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digest 2006-04-14 #002.txt
litsci-l-digest Friday, April 14 2006 Volume 01 : Number
164
In this issue:
"SUB 06" - "Queer Diagrammatics: The Unmeasurable, Unmappable
Geometries of Queer Discursive Space."
SUB 06: Man, Machine and the Paradox of Airpower
SUB 06: code as media panel submission
SUB 06: New Myths of Creation: Evolution and Its Discontents in
Atwood and Houellebecq
SUB 06 Rodolphe Bresdin: A Picture of Cogitating Urschleim
Paper Proposal
Fwd: Whole Earth, parts thereof (symposium)
SUB 06 : Imagining Transportation Systems: Past/Present/Future
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 10:30:04 -0500
From:
Subject: "SUB 06" - "Queer Diagrammatics: The Unmeasurable, Unmappable
Geometries of Queer Discursive Space."
Keywords: Math, Theory, Representation, Diagram, Rhetoric
"Queer Diagrammatics: The Unmeasurable, Unmappable Geometries
of Queer Discursive Space."
This paper will investigate the function of scientific
illustration in canonical queer theoretic texts by beginning
with the premise that queer theory is invested in
rearticulating tropes from mathematics, statistics, psychology
and evolutionary biology. The deployment of geometric
rhetoric, detached from the visual discourse of geometry,
makes conspicuous the queer revision of this traditionally
scientific genre. I will claim that the unconventionality and
the conspicuous omission of graphics in these texts
participate in a "queer diagrammatics": a mode of
representation that destabilizes the privileged role of
visibility in the production and authorization of knowledge.
I will invoke Latour, Rotman, and other critics of visual
scientific discourse in order to analyze the performative
function of this atypical diagrammatic. Ultimately, I will
argue that the queer redefinition of the I and of identity are
rhetorically linked to the repositioning of the function of
the eye, in a way that has broad implications for the genre of
queer and scientific imag(in)ing.
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 09:22:11 -0700
From: Denice Turner
Subject: SUB 06: Man, Machine and the Paradox of Airpower
Paper title: The View from Above: Man, Machine and the Paradox of
Airpower
Drawing upon Freud??s concept of modern man as ?¨prosthetic god?Æ and
Tim
Armstrong??s discussion of ?¨the influencing machine,?Æ I plan to look
at how body
and mind conform to the airplane, which both limits and extends human
perception of nature aloft. Since the man-to-(flying)-machine
metamorphosis
is, by its nature, paradoxical??the mechanism which makes man
?¨godlike?Æ actually
renders him more vulnerable to nature??I am interested in examining how
contradictory perceptions and sensations play out within the literature
of
flight, which tend toward extremes: as entrenching mythology about the
transcendence of flight (man conquers and surpasses the natural world),
and as
manifestations of fear and reverence (nature as sublime, supreme,
power). For
the purposes of this paper, I will analyze excerpts from texts by pilots
from
the early days of powered flight, including Antoine de Saint Exupery and
Amelia
Earhart, as well as selections from contemporary aviation writers such
as
Richard Bach and Patty Wagstaff to show how each constructs nature
through the
twin forces of power and vulnerability. Ultimately, I will argue that
issues of
power and vulnerability make the aerial perception and representation of
nature
impossible outside of dialectics of power.
Keywords:
aviation, perception, ecocriticism, nature, machine
Denice Turner
harperd@unr.nevada.edu
PhD Program in Literature and Environment
University of Nevada, Reno
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 12:30:16 -0400
From: bcoleman@MIT.EDU
Subject: SUB 06: code as media panel submission
co-chairs
Beth Coleman, MIT bcoleman@mit.edu
Ken Wark, New School, warkk@newschool.edu
Papers
Wendy Chun, Brown Wendy_Hui_Kyong_Chun@brown.edu
Alex Galloway, NYU Galloway@nyu.edu
Mark Hansen, UCLA Cocteau@stat.ucla.edu (confirmation pending)
Beth Coleman, MIT bcoleman@mit.edu
Key words:
code media generative aesthetics software genetic game mod
This panel looks at the modalities of code as a media form. In relation
to new
media arts and visual arts, traditionally code has performed as the
architecture in relation to a functional or actual output. The papers on
this
panel address the question of what are some of the significant changes
theoretically and in the production of art and cultural works when code
is
engaged as representational media form. A discussion of contemporary
reworking
of information and aesthetic theory is central to the panel. The panel
is
composed of media theorist and media practitioners (code writers and
artists
using code), which brings diverse and highly engaged perspectives to the
subject. The issues discussed in the various papers include generative
aesthetics, networked art works and network culture, and the history of
aesthetically oriented code.
Code as media abstracts & bios
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
?Order From Order?
?Order From Order? interrogates the odd erasure of computing necessary
to
the emergence of digital media and to the formation of ?visual culture
studies? and ?transparent society? (our computers are fundamentally
non-visual and non-transparent devices) by outlining some of the
surprising
parallels between software and race as visualizations of invisible
causalities.
Software?unforeseen by the early computer designers and non-existent at
a
physical level?has become a privileged way of explaining the
relationship
between nature (hardware) and culture (software), the operations of
heredity
(genetic program), and the functioning of narrative (rhetorical
software).
Software?s power stems from its programmability and from the ways it
concretizes causality: high-level procedural languages in particular
reduce
language to a series of imperatives, which in turn generate visible
effects in
an invisible yet understandable manner. Race was, and still is, a
privileged
way of understanding the relationship between the visible and invisible:
it
links visual cues to unseen forces.
Although post WWII it no longer credibly links physical differences with
innate
mental differences, race has become more on display than ever, even as
the
question of what race indexes?cultural or genetic differences, the
results of
economic injustice?remainsunresolved. ?Order From Order? focuses on the
importance of race to Erwin Schrodinger?s early conceptualization of
code:
interpreted through the lens of Mendelian genetics in the early- to
mid-twentieth century, the consistent hereditability of racial features
seemed
to encapsulate an orderly transfer of traits, which belied the
disorderly
future predicted by statistical physics. This dream of order from order
stemmed
from conceptions of a strictly causal genetic code, which software?and
not
genetics?would be able to fulfill.
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media
at Brown
University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English
Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on
digital
media. She is author of _Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the
Age of
Fiber Optics (MIT 2005); and co-editor with Thomas Keenan of _New
Media, Old
Media: A History and Theory Reader_ (Routledge 2005). She is currently
working
on a new project, Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race on the
relationship
between race and code. She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
for
Advanced Study and has been awarded a Henry Merritt Wriston fellowship
at Brown.
Mr. Softee Takes Command: Morphological Machines Advance
Beth Coleman
MIT
Abstract
In this paper I look at the ramifications of cybernetic theory and
practice??specifically the demands of contingency, feedback, and
automation??on the workings of a generative aesthetic in new media
production. I argue that particular forms representative of the
categories of
?new media art? or ?new media? in relation to popular visual culture
make a break with the tradition of plastic arts and film/video history
exactly
in regard to the issue of the generative. I use concepts basic to the
theory of
cybernetics, information theory, and the ?culture of code? as
instructive
guides by which to discuss new paradigms of cultural production that, as
this
paper argues, are influenced in equal parts by the history of computing
as they
are the history of aesthetics. Areas of analysis include the history of
electronic and digital arts design and practice in the genre of
networked
artworks, ?deconstructive? digital artworks, generative programs, and
Machinima automations. The theoretical works cited include Norbert
Wiener?s
Human Use of Human Beings, and texts by media and cultural theorists N.
Katherine Hayles, and philosopher of technology and temporality Bernard
Stiegler. These critical interlocutors provide a standardization of
terminology
that allows for a ?cross-section? of language between scientific,
technological and aesthetic fields. The emphasis of the paper is on the
relation of digital media to the development of the visual arts and the
transformation of popular visual culture.
Beth Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media with a
co-appointment in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and
Comparative
Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A cofounder of
the
SoundLab Cultural Alchemy project in 1995, Coleman is a practicing
artist whose
work has been internationally exhibited in contemporary art venues. She
is
currently working on the manuscript for Difference Engines.
Aliis exterendum
mark hansen
UCLA
Abstract:
Manovich finds the roots of new media in the 1830s, with the
technological
innovations of Daguerre and Babbage. During this period, statistical
societies
began to emerge in Europe and the U.S. producing an "avalanche of
numbers." The
early statisticians recognized the effect of "the law of large numbers,"
the
possibility for regular behavior in aggregates (crime rates, births,
deaths);
and even applied the normal distribution (the bell curve) to
sociological data.
These early statisticians, however, were asked to 'confine...attention
rigorously to facts...stated numerically and arranged in tables',
because
interpretation was, as declared by the motto of the London Statistical
Society,
Aliis exterendum -- to be threshed out by others. This stance did not
hold sway
for long, and statistics evolved from pure data collection to the study
of
making inferences from data; Tukey's work in the 1970's on exploratory
data
analysis asserts the statistician's role in uncovering a story in data,
and
with it, new tools for making data "expressive."
In the last decade, we have experienced an unprecedented leap
forward in
our abilities to collect and analyze data, and in particular, our
languages to
describe patterns, statistical representations of phenomena. While
probability
theory still provides us with a mathematical foundation for
understanding data
and studying inference, computing technology, software, or, in short,
code,
acts as a medium through which analyses are actually realized. Our
ability to
manipulate data and to explain its patterns depends on and is limited by
our
ability to generate code. To some extent, even our notion of what
constitutes
"data" is a product of our background in computing.
In this presentation, I will examine a series of recent works
(installations and a planned performance piece created in collaboration
with
Ben Rubin, EAR Studio) from the context of the "backend," the code that
links
observed phenomena and the narrative threads of the ultimate artworks.
These
pieces are all dynamic in character, responding in realtime to changes
in the
underlying data sources.
Mark Hansen is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of
California?Los Angeles, where he also has a joint appointment in the
Department of Design | Media Art and is affiliated with the Center for
Embedded
Networked Sensing. Prior to joining UCLA, he was a Member of the
Technical Staff
in the Statistics and Data Mining Research Department of Bell
Laboratories,
Lucent Technologies.
"A Formal Grammar for Artist-Made Game Mods"
This paper articulates a formal grammar for the genre of the artist-
made game
mod (short
for "modification"). Game mods are an unusual thing, for they seem to
contradict their
very existence: When the mod rises to the level of art, rather than a
gesture
of
fandom--as "Counter-Strike" was to "Half-Life"--then, more often then
not, the
game
looses its ruleset completely and ceases to be a game after all. Jodi's
"untitled game"
follows this contradictory logic when it removes all possibility of
gameplay
from
"Quake" and propels the game into fits of abstract modernism. Using
Peter
Wollen's seven
theses on counter-cinema as a guide, this paper presents a new
framework for
understanding game mods based on the following formal principles:
foregrounding,
aestheticism, visual artifacts, invented physics, and
non-correspondence.
Alexander R. Galloway is assistant professor in the Department of
Culture and
Communication at New York University. Galloway previously worked for
six years
at Rhizome.org. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG,
and
maker of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. The New York Times
recently
described his work as "conceptually sharp, visually compelling and
completely
attuned to the political moment." Galloway is the author of "Protocol:
How
Control Exists After Decentralization"
(MIT Press, 2004). "Gaming," a series of essays on the aesthetics and
politics
of video games, will appear in spring 2006 from University of Minnesota
Press.
Code as media abstracts & bios
?Order From Order?
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun
Brown
?Order From Order? interrogates the odd erasure of computing necessary
to
the emergence of digital media and to the formation of ?visual culture
studies? and ?transparent society? (our computers are fundamentally
non-visual and non-transparent devices) by outlining some of the
surprising
parallels between software and race as visualizations of invisible
causalities.
Software?unforeseen by the early computer designers and non-existent at
a
physical level?has become a privileged way of explaining the
relationship
between nature (hardware) and culture (software), the operations of
heredity
(genetic program), and the functioning of narrative (rhetorical
software).
Software?s power stems from its programmability and from the ways it
concretizes causality: high-level procedural languages in particular
reduce
language to a series of imperatives, which in turn generate visible
effects in
an invisible yet understandable manner. Race was, and still is, a
privileged
way of understanding the relationship between the visible and invisible:
it
links visual cues to unseen forces.
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Associate Professor of Modern Culture and Media
at Brown
University. She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English
Literature, which she combines and mutates in her current work on
digital
media. She is author of _Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the
Age of
Fiber Optics (MIT 2005); and co-editor with Thomas Keenan of _New
Media, Old
Media: A History and Theory Reader_ (Routledge 2005). She is currently
working
on a new project, Programmed Visions: Software, DNA, Race on the
relationship
between race and code. She has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute
for
Advanced Study and has been awarded a Henry Merritt Wriston fellowship
at Brown.
Mr. Softee Takes Command: Morphological Machines Advance
Beth Coleman
MIT
Abstract
In this paper I look at the ramifications of cybernetic theory and
practice??specifically the demands of contingency, feedback, and
automation??on the workings of a generative aesthetic in new media
production. I argue that particular forms representative of the
categories of
?new media art? or ?new media? in relation to popular visual culture
make a break with the tradition of plastic arts and film/video history
exactly
in regard to the issue of the generative. I use concepts basic to the
theory of
cybernetics, information theory, and the ?culture of code? as
instructive
guides by which to discuss new paradigms of cultural production that, as
this
paper argues, are influenced in equal parts by the history of computing
as they
are the history of aesthetics. Areas of analysis include the history of
electronic and digital arts design and practice in the genre of
networked
artworks, ?deconstructive? digital artworks, generative programs, and
Machinima automations. The theoretical works cited include Norbert
Wiener?s
Human Use of Human Beings, and texts by media and cultural theorists N.
Katherine Hayles, and philosopher of technology and temporality Bernard
Stiegler.
Beth Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media with a
co-appointment in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and
Comparative
Media Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A cofounder of
the
SoundLab Cultural Alchemy project in 1995, Coleman is a practicing
artist whose
work has been internationally exhibited in contemporary art venues. She
is
currently working on the manuscript for Difference Engines.
Aliis exterendum
mark hansen
UCLA
Abstract:
Manovich finds the roots of new media in the 1830s, with the
technological
innovations of Daguerre and Babbage. During this period, statistical
societies
began to emerge in Europe and the U.S. producing an "avalanche of
numbers." The
early statisticians recognized the effect of "the law of large numbers,"
the
possibility for regular behavior in aggregates (crime rates, births,
deaths);
and even applied the normal distribution (the bell curve) to
sociological data.
These early statisticians, however, were asked to 'confine...attention
rigorously to facts...stated numerically and arranged in tables',
because
interpretation was, as declared by the motto of the London Statistical
Society,
Aliis exterendum -- to be threshed out by others. This stance did not
hold sway
for long, and statistics evolved from pure data collection to the study
of
making inferences from data; Tukey's work in the 1970's on exploratory
data
analysis asserts the statistician's role in uncovering a story in data,
and
with it, new tools for making data "expressive."
In this presentation, I will examine a series of recent works
(installations and a planned performance piece created in collaboration
with
Ben Rubin, EAR Studio) from the context of the "backend," the code that
links
observed phenomena and the narrative threads of the ultimate artworks.
These
pieces are all dynamic in character, responding in realtime to changes
in the
underlying data sources.
Mark Hansen is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of
California?Los Angeles, where he also has a joint appointment in the
Department of Design | Media Art and is affiliated with the Center for
Embedded
Networked Sensing. Prior to joining UCLA, he was a Member of the
Technical Staff
in the Statistics and Data Mining Research Department of Bell
Laboratories,
Lucent Technologies.
"A Formal Grammar for Artist-Made Game Mods"
This paper articulates a formal grammar for the genre of the artist-
made game
mod (short for "modification"). Game mods are an unusual thing, for
they seem
to contradict their very existence: When the mod rises to the level of
art,
rather than a gesture of fandom--as "Counter-Strike" was to
"Half-Life"--then,
more often then not, the game looses its ruleset completely and ceases
to be a
game after all. Jodi's "untitled game" follows this contradictory logic
when
it removes all possibility of gameplay from "Quake" and propels the
game into
fits of abstract modernism. Using Peter Wollen's seven theses on
counter-cinema
as a guide, this paper presents a new framework for
understanding game mods based on the following formal principles:
foregrounding,
aestheticism, visual artifacts, invented physics, and
non-correspondence.
Alexander R. Galloway is assistant professor in the Department of
Culture and
Communication at New York University. Galloway previously worked for
six years
at Rhizome.org. He is a founding member of the software collective RSG,
and
maker of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. The New York Times
recently
described his work as "conceptually sharp, visually compelling and
completely
attuned to the political moment." Galloway is the author of "Protocol:
How
Control Exists After Decentralization" (MIT Press, 2004). "Gaming," a
series of
essays on the aesthetics and politics of video games, will appear in
spring
2006 from University of Minnesota Press.
- --
Beth Coleman
Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media
Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies
Comparative Media Studies
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14N-221A
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
- -
+-+-+-+-+-+
Please see the following URL for the LITSCI-L archive, Web resource
links and unsubscribing info:
http://www.law.duke.edu/sls
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:11:39 +0100
From: Aline Ferreira
Subject: SUB 06: New Myths of Creation: Evolution and Its Discontents in
Atwood and Houellebecq
Abstract Paper Proposal for SLSA 2006
Maria Aline Ferreira, Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal
aline@mail.ua.pt
This can be a standalone paper or linked to Oron=20
Catts' or Valerie Hartouni's papers
"New Myths of Creation: Evolution and Its=20
Discontents in Atwood and Houellebecq"
In a cluster of recent novels the question of the=20
evolution of the human species takes centre=20
stage, a question which is inextricably linked=20
with the notion of human identity and how it=20
might be dramatically changed if human beings=20
were to undergo significant alterations, mostly=20
brought about by genetic technologies. In this=20
scenario the concept of human identity is=20
radically questioned and problematized, in ways=20
that have been addressed by for instance=20
evolutionary psychology. These issues constitute=20
the nodal points in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and=20
Crake (2003) and Michel Houellebecq'sThe=20
Possibility of an Island (2005). In the former,=20
Crake, a scientist, takes evolution into his own=20
hands, creating new (human) beings, as do the=20
scientists in Houellebecq's The Possibility of an=20
Island, thus circumventing natural evolution and=20
reshaping humanity's future. In both books, in=20
addition, new myths of creation are explicitly=20
crafted to account for these new primal scenes of=20
origin which, like Darwin's, defy the notion of=20
the Fall. In both cases, as well, women are=20
elided from the scene of creation of the new=20
beings, although they reappear in the mythical=20
origin scenes, an aspect that needs to be=20
addressed in terms of the sexual politics of new=20
reproductive technologies.
I will engage with J=FCrgen Habermas's reflections=20
on the dangers to human identity of certain=20
biotechnological developments, Peter Sloterdijk's=20
disquisitions on humanity's geneticized future as=20
well as recent work on enhancement technologies=20
and posthuman becomings.
KEYWORDS: evolution, genetics, human identity, creation myths
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 18:20:59 +0100
From: "Catherine Clinger"
Subject: SUB 06 Rodolphe Bresdin: A Picture of Cogitating Urschleim
Paper Title:=20
Rodolphe Bresdin: A Picture of Cogitating Urschleim =20
=20
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822-1885) was an artist-printmaker to whom many =
artists looked as the progenitor of the French Symbolist movement in the
=
visual arts. Jules Champfleury's novel Chien-Caillou (1845) was =
inspired in part by the life of Bresdin. As noted by the art historian
=
Meyer Shapiro, Champfleury described Bresdin as the conjurer of =
child-like, fanciful images; claiming his was a na=EFve response from =
the heart, not the mind. This reception of the artist fails to take =
into account Bresdin's very real interest in the evolutionary sciences,
=
ornithology, herpetology and botany. Many of his images appear to pay =
homage to the ornithologist John Gould or the studies of George Cuvier.
=
I will argue that the work of Bresdin is a proto-eco-critical response =
to the expeditionary voyages of his day - he is a creator of Lamarckian
=
landscapes as well as the visual synthesizer of Darwin's biological =
world. Bresdin situated his invented zoophytes in primeval marshes and
=
verdant forests imbuing them with consciousness of the kind proposed by
=
Gustav Theodor Fechner in his Elemente der Psychophysik (1860); thus his
=
work is a catachrestic reflection of generative thought. =20
=20
Key words: Symbolism, visual art, evolutionary theory, nineteenth =
century
=20
Catherine Clinger=20
Department of History of Art
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
c.clinger@ucl.ac.uk
--------------------------------------------
"Mark Schiebe"
