Image

"This chapter is devoted to describing how the image becomes a method, taking up where the antidefinition left off, to become a positive ordering operation in its own right." (Ulmer 43)

In architecture (my field of study), we pride the visual more than the textual in presenting our ideas. At the same time, our professors push us to be able to speak eloquently about our process and our projects. We took three semesters of speech classes in addition to a writing class. For the past four years, my undergraduate education has been pushing me to describe the complex thoughts within my own mind through image, speech, and the written word. Ulmer's descriptions are not too far from what I've been learning, so this is exciting to me.

The connection between word and image placement, juxtaposition, and choice create a discussion outside of what can be described by just words.

Maybe it can even be said that the ability to create an experience to describe something is better than a much longer and extensive essay. Humans are emotional beings that connect more with something they are familiar with.

Roland Barthes

When we see an image, we see more than one thing- an obtuse significance. A photograph of Barthes's mother is not only a photograph, is not only a woman, but signified "mourning."

The associations of "photograph" and the "mother" fall under the term studium, while the association of "mourning" falls under the term punctum.

and again:

studium: automatic, culture-driven associations

punctum: association in reference to a personal or private set of memories and ideas

The most compelling point about this paragraph is that this punctum has been around all the time, just that the literate apparatus we've been following hasn't been allowing us to notice its existence.

Maybe.

What about music? Poetry?

Haiku.

to be continued... sadly late

9/11 MEmorial

www.wix.com/ginkgogogo/9_11

ulmer_isms

The image of Wide Scope

driving image of your interests and research throughout life/main idea of your center of focus through academia

Popcycle

career/family/entertainment/community: ideas/rituals/customs/morals these sections place upon us throughout our growth that influence our livelihood/way we live/interests/focuses

Grammatology/the Thing/of Definition

a series of intense examples describing the invention of school/of the definition of words both in meaning and their actual appearance/sound/worth/work; intended to explain how literacy and scholastic work have influenced the way we learn; how electracy aims to change this paradigm

From Text to Felt

felt=fabric=textile=root for text/interwoven fibers/nodes/hooks appearing as a whole/Gestalt

Antidefinition

an electrate idea stemmed from the text/felt definition??? not clear.

MEmorial_9/11 Project

Thinking of 9/11 is weird.

I kind of like to think that we can blank it out of our memories a little bit. I feel bad for the pain and death and destruction that it caused. I am sad people died. I am sad people's lives were ripped out from underneath them.

I just don't like to think about tragedies like that.

I guess they're kind of outside my realm of understanding, just like the actual events were to me when it happened. (Using the punctuation in my cartoons that I drew.)

I went on youtube and watched a bunch of 9/11 videos. I got really upset when I saw the "falling man" and the commentator's first comments upon the second plane's crashing into the building.

I just realized a plane crash sounds bad.... but so many people die when a plane crashes. Hundreds. You never think of that when you hear plane crash. You just think of a wreck.

Drawing is kind of a healing thing for me. When I hold a pen or a marker I can kind of turn my brain onto autopilot. It just comes natural. I can relax and just think about something else while I'm creating something. It feels good. I get compliments and it makes me feel good, too.

9/11 just is. Just like the way I draw. I don't think, I don't worry. I just do.

The images were in a new color technique that I'm working on developing.

I like to think the victims are somewhere in their "coloring place"-- that is, they're doing something that makes them happy and puts them in a happy state of being. Everyone deserves just that moment in their life.

New Media and the New Way

Ok, so maybe reading this book is going to be a little more difficult than I first expected.

"Not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought." -Basho

I still don't really understand the EmerAgency?

However, I do understand the following:

The term "literacy" is too limiting in describing the change that is happening around us in the form of new media. Ulmer describes the trend of literate change from the beginning of time: the Greeks writing about Homer, the Renaissance writing about religion, etc. "The content of new media... is the old media."

Therefore, in this new way, we should write about what we already know. In this way, we will learn how to communicate in this new realm and begin a new wave of understanding within this new media.

What can we write about to learn this New Way?

Why, what do we know better than ourselves?

The main thing I have learned from blogging the past month is that my thoughts and life are more organized when I write and share about it. I have started my own blog and a Twitter page all geared just to organize myself with my life. I am learning more about myself simply by writing about my life, and I am learning more about this New Media by doing so.

Ulmer creates the idea of the mystory, (like HIstory) to teach people more about themselves and their lives while learning to understand this New Way.

At least, this is what I've understood so far.

Huffington Post reports: "New York Times will go out of print... eventually"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/09/arthur-sulzberger-we-will_n_710251.html

Blogging Brands

From the outlook of the company, a blogging BRAND is an opportunity to create a franchise, make some money, be forward looking, and to get their name out in the web.

Common types of blogging BRANDS
Corporate blogs (like the Google blog, which the book said didn't exist when it was written, which is why I chose it) talks about the company, their type of branding, their upcoming products, their place in the online- and world- communities. The Google blog right now has a video about the Google instant search, a Q&A with Bill Clinton, product highlights, and product improvements, to name a few. It is a way for the company to document its progress consistent with its BRANDING and connect with its consumers and mission statements.

Ads (like mentioned earlier with Dooce.com) Blogger Dooce is able to make a comfortable middle class income from her ad revenue, just because her blog is visited so often. Many popular blogs don't include monetizing ads (writers say they get joy out of writing and don't need to make money from it), but others spend so much time working on their blogs they feel they need to be compensated for it. There is a significant amount of money available to writers if they so choose.

Paid Posts (like this Kmart-sponsored blog post from a "dad" blog about holiday shopping at Kmart) are somewhat controversial as readers want something "human" or "true" when they read their favorite blogs. As mentioned earlier, readers form a relationship with their blogs and become to trust their opinions as they would a friend's. If your friend suddenly started trying to sell you everything they used (like a billboard or an annoying, flashing ad), you would begin to distrust their judgment on certain things.

Sponsored Blogs/Name Drops (are similar to paid posts but are not always paid in the same way). Rettberg speaks of companies that encourage their employees to write about their professional experiences in blogs and name-drop their company often, and often linking to it.

From the outlook of the reader, the blogging BRAND is something non-human. The readers are comfortable with reading blogs because they are genuine, human interpretations of experiences, opinions, and outlooks. When a friend (or trusted person) becomes a BRAND, they become inhuman and a piece of the "machine" that seemingly powers our world.

september 11, 2001

look at me! look at me!

As our media types have grown, our obsessive nature as humans has grown. Through media, we are able to find a group of people that identifies with our likes and dislikes, and we are able to unite through these media to create a fan base. From Beatlemania and love for Michael Jackson to Care Bears and Pokemon, it can be seen that throughout time (or at least the last 50-60 years) every age group has found a media icon to attach itself to.

The most successful book and movie trends today come in sequels. Harry Potter has seven books (and will have eight movies), the Spiderman franchise has stretched over three movies, and Shrek might just be getting a little annoying by now.

Television shows spread into several seasons, The Simpsons has stretched over 21 seasons, the popular medical show House over 6. Sex and the City, HBO's hit show based off a book, boasted 6 seasons of broadcast and 2 films. My 9 year old niece watches Hannah Montana on the Disney channel, wears Hannah Montana clothes, and listens to Hannah Montana music. She was Hannah Montana for Halloween last year, went to a Hannah Montana concert, and says she wants to be famous when she grows up.

Everything is a franchise, and these franchises are all narratives. We simply just aren't finished with a character at the end of the first movie.

Rettberg speaks of several blog cases where the readers were thoroughly upset when they found out their speaker was a fictional character. While the previous examples explain how easily we tend to become obsessed with a trend, they don't exactly explain why people got so upset that their person wasn't real.

Carrie Bradshaw isn't real. Gregory House isn't real. Why does this matter?

Fame is something that seems untouchable, while desirable, to most of us. When we become obsessed with something that is actually tangible, it reaches another level of obsession. Back when MySpace was the hit, I remember people would strive to have as many friends as possible, some even hitting the 100,000+ mark. They would make bulletin posts, comment on each other's content, and write on their pages. This type of tangible fame, where you can see you have x amount of friends who care about you every day, is important to people.

Rettberg spoke of a YouTube vlogger (video blogger) who complained that lonelygirl15 (one of the fictional blogs in the chapter) was the second most subscribed on YouTube. He was more upset that she had an advantage over him in becoming more "famous" or "popular" in the YouTube world.

In a few years, if my sister gets a webcam for her family computer, perhaps my niece will film a video of herself singing and dancing and become the next big YouTube sensation. It will become a viral video, she will be featured on Tosh.0 and then maybe get on iTunes.

This is something tangible to all of us. Did you even think that was possible when you were 9 years old?

News Media

The assignment:

Watch several news networks on television, observe how they report the news, and then compare the reports to findings on twitter/online.

Initial observation:

I realize I don't know my television channel listings. I don't usually watch TV, and I don't watch the news on TV at all (I quit once I owned a laptop). After looking up the channel listings, I find two 24/7 news networks, Fox News and CNN. I have preconceived notions about the channels and their pedagogies; I put these behind me and forge ahead. (Side note: I spent about 15 minutes today on Youtube watching this channel, and today was the first time I've watched TV news in several months)

The main thing to notice about how news networks communicate these days is the dual-reporting that happens. The network has a reporter and often an interviewer talking about a preferred topic, and the bottom of the screen has a news-reel type interface that shows headlines. More often than not, I see headlines at the bottom that I care MUCH more about than the rambling they do on screen-- this is what got the Youtube channel I mentioned above going (Build a turtle fence?)-- some of these newscasters just aren't qualified enough to give their opinion (not to disqualify some news anchors). I have heard some people on these channels just speaking for full minutes to take up time before the commercial break. Maybe it is because we simply don't have enough news to cover a 24/7 channel.

I just realized I decided newscasters (who probably went to college for what they're doing) aren't qualified to give their report, however, I like reading twitter posts and blogs. I guess it is because I can choose what I read and WHO I read, rather than the network forcing me to watch what they want me to watch. It all comes back to independence, or the feeling that I am in control of what information I take in.

The Raw Data:

I watched each network for the amount of time they held between commercial breaks and just took notes on what they were reporting, both through the video reports and the "news reel."

Fox News:

The trapped Chilean miners (which I blogged about last week) are now able to communicate with their families through video chat.

American Economy: September stock market is starting well, while the labor market is looking bad; private hiring is up

There was a devastating earthquake in New Zealand, experts say there is a new fault in the surface of the earth, many are now without homes.

All of these were actually verbally/visually reported and mentioned in the news reel while the video reports were going on. The comments from the reporters were vague; they were giving more of a preview for later stories than a report (this was around 7 pm on Sunday), which was a little frustrating. I am not interested in hearing the long, drawn out discussions (often repetitive), so a short paragraph on what could be happening would be better than "Experts say there is a new fault in the surface of the Earth, does that mean we're looking at more earthquakes? Stay tuned.... [cut to commercial]"

CNN:

There was an interview on with the Connecticut attorney general about adult services (often prostitution ads) being banned on Craigslist, a "censored" bar appears instead of the heading. The man's opinion was that "websites should be responsible for what is advertised on their sites"

The news reel bar reported:

New Zealand city on edge after earthquake

"see news happening? go to ireport.com" [This is like a filter blog for regular people to report the news to CNN]

Pakistan floods lead to thousands dead; "washed away" special at 730.

They then went to a preview for the 7:30 special, reporting that floods have washed away a piece of land the size of New England, then went to commercial break.

I have two immediate comments after writing the news pieces; their "teasers" did not want me to sit through 5 minutes of commercials to see what they were going to say, and their news reel did not make me want to keep watching either; both of them made me want to get online and look up the full story.

Twitter:

Chilean Miners: By reading one page of tweets, I found out they had been underground one month, and that they were frustrated over their mail being censored. Also, I found that their video chats (so championed on Fox News) were only one minute a piece.

Economy: CNN tweeted 81% rate US Economy as "poor," others were more sarcastic or cutting in their posts, one saying that if Arizona removed all the illegal immigrants, their economy would collapse.

New Zealand: Tweets were mostly thoughts/prayers towards the victims, others reported facts (7.1 on the Richter scale) and articles about the tragedy.

Craigslist: Most just linked to articles elsewhere about it being banned, there weren't many opinions. Lang0sta tweeted: "Craigslist shouldnt give in to the attacks of its site, they are protected & immune from liability by the Communications Decency Act!"

Pakistan: Most reported that children are suffering the worst, especially through pictures from reporters.

Overall, my impression is that the twitter postings wouldn't exist unless someone found out from another twitter user/facebook/news media sites. I don't know if people get their information off of television news, and I know that I don't really have the patience to sit through the stations' time schedules when I know that I can get more extensive information by using the internet. Even the channels (ireport through CNN) know that the internet is the place to disseminate the news more effectively.

Citizen Journalists?

Our true ability to have free speech has been questioned over time:

Printing presses in the past only published books and pamphlets that would make them money or fame, refusing to publish anything that could get them in "trouble" with the mainstream, the government, etc.

Even today, when buying music, you have to check to make sure you aren't (or are) buying the "edited" version of the song-- thanks to overly controlling mothers across the country.

Blogs have freed us from the restraints of money- and power- hungry printers and media broadcasters. Blogger can be our Times, and Youtube can be our CNN.

Rettberg calls out a few different types of journalistic-style blogging.

Personal blogs of news-worthy events, such as:

Residents of New Orleans during Katrina relief

Residents of Baghdad during U.S. invasion

VA Tech student during the shootings

Gatekeeper blogs

Gatekeeper blogs are blogs that watch the news media and control the information that is disseminated across their sites. That is, they expose and further investigate ideas that the news brings up. (See "Rathergate") They also promote discussion about the events and encourage the discussions to continue through "points" or "karma" awarded to on-topic comments.

Through blogs, the mainstream media, and the ability to share findings with your "network" (through Facebook, Stumbleupon, Digg, etc.) we have created a symbiotic network of media through the web.