Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Julia Kristeva Rap
A musical rendering of the philosophies of psychoanalyst and theorist Julia Kristeva. Composed & performed by Mark Fullmer http://markfullmer.com
The Dancing Floor
The Dancing Floor Sarah J. Arroyo and Bahareh Alaei California State University Long Beach
Presented at the MLA Convention in Seattle in January 2012.
This installation features the ancient concept of "chora" and connects it to practices located in the culture inspired by online video sharing. We riff on chora's pre-Platonic connection to both a "dance" and a "dancing floor."
From Stasis to Chora
The first section introduces choric invention by turning to Roland Barthes's famous explication of the "punctum of recognition" one feels when looking at certain photographs. We transfer the concept to moving images to show how the experience becomes intensified when video can trigger simultaneous, multiple punctums, which in turn set off multiple inventions. Choric invention does not offer a set of pre-established procedures; it creates a network in which to feel an invention that is both sparked by a punctum and remembered by the body (Ulmer).
Thomas Rickert revisits the work of Plato, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Ulmer to present chora as a complex ecology for rhetorical invention. Rickert traces chora through Derrida's idea that choric "invention may inhabit a paradoxical or impossible place within rhetoric, precisely because of its always-ongoing withdrawal" ("Towards the Chora" 265). The second section of this installation attempts to visually capture these moments of ongoing withdrawal.
YouTube as Chora
We then turn to specific practices found on the video sharing site YouTube to show how YouTube's archive evokes a choral space, folding time and space in and out of the platform. "Lisztomania," a pop song that has inspired groups around the world to engage in acts of choric invention, is also a term describing "Liszt fever," an affliction dating back to the 1840s that triggered intense levels of hysteria in fans of composer Franz Liszt. We connect choric invention to the act of social remix, a process whereby one remix inspires participants to invent similar remixes, which contain nuanced, different content and, thus, divergent lines of communication.
We conclude by riffing on the "dance" metaphorically to show how the interactions taking place on YouTube are both intricate dances among participants and publically violent acts that enact both playful and serious consequences both on and off line. Acts of responding, repurposing, and reposting make YouTube's wild archive something that cannot be tamed but can inspire participatory acts of innovation that would otherwise remain hidden.
Works Cited
Arroyo, Sarah J. Participatory Composition: New Practices for Writing in Electracy. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012 (forthcoming). Print.
Carter, Geoffrey V. and Sarah J. Arroyo. "Tubing the Future: Participatory Pedagogy and YouTube U in 2020.Computers and Composition 28.4 (December 2011): 292 --302. Web.
Rickert, Thomas. "Towards the Chora: Kristeva, Derrida, and Ulmer on Emplaced Invention." Philosophy and Rhetoric 40.3 (2007): 251--73. Print.
Ulmer, Gregory. Heuretics. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Print.
Fredric Jameson's The Political Unconscious Introduction
A very short introduction to some of the main concepts of Fredric Jameson's the Political Unconscious
China Bans Tiananmen Searches on Anniversary of Protests
From Mashable:
Banned terms include “six four,” “23,” “candle” and “never forget,” according to the BBC. Sina Weibo has even blocked users from using a candle emoticon as it’s considered a symbol of mourning. When Weibo users started using an Olympic flame symbol as a work-around, Weibo blocked that as well.
See also:
Picture Post: Thousands mourn victims of Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong candle-lit vigil
Record turnout for June 4 vigil
Tahrir overview 18.30
Ahli Ultras are on the bridge coming towards the Square and the Square has filled up and still there are other marches on the way
Eugene Polley, Inventor of the First Wireless TV Remote Control, Has Died
Polley bagan his career in 1935 working for Zenith Radio Corporation (now Zenith Electronics, a subsidiary of LG Electronics). In 1955, he introduced the world to the first-ever wireless TV remote control, the "Flash-Matic," which changed channels on a TV set using a photo-cell activating flashlight-like device. The Flash-Matic was temperamental, requiring precise angling to successfully work, but its arrival was a huge advancement from Zenith's first TV remote, a device called—no kidding—the "Lazy Bones," which was connected to the TV set by an umbilical-like wire cord.
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The Island President (2011), Trailer
The Island President tells the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, a man confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced--the literal survival of his country and everyone in it.
Cleaning Up Radiation and Radioactive Fallout With Sunflowers
The engineers who grew them in a pond one kilometer from the crippled Chernobyl nuclear plant ─ an area often called the most radioactive spot on Earth ─ are excited about the possibilities. That’s because this patch of sunflowers marks the first successful field demonstration using terrestrial plants for removing radionuclides from contaminated water, a process known as rhizofiltration. "The results we have seen at this site, as well as a field test in Ohio, suggest that many radionuclides can be substantially or completely removed from water using rhizofiltration ,” says Burt Ensley, president and CED of Phytotech, a Monmouth Junction, New Jersey-based environmental biotechnology firm.
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