Website Link

Here is the link to the in-development website for the Peanuts Electronic Monument:

http://www.wix.com/stephenjlind/Peanuts-Gallery

Note:  I am conscious of my choice to use a WYSIWYG platform to create the site, as opposed to coding/scripting the site "by hand."  I am torn on this issue.  I began constructing the site in Adobe Flash (which I have used before, long long ago when it was Macromedia, though I remember just about nothing from that use), and as I searched through tutorials to understand the not-so-user-friendly Adobe Flash, I came across Wix.  Now, I knew that I wanted a Flash site.  There are certain media-esque qualities of a flash site that fit my purposes much more immediately (both functionally and aesthetically), given the content of my monument.  That meant I would be doing scripting in Flash as opposed to say HTML coding in Dreamweaver - either way, getting my hands dirty.  However, I would be taking shortcuts along the way, using pre-defined motion paths to get me started, then making alterations in order to customize and personalize the material.  I mean I was certainly not going to simply open up Dreamweaver and ONLY stay in the coding window the whole time -- I would be using the program to help me achieve the desired ends.  Well, when I stumbled upon Wix, I saw that desired End much more immediately than I had before.  I chose to use Wix because it allows me to focus more time on Design than Coding.  I manipulated the material on Wix such that I certainly did not just plug my pictures into a predefined template... but all the while, I did not code the site.  I guess this work is closer to the "cake-from-a-box" end of the spectrum than the "cake-from-scratch" end.  I am torn between "getting my hands dirty with the process" and "getting to my desired product."  Either way I am using a tool to create the product I want... the tool I have used at this point has simply left my hands a little less dirty.... 


hmm.....

Stability and Change...

Hi All --- I am going to keep this post short, given that NCA and the great city of Chicago are calling my name (sorry usual Peanuts strip, even you don’t make the cut this time…)…

A couple orders of business – first, the reading for this week.  Boy oh boy does Ulmer continue to get convoluted, with folds upon folds of meaning. 

It seems like Ulmer would not be a non-fan of the images I posted last time (Abercrombie and Sean John).  He puts forth “the premise that advertising is one of the practices most committed to inventing the discourse of electracy” (182) by the way it creates gaps that are a/e-ffective: “What is new in the ad is that the inference is a work of images rather than concepts, of associated signifiers rather than arguments” (183).  Perhaps this is thus not a means by which to have Neon trump Reason, but rather a way of having Neon create new pathways for constructing/articulating/creating/communicating Reason, largely through Memory.  This is done through images, which serve as signifiers, creating a “mood” (186).  These ads work in a way that Ulmer seems to conceive us as evolved beyond the traditional literate way of thinking.  If these modes of ‘working’ become cliché, however, like with the good cop/bad cop routine, then they stop working (194).  The egent has to be a step or two ahead – that seems to be the nature of electracy. 

So what then (our second order of business) can I take from this in application to my MEmorial project for Schulz?  Well, I know that I should not be predictable and rudimentary.  That wouldn’t fit with the transversal approach of connecting ideas.  Yet I need to think of what will be most a/e-ffective.  The video “More” seems to be a useful peripheral for my project.  One current monument to attach it to is the host of YouTube posts about Charlie Brown/Peanuts.  Their presence serves to memorialize the great fandom that the franchise still commands – and  a YouTube Video Response would be a peripheral way of attaching new signifying images to expose the gap in readings of Peanuts.  I’m not sure how much Neon or electracy is at work there, though.  Barbara’s thoughts on going the different direction of attaching Peanuts to the topics under-recognized (like Vietnam, the economy, feminism, etc.) seems a little more Neon… but I’m not sure if the peripheral matches up as well.  And thus I am at an impasse.  I think the “More” video as a peripheral is a solid approach – in fact, it’d be great if I could get the Charles M. Schulz Museum in CA to display the video (I’d be able to put the CNN debacle behind me then, for sure!).  I am a little worried that I am not being clever or transversal enough.  It doesn’t seem to live up to the Miranda-esque standards Ulmer puts forth for us.  Then again, maybe I’m being too hard on myself.

Hmm… things to think about… and now off to explore more of the Windy City and “Stability and Change" through NCA’s 95th annual convention!

Struggling to be a fan...

It just didn't seem right to include a strip by Schulz for reflection on the reading(s) for today.  I am sure there is a great irony in that.  For the most part, I have been on board with Ulmer's approach up to this point.  That is certainly not to say that I have fully understood the nuanced writing that is Ulmer's approach (good grief, No), but his emphasis on bringing to light the abject, interrogating the boundaries of the inside and outside, making new collective identities out of individuals as individuals, etc. etc., has been embraceable.  The approach in the chapters on Formless Emblems and The Agency of the Image were... troublesome at best.

These sections made me question the ethics of a MEmorial.  To what degree must an egent be "fair" or "truthful" in their representations of the issue(s)?  More particularly, to what degree does Ulmer say that an egent must be "fair."  In some ways, I am not sure that he allows himself to set up such an ethical scheme.  If problems are multidimensional, rhizomatic even, to what degree can we claim that one perspective is "right?"  It seems that that is perhaps not the point?

But maybe it should be.  How are we to gauge the recipe for Reseoneon?  One part Reason, One part Neon?  On what basis do we make that claim?  Let's take the following Advertising examples as commercialized approaches towards emblem-making and image-use:

Both  of these images represent rather successful franchises - Abercombie and Sean John.  The logic behind them is, well, lacking a certain amount of robustness.  The Abercrombie ad is hypothetically selling clothing - something that is barely pictured in their advertisement.  We know, though, that the advertisement, through certain methods of emblem-ness, is selling much more.  It relies on codes shared by the audience (122), namely of beauty, power, desire, etc.  The second image very explicitly violates any reasonable line of logic, in that the slogan is "Life without passion is unforgivable."  The product is called Unforgivable... it is life without passion.  Certainly not the intent of the producers... but who cares? Not the massive consumer base buying the product.  Half part reason, Twelve parts Neon, and we have a successful campaign!  Why shouldn't the egent take this same approach?

Certainly Ulmer has plenty of Neon in these chapters by way of the very...  intense stories he shares from the various news stories.  The fact that he shares them via news stories, though, is proof in itself of a limited portrayal of the facts as a strategic/tactical way of getting to ones ends - Neon.  The stories serve primarily as Neon.  Now, maybe that's the point.  Maybe they are necessary in their graphicness in order to sting us who are in a world of catastrophe fatigue.  The images of aborted fetuses/babies/unbornchildren/tissue may very well fit into this same category.  Forcing us to see the abject in ways that may seem like too much, only because too much is the only amount that is enough.  It certainly does not get us toward an ethical guideline, though.

This all begs the question of what the egent is trying to accomplish?  It seems as though Ulmer is working more toward a performance of the philosophical/theological quandary that is the Problem of Evil, more than he is working toward a new form of consultancy that could influence public policy beyond the RedBlue mentality currently at play:  "More power to the conventional consultants as they plan and calculate their solutions" (160 , my emphasis).  They are not solutions we all should be taking part in - they are theirs.  This is the problem of the Y - seeing "not solution, but impasse" (160).  Why would we see it any other way?  Ulmer himself knows "intellectually [...] that nothing [we] do will improve the world" (164).

He may say that he wants to consider what to do about these abject sacrifices (these sacrifices that are so intimately tied to death... talk about generating fatigue in a reader...), but I'm not sure we're "supposed" to do anything - how can you when the Y asks us to see the impasse of these competing goods/stories/testimonies/perspectives/values/etc?  AND if we are supposed to "do" something, then what are the ethical guidelines - the recipe for Reseoneon?  One part Reason, two parts Neon?  How can one hold to the Y and still hold to a prescribed recipe?  I'm not sure on this one.

Video Subproject

CNN iReport - Christians and the Media

(Oct 8, 1970)

For better or worse, we spend A LOT of time in front of our image-machines.  While I did not read this particular chapter until after making the iReport video, it is clear that this chapter on the Transversal is quite relevant to the issues raised in the video.  Ulmer writes that "the agenda-setting power of popular culture is based on its ability to transform science and history [and I would add religion, or the naively purported lack-thereof that constitute the mythology of our society" (95).  In contemporary society, Christian belief and ideology is at risk of being wholesale written out of the societal mythology.

One might see the approach of increasing Christian representation in Entertainment media as somewhat consistent with the strategies advocated by Ulmer.  In that our "identity experience" (99) is connected and influenced through a growing visual and electrate world, and that "one's own scene may be figured by the news[/entertainment media]" (95), it makes sense to explore that world of the Spectacle as a way of "using the visible to write the [increasingly] invisible" (111).  Breaking through the emerging barriers, though, may be difficult, in that the public sphere "sanctions certain images and not others" (100), and the image of the normal/sane Christian is an image that seems to be on the outs. 

Video ALSO posted on CNN's iReport:  http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-345054

(NOTE:  Video Clips obtained from Public YouTube channels of ABC and IGN Downloads)

Referenced News Articles:

Roland Martin: "Hollywood and God can co-exist" - CNN.com

"GLAAD Sad about Grey's" - TVGUIDE.com

Neon Lights, Full Moons, and Lucy

(October 30, 1964) 

Ulmer seems to have a rather distinct answer to that question.

Below is my video response (albeit spoken rather quickly) to the next section of the readings:

Links:

BBC Posts:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/641394.stm

Monte Schulz Interview: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/091014-Schulz-Jordan-Fantagraphics.html

"I'm a Lucy" YouTube Page:  http://www.youtube.com/user/IMaLUCY

Software/FREEware Link:

CamStudio (Screen Capture video software): http://download.cnet.com/CamStudio/3000-13633_4-10067101.html?tag=mncol

A New Language

(Oct 11, 1962)

I do not have much experience speaking through the language of film/video.  My vocabulary is pretty limited, and my accent is even worse.  But, like with any new language, practice by immersion is the best way to learn, and thus my video response to the next portion of the readings: