Discussion is here.
If everything we know comes to us in a representation, whether it is an image from the media or on TV or whatever, how to we know what is real?
Baudrillard says: “The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. . . The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal… which is entirely in simulation.”
His stuff is meant to be a verbal hand grenade.
"The real" is a code for representing things. It's a learned cultural code. A culture that has come through many things and values truthful things - access to things outside of media are no longer fact-checked. Things are encoded as being real.
For ex. Abu Ghraib = images are gritty, which tells us that they are "real" just because they have the right look.
Baurdillard is saying that this "real" is just another code, not that it actually has to do with the truth value of the medium. So the above quote is easily produced, it is hyperreal and we read it everyday.
Some images:
The Truman Show - simulation
Self-immolation monk (Malcom Browne) - Now a Rage Against the Machine album cover
Joe Rosenthal's Iwo Jima Flag raising - the symbolism related to this image becomes the meaning of the image, the real
9/11 Falling man - Richard Drew (AP)
Benjamin had fears of fascism, but hoped that media would be freeing, meant to prevent the media from being controlled by the government. There was an opportunity to break out of that. Still his quandry about reproductions of images, it makes it "low" instead of art. An original piece of art has value in its uniqueness, it's existence in time and space. When reading you can substitute the word "digital" for "mechanical" and the argument is still valid. His argument is replicating itself.
Long discussion of Tiananmen Square image, if exposure can be understood in any context except the one in which it is learned.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
CCTP 725 - Cultural Hybridity - Class #1 - 15 January 2008
The syllabus is here
The idea of globalization, Tokyo and Hong Kong have more in common with New York than with towns in the rural areas of their home countries.
Hybridity across platforms - what is a telephone? The iPhone, it's a hybrid device that does everything. Technology allows the devices to be hybrid. The devices are still young, clunky, but they have all the media.
Media is mutually interdependent. "Cross-mediation" = how you encounter the same media object in multiple forms, TV, web, newspaper, radio. The content is no longer anchored to a particular media technology. It informs the way we see everything.
Ars Electronica - see link
Don't get stuck on the term 'hybridity'
Dilemmas: understanding and interpreting today's cultural and media complexity w/o a fixed or privileged position.
How?
1. Lessons of cultural studies, post-colonial theory, but new lessons of practice: media, art, photography, film (ex. Paul Miller considering what he is doing, but most artists don't. Still the work shows the great depth of the work, and it makes a comment on the making of the thing that we can interpret.)
2. Our own cultural and social embeddedness, positioned points of view, identities, assumptions, presuppositions. (We need to look past them)
3. One option: self-reflexive and heuristic theoretical ways of thinking. (We recognize our position. There is no neutral position. We have a lens, acknowledge it, then learn the validity of other points of view. Heuristic = eureka - discovery techniques allow you to see things you didn't realize you'd discovered.)
"If you can't discover new things with a body of theory, what the hell good is it?" - Professor Irvine
Still, must get into theory pretty deep before you know it's no good. The theories should be hybrid to discover hybridity.
See graphic in ppt on syllabus.
An Interdisciplinary, Heuristic Model for Interpreting Cultural Hybridity
Post-structuralist core theories: textuality, discourse, semiotics, ideology: Carthes, Foucault, Derrida
Linguistics: structuralism, creolization theories, discourse
Postmodernism core theories: Benjamin, Debord, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deluze and Guattari, Jameson
Semiotics: codes, code-mixing, intertextuality,
Cultural theory: deconstructing high/low culture, identities, theories of subcultures
Queer theory and Camp:so many great things come from mixed identities
Dialogism, Heteroglossia (no pure states of speech), Carnivalesque, Intertextuality: Bakhtin (no pure states of anything everywhere)
Post-colonial and social diaspora theories: appropriation and hybridity
Mediology: media institutions
Globalization: transnational border crossings, urban concentrations and flows
Post-Digital Media theory: hypermedia, role-playing
Netowrk Theory: nodal theory, urban agglomeration
Global economics, international markets
Post-postmodernism
What was new, learned, or intentional in modes of postmodernism is now just accepted as "part of the mix."
Multi-sourcing for new cultural works is assumed as method and practice. Not a break with 'modernity' or fixed tradition.
Damien Hirst, For the love of God
Diamond encrusted skull sold to an investment group for the asking price os $100 M. Hirst was in the investment group, he has a history of buying back his own work. Skull cast from an 18th century European Man but retaining the original teeth. It's a hybrid thing.
"Reality"
The Daily Show
Stephen Colbert
Culturally, reality is a performative code
lonelygirl15 -youtube - convinced everyone that it was real
Shirin Neshat, Iranian-born. "Allah's Women" "I Am It's Secret" Farsi on their hands, faces
Chuck Close: deconstructed the picture plane, breaking it into grids.
For next class - login w/ net id, common password, think through readings, post thoughts, examples to which you can apply the theory.
The idea of globalization, Tokyo and Hong Kong have more in common with New York than with towns in the rural areas of their home countries.
Hybridity across platforms - what is a telephone? The iPhone, it's a hybrid device that does everything. Technology allows the devices to be hybrid. The devices are still young, clunky, but they have all the media.
Media is mutually interdependent. "Cross-mediation" = how you encounter the same media object in multiple forms, TV, web, newspaper, radio. The content is no longer anchored to a particular media technology. It informs the way we see everything.
Ars Electronica - see link
Don't get stuck on the term 'hybridity'
Dilemmas: understanding and interpreting today's cultural and media complexity w/o a fixed or privileged position.
How?
1. Lessons of cultural studies, post-colonial theory, but new lessons of practice: media, art, photography, film (ex. Paul Miller considering what he is doing, but most artists don't. Still the work shows the great depth of the work, and it makes a comment on the making of the thing that we can interpret.)
2. Our own cultural and social embeddedness, positioned points of view, identities, assumptions, presuppositions. (We need to look past them)
3. One option: self-reflexive and heuristic theoretical ways of thinking. (We recognize our position. There is no neutral position. We have a lens, acknowledge it, then learn the validity of other points of view. Heuristic = eureka - discovery techniques allow you to see things you didn't realize you'd discovered.)
"If you can't discover new things with a body of theory, what the hell good is it?" - Professor Irvine
Still, must get into theory pretty deep before you know it's no good. The theories should be hybrid to discover hybridity.
See graphic in ppt on syllabus.
An Interdisciplinary, Heuristic Model for Interpreting Cultural Hybridity
Post-structuralist core theories: textuality, discourse, semiotics, ideology: Carthes, Foucault, Derrida
Linguistics: structuralism, creolization theories, discourse
Postmodernism core theories: Benjamin, Debord, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Deluze and Guattari, Jameson
Semiotics: codes, code-mixing, intertextuality,
Cultural theory: deconstructing high/low culture, identities, theories of subcultures
Queer theory and Camp:so many great things come from mixed identities
Dialogism, Heteroglossia (no pure states of speech), Carnivalesque, Intertextuality: Bakhtin (no pure states of anything everywhere)
Post-colonial and social diaspora theories: appropriation and hybridity
Mediology: media institutions
Globalization: transnational border crossings, urban concentrations and flows
Post-Digital Media theory: hypermedia, role-playing
Netowrk Theory: nodal theory, urban agglomeration
Global economics, international markets
Post-postmodernism
What was new, learned, or intentional in modes of postmodernism is now just accepted as "part of the mix."
Multi-sourcing for new cultural works is assumed as method and practice. Not a break with 'modernity' or fixed tradition.
Damien Hirst, For the love of God
Diamond encrusted skull sold to an investment group for the asking price os $100 M. Hirst was in the investment group, he has a history of buying back his own work. Skull cast from an 18th century European Man but retaining the original teeth. It's a hybrid thing.
"Reality"
The Daily Show
Stephen Colbert
Culturally, reality is a performative code
lonelygirl15 -youtube - convinced everyone that it was real
Shirin Neshat, Iranian-born. "Allah's Women" "I Am It's Secret" Farsi on their hands, faces
Chuck Close: deconstructed the picture plane, breaking it into grids.
For next class - login w/ net id, common password, think through readings, post thoughts, examples to which you can apply the theory.
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