Week 2 - Ulises Carrión - Mail Art and the Big Monster from Second
Thoughts 11 unread reply.1111 replies.
To be honest, I don't find this argument to be entirely compelling, but
it's possible I misunderstood. Carrión says that Mail Art knocks at the
door of the big monster or is a weapon thrown against it. Maybe I don't
know well enough the history of Mail Art, but I think its a bit arrogant
to say that the big monster cares whatsoever. I think the big monster
takes the money for postage, sends your art, and forgets. I think Mail Art
walks past the big monster, but I don't think said monster feels
threatened. I do agree that, in the ways Carrión stated, Mail Art is not
really easy, cheap, or unpretentious. However, it was made more
pretentious when someone uttered "the best Mail Art is..." and more
difficult when someone said "an artist does not become a Mail artist when
XYZ." So, I agree when Carrión acknowledges the deficiency of Mail Art,
and for that reason don't understand how it then be part of a guerilla war
against the big monster. Maybe the rhetoric lost me, but I feel like these
aspects of Mail Art need to be altered in some way before it can be part
of a war against the big monster. For now, I think whatever's happening
here is one-sided.
1. Is Carrión trying to say that he wants these things to change so that
Mail Art can actually fight against the big monster?
2. Why does he announce that "we cannot imagine a piece of
Mail Art that does not use words, or drawings, or plastic," but then later
asks for more [new] ideas for Mail Art? And that he'd be receptive to
them? Personally, I think the former statement is limiting. It then makes
the latter request sound inauthentic and the entire closing paragraph
sarcastic.
Week 3 - Laurel Schwulst & Édouard U - Selections from Creative
Independent and Arena How Do You Use the Internet Mindfully
WOW! I loved Laurel's take on website production, it feels like something
I've been trying to put my finger on for a while. I have always wanted to
journal, but have never been able to commit. I really love the idea of
recording my life an thoughts in a more visual way, rather than just with
writing (although I do write). I love using my instagram (I've been told I
carefully construct it). I think that social media can be very
problematic, and people are often obsessed with their self image, however
I get a lot of joy from making collages and taking pictures of myself and
the world around me. I like putting posts together. I don't have very many
followers, I don't get a lot of likes, and I don't really care about that.
HOWEVER, I love the idea of investing in a personal website rather than a
social media platform. My first ever website was a 'digital diary' which
is very on brand with me obsessively wanting to journal. Still, that
website and a few of my other website projects, are more like the stone in
the ocean. I made it, it was fun to make, and now I've moved on. My most
recent website (my creative portfolio for grad applications) is like a
shelf; very simple and lays out my projects. I'll update it just like I'd
add a book or take off a trinket, but I won't focus too much on it.
Eventually, I want to build a garden that takes the things I love about
instagram and pinterest and puts it into something I created from the
ground up. The idea of the web as a place is great and that the web should
be for individuals not companies is better. Sometimes, I question why I
want to work in digital/web design because it feeds into things I don't
really like about society and the internet, and this makes me feel worlds
better. (I can also attest to the anxiety of knowing HTML/CSS and still
feeling like I don't know how to actually make a website.)
1. How do we educate people on the real infrastructure of the
internet? The fact that people don't understand it, except for the few
that study it or read articles like this, is a huge problem. Learning the
infrastructure teaches you a lot about who holds the power and how they
use/misuse it.
2. One thing about social media and visibility: a lot of people use social
media platforms instead of a personal website because they want to be
seen, and personal websites are harder for other people to find. If we
want to transition away from social media, how can we make personal
projects more visible? And don't we think that there is a risk that
personal websites could snowball into another form of toxic social media?
Is that the nature of the internet within a capitalist hellscape?
Week 4 - Olia Lialina - STILL THERE Ruins and Templates of Geocities from
Lost and Living (in) Archives
Reading this article helped me bring this fact into focus: the internet is
forever, but only for now. Yes once you put something on the internet, it
can be stored, found, and accessed even if you try to delete it. But, what
about in a 100 years? What happens if the places that we store our data
are cleared or become defunct. Geocities carried so much data that could
only be stored because someone thought ahead. People these days like to
stress the permanence of the internet, and this just reminded me that in
the long-term, it's really not as permanent as we think it is.
1. Should we feel comforted or scared by what happened with
Geocities?
2. How would you guys feel if something similar
happened to the internet as we know it?
3. What kind of data
would you want to be recovered in that situation?
4. Has
anyone seen the most recent Mission Impossible movie? How did it make you
guys feel? Cause I was pretty disturbed...
Week 6 - Bojana Coklyat & Shannon Finnegan - Selections from Alt-Text as
Poetry Workbook
I think it is really important to highlight the distinction between image
description and alt-text, as the former is a catch-all term which includes
things that are often supplementary rather than meant to replace. I also
really connect with the notion that alt-text is a form of translation. I
have experience trying to translate languages that don't come naturally to
anyone anymore, like Latin, and it really does feel like certain ideas are
lost in the process. Not only do individual words carry slightly different
meanings, but there are also nuances in what various cultures consider
good, bad, normal, etc.. In the same way that different cultures may
perceive the concept of green differently, visually impaired people
conceptualize and attach meaning to visual ideas in a different way. Being
aware of the gap is important; not everything that seems simply understood
to you is simple to everyone else.
1. When would you insert yourself as the creator while writing
alt-text? Would you be inclined to write as "I" or would you try to stay
as objective as possible about the content on the page? Is that even
possible?
2. What happens when the site itself is the image, the piece
of art? Where do you put alt-text for the artistic choices you made when
building the site as a whole? The images here, the descriptions there, the
background is this... for a reason right?
Week 8 - _A Personal Computer for Children of All Cultures_ from
Decolonising the Digital
To be honest, this article made me feel a bit overwhelmed at the enormity
of the world's digital infrastructure problems. Nasser has a lot of valid
concerns about the inaccessibility of the digital world to non-english
speakers. I think there are many ways that these concerns also tie to the
relationship between physical infrastructure and internet access. This
access is manipulated by governments and the private (Western) companies
which control the literal internet cables. When I hear or read about all
the ways that the digital world is inaccessible, I wonder if there's even
a way to fix anything well because of how interconnected the problems are.
I also don't see a world in which these governments or private companies
would want to change anything, given how they benefit. Sometimes I wonder
if the internet/digital spaces are even worth the trouble.
1. The idea of a computer for every child is a bit dystopian, even if the
intended message is access to education. Is the digital world even the
place for education? Just because there is a lot of information to access,
doesn't mean its good for children's brain to have it all at the their
fingertips that young.
2. In regards to all of our infrastructure problems, it feels
like making an accessible coding language is just putting bandaid on a
missing limb. Is it even possible to completely overhaul the digital world
with small steps?
https://www.criticalinfralab.net/
Week 9 - Ben Duvall - Selections from New Modernism(s)
I think the idea of hypermodernism and its relationship to
exponentiality goes beyond graphic design. I'm currently building a
presentation for another class on microtrends and the Gothic, and I'm
seeing a similar kind of exponential development when I look at fashion.
In the past, I feel like human culture, with its many facets, changed
naturally and slowly over time [likely with a few exclusions]. The digital
age has made it so that culture can shift easily and artificially, with
great speed. We are in a constant state of change, and it almost feels
like we can experience a decade of cultural change in just a year. The
digital space has given us access to too much information; it makes sense
that the circumstances in which we design cause our work to be similarly
packed full of information. One of the first things I thought about was
memes, which started out fairly simplistic but now can contain layers of
meaning with multiple references to memes of the past.
1. Where do you guys see hypermodernism beyond graphic design?
2. Be honest: how much of the underlying meaning behind signs is actually
unconsciously understood by the average person in the way that academics
have described it, and how much of this meaning is simply intellectually
created by the people writing articles like this?
Week 11 - Dot Tuer - Beyond the New Media Frame The Poetics of Absence in
Vera Frenkel’s String Games
I'm going to go on a tangent:
I decided that academia is not really a long-term place for me
and my future, because I have difficult time getting into academic
writing. I'm a yapper, I love drama and poetics and convoluted sentences,
but ultimately something that bothers me most about academia, is that it
is really inaccessible to a lot of readers. This article was beautifully
written, but incredibly difficult to read. I had a hard time understanding
certain parts, even after a couple tries. It felt a bit like translation.
All of this is really beside the point, but whenever I come across this
sort of issue, I have an internal debate about whether or not I appreciate
the prose. There are pros and cons, of course we shouldn't be
over-simplifying writing to an extreme degree obviously. However, I feel
like academics forget that the most important part of their job is to
spread knowledge and make it accessible to those wanting to learn.
Occasionally, this writing-style comes across as self-aggrandizing,
regardless of a valid thesis.
Anyway:
The quote from Marshall McLuhan on the expanse of a global
media-related nervous system abolishing time and space really peaked my
interest. This is something that I think about ALL the time. It is
shocking to me how the digital world has given access to an unlimited
quantity of knowledge to children, such that time and space are almost
meaningless. Like, for a basic example, I don't think it's healthy for a
child to have access to lives of as many adults as they can now see with
the internet. Witnessing this many faces and lifestyles is actually a
little bit horrifying because of the constant comparison to oneself,
during the critical developmental years to boot. I think that this cause
severe mental health problems, simply because you know about things that
you can necessarily have, even if you desperately want them. And don't
even get me started on para-social relationships. Having access to
information is a blessing and a curse, and in some ways ignorance is truly
bliss.
1. I guess I wonder what other people's takes on this are.
Like obviously the internet and digital world can do so many fantastic
things, but does that outweigh the harm?
2. In what ways does our generation read this article
differently than someone our parents/grandparents age?
Week 12 - Paul Soulellis - Performing the Feed
I liked this article/talk a lot. What it made me think about was, first,
surveillance that seems to listen to you even when your phone isn't on,
and, second, the shrinking attention span of social media / internet
users. I was talking to my friend about something recently on a walk when
she suggested I buy a certain product. That night, I get an ad for it.
This phenomena is so common that users are no longer freaked out by it;
they're totally desensitized. I've seen TikToks or reels that make it a
joke. So Soulellis's point that we are becoming too comfortable with
surveillance rings pretty true to me.
The shrinking of the attention span is very real. I've noticed it in
myself and its talked about on social media too. Users also joke about it,
because they think its funny or scary or both. There are reels where a
scene from a movie is playing right next to someone playing a phone app.
We watch both at the same time, and then scroll to the next part of the
movie. I think the live streaming discussion is interesting, and I
definitely think live streams would be less prevalent without the chat
element. People want to have conversations while they watch. Lately,
People need to be doing at least two things at once OR one thing for less
than 30 seconds and on to the next. I attribute part of this, in my own
case, to an attention deficit disorder... but I wonder if there is a
nurture aspect to something like that, which the prevalence of the
internet and social media is exacerbating in developing children.
1. Do any of you feel like you've lost your ability to hold
your attention as you've gotten older?
2. Are you guys comfortable with the level of surveillance
going on? Why don't you do anything to combat it?
Week 13 - Neta Bomani & Sabii Borno - Beyond Dark Matter from Logic Issue
15 Beacons
First, I love the cover art.
I thought the use of the acronym STEAM is really interesting.
It's not something I've really heard of before, though I've obviously
heard of STEM. Very often, Art isn't tied to STEM, especially pre-college,
so I feel like that's an intentional choice.
I think this story deals with really important topics
regarding the narratives that inform technology as we know it today. This
could be as simple as the words we choose to describe inanimate objects,
disregarding their clear connections to historical events. This relates
more to the history of technology. Who gets credited, and who gets erased?
Who controls the direction of development, and what do we name functions
or devices? Before delete was delete, it was kill. In another direction,
this could be the history that becomes canonical and inescapable on the
web. Who controls what information is easily available? Who controls what
gets removed / taken down? Some history is easy to find, and some more
detailed or honest versions take more digging to find.
I do like the way that this text ends on something optimistic:
that we can update (though never fully undo) narratives by approaching
tech / computing and asserting our own power.
1. Has anybody else heard of STEAM? I could be crazy.
2. How often do you guys believe "conspiracy" theories? Where
do you draw the line between trusting widely accepted narratives and
distrusting them?
Week 14 - Boris Groys - Art on the Internet
I'm interested in what Groys has to say about the difference between
politics and art. I think the idea that politics disappears into its
consequences while art remains has some weight, but I think there are
holes in the argument. Groys says that politics is absorbed by its results
to make room for the politics of the future, and in a lot of ways this is
correct. Right-wing ideas from the 20th century, like the war on drugs,
have continued to negatively affect certain communities, especially Black
communities, well into the 21st century... although the war on drugs is
technically not a political movement anymore. However, not all politics
disappear. Political figures frequently call upon figures of the past in
order to garner support. Make America Great Again as a slogan uses the
politics of the past to gain support in the present. You can see this kind
of thing with many different groups... Communists, Fascists, etc.. Many
current, and especially radical, political groups call upon the past for
validity. Political figures do not disappear, they are used as examples.
Politics is not constantly moving forward based on whatever consequences
and letting go of the past easily. In fact, many groups ignore obvious
consequences or place blame incorrectly, so that they can continue to tout
their same old ideas, promising that it'll work this time. I think Groys
is ignoring the fact that politics is not just legislation. While some
political ideas disappear, not all of them do. I mean, Fascist Germany and
Italy used the ancient Greeks and Romans in order to validate their
nationalist, fascist, and eugenicist ideas. The USA is not a democracy,
it's a republic, and our political structure is directly influenced by the
Roman Republic. Politics comes and goes in cycles. History is used and
misused in the present. So, while I understand the point Groys is trying
to make, I think he is over simplifying a very complex phenomena. Politics
remains and is used in the future in a very similar way to art; it does
not disappear when it is done, not really.
Art is also incredibly political; even thousands of years
after its creation, it can create new political conversations. Art does
not exist outside of some historical context. We may lose its past context
but if art is looked upon by people with thoughts, it has some context
within time. Death of the author, blah blah blah... you may be able to
kill the artist but you can't kill audience reaction/opinion and what that
says about current society. That is historical context.
Separately, to say that artists make their art for present and
for the archives is a bold stretch. Maybe the artists Groys cares about do
that, but not all artists make art for the same reason. Not all art is
created for others or is created with time in mind.
1. Do you guys agree with his take? Do we think that art and
politics is so distinctly and simply separated?
2. Do you think art should exist in the archive, out of
context?