rhetoric, writing, and technology

Intimate Tool

Ah to skim blogs again. I really should be working on my book right now but . . . Found this over at jill/txt: a little blurb on a test run of her Hypertext '05 presentation. I like the link back to V.Bush calling the memex an "intimate supplement to his memory." The odd thing about blogs, as she notes, is that this intimacy has become a really interesting example of extimacy. It brings to mind some of the classic MOO arguments about identity. There is something about the medium that strips away the more formal social barriers we carry around daily. I really think it is possible to like a person f2f but hate him/her online.

Posted by: bhawk at 20:19 | link | comments
thoughts, links, new media

Mapping

Got this link to Cmap from Collin (who seemingly knows everything!). I'm a ridiculously visual learner so I want to download this (or a program like it) when I get a chance. I'm getting fond of server-side software though, so I might keep an eye out for that.

Posted by: bhawk at 20:00 | link | comments
links

Blogtalk

Just a quick link to the Blogtalk Downunder conference blog. Looks like there is some worthwhile stuff to go back to such as this list of 10 things learned at the conference or this link to all the eletronically published conference papers. Also got this cool link to a Wired article on The Long Tail from Adrian's blog. It's nice to be able to start keeping up with blogs again.

Posted by: bhawk at 19:12 | link | comments
links, blogging, new media

Commonplaces

It's been nice to read whatever lately. Got a copy of the recent edited collection The Realms of Rhetoric and started checking it out. In Walter Jost's article "The Logos of Techne" he discusses the importance of the topics or commonplaces in a refigured rhetoric education. Here's a cut:

The aim, in other words, is not mastery of a body of knowledge or specialist expertise but rather the ability to indentify topoi for inquiry and argument pertinent to any problem and to judge claims and appeals spun from them. If we want a graphic metaphor for this sort of education, it is difficult to find one better suited than the Internet (Bromwich uses "network"), whose "Websites" are loci or topoi for thought, and in which "inter-connection" of these loci is the watchword. (18)

This is precisely what Ulmer is doing with mystory in Internet Invention. We talked a lot about this in the last 611 class. What Ulmer is doing to trying to get students to start building their own commonplaces for their particular situations, their histories and their particular purposes (individual futures or community problems). I think in the next 611 I'll try to set this up more with some more discussion of the classical commonplaces early in the semester.

Posted by: bhawk at 08:20 | link | comments
quotes, thoughts, rhetoric, new media

Lovejoy

I'm working on revising the book's introduction, which is all about historiography, and I've been going back through Arthur Lovejoy's stuff on the history of ideas. I really dig a lot of this kind of stuff from mid-century (been into Isaiah Berlin a bit lately too). The thing I like about Lovejoy's historiography is that it is fundamentally rhetorical. He wants to break things down into their component unit-ideas and trace them across time periods and disciplinary categories. A little like comparative literature for philosophy. His list of types of unit-ideas in the intro to The Great Chain of Being reads like traditional rhetoric. Here's my take on them:

• Value assumptions: assumptions or unconscious mental habits that, for example, lend one to think in terms of categories or assume simplicity over complexity—assumptions so broad that they influence thought on a variety of subjects.

• Rhetorical or logical moves: dialectical motives, turns of reasoning, tricks of logic, or methodological assumptions such as the reduction of generalities to specifics (enlightenment nominalism) or assuming the essentiality of complex relations (romantic organicism).

• Pathos appeals: underlying assumptions that persuade readers to identify with them at the level of affect, association, or mood, such as appeals to the sublime (Kant, Heidegger), the mysterious (Hegel, Schelling, Bergson), the universal (Plato, Shelley), or oneness (Spinoza Fichte, James).

• Associations of ideas: a key term or phrase in a period or movement, such as nature in the romantic period, whose multiple meanings and ambiguities across various texts and thinkers greatly influence the development or transformation of doctrines.

• Propositions or principles: a foundational idea that seeks to "answer a philosophical question which it was natural for man to ask" (14), such as "the great chain of being," which has a natural or logical affinity for connecting with other principles in disparate philosophies or periods.

What I also like is that he really emphasizes intertextuality and affect. These are some things that I think we've sort of lost sight of. Probably more on this kind of thing as I progress.

Posted by: bhawk at 10:35 | link | comments (2)
responses, rhetoric, vitalism

Noise

Now that the semester is finally over I've found some head space to start working. Been reading a cool book: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts, by Douglas Kahn. Here's a couple of choice cuts:

Indeed the specter of noise—that is, the rhetoric of all those raucous associations and figurative expressions that arise once the idea of noise is invoked—can both mimic the complexes of meaning at the empirical roots of significant sounds and make an actual audible event called noise louder than it might already be. (20)

And shortly thereafter,

Noise in the avant-garde was linked to the sounds of military combat, the specter and incursion of technology and industrialism, the forms of popular culture and public demonstrations, nature and the sounds of other species, religious and occult activities, psychosis and drug-induced experiences, the music and languages of cultures outside reigning cultures of European society, and the sounds of the domestic sphere gendered female in contrast to the male face of the noisy parts of the avant-garde. (21)

What Kahn is doing, knowingly or unknowingly, is establishing the back story for industrial, techno, and hip hop music of the past twenty years and showing its beginnings in the twentieth century. The thing I like about the book so far, in addition to his focus on technologies such as the phonograph and radio, is that he is both recognizing the rhetorical operations of sound, the fact that noise can carry meaning, but also the bodily, affective operations of sound as a part of its contribution to the arts.

I'm reading a little into the book since I have just started it, but this is the impression I get. It all fits nicely into the re/mix stuff but also should give me some ideas for the media project I'm trying to flesh out.

Posted by: bhawk at 10:47 | link | comments (3)
music, quotes, thoughts, theory, new media

Penguin Remix

As technologies expand, remix culture is becoming more predominant. Penguin audio books in the UK is having a remix contest. They let people download samples from audio books, remix them, add music, and upload them to their site for a best remix contest. Combine this with what Trent is doing, all the work by Lessig, the popularity of DJ Spooky, and it all starts adding up. If the technology makes a practice possible, people will practice it.

Posted by: bhawk at 08:27 | link | comments
thoughts, links, new media

Podcasting Tutorial

Via PodChef, a tutorial for podcasting from David Passmore.

Posted by: bhawk at 21:04 | link | comments
links

Web/Dev

From Johndan, a link to a nice site on web development.

Posted by: bhawk at 19:34 | link | comments
links

NIN Remix

Thanks to Collin for this tip: Trent Rezner has made his first single "The Hands that Feed" availble in Garage Band format so fans can do simple remixes of the song. (Garage Band is a music program that comes stock on Macs.) I downloaded it in my office on my new G5 and started playing around with it. I think I'm going to work on a remix and use it as the basis for a little iMovie I'm planning to do. See http://nin.com/current/ 4_15_05

Posted by: bhawk at 18:17 | link | comments (2)
music, thoughts, links, new media

Movie/Contest

Cool QT movie web installation art thing: Crying While Eating

Blurb on NPR with some related links: Contageous Media Contest

Posted by: bhawk at 12:31 | link | comments
links, new media

cellphone vs PDA

A short article from the Post with some interesting numbers: PDAs Keep Losing Ground to Smart Phones.

Posted by: bhawk at 11:23 | link | comments
links

Artists' Books at Mason

Thought some of you might be interested in this since we talked about it this semester. I'll probably try to catch the reception tonight.

"Ex-Libris: A Collection of Student Artists’ Books"

Students currently enrolled in AVT 395: Writing for Artists and in last semester’s ENGL497: Digital Poetry are exhibiting their treated books in the Alcove Gallery (the second floor of the Fine Arts Building) from Monday, May 9th through Monday, May 23rd.

There will be an opening reception on Monday, May 9th from 5-7 PM. Brad Freeman, the editor of the Journal of Artist Books (JAB) and a visiting instructor for AVT 395, will be presenting some of his treated books as well.

Posted by: bhawk at 08:17 | link | comments
announcements

Blog Revolt

Here's an interesting article from the NYT: At Los Alamos, Blogging Their Discontent.

Posted by: bhawk at 14:08 | link | comments
links, blogging