Martha’s Quest

UAL Application for Social Rep Job

2015-06-26T05:06:00.000-07:00

Please go to my active Twitter Account:
meg_wi1liams

2013-11-18T08:13:00.001-08:00

http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.109/19.2lennon.txt

interesting article - new tech and po-mo

I am not a Borg

2013-10-03T08:46:00.002-07:00

Today we had a very interesting discussion
I have spent ages commenting on the others' Blogs so little ltime left to post..But main thoughts
1) why so interesting in class - so little discussion on our Blogs? Wrong medium? Should we be using a forum? Have asked Polly to investigate!
2) Democratisation? Don't think so at the mo because
A) who owns the machinery to produce thes messages? What is their agenda?
B)self-censorship due to societal expectaions of how we shoule "behave" - fear of repriesals if we transgress - as in the Snowdon case mentioned in class... and many moer?
C) IT as the new opium of the masses?
D) Tribes? Communities? Peronae?
E) reality and the moment are only ever fleeting in whatever context and have only ever been that way so this new world we are exploring is infact the only way we can truly consider anything...it is infact the only "real"... ephemeral, transtory, shifting, various, multifaceted, infinitely different
F) but... controlled by who? business? governments?

So do these mean I am a Luddite or does E) above mean I am moving into the virtual world? Am I becoming a Borg?

am I a Luddite?

2013-10-03T08:35:00.002-07:00

School Days

2013-09-30T13:02:00.001-07:00

Well today we had a very frustrating session trying to set up all our Blogs so that we could communicate virtually with each other as we learn and it was massively ironic how the only way we could achieve this was by all sitting in the library together on computers talking to each other and standing up and helping each other. I know some of the students were wondering what the point of all this is - all process, no product... all medium, no message.....
So for those frustrated students who want to know where this is heading:

n Task One: practical portfolio
hand in: 28/3/14

n produce an electronic document (blog, online journal, myspace page, or webpage, and/or to maintain records of your contribution to online journals, collaborative poetry or stories, chatrooms, for a or ezines)
n Reflective commentary

There will also be a task two later....

I also asked them to read

https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillard-simulacra_and_simulation.pdf

www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

The second of these two links is the shorter

radio gaga

2013-09-23T13:29:00.001-07:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bdbpt

Sounds interesting!

'twas brillig and the slythy toves

2013-09-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Before I could post this... I had to re-learn how to sign in and post... so I could record my thinking on web poetry.

1) searched for web poetry – came up with a lot of e-poems which were playful and challenge conventional ideas of genre, form , content, presentation, analysis….

For example: http://www.arras.net/web_poetry.htm

In particular: http://www.arras.net/RNG/flash/dreamlife/dreamlife_index.html

BUT

Did not seem to be any more interactive in terms of collaborative or fluid production of text… the reader – or viewer – still more-or-less a viewer – or reader (with the caveat that all readers produce meanings). Production of meanings but not construction of arfefact or particiapeation in performance..

There must be more to this… surely it should be interactive, participatory, challenging boundaries between author and reader…

2) searched for hyper-text poetry

This was more like it

Especially …. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_poetry

This seems to sum up everything we need to think about ( I know… Wikipedia again!)

Consider: hypertext poetry, collaborative poetry (writing and publication), digital poetry, computer generated poetry, different media, interactive poetry (Interaction allows the reader to participate and influence the work and their experience of it.)

But then immediately came up against a problem

3) The hyper link to:

http://archives.chbooks.com/online_books/jabber/

was dead – shame as this looks like a very important and early example of the genre? Form?

So – I searched for it elsewhere to find that you have to BUY the opportunity to participate in this poem… leading me to ponder on the relationship between the writer and the reader – has it actually changed – we have to pay the author to play the poetry-game.

So rather than a collaborator – we are now a customer – a consumer --- so where is the democratisation offered by the digital revolution?

4) Decided I need to do some more reading – found this bibliography but will also ask a friend to recommend key texts.

http://leonardo.info/isast/spec.projects/newmediapoetry.html

5) Definitions here – useful

http://course1.winona.edu/geddy/Eng353/hypertext_poetry_and_fiction.htm

6) BRILLIANT PLYFUL INTERACTIVE SITES

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Fall01/johnson/PG3.html

http://www.clickablepoems.com/

But again – interesting mix

Some obsolete, some interactive, some just links to video performances… some linking to sites where you have to PAY…

Ishi and Mobious

2013-08-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

Reading Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation.

See where my confusion came from earlier as in this he does talk about the "successive phases of the image" in several stages - but my general understanding is sufficient I think. For me, for now. First representational copies. Then mass produced copies which raise questions about value, authenticity... then the construction of the artefact in its own right - not as a representation but as a thing. So raising questions as to what is in fact real, or true or authentic...

Nothing, any more , if Baudrillard is correct. Much of what he says ( about religion and religious iconography, about Disneyland) does make sense - so much of it is as obvious as the fact that all teenage girls create themselves in the image of the ideal that does not and cannot ever exist - and the only differences are those fabricated artificially...

But I do not agree that he is correct as there are still things that exist without being simulacra. Old ladies sitting in the sun. Children playing on the green. And there must even be teenage girls somewhere with unstraightened hair, imperfect skin, straggly eyelashes...)

All those things which exist outside and in spite of the mass communication that enmeshes so much of our lives.

He talks about the lost tribe being returned to their pre-discovered state and how they can never be returned. Like those in South America last year who were filmed looking up at the planes filming them. They are touched and changed but still exist in their own sphere. Why should they be changed just by our perceptions of what matters?

He also references Ishi - I did not know anyone else knew about Ishi. Ishi Last of His Tribe was a favourite childhood book which I re-read this year with my youngest child. I took issue with Baudrillard's suggestion that Ishi supports the notion that tribal cultures "refuse any 'unlimited' increase" as this was not part of the story that I knew. So - I googled Ishi - of course - and found that his story, life, brain, body, myth has indeed been appropriated, transformed and destroyed or replicated by just about everyone and that his life and death does indeed epitomise all that Baudrillard is discussing.

As regards the Mobious strip - I am sure there is the opportunity for some kinaesthetic learning there....

The Simulacra

2013-08-17T15:10:00.001-07:00

OK.... so I have been reading..

I get the idea that " a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal".

And I understand that 'Where Plato saw two steps of reproduction – faithful and intentionally distorted (simulacrum) — Baudrillard sees four: (1) basic reflection of reality, (2) perversion of reality; (3) pretence of reality (where there is no model); and (4) simulacrum, which "bears no relation to any reality whatsoever"' (and sorry this is from Wiki)

Except... what is number (3) - p"retence of reality... where there is no model". How does this fit in? Where and when? Is anyone able to give me an answer here?

I shall read to try and get some semblance of understanding:

https://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/baudrillard-simulacra_and_simulation.pdf

www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

maze

2013-08-16T01:27:00.003-07:00

Very frustrated as I am trying to get this up and running. My first chosen guinea pig has left the cyber sphere as a reaction to my ineptitude. My second - whom I contacted in the old-fashioned realm of Facebook messaging - suggested that my failure to go interactive may be because I had paid nothing on the first Blog site (Simple something) and recommended this one - Blogger - as being simple and FREE.
So - I have migrated to this new Blog - copying and pasting all my previous posts and trying to share it just to see if there is anyone out there!
I am frustrated my the fact that I am expending all this energy on the mechanics and achieving nothing in terms of developing my understanding of things relevant to New Technologies and New Writings. Proving McLuhan right any way - the message is non-existent and the medium is everything.

I do not like the look of this as much as the other - maybe because this is free!!!!!!! Still - if it works.......

dummy

2013-08-16T01:11:00.001-07:00

Well - a lot going on since last posted in my search for enlightenment in the - what - cybersphere? Ether?

First I followed the links on yesterday's blog which gave me food for thought.

1) I liked the fact that McLuhan used the phrase "Quest for Identity" several times - how prescient I was in my choice of Blog identity!

2) McLuhan stated that things (texts???) need an audience to make meanings....and so this Blog has no meaning without an audience - as I had already realised, hence my assertion yesterday that I was going to ask a trusted friend to be my guinea pig

3) Said Guinea Pig emailed me to this effect:

"Nice idea ....And some lovely visuals...... But this blog seems to be a one way channel (or am I missing a simple button somewhere?). It is from you to us, which leaves out a fundamental aspect of many blogs, the interactivity that they allow (encourage?) as part of the democratisation process – and also part of the collective ‘archive’ – the interactivity that the net allows and fosters is part of the new world, and I hesitate to suggest, the new world of literature. Your ideas are no longer just your own (if they ever were) but part of a conversation which has an audience enabled to respond!I’m also not clear how I ‘follow’ (get notified each time you add something new)"

4) This was an important email for me as I had not realised I needed to set up the interconnectivity - I had just kind of assumed it would happen! Any way, I have now set it up with my guinea pig - I hope - and eagerly await his response.

Guinea Pigs?

2013-08-16T01:10:00.002-07:00

Have contacted an experienced Blogger to ask him to be my guide through this maze... at the moment grappling with the practical basics - hoping that the message will be worthy of the medium.... but again - maybe the idea of "worthy" is too hierarchical and the whole idea is the democratisation of... well - I think Lessing's Martha might have an opinion on this...but at least the process is prompting thought

Maybe this will help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaH51F4HBw

or this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVnjiASvCOU although I still prefer the book "The Medium is the Massage"... but imagine McLuhan's Blog!

The first brick

2013-08-16T01:07:00.004-07:00

Building a tower or a heap?

Trying to learn how to blog... proving harder than I had thought - maybe not as simple as it says on the packet. Will keep trying.... Have decided one definite thing - I will move the session on Blogs to the top of the course so that we can all Blog our thoughts on each new topic from the start - and will try to learn how to connect with each other so we can share and comment on our ideas.

Martha's Quest

2013-08-16T00:35:00.001-07:00

Trying to get my head around the New Tech Module - feels as if I have dropped a bag of marbles on the patio and they are all running around being chased by small children and tortoises and I cannot get them back into the bag. Maybe that is the point. Maybe I am just losing my marbles.