Cameo Turner's Media Blog

One quote that I really took from this chapter was “Lists refuse the connecting powers of language”. I feel that this quote really addresses a part of this studio where lists isolate the understanding and attentiveness of what things mean and their relationship.

I am not quite there yet on understanding exactly what is going on 100% of the time of this studio, but I am slowly getting different parts which will hopefully link together to help my ‘noticing’.

When googling what ontography meant, I came to the understanding that it is a word to describe the existence and relationship between objects- but in ‘Alien Phenomenology” it was shown to be much more than that. In the beginning of chapter two I was supplied with many different meanings and understandings of ontography.

The ones that made most understanding to me and I think will help me with my essay in ‘Noticing’s two’ were:

• Harman “Ontography deals with the limited number of dynamics that can occur between all different sorts of objects” : my understanding of this relates to the idea of lists, comparing and contrasting the relationship between ‘things’.
• Susan Schulten: “ontography is a term to describe the human response to the physical landscape” : this definition is a lot more simpler than the others, I feel this is a different way to understand it is it expresses how humans specifically have relationships with objects 
• “Ontography involves the revelation of object relationships without necessarily offering clarification or description of any kind”: this definition to me makes me believe that ontography requires you to look at the bigger idea of objects i.e the unknown without having to give detail of what it actually is

One definition I really struggled with was :

• Michael Lynch: “ontography is a descriptive alternative to its grand theoretical counterpart”

I don’t quite understand the meaning of this and feel the relevance doesn’t quite fit in to the others understandings.

Well this book is one of the most complex and hard to understand things I have ever laid my eyes on. I have tried so hard to understand what is being talked about but it is literally anything and everything.

• Human’s and the world are inextricably tied together, the on never exciting without the other
• Human culture is allowed to be multifarious and complex, but the natural or material world is only ever permitted to be singular.
• To be a speculative realist, one must abandon the belief that human access sits at the centre of being, organising and regulating it like an ontological watchmaker
• Speculative realism is an event rather than a philosophical position
• Object oriented ontology puts things at the centre of being

Although I had an epiphany of WHY I should start blogging more, I completely contradicted that this weekend as I had to go back to New Zealand have have been so caught up in catching up with friends and family.

To reflect on last week, I submitted my first PB not feeling to great about it as I felt so lost as to what my video should actually show.. I feel very nervous about showing this in class I hope it is ok

• stories only have a beginning middle and end only because of the media we put them on
• Rushkoff says that games have a dominant place in culture- they don’t really have a end

At the beginning of our Week 2 Thursday class Adrian has given us a lot more guidance and help about blogging. He started off with a very valid point about using the comparison between blogging and essays. When I finish my degree will I be writing essay’s in the work force OR will my industry use blogs? This seems so simple because since I am wanting to work in the media industry obviously my workforce will have some sort of basis about blogging.

I think that I should blog because soon enough it will become a way of my life and prepare myself for when will get a job involving this. If blogging now starts to become a regular thing and a way of life, it will keep me in the front seat of the media industry and the way that it works today. I think about blogs from an outside point of view and the amount I refer to for advice, knowledge or things that I enjoy to look at. It basically consumes my internet surfacing so why wouldn’t I do that myself.

I think that blogging is also very beneficial to expand upon ideas in class and take it further when I might not understand. It is also a good reference for what I have learnt and areas that I may struggle in more than others.

Basically after this discussion on blogging I have realised how important it is to do this. Not only for now and doing well in this degree, but for the media industry and the way blogs influence others, help you gain knowledge, give you a place to expand on ideas or just simply discuss anything you think is worth it.

• “Narrative imaging is the fundamental instrument of thought. Rational capacities depend upon it. It is our chief means of looking into the future, of predicting, of planning and of explaining” Mark Turner
• We all become futurists in one way or another, peering around the corner for the next big thing… now we are in the future the story began to fall apart and we began experiencing our first true symptoms of present shock
• Knowledge of history help us put the present in perspective although we do not have great skill in projecting that narrative ability into the future
• The way of organising stories is the now the way of understanding the world
• Movies dedicated to preserving the stories we use to understand ourselves turned the cut and paste technologies against the digital era from which they emerged as if to restore the seamless reality of yesterday
• The new challenge for writers is to generate the sense of captivity as well as the sensations and insights of traditional narrative but to do so without the lucky of a traditional storyline
• it is no longer the writers job to tell us how somebody felt about somethings it is to tell us how the world works

I have started to find this task more confusing that I thought it would- I don’t quite understand the difficult to put video/imaging to something that you are not allowed to show. I spent majority of yesterday trying to find images and video that were more metaphors for what I was describing but also had relevance. Im not quite sure if I am on the right track but I feel this task is more of a trial and error to see what works and what doesn’t. It has really made me see how many different ‘things’ and ideas there are I just need to try and fit in the one that works best.

I have become reflecting upon the last studio on Thursday where I feel Adrian made a valid point about Tacit Knowledge e.g. theory. This is something that everybody feels is what you need to be successful in this world. You do school, focussing on maths and english and then hopefully continue on to university, and in order to do well you need to have that theory on easy memory. What he said that really opened up my eyes is those people that can move beyond that. This is something that I feel very passionate about in regards that I believe this is what will make you most successful in life.

Today left me wondering with many questions of the bigger idea. I’ve never actually thought in detail about what has constructed the way we live and how it realistically all came to be. It makes sense that human’s are the centre of everything but also language is what has constructed everything around us. This sort of scares me… it makes me question how it has become the way it is and why it is constructed to not even questioning what is around us… Scary stuff I think.

Another point that was raised today that really opened my mind was “qualities are hard to talk about as things” to me i guess a quality is a describing word or an emotion, but they are things that we believe about ourselves or other people. It is easy to talk about something tangible as things.