Monthly Archives: August 2014

Towards a network singularity?

After last week’s symposium, I have been thinking about a future that is shaped by this digital evolution of hypertext and the network.

I recently watched the movie Transcendence, by cinematopher-turned-director Wally Pfister. The film explores how scientific progress (artificial intelligence, technological singularity) challenges our human morals and individuality. The film was not amazing (being a blockbuster, the film focused too heavily of an individual story of a ‘transcended’ intelligence, whose transcendence did not seem to gain him any wisdom beyond a human’s, rather than investigating the deep philosophical debate that surrounds the topic – remembering to justify my criticism), but I have been interested in the concept of singularity. Although most commonly, the theoretical cause of a technological singularity is attributed to artificial intelligence (where the AI evolve to a point beyond human comprehension achieves singularity rather than humans ‘transcending’ to it – this can also be seen in the film Her, where the AI’s eventually move on from their service to humans), what I’m interested in is if humans are able to share all information at once with each other. (Similar to the behaviour of ants in a colony that I have mentioned in a previous post.)  The hardware that we currently use to access this network of knowledge and communication will only get smaller, more ‘customisable’ (we already have Google glasses!!), maybe one day these devices will become a part of us. Would we not all be ‘transcended’ by our ability to access the boundless web of information? In this sense, hypertext and our network of information are just the first few steps towards such a future. 

MIFF entry 2

Went to two MIFF films today: Listen Up Philip by Alex Ross Perry and an animated film Cheatin’ by Bill Plympton

Both were fantastic and absolutely hilarious!

Highly recommend if the opportunity arises!


Listen Up Philip: miserable, lonely, desperate characters so blatantly put on screen, its sad honesty is its funniest quality.


Cheatin’: Abstract emotions were brilliantly captured by bizzare scenes. Plympton’s animation was surreal, clever, and not exactly subtle. A journey that left the theater with me since. Part of me is still in that world. 

Thought I do have to say, not a big fan of the Kino theater.

Notes on reading

Reading: Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2006. Print. (low rez PDF)

  • metatext, paratext
  • ‘we must write with an awareness that we are writing in the presence of other texts”
  • active reader-author
  • Comments as a form of hypertext – active participation from reader
  • Blogs: unsettling the borders between private and public spheres
  • ‘borders of any documents on the internet are porous and provisional at best’
  • links and search tools limit the power of authority
  • When copying exactly a printed text into virtual space, experience and textuality changes, borders are broken
  • Endings: ‘there can be no final word, no final version, no last thought…Always a new view, new idea, and reinterpretation.’
  • Boundaries of open text: it is not a closed, complete, absolute object. Boundaries are blurred, not being what it is. (Derrida)…between absence and presence, inside and outside, self and other.

A rant. A fit – on the symposium

The highlight in this week’s Q&A symposium for me was the debate about whether we need to learn coding to become network literate. As I have mentioned before, it is a choice of words which in turn makes us develop different opinions on the matter. Of course we don’t need to be experts in coding, its not like everyone will get a job or make a living out of it, nor will it harm them to just rely on what is made available to them so far.  However, suppose you are aware that there are things about the network/internet, or ways to do things that may benefit you, would you choose to not know? This knowledge may become handy at some point in the future, or it may just add to our experience of the thing itself, to help us make sense of it. In any case, it is only logical to choose to know more – this is a logical preference not a necessity, not knowing should only be applicable when you don’t have choice. When there is choice and one chooses not to know – that is an excuse. History provides a good enough example that the general knowledge of the average person will only continue to grow. Ignorance may be bliss, but that only remains as long as one is also ignorant of their powerlessness. Knowledge will continue to grow and expand, becoming more accessible to the average person. Despite what I just said about ‘choice’, it is kind of inevitable. 10 years from now, coding might be the basic first year component of this course instead of learning about networked media, which might be a secondary/primary school subject!

Which brings me to my second point…

Too bad we didn’t get to discuss the last question during the session. To generations from early 90’s and older, including myself, the idea that primary school kids and toddlers are growing up with the current technologies and networked devices must seem foreign and not such a healthy idea. Since the internet is already what it is and it all happened before the current generation of kids were born, they are already getting used to technology faster than they can learn to pick up a pen and write the alphabet on paper. Therefore, given their early exposure which allows them to know way more than we do in high school about networked literacies, it is fair to say that these subjects will be taught in earlier education. Kids are already taught through doing. Only generations like ours who adapted to such new technologies during our teenage years will probably need formulas or formal training to challenge the heavy conditioning we had growing up before social and networked media became significant.

Allone @ MIFF

Sepideh-Film-Poster

Just came back from a documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Sepideh – Reaching for the Stars (2013) by Berit Madsen, is a documentary about a 17 year old Iranian girl, Sepideh, who has a deep passion for astronomy and aspire to become an astronaut. The film explores some of the hardships  that arise from her daring modern dream and the fight for science within a society faithfully driven by religion and traditions. 

I believe tears started pouring down my face from the first few minutes til the last shot. Being a passionate stargazer myself, I was overwhelmed that the girl on screen believed in the same things I believed in. I was very self-conscious about my crying in the cinema, it’s something that I’m usually very embarrassed about. But I soon realised that there were many others sniffling around me. Usually, I would be watching something like this in my room on my computer screen. I would get emotional by myself and probably think that I am the only one feeling this way right now, or why is everyone else too busy with their little lives on earth to care about what’s out there and so on…(A bit like me vs. the world kind of mentality). However, going to this film alone was an incredible experience. If I had gone with someone else I know, my experience of the cinema will be that I am ‘watching a film with my friend’. (Us in a crowd of ‘others’). But being there ‘alone‘, I know yet do-not-know every one of them equally. Therefore, to me, no one presence overshadows any other. I feel each and every presence in the theater equally and feel as if I was just a part of this larger, bigger witness called an audience. And we were all a part of the same emotion that is bigger than us that we are experiencing.

SIM•ulation ONE

The title of this blog is borrowed from an idea in S1m0ne (2002), a film by Andrew Niccol starring Al Pacino. The story revolves around a computer generated actress who was titled Simulation One. In similar ways, this blog is a simulation of a persona. In a recent tutorial, the notion of an ONLINE PERSONA was briefly mentioned. This inspired the title and direction of my blog. My previous works in photography were mainly concerned with identity and stereotypes and how much or how little we know another person. Following this interest, I plan to use this blog as an experiment to document the manifestation of an online persona.

In chapter 1 of one of this week’s readings Small Pieces Loosely Joined, Weinberger lists many interesting examples of peculiar situations involving uses of an online persona or username. Through these examples, exploring the effects and phenomena that stem from the fundamental questions of identity. Perhaps it is nothing different from our role playing in daily life. At work I perform a sales assistant; within the family I assume the role of daughter, sister; in a relationship I act as a girlfriend; and here, I carry out the role of a blogger.

So what happens when there is no need for resistance anymore, and we can see our virtual persona in the same light as our personas in the real world? At the moment, we are living a dual life in the midst of such a transition between this seemingly real non-virtual world and our online activities. Some are still resisting the new, some choose to be so immersed in it that they have left the past behind completely.

I am blogging about blogging about… …

BLOGGING. This loop of infinity is just about how confused I feel when it comes to blogging! As I take my first few steps into a new routine that involves blogging, I realised I have to forget all the ideas I previously had about it. During tutorial this week, I shared my feelings on this issue. Jason made a very good point that has reminded me of the constantly evolving nature of blogs and the internet in general: blogs are not personal diaries. I am more excited to blog now because as this process take its course, I am also evolving with every post I make.