I STILL NEED A TITLE

how did i make the list?
what did i make the list of?
how did it come about?
anything we dont know about, use that to ask questions

I gotta try and find some good resources for my 100 video project. Here’s what’s been found so far:

FCJ-080 On Transmission: A Metamethodological Analysis (after Régis Debray)

FCJ-081 Toward An Ontology of Mutual Recursion: Models, Mind and Media

FCJ-084 Who’s Afraid of Technological Determinism? Another Look at Medium Theory

Things to think about for presentation on Wednesday

1. What do I want it to do? / How will it do this?

2. What parts/bits does it have?

3. What are the ideas/concepts that it makes concrete? (content, style)

today i learnt that the idea of semiotics is not a good thing to discuss on an ontograph. the reason for this i assume is that semiotics explores the meaning behind things (symbols), however the ontograph wants you to ignore meaning, and look at things as things (if that makes any sense).

I think that the ontographs we made for studio 3 do a few things.

Right now physically all they are doing is hanging on a wall, but I also think they participate in granting us a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of certain things. They teach us not to accept, but to keep probing.

“gentle knot of a comma” – what can this mean?

periods imply separation, whereas the comma allows one to join words in a sentence whilst maintaining the ambiguous objectivity of all things listed… i think

Unlike Wednesday I am now quite sure what an ontograph is.

I also feel that I possibly learnt that in order to undertake the first task; an exploded map of a media thing, that I must look at the thing objectively, as it is, and not subjectively, under the influence of what I believe the specific thing to do.

today i have learnt part of the reasoning behind why our class is being taught as a studio model. i also just learnt what we are actually doing in this class. i’ve also learnt that i am going to need to put a significant amount of time into this class. and also learn what ontography is.

References

 Assmann, J. (2011). Communicative and Cultural Memory.

Erill, A. (2008). Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction. International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, p. 1-7.

Watts, Duncan J. (2003) Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/aug/03/internet.email

Conclusion

As future media creators, critics, and hopefully industry personal, we must be aware of the constant changes happening within the field. These days it seems that in order to succeed one must be ahead of the grade, persistently thinking about what society might want, or need in terms of media outlets in the near future. The Internet seems to be slowly unraveling the conservative side of society, and the public are both accepting, and seeking more radical, untypical streams of content (eg. Vice). Now that we do have access to ideals and influence from worlds we may never physically see, its up to us to utilize all information possible to hypothesize on what society will seek out from it’s media personal in the near future, and be at the forefront of delivering it.

The Internet has not only opened up global streams of communication, but has, and will continue to not only influence certain cultures, but through our participation, will assist future generations in archiving the past more accurately than the human race has ever been able to, to date.

For much of our recorded history, humans have progressed society in many forms through cultural appropriation. It is only alongside the rapid rise of the Internet however that this concept has received its ubiquitous term, and in turn become a far more self-conscious notion. Whereas something like music, was once heavily confined stylistically to the region in which it was conceived (Kentucky blue-grass, Ethiopian afro-beat, Southern blues), the Internet has globalized the stream of inspiration, and artists are now able to more liberally indulge in all the music that they could possibly want to find, no matter how far away they find themselves, in terms of both time period and geographical location.

One of the most interesting examples of this cultural clash/unification/blending we are seeing today is the currently trendy fad, ‘PC Music’, a genre so reliant on computers and the Internet it has taken its name directly from it. Disregarding the fact that PC music is mostly comprised sonically of electronic elements, it is a genre that would have never been conceived without computers, and particularly the Internet. The genre as a whole describes its many influences as stemming from places scattered all over the globe; Euro-pop, J-pop, K-pop (all of which are cultural genre mashes themselves), 1990s American pop, and R&B are all prominent in any list you can find online, and it usually doesn’t even stop there.

Seeing as I hope to one-day work in the field of music media production, I find it to be an extremely interesting industry to explore in relation to the Internet. Whilst the web may have paved the way for new, obscure mashing’s of traditional styles, on the other hand, the Internet can work in the opposite way, prolonging, or even bringing back old structures and formats, such as cassette tapes, which have recently heightened their popularity online. Maurice Halbwachs made the great discovery that “human memory depends, like consciousness in general, on socialisation and communication”. Today’s cassette culture is both a reaction to and a product of digital media, and ultimately, the Internet. Tapes are the embrace of something old and out-dated, intentionally obscure and marginal, almost pointless in some way, however, the Internet is a place where cassettes are allowed to flourish.

In Jan Assmann’s piece, ‘Communicative and Cultural Memory’, he discusses the “participation of groups within cultural memory” and their ability to “preserve the past”, focusing heavily on key ways in which certain groups have historically kept track of religion. He talks of “poets, and storytellers” being some of the earliest forms of building and defining cultural memory, as it was their task to take what they had seen, and spread the word, allowing others to gain insight as well. This theory ultimately sounds like the very basic fundaments of the Internet, a network on which to give and receive information, however, as Assmann clearly points out, this system is massively flawed within the tangibility of the information, when you consider that there is no way to tell by who, and when certain pieces of information have been conceived. Although still in quite early days, the Internet has, and will continue to allow humans to look back on our own collective past as a society. The extremely beneficial thing about that is that we are able to gather all of the subjective points of view, and stories that exist surrounding any one subject, and hold on to all possible conclusions.