more essay planning

CONVERSATION WITH CHRIS:

GEN: i've typed things up under the headings of finance, celebrity, movies, tv, cyberspace - - cyberspace is the most expansive one, encompasses blog sites, myspace, messageboards, music piracy/filesharing, and somewhere in that, i'll discuss language as well, how it gets subverted and modified through internet usage.obviously some of these cross over - celebrity crosses over with tv and cyberspace, very definitely.

CHRIS: id group together myspace/forums/blogs as selfpublishing or something.

GEN: myspace, for me, is ordinary people's ability not so much to self-publish, but to self-publicise - to flatten themselves into an abbreviated, concise form; to reduce themselves to summaries, stereotypes, two dimensional beings, just like 'celebrities' [as opposed to the people behind the sleb veneer - but those people are inevitably affected by their veneer, it is integrated into their personalities, and in the worst cases [i.e. extreeeme divas], replaces them, they become simulacra] - an attempt, subconscious or otherwise, to simplify themselves and perhaps thus understand themselves/be understood.

[...Simplifying themselves in the face of a culture of information overload? We have access to more information about ourselves and each other than we've ever had; is this two-dimensionalising an attempt to make sense of it all?]

...And to satisfy their egos - to design themselves, in cyberspace, as their ideal selves rather than the splintered, faulty selves they're forced to accept in 'reality' - much like gameplayers who use avatars [hindu origin - ultimate supreme being, related to vishnu, the divinity who comes down to earth in human form, equatable with christ] to represent them, and choose the traits of these avatars rather than organically developing them/having them from birth. so both are a way of bypassing reality; rules no longer apply.

but then maybe people's human interaction with each other WITHIN the social networking space - responding to each other's profiles, affects them; like people are upset when they get unkind comments on their pictures, even though these pictures are just 2D representations that they've chosen to show a particular side of themselves [literally and metaphorically] - that comment, to some people, is not about the picture, it's about THEM, directly affects self-esteem. they cheat reality by presenting themselves in a selective way, but are cheated in turn by real behaviour in that virtual space, and accept that behaviour as being directed at their real selves, not their virtual selves.
so yr online identity BECOMES part of yr real identity, no longer a willed, subversive act, but an accepted, involuntary part of you.

actually i do think years of social internet usage definitely affects one's personality/social behaviour; one interacts socially online where, or in a way that, they might not in a physical space. this experience affects their mental/social development just as social experiences in a physical environment do. though given my limited time, i can probably only hypothesise this, rather than offer solid proof of it.

CHRIS: oooooooooooh thats good shit.as a person im massively influenced by the internet. like my sense of humour is very heavily influenced by spending too much time talking to americans on make out club when i was a wee teen

also, i still think you should choose a word other than abbreviate, compress maybe? and relate linguistic abbreviation to this. abbreviation sounds completely wrong.

also: re people being offended by bad image comments, theres the fact that, say, I CHOSE to put that pictre up, so an insult to the picture is an insult to my judgement.

GEN: i'm gonna research the word abbreviate thoroughly... right now it feels instinctually exactly the word i'm looking for, cos i like the idea of people as texts [barthes/derrida, everything is a text and can be analysed as such], as words, ideograms, strings of information and subsequent meaning, that can be analysed and altered just like language, person as expression, a person's presentation of themselves altering their meaning. but i do need to research this, cos it could well end up looking really stupid and discrediting my point. As to abbreviation vs compression - the point is that information isn't just squashed, it's actually lost, just as, when abbreviating a word, you jettison parts of it and alter its shape completely.

essay thoughts

Feeling a bit lost with the essay - lots of things I'm interested in exploring, but a bit worried I'll go off on innumerable tangents and not actually argue a point.
Things I'm thinking about for inclusion:

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‘Real’ can be opposed to (or set in contrast with) ‘fake’ or ‘illusion’. HOW has the development of cyberspace [CS] (or other recent technological innovations) made us RETHINK the oppositions between real/ fake and real/ illusory?

(You might also consider the question: to what extent has CS made us rethink the distinction between 'original' and 'copy.')
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REAL - LACAN, BAUDRILLARD
ILLUSION - NIETZSCHE, BAUDRILLARD

OPPOSITIONS BETWEEN - swallowing each other up?

ORIGINAL & COPY - simulacra - remind self of the four stages of an image:

reflection of reality
mask over reality - "denatures" it [baudrillard]
void mask - hides absence of reality
simulacrum - bears no relation to ANY reality - relates to nothing but itself

read baudrillard's clones

MOVIES:

SOLARIS - reality replaced by simulacra - in a strange, disembodied environment, dead loved ones return, formed not from factual remnants but from memories - memories that could well be distorted [think about nostalgia - BAUDRILLARD & NOSTALGIA] - the illusory yet "real" [physical, sentient] loved ones that present themselves could actually bear no relation to their originals, and are at any rate not complete, formed only from what their companions remember - no self construction, only formed from external sources [LACAN - objectified self, conception of the external]. Yet they're all their companions have left of them - not remnants though, but created anew to torment them. [Is their self-awareness of their own incompleteness, and the means of their existence, relevant?]

THE MATRIX - within this cyberreality, people can achieve the impossible, armed only with unwavering self-belief and training [both a celebration of the American dream, and a critique of the limitations of the life this dream has brought about]; they can become the superhuman of Nietzschean ideology if they try; also brings up Borg-esque insectoid collective mentality on the part of the antagonists [discussed by Zizek] - one consciousness transferred and shared liquidly between agents who exist both in the "real world" and "matrix".

TV:

NEWS - Media technology, instant relay of information, closed circuit of information? [baudrillard]
- 9/11, it happened so we displayed it, movies displayed it so it happened... chicken/egg syndrome, which was the original, which was the copy?
- DIANA, 'the people's princess' a tag devised by the media [tabloid headlines?], not by the actual people - media PRESUMES to speak for the people, and thus replaces them...
- ...debate panels of people we don't personally know set up to represent us, voxpops that speak for public opinion, when public opinion itself is/should be a mass of shifting, opposing opinions - but do we take on the opinions fed to us? when all facts are imparted, interpreted/summarised and understood on our behalf, do we need to think, and formulate our own opinions?
- if the people as a truly receptive/active body no longer exist, the media speaks only to itself in an endlessly self-referential loop.

CYBERSPACE:

- livejournal
- myspace
- internet messageboards
- online gaming/roleplaying

LIVEJOURNAL.COM - most prevalent example of diary sites, where protagonists document - most commonly - their own lives, observed and participated in [via comments, and interaction with other, "befriended" journals] by others.
- Breeding ground for many an injoke, sparked by the nature of evolution of internet language [acronyms, creative spelling, commonly used phrases, ironic typos [e.g. oh my god!!1!1one] - circularity of injokes [they beget themselves] - large part of internet culture in general - massive, ironic, cynical self-awareness.
- Gave birth to the injokey-yet-taken-far-too-seriously [?] phenomenon of "ljdrama" [of which there is now even - inevitably - an official community] - he-said-she-said arguments, into which various users are inevitably drawn in, based on something written in someone's journal and seen by unintended eyes. See internet messageboards.
-Communities spring up for likeminded people - sometimes local communities, supplanted to an online, digital, cyberspace; more often though, linked by interests, social networking, common problems. Social groups are frequently formed from group members - meetups take place, friendships are formed on the basis of the comradeship established online. Typical examples include:
- creative communities, where participants all engage in similar creative activities and share these online;
- support groups, e.g. anorexia, self-harm;
- local "scene" groups, e.g. London indie scene, DC punk/hardcore scene, moviegoers in a particular area;
- fans of bands/films/'celebrities' [icons?]/other cultural phenomena; -->
--> and a recent and increasingly popular breed, fan-fiction - written about the object of fans' admiration, where the "icon" [already a two-dimensional projection on the part of his admirers - and this most frequently occurs with actors, or specifically, characters within a fiction, e.g. cult tv dramas] is placed within a further fictional setup, and made to play out the notions and fantasies of his/her fans. In some cases this is merely dramatic and narrative, in others it reaches into the realms of the erotic.

MYSPACE - social networking tool, seen by some frequent internet users as a step on from blog sites - one can maintain a blog as part of a more integrated and dynamic profile.
- The basis is on briefer, snappier communication - photos, bulletins that are sent to all of one's contacts. Baudrillard'd have a lot to say about it - bulletins fill up people's pages, saying nothing - people send bulletins to announce their state of boredom - their lack of anything to actually say.
- Myspace photos - the most cliched take photography to its most two-dimensional limits - high-contrast, Photoshop-edited self-photography, in which you only ever see a user's "good side", one half of their face, tilted and angled flatteringly and archly. Doesn't even pretend to represent reality - but does this make people FAKE, or merely show them experiementing with the different identities the site makes possible?

MESSAGEBOARDS - like lj communities, users are drawn together based on common interests; collective and personal relationships are formed; arguments are played out via the constructed medium of the messageboard [and does the chosen layout - threaded, inline etc - affect the discourse?] - users' use of the media is often woven into the content of the argument. Peacemaking users attempt to calm arguments saying "it's not worth arguing about, because it's only the internet" - the implication being, the space is not real, therefore neither is the argument.
- Infamous, somewhat tasteless internet image, often thrown sardonically into internet messageboard arguments: http://www.viperalley.com/gallery/data/502/109argue.jpg [slogan: "Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics - even if you win, you're still retarded"
- Interestingly, it's now been reinvented, and claimed as a political tool - http://justoneminute.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/bush_special_iraq.jpg ["Starting a war in Iraq is like running in the Special Olympics..."
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=29591 - messageboard conversation about it on a Republican messageboard
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2004/week42/ - ...but elsewhere, speculation that it was a Republican trick to smear Democrats.
Interesting how an initially "geeky", intendedly humorous [though offensive] internet joke has become a political phenomenon in the "real world", and implicated politicians who may not even personally use the messageboards where this kind of image regularly appears [most frequently on pop-culture/gaming/technology boards where the boards' setup allow the inclusion of users' code and images, and the userbase is highly self-aware and self-referential].

Solaris, Syracuse and simulacra

Looking at the new essay questions, number 16 is appealing:
‘Real’ can be opposed to (or set in contrast with) ‘fake’ or ‘illusion’. How has the development of cyberspace [CS] (or other recent technological innovations) made us rethink the oppositions between real/ fake and real/ illusory? (You might also consider the question: to what extent has CS made us rethink the distinction between 'original' and 'copy.') I think I'll probably attempt that one or the earlier question about cultural icons.

I just caught the second half of Solaris, Stephen Soderbergh's American remake of the Russian film of the 70s. It was pretty intriguing, I'd like to see the original, and read the Stanislaw Lem book that inspired it. I was interested in the film's exploration of ideas about reality: the reality of the world and people around us, and of ourselves; the part our memories play in defining and historically preserving reality and the form of our lives. It's not a theme that could have been well explored in a sensational, typically 'Hollywood' film; the effect would have been crass and not a little superficial.

It follows a psychologist sent to investigate astronauts' odd visions aboard a space station orbiting the oceanic planet of the film's title; their dead loved ones appear to them, seemingly real and sentient. In turn, his dead wife (suicide) turns up and they resume their relationship, faced with numerous dilemmas: that not only he, but she also, knows she's not real, but a facsimile of his wife, yet she feels and experiences like a human . . . that she is not a complete person, but constructed only from what he remembers - and what if he remembers her wrong? (this plays into notions of simulacra, that if his memories are inaccurate, he's in love with an illusion that bears no relations to the woman who informed her existence) . . . that he remembers her as suicidal, and thus she still is, and tries to kill herself but, being a phenomena rather than a human, is resurrected and forced to continue her unintentional existence . . . and that he cannot bring her back to Earth, yet can live no kind of decent life on the space station.

The pace of Solaris - what I saw of it, at least - lets one think about the ideas present while the film slowly unfolds. A line towards the end particularly intrigued me: "I performed all the millions of gestures that constitute life on Earth. But I was haunted by the idea that I remembered her wrong... that I was wrong about everything."

Took some reading on holiday; am now halfway through Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation; his writing style made it very difficult to get into, but it seems to get easier as you progress with it. Some interesting points about the circular nature of simulation; how, once you dispose of meaning, and are left only with signifiers, they consume and refer to each other endlessly rather than leading to any kind of outcome (e.g. the repetitious & increasingly meaningless process of communication, without any meaning actually being communicated, also documented by Richard Sennett regarding high-risk office-based workplaces - ad agencies etc - in his analysis of the modern employment culture, The Corrosion Of Character.) He also makes interesting points about consumer culture, and the illusory "needs" that are produced for us to pursue.

Also read Susan Sontag's Regarding The Pain Of Others. A key quote from it - "The problem is not that people remember the photographs, but that they remember only the photographs" - quite an accurate summation of one of the key problems with news coverage [say for instance 9/11; we think of two images that were hammered home - the slomo, shaky-video destruction of the WTC, and Osama Bin Laden's face - and other aspects fade into obscurity, like the other plane that was supposedly shot down near Washington, or the events involving the Middle East and Osama Bin Laden that preceded the terrorism, etc.]

On holiday, I found something else, quite different, that felt quite relevant. I visited an archeological park in Syracuse, which houses Roman and Greek stone outdoor theatres. I took some photos, a couple are below. The stone seats of the Greek theatre, having corroded in places, are being replaced with wooden boarded seats, painted grey to match the stone. The effect is peculiar to say the least.... the preservation of the theatre, and of the experience of the theatre - sitting on the seats, looking down into the semi-circular stage area - being preserved by thoroughly incongruous wooden seats.



That said, they are a temporary amendment, not the same as filling in the seats with fresh stone and contaminating its historical relevance and accuracy - but this whole debate, over the preservation of history, is one that the likes of Baudrillard have discussed, in relation to simulation.



Elsewhere, fallen pillars from the Roman amphitheatre were arranged prettily to line a path at the fee-paying entrance. The effect was rather trite; the pillars were no longer authentic evidence of an ancient culture, left where they fell to be observed in later centuries, but Roman-themed ephemera that made up the modern aesthetic structure of this museum piece, clambered over by tourists.