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Week 15: 24/7

Jonathan Crary’s argument on the contemporary state of the individual within the capitalist model is altogether persuasive within the rhetoric he constructs. The persuasiveness of his arguments rests in its relevance to most of its readers for we are the consumers to which he refers. His conception of the “24/7” acts as the umbrella term to which he applies infinite consumption and all of its most relevant and destructive implications, is relatively easy to absorb, for it follows the trend of neoliberalism to both support and critique itself. As indoctrinated members of the modern age, 24/7 seems almost intuitive and formulaic in its assertions for it is aligned with the fatalistic mentality that have surrounded technological advancement since mechanization’s inception: we have been conditioned to fear, or at the very least question, technological progress.

Crary’s persuasiveness is heightened by his fear-mongering, as the individual is pitted in the a widely unacknowledged battle against the machine; pointless competition that cannot be won, because, as Crary states, the living being cannot match the efficiency of technology. Our inefficacy is placed on the shoulders of sleep, the one area that remains sanctified, untouched by the consumerist ideology. Sleep has maintained its ties to the natural rhythms that have dominated human existence for centuries, impervious to the operational demand of 24/7 capitalism. However, the technological advancements that Crary utilizes to support his claims are often hypothetical, on the verge of paranoiac.

Despite the persuasiveness of Crary’s message, I am less inclined to submit to his ideological stance, mostly because he poses no means of escape or available alternatives to the 24/7. In it essence, his these can be reduced fatalistic criticism. Without any meaningful alternative, the critique of the modern state of being and the implications of late capitalism falls flat. Furthermore, in his fatalistic endeavor, he often reduces the individual, completely stripped of any self-efficacy, power, or autonomy. If this is the case, than he envisions himself superior to the 24/7 individual in not only his ability to see through the manipulative designs of 24/7, but more importantly in his ability to rise above his constraints. However, this makes his critique worthless, for without empowerment of the individual, his claims cannot be utilized to further the rebuilding of the domination of the living being.

Weekly Response 14: Infinite Productivity But No Finished Product in the 24/7

In Jonathan Crary’s 24/7, Crary establishes the contemporary model of existence, a widespread phenomenon of suspended living. He argues that, in the search for an infinite increase in efficiency, society has undervalued sleep and associated interrupted cycles that have defined cultural rhythms for millennia. Additionally, absolute and infinite access and witness are overvalued. This is a result of a relatively recent metamorphosis in the ways time is treated and organized towards a complete mechanized reorganization of personal and social spheres to fit the uninterrupted operation of markets. In the markets wake, most of the basic human biological drives have been converted and commoditized to fit the capitalist model (besides sleep). However, this reorganization, in which living beings are treated as cogs within the network, meets it crisis point when confronted with the inescapable truth of bioderegulation: the physical incapability of humans to conform to the uninterrupted pace of the deregulated market. Yet, the wheel continues to turn as the lines between personal and professional life are blurred and the the is increasingly widespread epidemic of insomnia. This prevalence of this problem is furthered by the consumers’ relative ignorance. It could be argued that there is a widespread cultural crisis, a continued refusal to acknowledge the value of sleep as necessary for effective cognitive functioning while instead sleep is devalued in the face of consciousness, utility, and operational efficacy.

Evernote, a popular freemium productivity app, exemplifies this cultural crisis as well as the increasing desire to have complete access and efficiency. Evernote has been successful in their digital restructuring of the classic ‘notebook’ or ‘journal’, acting as a pro-consumer personal archiving system. However, I believe there success can be more largely attributed to their ability to incorporates and commodify the infinite accessibility required for contemporary functioning within the 24/7 environment by marketing themselves (and successfully functioning as) a cross-platform software; a user can open and create a ‘note’ on their smartphone, edit it on their tablet, and distribute the note to their colleagues/peers through their computer. Furthermore, notes and notebooks are compatible with a variety of digital media: a note can include anything from formatted text, webpages, photographs, annotatable attachments, voice memos, etc. The high compatibility of Evernote software is facilitated not only by the original Evernote app, but other Evernote products such as Penultimate or Stitch that allow for handwritten searchable annotations that are easily exported through the Evernote archive system.

On the Evernote homepage, their slogan clearly contextualizes the products place within its market as the “workspace for your life’s work”. Evernote not only recognizes its place within the commodified market of efficiency, but takes full advantage of the void created by the 24/7 environment, a void that humans are eagerly attempting to fulfill as the demand for human efficiency and product output only increases. This is made apparent when scrolling through their home webpage as the describe the benefit of their app within the a users daily routine. They purport that Evernote and its associated applications will “keep the physical and digital detail of your projects with you at all times”, demonstrating that Evernote creators are aware of the marketability of complete accessibility. Evernote is just one of many of the 24/7 digital access points that have arisen in the information age, yet it has become one of the most successful. It could be argued that their success is generated from their ability to take advantage of bioderegulation within the 24/7 capital scheme.

Week 11 Response: Controlling the Narrative

In Archives, Charles Merewether asserts that the narrative of archived information, of archived history, is invariable defined by the archiver. The ways on which the archive is defined is the foundation through which history is built. As a result, the archiver possesses a great deal of power; power that extends beyond the present or even the life of the historical scribe. The archived is deemed as an eternal resting place for information, solidifying its presence within collective memory. This power over the fate of posterity is wielded through the control of the archive, usually to further historical and cultural interpretations that serve the aims of the dominant culture (Merewether give the example of the census: an archival apparatus that is then utilized by the state to monitor and thus control its citizens.) Yet, despite the predominance of the archive as an immutable tool for the dominant, Merewether concludes that there are subcultural forces utilizing the archive to promote a “counter-memory”; counteracting the presumed authoritarian control of the archive through constant reinterpretation to further differing narratives.

This reclaiming of the archive through the fostering of a myriad of interpretations is the foundation of cultural postmodernism and Bourriard’s postproduction. In contrast with Merewether’s understanding of the archive, Bourriard illustrates that reactions against dominant interpretations to create divergent “counter-memory” are no longer simply culturally emergent, but are instead being integrated into the collective narrative. However, I argue that the increasing multiplicity of narratives and interpretations – fostering discourse around the limits of a single, dominant worldview – are simple simulacrums: copies that mask no underlying reality. Oliver Laric, in many ways, emphasizes the illusion that postmodernism provides of diversity in perspective. For example, that narrating voice behind Versions 2009 expounds ““same, same, but different, the multiverse is composed of a quantum superposition of infinitely many, increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes.” While these non-communicating perspectives do differ from their original, the promotion of an oppositional viewing is (usually) merely a façade.

This is because, for the most part, oppositional viewings are proposed through the language of the dominant, and thus further the aims of the dominant culture. Postmodernism, postproduction, and the associated DIY culture seemingly react against the disenfranchisement of the many and consequently increase the archival power of the individual. Yet, the increased self-efficacy of the individual does not come at the expense of ruling ideology; “multiplication of an icon far from diluting its cultic power, rather increases its fame and each image, however imperfect, conventionally partakes in some portion of the properties of the precursor. (Laric, 2010)”

Week 8: The Everyday Cyborg

According to Haraway, a cyborg is a “hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.” Following Haraway’s definition, cyborgs dominate humanity. Especially if this definition is extended beyond the common conception of cyborgs provided by mainstream media: of human beings who have been inseparably attached to mechanical parts. Modernity has provided a more subtle and seamless conception of cyborg entities, of beings whose senses, perceptions, and abilities are extended beyond their original, biological capabilities. While this definition can be easily applied to our ever-increasing interactions with digital and electronic media – the Internet, cell phones – and utilizing these technological innovations to extend the human spatio-temporal scope. Cell phones, for example, allow us to be anywhere at anytime, even if this presence is not necessarily physical. However, this definition lacks specificity in that it can include any technological innovation that expanded human capability in the history of man.

The possibilities for cyborg technology are becoming more mainstream and less detachable from the human experience. With the inception of wearable technology, such as the Apple Watch and the Samsung Watch, contemporary society is becoming more and more like the world described in Gibson’s Neuromancer, where attachment to an external shared consciousness is so accessible that it becomes seamlessly integrated into daily human experience. Furthermore, attachment to this external consciousness is a symbol of status and power. Contrastingly, detachment from this external consciousness disenfranchises the individual within the system they exist, leaving them at an extreme disadvantage.

Week 7: Reevaluating Hayles’ Oppositional Electronic Literature and its Integration into the Mainstream

In Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary Book, Katherine Hayles identifies the core characteristic of electronic literature, defined almost solely based in its opposition to its cultural ancestor: “literature proper”. According to Hayles and her academic coterie, Electronic literature, in its binary opposition to literature proper, conceptually excludes print media that has later been digitized. It is instead “digital born”: the term can solely applied to first generation digital publications (3, Hayles).

To Hayles, the concept of electronic literature is somewhat avant-garde; niche and fringe in its cultural practice. Furthermore, in her book,electronic literature is implicitly attributed as a marker of the threat of media revolution, that “the place of writing is again in turmoil, roiled now not by the invention of print books but the emergence of electronic literature” (2, Hayles). In many respects, the threat of media revolution is not a revolutionary assertion, for it is apparent even to the unassuming eye that the mass media powerhouses of the past are being replaced by the new. However, while the technological methods of past media are dying, the vestiges of print media remain. Hayles addresses, stating that “readers approach digital work with expectations formed by print”, I disagree with Hayles assertions that the separation between electronic literature and literature proper is becoming more and more distinct (4, Hayles). On the contrary, the old media paragons are not simply allowing electronic literature to take over, but instead recognizing the threat of created by digital technology and adapting to the digital presence.

An example of this absorption of electronic literature into the media mainstream is the award-winning article, Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek. This interactive and multimedia article was written by New York Times columnist, John Branch, and published on the online edition in 2012. The article is an extensive chronicle of the 2012 Cascade Mountain avalanche. The avalanche, in particular, got a lot of media attention because it was triggered by sixteen of the best skiers and snowboarders in the country. Snow Fall follows the story of the avalanche through the eyes and narratives of these sixteen men and women. However, it does so in a very untraditional manner.

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek

The New York Times is an iconic media source, and despite its entrenched association with tradition and old media, it has been able to weather the impending threat of digital mass media. This is not simply due to its iconic status (although status must be a major contributor). Instead, the success of the Times must be attributed in their ability to adapt to changes in medium, and Snow Fall is a perfect example of this adaptation. This six-part article maintains the vestigial formula of text heavy, linear narrative structures. However, it follows many of the core tenets that Hayles identifies for electronic literature, most notably that there are many aspects to this piece that are interactive and “cannot proceed without input from the user” (8, Hayles). Hayles describes the ‘playable space’ that electronic, interactive literature provides, breaking from the solely linear and stable narrative. Snow Falls capitalizes on the consumers need for a multidimensional knowledge experience, in that the modern consumer no longer relies on solely textual formats to provide information, as well as relying on input from the user in order for the narrative to continue.

Hayles prophesized that electronic literature would “likely be experienced only by relatively few users” due to the comparatively inaccessible nature of the medium “thus sacrificing the portability, low cost, robust durability, and mass distribution that made print literature a transformative social and cultural force” (14, Hayles). However, the Times’ integration of electronic literature into the practices of literature proper disproves Hayles’ assertion, demonstrating that electronic literature is becoming the norm for information dissemination.

Week 5: Utopia and Technology- Utopia Through Architectural Intervention

In contemporary western culture, the dystopian genre has permeated popular culture and entertainment. Many see this relatively newfound obsession with the dystopian as not only a means to reflect on contemporary issues, but simultaneously allow the imagination to envision a method of escape from the same contemporary concerns. The dystopian genre’s widespread pervasiveness in popular culture reveals a general fatalistic attitude in our world-wide trajectory. The dominant worldview is that the technological advances of the industrial and post-industrial eras have created a form of seemingly unstoppable and infinite progression that has come at the expense of our global depreciation. To many, the forces that act to produce western culture seem fixed, and as a result, the future seems bleak. But there is a collective group of artists and architects that resist this defeatist acceptance of biological and cultural degradation.

The Neo-Futurism is a movement spawned by architects and art critics in the 1970′s, whose members are driven by a desire to act against this fatalistic attitude toward technological progression. Born out of the early avant-garde Italian Futurists, the Neo-Futurists are acting in intentional resistance of the predominant skepticism associated with the post-modern way of thinking. Hal Foster, American art critic and the movement’s supposed founder, states that “belief in the omnipotence of technology is the specific form of bourgeois ideology in late capitalism. Belief in the omnipotence of technology: either total faith or total fatalism, either commitment or resignation to its totalitarian logic. Both these positions must be rejected” (Foster, 26). The Neo-Futurists believe that this “total fatalism” or “historic determinism” predominant in western contemporary culture can only be usurped with the implementation of a widespread public and private project that combines heavy industry with high technology (Foster, 27). This project is an architectural movements attempt at utopia, in many ways moving against the prevailing techno-logic inherent in the California Ideology and Nelson’s Computer Lib/Dream Machine where the individual reigns over the collective and self-motivation is key to humanistic progression.

The architectural practice of the Neo-Futurists is connected to their positive future ideology. In many ways, the Neo-Futurist understanding of the future and utopia is centered on the concept that present technological advances do not inherently cause destruction, but cause destruction because they are being utilized with the mistaken creative intention. They have many core tenets described in Vito Di Bari’s Neo-Futurist City Manifesto, but all their tenets are elaboration on their core practice: “the cross-pollination of art, cutting edge technologies and ethical values combined to create a pervasively higher quality of life” (Di Bari, 1).

Foster, Hal. "Neo-Futurism: Architecture and Technology." AA Files No. 14 (1987): pp. 25-27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29543561

Vito Di Bari, The Neo-Futurist City Manifesto, 2007 http://neo-futurism.com/Brochure_ManifestoFuturismo.pdf

Week 3 Response: Mass Media - Beyond the Digital

Colloquially, “mass media” has developed into a representational manifestation of the modern flat world, a social amenity provided by industrial and digital advances. According to John Durham Peters, such a view of mass communication reduces its existence to the modern, following the recent trend of media and cultural studies towards ahistorical analysis. The colloquial view of mass communication is residual from the concept of “classical broadcasting”: a form of mass media that dominated the mid twentieth century’s public spheres of communication where audiences were both nationally massive and spatiotemporally unified. Despite the conceptual salience of this understanding of mass media in contemporary culture, in actuality, the concept is no longer descriptive of the present’s popular media tendencies nor does it do justice to the forms of mass media that came before classical broadcasting’s inception.

Peters opposes this reductionist view, arguing that, in many ways, all communication is mass communication. He agues that there is an ‘indefinite address in any signifying practice” (274) due the sign’s inherently communicable and translatable nature. As a result, almost any communication can be received by an external receiver, even if the specific receiver was unintended by the agent. Consequently, classical broadcasting is only one of many forms of mass communication.

Furthermore, in spite of the dominant belief that the communicating abilities stemming from the commercialization and popularization of Internet usage are inherently modern, Peters demonstrates that the communicable tendencies of the Internet are more aligned with a more archaic and pre-industrial media logic. A contemporary view of mass media revolves around the principles of scale and spontaneity as markers of modernity. The Internet most certainly promises to align itself with the focal points of modern media through both a widespread knowledge base as well as immediate access to that knowledge. It historical roots, however, are not in its potential for user access to media but its method of user access: the method by which receivers receive media information. The Internet follows a historical trend set by ancient rhetoricians and prophets of mass audiences accessing a singular message, yet spread out over time. “One Web ‘site’ may accumulate millions of hits (‘visits’), but each hit occurs at the private pleasure of an individual user at his or her terminal”(273).

http://www.iterature.com/human-browser/en/

The ‘Human Browser’ is an artistic example of mass media defying its typified form. The ‘Human Browser’ was a conceptual art project, where a “human being embodies the World Wide Web” (Bruno, 2001). This piece involves a performance artist wearing a headset through which the actor hears text-to-speech audio that comes directly from the Internet in real time. The actor repeats the text as they hear it. An unintended result of this new media art piece is that it defies the spatiotemporal distance implied by representational mass media, actually facilitating peer-to-peer communication within the context of mass addressed media.

In terms of Media studies, mass media’s relevancy cannot be underestimated, for according to John Durham Peters, it has become the basis for almost all human interaction and communication, even outside of the digital scope.

Week 2 Response: The Collapse of Futurism in the Prevailing Age of Mechanical Reproduction

In their manifesto, the Futurists proclaimed themselves fed up with the ways of the past. That the traditions that have plagued Europe and European culture have allowed for widespread apathy among its people, halting progression in its wake. From the Futurist perspective, progression and revolution were being starved by the ‘traditional stars’, an oppressive force which could only be defeated by an aggressive force: “the sun’s red sword, slashing for the first time in [their] millennial gloom” (Marinetti). In many ways this aggressive revolt against the traditions of the past was anti-academic. To the Italian Futurists, academia was a study of the past, a stoic study of death that undermined the Futurist quest for vitality and infinite progress. Along this vein, museums were shrines to the past, repositories for the stagnant and lifeless. Disillusioned with this traditional mindset that seemingly plagued Europe, the Futurist fought to “break out of the horrible shell of wisdom… and give [themselves] utterly to the Unknown” (Marinetti).

If confronted with Benjamin’s concept of the ‘aura’, the Futurists would proclaim themselves against its veneration. (Not that Benjamin is necessarily for or against the ritualization of the aura, merely revealing that the prescription of an object’s aura is arbitrarily founded on human historical values). From their ideological viewpoint, the ‘aura’ and any ‘unique existence’ of art is substantiated in a historical mindset in which both authenticity and value are prescribed based on a combination of rarity, authorship, and situational context. To the Futurist, authorship is somewhat meaningless, for those who fight for progression in the present will consistently and continuously be overthrown by their more youthful successors. The Futurists would further resist the veneration of aura because of its reliance on a capitalist belief: that an object’s value is established by its value in an economic market, which in turn is founded on the object’s relationship to the original.

Despite their efforts, the Futurist mentality has not prevailed. While mechanical/technical reproduction has somewhat seamlessly been integrated into contemporary culture, the assigning of commodity value has not distanced itself from the aura and unique existence of an object. If anything, reproduction has called attention to the seeming irreplaceable quality of an original work of art. For example, in the time of the old masters, reproduction of canonical works was encouraged by artists in order to promote widespread dissemination of their work. Presently, reproduced works (especially mechanically reproduced works) are not only considered less valuable than their original, but their value is solely defined by their relationship to the original. While Benjamin’s arguments are of a somewhat dated nature, they continue to be applicable to the 21st century cultural mindset.

- Cecelia Visscher

Week 1 Response: Gere’s Digital Culture & Semiotic Discordance in the Age of Mass Surveillance

Throughout Gere’s historical recount of the inception of digital culture, he links the rise of digital culture to the separation of the signifier from the signified, whether this be in reference to commodity or the individual acting within the commodity capitalist environment. Furthermore, this separation of the signifier and the signified is an unintentional response to the resulting anxiety surrounding the “crisis of control” (35). In an effort to end the chaos stemmed from an overwhelming amount of information, digital technology was applied as a solution. Gere describes the combined effort of the railways and the telegraph to transform the national economic system into a more controlled and coordinated global market. The change in economic landscape created a system where information was traded in the stead of goods.

“What was traded was information rather than actual products. To begin with this meant the ware- house receipts from grain elevators along the railroad line, which were traded instead of the grain itself. In order to facilitate this kind of trade, products had to be standardized and homogenized so that they could be bought and sold without inspection. Cary continues to suggest that this process of divorcing the receipt from the product can be thought of as ‘part of a general process initiated by the use of money . . . the progressive divorce of the signifier from the signified, a process in which the world of signifiers progressively overwhelms and moves independently of real material objects’.” (36)

Gere also indicated that the understanding of the individual was similarly separated from its signifier. No longer intangibly nuanced, the individual was transformed to fit into the mass society landscape, represented as numeric and symbolic abstractions. In an effort towards control a system was adopted that simulates the “panoptic society described by Foucault. Within his system people are made visible as pieces of digital data. They are individuals, but their individuality is rationalized and normalized in a system of signs that also homogenizes them as a mass, and makes them interchangeable and manipulable as data.” (42)

http://rhizome.org/artbase/artwork/57153/?ref=search_title

Andre Blanton’s exhibition Panoptics makes visible the otherwise invisible panoptic landscape, where the individual’s are equalized numerically to be more easily surveilled and controlled. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the individual’s separation from personhood towards a more data centralized condition allows the individual to be disconnected from physical reality in order to be abstracted.

While the surveillance, disciplinary, and symbolic based society that Foucoult and Gere described (and Blanton depicts) still exists, recent developments in digital technology have allowed for resistance, and the reemergence of the individual. This is made most visible in individuals’ use of digital technology to reflect a panoptical view onto those who typically have the power to surveil. The result is an ability to resist against those who utilize the majority of power within contemporary capitalism’s asymmetrical power distribution: groups that have the ability to use panoptic surveillance on a mass scale. Examples would be the use of handheld video devices that have recorded police brutality in order to resist the status-quo (e.g. the recorded video of Eric Garner’s murder, recording of police assault on Rodney King).

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