coming Wednesday on the ways that our creative work (especially Robin’s and mine) might form some interesting relationships with Bipsham’s article, and other readings.

We’re expecting our audience to have read the Bipsham, and we’d also like everyone to listen to a few musical examples in advance. Those are:

Robin Sacolick’s

Elementary Shastraemenence

Trance

and Ben Leeds Carson’s

Star Trek Opera Notebook (focus particularly on the 1st and the 4th examples here; in the 4th, think about the relationship between musical time on the one hand, and the implied time of Commander Tor’s narrative.

We hope you enjoy both.

Meanwhile, below you’ll find the materials that we as a group are going to present to you. The general seminar is not required to do these readings, but please use this list as a model for the kind of preparation you’ll provide for a presentation group in the future. Two of you volunteered to come this week with a similar list prepared, as a starting point for the following week’s presentations.

***

Prompt from Robin Sacolick (pace Robin, I have paraphrased and simplified her detailed instructions -BLC):

—Please read Bispham, giving special attention at: Page 127, second column, first paragraph… especially regarding the reference to Fitch (2006), the various claims made on page 128 (especially 1st and 2nd paragraphs of column 1 and the 1st paragraph of column 2), and the reference to Cross (2001) on p 130.

— Please read the introduction of Carson’s “Perceiving and Distinguishing Simple Timespan Ratios w/o Metric Reinforcement,” [links to resource page; the paper is the 1st of two links there] … paying special attention to the question in paragraph 3 of the first full page: “can there also be ‘individuated’ or ‘metrically independent’ objects of temporal experience?” p. 314, second paragraph “Expectancy, in other words, is weakened by complex timespan ratios, just as our experience of difference ‘in itself’ — individuation of features out of time — is hypothetically strengthened.” and p. 316, column 2, in italics:  “Perceived meter can both guard rhythmic identity against transformations in clock-time, and obfuscate rhythmic identity in spite of clock-time invariance.”

Questions for group, addressing above quotes in order:  Do you agree that music depends upon there being a pulse?  Do you agree that inability to hear pulse in animal noisemaking rules out the possibility that it is music? Do you agree that music shares attributes with religion that enable it to enhance it? If expectation of difference in itself is stengthened by complex rhythms, do they then enhance consciousness expansion and evolution? Can you think of examples of perceived meter that guard rhythmic identity against transformations in clock-time OR obfuscate rhythmic identity in spite of clock-time invariance?”

With these ideas in mind, listen to the following passages in the mp3s linked above.

—Trance Fugue Mp3 (0 to 45 sec and ending (2:15 to 2:45).  Do the passages seem to have a pulse throughout?  The same pulse? Or, how would you characterize?

—Eminence Front Shastra Mp3 begin at 3:10 and listen at least through 4:20 (if you listen until the end there is a surprise ending around 6).  At 3:51 the rhythm track drops out and there are chords in a higher register. (IF POSSIBLE DO NOT READ ON UNTIL YOU LISTEN TO THE PASSAGE).  What do you make of it? OK, now read on: The beats made by the chord overtones are at a different pulse than the former triplets so please listen to whether the original rhythm periods stay firm in your mind without the rhythm track, or whether the harmonic beats kick in a new sense of periodicity and pulse.

 Prompt from BLC:

So, for my part in this, I would ask these three things below:

(1) pay special attention to the Bipsham in this week’s readings (which is assigned to everyone), and

(2) Read the introductory pages to my scientific article published in the Journal of New Music Research (36/4, December 2007). (Find it through the first of two links on this resource page for research in time perception. There’s bit of context there that might be helpful prior to diving in.) Read only pp 313-319, paying special attention to my references to Deleuze about repetition, and difference. Then proceed to this page: </about-unpulser/>, where you’ll find out about a piece of software that helps me imagine qualities of musical pulse. Read that page, and “Task 1” linked to the bottom of the page. You don’t need to download the software or follow the instructions for playing with it, but it should be relatively easy, if that interests you.

(3) Regarding my creative work, please listen to i. Contention, and iv. Tor Explains Pike’s Injury, on my Star Trek Opera Notebook page. (These are the first and fourth mp3s linked there.) Consider your experiences of timing in the two pieces, and, in the latter case, their relationship to the story being told. What are your experiences of pulse, repetition, regularity (or lack of same) …come prepared to grill me…be tough on me if you are so inspired …challenge me on the relationship between the writing/theory in (2) above, and the musical experiences/practices on the Star Trek page.