Tag: representational

Blog 1: An Introduction to New Media

In class, we were introduced to the concept of New Media. It is a medium in which there are seemingly endless possibilities. What exactly qualifies as New Media, anyway? I mean, you could make the argument it could range from scanning a book in upside down to personal photos. The three examples we were shown today were just the very beginning of the many, many different avenues we will be taken down in the coming weeks.

Perhaps the most fascinating example of what’s to come was Alex Itin’s “Orson Whales”. It was a personification of today’s “mash-up” culture, combining Herman Melville’s masterpiece of a novel “Moby Dick” with original artwork, a dramatic reading (and some drunken liquor commerical outtake soundbytes) from Orson Welles, and a song from arguably the greatest band of all time; Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick”. Now, on the surface, this may not sound like the most satisfying experience, but it truly was a sight to behold. The timing of the images shown and the rhythms and speech patterns were synced to perfection and made for an exciting 4 minutes.

This begs the question, what was Itin trying to tell his viewing audience? After all, we naturally make the assumption that all art has at least some meaning behind it, whether it be representational or evocative.  Representation meaning is defined as the meaning that the work shows or tells its audience directly. In this instance, I think the message was that art is subjective. Now, it may not sound like much and I may be way off, but I think this piece was his way of showing that you can take elements from many walks of life and throw them together to create something new and, in this case, something special. This piece was a medium for him to showcase how to make art using New Media.

In terms of evocative meaning, I walked away from this wondering about the rights to art. Does he have to credit all the original artists? Is this indeed something new? Sure, the paintings were his, but he was not responsible for either audio recording or the text. That’s what I walked away with, which leads me to believe this qualifies as the evocative meaning obtained from “Orson Whales”.

Jabber: The Jabberwocky Engine, Neil Hennessey – Lynn Golden

Thinking through the representational aspects of Jabber:

When I first visited JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine in class, frankly – I wasn’t impressed. However, my love of vocabulary, crossword puzzles, and Scrabble urged me to give Neil Hennessey another chance to captivate me. Initiating the Jabberwocky Engine for a second time, surprisingly, changed my perception of Hennessey’s creation. Jabberwocky is a fun textual media experience that gives the user the opportunity to watch randomly bumping letters bond into accepted English language syllables that create new “nonsense words.” An amusing aspect of the Jabberwocky experience is that some “nonsense words” are further combined to create “compound nonsense words.” Hennessey’s presentation can be (if given the chance) a stimulating experience for anyone interested in the construction of words. Through my second encounter with Jabberwocky, I found it to be both informative – related to standard phonetic combinations – and humorous related to the accidental combinations that result in “words.” The randomness of Jabberwocky provides an element of surprise that retains interest. Another dimension is added by the user’s ability to access the list of “words” being formed. This list is a window into the innumerable possible combinations of new words that could be created using this concept and catalyzes thought regarding the similarity of many of the created words to real morphemes. Neil Hennessey’s analogy that letters are to words as atoms are to molecules, clearly explains his intent to present a visual demonstration of what he calls “word chemistry” in the context of the creation or building of words.

Considering my initial impressions of Jabberwocky and contemplating why I wasn’t initially impressed, it struck me that unlike Firefly and Orson Whales, Jabberwocky is not as graphically rich. The introductory frame is a simple black rectangle centered on a doctor’s office blue background. The introduction is crisp, clean, and to the point – a basic explanation with a small simple window that invites the user to “launch!” Certainly, Hennessey was capable of creating a more visually stimulating experience, but he chose to keep the periphery basic. The choice to minimize graphics and sound purposefully focuses the user on the basics of the Jabber experience and analogously – the very basic building blocks of all words – letters. Would aesthetic additions to the graphic or sound experience of Jabber heighten or diminish the experience? My conclusion is that any further graphic or sound enhancements would detract from the intended purpose and experience.

On an evocative level:

Jabberwocky evokes the randomness of language. Although we can trace many morphemes to Latin, through time and the influences of the evolution of culture, language is constantly changing. An example of a recent word creation is infobahn. This word derived from the merger of two concepts – the high speed German Autobahn and the idea of the information superhighway. Thus, the bumping together of letters/words through cultural influence created a new word. When viewing my Jabber word list, I couldn’t help but notice many similarities or inversions of familiar words. These words made me think of other real word inversions, for example – the simple word mop. Why is a mop called a mop and not a pom. Why is a pom-pom called a pom-pom and not a mop-mop. A mop head and a pom-pom are constructed in the same way. Strands of fiber are bound in the center. Of course there is a history behind these words that can be studied and analyzed, but for a common person – it seems like nonsense in much the same way the Jabberwocky Engine first struck me. Another simple word example: tot. A tot can be a toddler or a processed potato food. This does not make any more sense to me than a random Jabber creation. In viewing my Jabber list, I see the word: leggering. This word makes perfect sense to me. This word could be used to describe a person who is sitting with her legs crossed, swinging her top leg up and down – why not just say she is leggering?

It is also plausible for the Jabberwocky Engine to evoke the idea of the colliding/bumping of the letters/words of the languages of the world. As our world continues to become smaller and smaller through advancements in the technologies of travel and communication – cultures and ideologies are gradually blending/assimilating and thus affecting language. Six years ago, I was not familiar with Cinco de Mayo. Five years ago, one of my Latino neighbors started the tradition of a Cinco de Mayo block party. Now, families of Korean, European, Latino, and Chinese descent have formed a new tradition – the Thames Street Cinco De Mayo Block Party. In Jabberville, it might be called the Thamco DeMock Party!

“Orson Whales”: A Chaotic Amalgamation

Collectively, “Orson Whales”, “Jabber”, and “Firefly” are all pieces that can be considered to be forms of “new media”. However, the application of the term “new media” changes with each piece.

“Orson Whales” is a compilation of film, text, audio, and art. When combined, these various artistic mediums create a sort of performance art that is wildly unique. Technology allows them to coexist with one another, and therefore stimulate both the auditory and visual senses. Together, these several types of media extract a multi-sensory reaction from the audience (something that neither illustration nor text can do alone).

This chaotic amalgamation also illustrates the dynamic relationship between representational meaning and evocative meaning. On its own, the representational meaning of the text “Moby Dick” is obvious. The book is easily read on the surface level as a story about a whale. However when Orson Wells’ voice, Led Zeppelin’s lyrics, and Alex Itin’s art are all projected across the visual image of the text, the evocative meaning of the work becomes slightly more difficult to read. The book alone can be analyzed page by page; but analyzing the text, the song, the voiceover, and the art suddenly becomes an unmanageable task put forth by the “new media” compilation piece. Though the representational meaning of the text remains the same (as it has since its inception), the evocative meaning suddenly changes with the inclusion of multiple other interpretations. “Orson Whales” isn’t Orson Wells’ interpretation of the text, nor is it Led Zeppelin’s. Rather, “Orson Whales” is Alex Itin’s own reading of the renowned tale.

By using outside sources to help narrate his vision, Alex Itin brings into question the notion of artistic integrity. Who truly gets the credit? The piece in its present form could not exist without the contributions of Led Zeppelin, Orson Wells, or Herman Melville. Alone, Alex Itin’s illustrations would not be so easily recognizable as a visual reading of “Moby Dick”. Just as “Orson Whales” relies on the interactive relationship between multiple artists, so too do most other forms of “new media”. “New media” depends on the interaction of several different perspectives simply because it has transformed into a means of universal communication in a technological world.

Blog #1: Evocative and Representational Meaning

As a first blog post, I’m a little leery on whether or not I’ll answer the subject correctly, or even remain on subject. As such, I’ll begin with a lot of uncertainty but at least with quite a few things so say.

Evocative and representational meaning. At first, I couldn’t differentiate exactly what was meant by this, but now with about two hours hindsight, I can relate that to the topic. Words and meaning – or overall, language – are subjective and ever-changing. In semesters past, I’ve been assigned to read Shakespeare, novels or poems that all dated from far before the 1900s; and upon reading all of them (or at least most, when it came to crunch time) it was then suddenly the light went on about how much language changes and adapts overtime. With blogging, or the new media-laden world, we’ve once again hit a dynamic crossroads.

Relating all this to the three examples presented in class, each gives a different perspective on the topic of this blog assignment.

For one, as we discussed in class, the “Orson Whales” video was static in that it was unchanging. It can be repeated innumerable times and never, ever change. The only person capable of changing the video would be the author his or herself. But! Despite the medium itself not being capable of change from outside forces, its meaning can forever be argued.

This is the power of literature, regardless of whether or not it’s old media. People have argued the meanings, symbolism and characterization of Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” for over 150 years. Yet the story itself – it’s text, pages and all its characters and letters – has remained the same (for the sake of argument and not delving into library research, we’ll assume that the novel hasn’t changed significantly overtime from one published or revised edition to another). Other classic novels have gained this notoriety: “The Scarlet Letter,” “Frankenstein,” “Great Expectations,” or even more modern Sci-fi classics such as “Brave New World” continue to appear in academic classrooms for discussion and study. Regardless of what a medium is, it would seem that the meanings of its content can forever change as long as there is a subjective human mind to interpret it and lend opinion.

But about evocative and representational‘s place in this blog – the three new media examples can also be argued for years to come (pending on how long the Internet sticks around in this form) about what they exactly mean, or what the author intended. Perhaps the most dynamic of them all, “Firefly,” can be argued most, simply because an outside user can almost limitlessly rearrange the poem’s order, and therefore conjure a new meaning.

So what did the author of “Firefly” mean to do by presenting the poem is such a format? What is the intended, or representational, meaning behind this new media text? I could argue that it is the last two lines, which read, “for what he has to say / is not for me.” No matter what order a user decides to place all the lines of text, the ending’s last two lines remain the same. Surely, then, the represented meaning of this poem is just as stagnant?

No.

Due to the ability to rearrange the poem as one sees fit, the last two lines are just as subjective as anything else in the poem. The evocative meaning, or what the user decides those two lines mean, are reflected in what text the user decides lead up to that point in the poem’s story. Who is “he?” What is “he” saying? Who is the speaker, “me?” All of that is evoked in the poem the user gets to create. The represented meaning is whatever the author has stashed hidden away.

At the beginning of typing this post, I enable the JABBER window and left it in the background to play. Since then, it’s conjured the words “hoppit,” “eynalarch,” “usetons,” “golizong” and many others. I toy around with the idea of resetting it and seeing whether any of those words will ever repeat themselves.