Language, Texts, and Technology

A blog for students in Dene Grigar's course, DTC 375 "Language, Texts and Technology"

A reminder that our exam time is on Wednesday from 1-3 in VMMC 111.

There is NO class on Monday. Any projects needing to be turned in can be done on Wednesday.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 22:21 | link | comments (1) |

DTC 375 Language Text and Technology
Final Exam Structure


Part 1. Terms
Directions: Fill in the blank with the correct term.
20 @ 2 pts. = 40

Ex.: __________ is the term used to describe work in which several forms of media are used simultaneously.


Part II. Concepts
Directions: Explain, list, or describe the concepts called for below
10 @ 2 pts. = 20

Ex.: List three of the four characteristics of the concept of “posthuman.”


Part III. Brief Questions
Directions: Answer the questions below in one or two complete statements.
10 @ 2 pts. = 20

Ex.: What is text?

Part IV. Discussion Questions
Directions: Provide a detailed essay style response to two of the three questions below.
2 @ 10 pts. = 20

Ex.: Discuss the differences between print-based and electronic mediums. Be sure to include such ideas as textuality, sensory modality, media object.


***Bonus Question: A rigorous question relating to concepts worth 10 pts.


Ex.: What is the relationship between consciousness and media art?

posted by: grigar at 01:19 | link | comments |

The three main movements or "waves" of cybernetics are

1. Homeostasis (1945-1960),

As explained by Craig Keating , Department 
of History, Simon Fraser University for H-Ideas http://kh.bu.edu/artwithbraininmind-l/0851.html


“The first wave of cybernetics, Hayles argues, coincides with what 
have become known retrospectively as the Macy Conferences. Out of 
these meetings, held between 1945 and 1954 and clearly focussed on 
the prospect of inventing intelligent machines, grew a model of 
cybernetics predicated on the notion of homeostasis. This concept, 
familiar to biologists as the capacity of living organisms to 
maintain steady states regardless of environmental changes, is 
extended in the Macy Conferences to machines through the concept of 
an informational feedback loop. Several theoretical moves as 
regards both information and humans are implied here. First, 
following the work of the Claude Shannon, whose binary theory of 
information helped launch the computer revolution, information is 
reduced to a quantifiable choice, regardless of context.”


2. Reflexivity (1960-1985)

“Second-wave cybernetics arises out of the central lacuna of its 
earlier cousin--which is to say out of questions concerning 
reflexivity. Even during the Macy Conferences the question of how 
to take into account observers as part of the system being observed 
was an issue. But it is largely ignored in favour of notions which, 
in reifiying information, simplistically resolved problems of 
engineering cybernetic devices. Yet some participants, among whom 
Gregory Bateson is arguably the most well known, would not let the 
question lie. The upshot was the notion of autopoiesis, whose 
progenitors were Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana. 
Autopoiesis goes beyond homeostasis in arguing that organisms 
respond to their environments not in any objective way (i.e. on the 
basis of what is observed "out there") but in ways encoded and 
polarized to the needs of the organism as a living system. This was 
most famously substantiated in Varela's and Maturana's experiment of 
implanting receptors in the visual cortex of a frog. From this they 
discovered that the frogs could only see rapid movement of small 
objects like flies. The conclusion they drew was that the frog does 
not observe reality but constructs it. Autopoiesis is important to 
second-wave cybernetic theory to the extent that the theoretical 
focus shifts to how the component elements of a given system work 
together to replicate that system.”

3. Virtuality (1985 to the present)

“These advances set the stage for third-wave cybernetics whose 
concern was not simply with how systems, including machines, 
replicated themselves, but with how the tendency of systems to 
reproduce themselves could serve as the "springboard to emergence" 
(11), which is to say, how systems, even non-human ones, evolve. 
This brings us to the computer generated world of virtual reality 
and Artificial Life. Artificial Life is the research program 
devoted to the construction of disembodied "organisms." Some of 
these organisms are computer programs which feedback output as input 
and use the opportunity of deviations within this looping process to 
"evolve" in new and unpredictable ways. One such program is Tierra, 
devised by Thomas S. Ray of the Santa Fe Institute (a center devoted 
to the study of Artificial Life), who has programmed in deviations 
which allow the program to develop on its own.
Another such "organism" is Genghis, a six-legged robot designed by 
MIT researcher Rodney Brooks. Moving beyond the electronic rat of 
the first-wave of cybernetics and incorporating elements of the 
autopoietic thrust of second-wave cybernetics, each leg of Genghis 
is "programmed to stabilize itself in an environment which includes 
the other five" (237). No particular movement is programmed in 
advance. There is no direct or indirect external control. At least 
theoretically, Genghis is a machine that can both think for itself 
and do without humans. The idea that to this extent Genghis might 
be considered a living organism not importantly different that a 
human being is substantiated in the comments of a leading Artificial 
Life researcher, Christopher Langton: "The p[r]inciple [sic] 
assumption made in Artificial Life is that the 'logical form' of an 
organism can be separated from its material basis of construction, 
and that 'aliveness' will be found to be a property of the former, 
not of the latter" (231).

And it is this proposition--that what is essentially characteristic 
of human beings is consciousness taken to be a form of information 
not importantly connected to its carbon-based or silicon-based 
substrates--that for Hayles, remains a disturbing constant 
throughout the three waves of cybernetics and the basis of her 
reflections on the political and philosophical consequences of the 
posthuman. Arguably more disturbing for Hayles are the literary 
texts which are grounded in cybernetics and which have allowed "the 
stories coming out of narrowly focused scientific theories to 
circulate more widely through the body politic" (21). It is through 
these works that the posthuman subject is constructed in an arguably 
more effective way. For as we become, according to Hayles, more 
like "cyborgs" in our everyday existence (i.e. in the way that we 
interact with intelligent machines and in the way that humans are 
actually articulated in physical way with intelligent machines like 
artificial joints or electronic pacemakers), cybernetic notions at 
play in popular culture (through novels like Philip K. Dick's _Do 
Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?_, its cinematic adaptation, Ridley 
Scott's _Blade Runner_, or even such sanitized popular fare as _The 
Six Million Dollar Man_) structure our experience the world and 
ourselves in a thoroughly posthuman way.
But Hayles does not see the rise of the posthuman as a necessarily 
negative development. If the disembodiment of information, the 
constitution of human consciousness as alike to information, and the 
fundamental similarity between machines and humans all "evoke. . 
.terror" by calling forth fears of our gradual dehumanization and 
the conquest of humans by machines, the notion of the posthuman also 
"excites pleasure" (4), she argues, insofar as it is fecund with the 
possibility of radical political change. The posthuman of 
cybernetics deconstructs the subject of liberal humanism by 
disrupting the notion of a self (as identity, will and agency) that 
is self-identical ("owing nothing to society" (3), in C. B. 
MacPherson's phrase) by reducing consciousness to information having 
no important relation to its material instantiation. For Hayles, 
the terrifying aspects of the posthuman derive from this notion.”

posted by: grigar at 00:30 | link | comments |

Genesis
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Eduardo_Kac_-_Genesis_-_Ars_Electronica_99.jpg
http://www.indiana.edu/~sofa/human_nature/hn.php
"A transgenic artwork that explores the intricate relationship between biology, belief systems, informatIon technology, dialogical interaction, ethics and the internet" (249).

Radio Controlled Robot
http://telematic.walkerart.org/telereal/kac_telepresence.html

The Telegarden
http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/372

Ornitorrinco
http://www.ekac.org/ornitorrincoM.html

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/albersmoholy/rooms/room2.shtm

Network Art Projects
http://societyofalgorithm.org/networktime/

Terminal Art
http://www.zakros.com/mica/wvrF01/notes/Class4/class4.html

La Plissure du Texte
http://www.intelligentagent.com/archive/Vol3_No1_bio_little.html
http://www.olats.org/fcm/textes/planeteterre2eversion.php

posted by: grigar at 00:08 | link | comments |

Week Fourteen introduces the theme of "Telepresence and Telematics," two terms you may be unfamiliar with but need to know in these days of growing mobile communications.

You should come to class today having read chapters 1 and 5 of Telepresence and Bio Art. Chapter one does a nice job laying out the field of telematics and Chapter five provides examples of telepresence. Pay special attention to the the definition of telmatics and its connection to telecommunication technologies, as well as the definition of telepresence.

The Discussion Leader for this section of our class is Lindsay Delevante

Ideas to think about before walking into class:

What makes telecommunication technologies like the phone and radio seem like a disembodied experience? What may be the impact of such an experience in our culture?

Also be prepared to define telepresence and telematic.

I will have your study guide for the final exam ready for class on Monday. Some of your projects will be graded and ready to return to you.

--Dene

posted by: grigar at 02:48 | link | comments |

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