ch 10

What is?

Who is?

What is my mood?

Proof we have individual moods:

Everyone has a specific mood attached to them. Ozzy is scary, Snooki is clumsy, Jim Morrison is oh-so-cool.

You see people on campus, in the grocery store, around town, and you associate moods with these people.

Think: People Of Walmart versus Vogue versus the general college student

We stereotype ourselves into groups, and see ourselves as different types of people.

We find our wide image backwards to avoid being caught in this mess. I am: a student, obsessed with harry potter, a design student, a geek, i have an eclectic taste in music, I like to go out on the weekends with my friends, I am from the mountains....

I am Allender.

What is my image?

"The wide image may be thought of as a series of murals decorating the border of identity”

My murals:

Career (concrete)

Family (the drive)

Entertainment (TPY)

Community (the River)

What links these together?

emblem

Charge: Discover the emblem. (Version of Wide Image)

Method: Exploration/Experimentation-- using the images and moods associated with our various discourses/Working backwards.

Why work backwards?

The wide image is our driving force/mood. This should be easy to find-- as it is behind everything we do-- yet difficult to find-- as it is internalized. We don't want to find the obvious-- we must experiment, discover to find best image for ourselves.

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Title-Image-Description.

We associate several types of images with different moods/feelings/ideas.

Example: we see Santa Claus, we think happiness/Christmas/snow/the holidays (usually)

Electrate approach: juxtapose images with other images of the same??? Santa Claus vs. reindeer vs. nativity scene??

Pop Art

Duchamp: turned a urinal upside down>> A fountain.

Warhol: A painting of a can is a can but it is an image of a can-- what is the difference between the cans?

Jim Krantz: takes pictures of famous advertisements/works and resells them as his own. He has made millions off of his photographs, which are oftentimes simple photographs of other people's works. What makes his better? Is there a mood associated with these? What is the connection between his work and the works he copies? Why does it sell better?

Art is experience. Architecture is experiential. Our emblems are experiential. As we experience a building or a new place or sensation, our perceptions are individual to the experience. These should affect us in a psychological and physical way-- stimulate our senses in a very precise, individual, and experiential manner.

The Bar (Street)

Probably the most confusing chapter I've read yet-- but I'm going to try.

The cultural "freakout" about binge drinking (or today, Four Loko drinking) is a cultural issue, rather than a behavioral issue. That is, we are more concerned that it is considered "okay" in certain groups or settings to consume more than we are physically able. You would not take 20 shots in 10 minutes in your front yard or at school, but you would at a bar or at a party. Well, to be perfectly honest, nobody could take 20 shots in 10 minutes, but this is an example so just run with it.

When we are in a certain setting or mood, we are apt to behave in different ways. On gamedays, we wear orange and yell and scream about being Tigers and having Clemson pride. Many people wear orange on Fridays. When I go home during a break and there is a Clemson football game on (mainly because I grew up in a West Virginia Mountaineers family, back to the theme of environment) I turn the tv on and kind of listen to the game as I'm doing something else, and I save my orange tshirts mainly for lounging.

These themes are linked into rites of passage-- the 21st birthday (and the morning after), the first football game of the season, the last football game of the season, and any occasion (mostly birthdays, football wins, football losses, trivia nights, days that end in -y, the completion of an exam or paper, etc.)

Everyone must take a midnight shot on their 21st birthday. Everyone must sit on the hill for at least one football game. No one should EVER read the inscription on the statue in front of Tillman, until after graduation.

These aren't specific rites of passage to anything but the mood we place ourselves within. If I wanted to sit in my bedroom on my 21st birthday with the door locked (closest thing to a neutral environment I can think of right now) then I wouldn't have had to take a birthday shot. However, I was with my friends, and at midnight we went and bought beer and I took a shot of vodka right as the clock turned. Now that I think of it, I was actually late getting to my friends' house, and they were yelling at me for not taking the shot right AT midnight.

When we place ourselves within certain moods or environments, certain behaviors are expected of us-- this is a part of the culture and the moods associated with it, rather than a behavioral issue. If I were to refuse my birthday shot, it would have discouraged everyone around me, and we probably would have ended up playing board games for a few hours and gone to bed. Instead, I took the birthday shot and we all drank for about 3 hours and danced around and had a lovely time. By placing myself within the expectations of the culture, the culture continued.

Ulmer's combination of narrative and argument usually guides me in the right direction-- I can't figure out how to tie in the tango allegory at all... something about it just isn't clicking with me today. As a matter of fact, I was lost from the tango onward.

This is what I gathered from the "office" at the end of the chapter, however.

He combines allegory and narrative to instill moods or images that we can tie the argument back to-- this is in the spirit of electrate thinking. Instead of saying "this is this and this is this," he is saying "assess how you feel when you read this story, and that feeling should tie into this argument."

To find our wide image, we should start looking at signifiers in all four aspects of our mystory and begin finding connections. He found the connection of "gall/gaul" and began assessing that connection to other allegorical principles.

History (School)

Understanding the way narratives work is as important as understanding the meaning of the narrative itself. A wide variety of stories in our culture follow the same paths, which is a part of our literate learning. In many stories, the main characters have inner and outer problems that conflict in different ways. Sometimes the outer problems are the same, and the characters are driven by their distinct inner problems. The main conflict of the story drives the characters to confront their inner problems and resolve them.

To understand our community history, we must understand the narrative history of our community and observe how we respond to it. The community within which we grow up is important in shaping who we are; the environment we are shaped within influences us indirectly. In a community, lives wrap their ways around each other through mysterious and strangely influential methods.

When I was 9 years old, an historic building burnt down in our downtown area (my town has about 3500 people in it, so it is a small community, but it is very spread out as mountain communities tend to be). The entire town went downtown and watched the firefighters put out the fire and then was present for the demolition of the building and its subsequent transformation into a park. While nothing drastic changed in most of our lives due to this event (only a few people lived in the building and nobody was killed during the fire), this time was a sort of a placeholder in my childhood. The event was part of my community narrative, so it has become a part of my narrative.

Our individual communities and our shared communities (my individual of Lewisburg, West Virginia, our shared community of the Eastern United States [I feel like different pieces of our country have much different cultural expectations at different points in our lives]) have different rites of passage and cultural expectations at different points in our lives. Watch any 80s movie and see the "new guy" continue his normal, cultural, teenage struggle in his new home, but then have to learn and conquer the rituals of his new community. (The Karate Kid moves across the country and has to continue adolescence, go on his first date, get a car, etc. but also deal with the "karate tough kids" in the neighborhood that he didn't experience in New York).

By exploring our community history and the rituals and passages associated with it, we can begin to see what things are important to our individual communities. A community doesn't always have to be a town, it can be a cluster of towns, a sub-community, a neighborhood, as long as it was an outside, independently progressing unit of people and place strongly present in the environment of our growth.

Interface Impressions

The Entertainment narrative template we are following is based on the archetypal pattern of the hero's quest, which expresses in turn an ancient ritual of initiation-- the achievement of individual identity.

Our assignment: create a webpage documenting a tv show (or book or movie) from our childhood that struck a certain chord of resonance with us. Assess our first thoughts-- then watch it again-- and record new thoughts.

I was a very impressionable child. I have these seemingly important tidbits of tons of things that just float around in the "important from childhood" section in my brain. I'm sure we all are, and I'm looking forward to this section of the mystory. I don't exactly know how to present it yet.

Impersonation as a starting point for understanding images/imaging. By capturing the essence of a person or a production, you can easily recognize the image that is being given by the object.

We won't be performing an impersonation of the person, but we will use gestures to write their icon.

The Bordovitz example shows us how this can be achieved-- he weaves, quite well, the news report of Evel Knievel's failed jump over a canyon with the news report of his father's death. He ties the angry fans in with the desolation in himself. He sees a tragic situation in his own life shown through a cultural device. He uses this as a tool to describe his own feelings and thoughts. While most readers wouldn't be able to understand exactly his emotions of being diagnosed with HIV, we are able to see the frustration, the almost win, the sadness, the feeling of failure associated with his realization.

The other two examples act the same, showing frustration, anxiety, hopefulness, and calm. They tie in tangible examples that serve as tools to describe their emotions.

"Write a structural self portrait, using the given circumstances of a character in a story as a figurative analogy for your given circumstances in your lifeworld." In other words, describe your life and feelings and circumstances through another story.

1993: dealing with computers will become less like operating a device and more like conversing with another person.

At least for me, this is true. Working with the internet and other programs on my computer is almost second-nature to me by this point. I spend so much time on my computer that I am infinitely comfortable working within its capabilities. We should use this fluidity to apply to our educational experience; to move freely between programs (metaphors, stories, and diversions) to create an end product (describe something).

Seances?

"Noticing and documenting the problems causing the dramatic conflict in your Family and Entertainment stories anticipate your work with problems in your Career field and in your Community as a consultant." It is our job to be able to explain our conflicts and our stresses through metaphors and diversions, to make our emotions and our responses more clear to those around us. By being able to explain an issue that has been around us for years, we can explain anything, right? These all help us find our wide image, which is supposed to help us become true electrate egents (is that redundant?). By understanding ourselves, we can understand the learning model, and apply it to our lives.

thin blue line/cosmogram

thin blue line_significant places in my life linked by a blue line.

location: italy

discovery: many of the most significant and beautiful places I found in Italy occurred along a single line. only with the addition of the two places further north did I begin to find shapes. the most meaningful shape I found was an open book; signifying the learning and sketching I did in these places and how they have become pages in my book of experience???

cosmogram_significant places in my hometown linked by lines and circles.

discovery: while i always thought the significant places in my hometown were in a circular path, the most significant reached out from my home to create a star pattern. the river and the rhythm of the hills compliment the reaching lines of the drawing. the text compliments my justification for choosing those specific places.

Cosmogram

Xanadu: referring to the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; his dream/poem/recollection that was interrupted-- and lost forever-- the everlasting land of the ends of our lost trails of thought-- the ideal place for all information to reside-- the epitome of the creative process.

Mapping the Diegesis

diegesis: "the imaginary space and time of the world created in the poem"/film/medium

Xanadu: a "hybrid place" composed of elements from "exotic sites of otherness"--use of "exotic as the emblem of curiosity and imagination"

Four exotic sites: Zanadu/Mongolia; holy caves of ice/Kashmir/India; Mount Abora/Ethiopia; underwater caves/fountains/Gainesville, Florida.

A fact certainly only the closest followers of Coleridge's poem and residents/fans of Gainesville, Florida would know. Ulmer is locating the "uncanny moments" when he experienced a sense of destiny or a life path/direction.

Chora (Sacred Space)

Three kinds of space or place, according to the Greeks:

Topos: the abstract quality of place as a container

Chora: the scared nature of specific places

Kenon: the "nothing" (why is there something rather than nothing?)

Ulmer: choragraphy: a "hyper-rhetoric_ that chora is used, rather than topos, as a metaphor for the places of invention. As in, our thoughts now exist in the web and the electric pieces of the world, in our minds, our feelings in memories. These are not held within any object or a container, but within the emotions and sensations associated with the event.