Reaction to "The Ecstacy of Influence" by Jonathan Lethem

Saturday night, my boyfriend and I were driving north on 57, attempting to get home for a family celebration. Instead, we found ourselves flung 30 yards off the roadside, with a tree trunk 2 ft into the back of his car. This was by far the closest experience I've had to death. However, during the two full spins and what seemed like hours of sliding, all I remember thinking about was a mix of the muddy car scene in Jurassic Park with the "let go" crash from Fight club. I didn't even realize how frightened I was until stepping out of the car. While reading Lethem's article, I felt a little indignant that I didn't experience that car crash as my own. For god's sake, I was thinking about a movie! Lethem addresses the concept of original source. I often find myself wondering, when writing or sketching, if I read or saw what I am working on somewhere else. There are only so many human experiences to draw from. Re appropriation and remixing is as common as "original" work anymore. I love Lethem's conclusion: "Today, when we can eat Tex-Mex with chop sticks while listening to reagge and watching a YouTube rebroadcast of the Berlin Wall's fall--i.e. when damn near everything presents itself as familiar--it's not asurprise that some of today's most ambitious art is going about trying to make the familiar strange. In so doing, in reimagining what human life might truly be like over there across the chasms of illusion, mediation, demographics, marketing, imago, and appearance, artists are paradoxically trying to restore what's taken for "real" to three whole dimensions, to reconstruct a univocally round world our of disparate streams of flat sights." I often find myself trying to push my experiences, separate myself from media, and record something uniquely mine and completely whole. I think this is a reaction to the impossibility of unmediated experience.

Reaction to "Rebirth of a Nation" by Paul D. Miller

I really had a hard time deciphering DJ Spooky's remix of "Birth of a Nation." I wiki-ed D. W. Griffith's 1915 white supremacist film. To be perfectly honest, I didn't feel that Miller made any interesting point with the remix, that I could understand, and I found his notes very frustrating and indirect. The only line I really could relate to what I saw was "But if you compare that kind of flux to stuff to DJ mixes, you can see a similar logic at work: it's all about selection of song as narrative." Griffith's original film used a very strong story/narrative to make a political statement with a strong emotional appeal. By telling a story, Griffith makes his audience empathize with the victimized white characters and celebrate the heroic ones. I guess this relates to DJing? Telling a story with the mixing of different songs? Miller connects his work with montage. Which makes sense. I really don't know what else to say. I didn't really appreciate it.

Reactions to "The Body and the Archive" by Alan Seluka

I have a feeling I did not fully understand the entirety of Sekula's essay. This may show significant misinterpretation, but I would summarize Seluka's thesis as such: The introduction of photography began an exact documentation of human bodies/physiological features, that provided "the man" with further evidence to categorize society, based on these features, into a social and ethnic taxonomy. As in, photographs of Chinese farmers could be dissected into thousands of implications of "Orientalism," low income, and subservience in Western eyes. Or the image of a man beside a woman could demonstrate his superior strength by examination of his height, muscle mass, and posture. I guess, if this is a correct interpretation, I can agree with Seluka as much as the camera accelerated this already existent taxonomy. This whole essay made me think of the 16th century Casta paintings that came out of the Spanish conquest of South America. In fact, I believe you showed one in class. These existed far before the invention of the camera, but definitely highlights European interest in ethnography and social taxonomy. My boyfriend, who is Peruvian, has told me that, to this day, you can see remnants of this social categorization, where the lighter skinned generally hold higher-paying jobs. I guess the point could be made, that Casta paintings were very similar to the inexistent world of photography, as they were pictorial documentation of people's bodies, with as much "scientific accuracy" as possible. The camera is a very powerful tool, in that it holds this status of "scientifically accurate," however, I think the power of photography dwindles everyday with the accelarating pervasiveness of photoshop and special effects. However, a perfect example of this is fashion publications for women. While we know perfectly well that the pictures we see of Kate Moss and Keira Knightly have been airbrushed and altered, we cannot help but to disect ourselves in comparison to these images. We lift "signs" of beauty, such as slimness, clean skin, large eyes, and shiny hair, despite the fact that half these things have been artificially created. We know the photograph is not "scientifically accurate" but its power still holds. It would be odd to find a woman comparing herself to a contemporary painting, because the media does not claim accuracy.

Reactions to "What is a Sign?" by Charles Peirce

The tone that Charles Peirce uses really dates the article. It definitely seems like the analysis of a far simple culture, and body of information than today's world. He breaks all of "human interest" into three levels: primary [interest in the a thing in and of itself], secondary [interest in a thing in relation to other things], and mediatory [interest in a thing as a representation]. First of all I do not think this a very linear progression. Second I don't think it encompasses all of the many cognitive relationships we have with our environment. Peirce continues to separate signs into a somewhat corresponding three groups: likenesses [or icons], indications, and symbols. The catagory that is the least consistent and logical, to me, is the indices. What does that mean? His example was a guide post, which is a physical thing and not well related to the world of images. He then continues to say that "pictures alone--pure likenesses--can never convey the slightest information." Ok, lets look at his zebra example. He states that equating a zebra to a donkey as a symbol of stubbornness is an application of likeness. Tell me how that is "no information" whatsoever. I would say, using his own incomplete formula, that the analysis would go like this. As you perceive a zebra, you already have the perception of a donkey in your mind [a likeness]. The shape of the animal indicates [indice, obviously] that the zebra relates to the donkey. You associate the image of a donkey with the animal's stubborn nature, and that correlation is a third-level symbolic/representative level of cognition. But instead he delivers a shit-awful jumble of random information. Personally, I think his theory leaves out many important factors in how we think about images. I guess personal taste and customs can be learned, but I don't think they would fit in the same pattern of logic. What about all the things we learn by way of community. For example, when we are little, and our brains are most active, we will put anything into our mouths, regardless of association to things we have eaten before. We learn on a case-by-case basis. Then our parents instruct us on what is good and bad for our bodies. That lingual learning formula is far more complicated than perception, indication, rule. Anyway, it was an interesting article.

Reaction to "Pictures for Rent" by Abbot Miller

I have a friend whose father-in-law is a stock photographer. I remember her showing me teen devotionals and family planners featuring her and her husband and kids at various ages. It is just kind of odd looking at people you know posed in "stereotypical" life situations.

I thought Abbot's definition of the word "stereotype" and its historical link to the stereoscope made for an interesting opening to this discussion of stock photography. I think it is ironic that the stereoscope used optics to imitate depth while the current psychological term "stereotype" denotes a certain amount of superficiality to our understanding and categorization of life.

While the article discussed the quaintness of stock photography from the fifties, I couldn't help but to picture those silly greeting cards and calenders that re appropriate fifties advertisements to outrageous comics with feminist messages. The housewife in a pinched-waist dress, presenting a fully frosted cake under injected typewriter script "My cakes kick ass." I just think its amusing how clearly stock photography chronicles the values of the time and place it comes from. In today's culture, that simple cake mix advertisement brings up gender role, race, and class issues, while it would have been read simply as an advertisement in the fifties. In the political realm, location also affects the image literacy. I'm sure Japanese news photography looked very different than American recording the same events during WWII.

Abbot broke stock photography down into that meant for commercial use and that intended for news broadcast. Both intended to generate an instant reaction in mass viewing that coincides with the publishers intentions. I liked this quote:

"The striving for clarity and legibility (in both formal and conceptual terms) unites the products of stock photo agencies, whether they are artfully blurred still-lives or sharply focussed portraits."

Stock photography must be easily read, otherwise it is useless. Which is what separates it from artistic photography. It must be current or its targets will not relate to the subjects and style. It must be obvious and intentional. Which is what makes it so fascinating and hysterical once it is past its prime.

Reactions to "Semiotics for Beginners" and "Exploring Language"

The conventions of codes represent a social dimension in semiotics: a code is a set of practices familiar to users of the medium operating within a broad cultural framework. Indeed, as Stuart Hall puts it, 'there is no intelligible discourse without the operation of a code' (Hall 1980, 131). Society itself depends on the existence of such signifying systems.

Daniel Chandler's introduction to semiotics actually brought me directly back to my thoughts on Jeff's icon project. I felt at the time that he had jumped the gun and headed straight into the swamp of signal/sign interpretation. Even in an attempt to create the simplest set of "objective statements," he had not avoided a great deal of interpretation. Jeff's suggestion that his system be used in some non-earth realm seemed comically appropriate while reading Ernst Gombrich's commentary on the somewhat silly depiction of humanity found on the pioneer 10. Beyond the very rod/cone/light/eyeball level of it all, there is a whole deeply complex Gestault visual interpretation. One step further and you find yourself still relying on a mostly universal understanding of visual hierarchy, the language of perspective, and linear thought. Add cultural connotation, and I guess it makes communication with anyone other than ourselves seem muddled and difficult.


"Sign" is a broad term that includes visual symbols, conventional gestures, and other types of non-verbal communication, as well as words. When we recognize a sign - by eye or ear - we recognize both its pattern and its meaning.

Any piece of sense information can be a sign I suppose. Are all pieces of sense information a sign, if they have been experienced at least one time before?

Reactions to "Constructing the Swastika," "The Language of Dreams," and "Modern Hieroglyphs"

It seems pretty wild to me that such a simple little marking can trigger all of the horrific images of bodies and concentration camps that we have ever been shown in school. The swastika is a far more emotionally powerful illustration than the documenting photos themselves. I guess it makes me wonder about the basic design to the swastika; as in, could any other symbol have retained such visual command, provided the history of World War II remained the same? Can any mark obtain such power with repetition and pervasiveness? My grandfather owns a wonderful, very old collection of Rudyard Kipling books. I remember the first time I realized the symbol embossed on their leather binding was a swastika. Horrified, I asked my dad if Kipling was a Nazi. He explained to me that the swastika was originally and symbol of good luck in India, and that Kipling had it removed from later publishings of his books, as the swastika became more and more associated with the Nazi party. It is just such a strange duality.

I found the "Modern Hieroglyphics" article a little confusing, but very novel. I thought this line summed it up well: "[the helvetica figures] are neither universal, self-evident, nor purely informational--like linguistic signs, they must be learned; like other styles of drawing, they are culturally specific." I thought the article also outlined the impossibility of our first project. Any icon needs currency before it can hold meaning. Creating a system of symbols that transcends culture cannot be done, period. I would say that the Gestalt principles may be the most universal understanding of imagery, and they don't actually represent hierarchy, gender, or any other qualitative value.

As for the "Language of Dreams," I thought it was an interesting look at the development of Japanese kanji. However, I thought the relationship to dream analysis is about as far-fetched as most Freudian theory. Philosopher David Hume's theory of imagination as only the compilation of perceived information makes far more sense to me. As in, you can imagine a purple elephant, because you have seen the color purple and you have seen real or representations of an elephant. But it still requires the information to be in its original context. I don't think our understanding is that linguistically based that our dreams would be phonetically linking to reality as opposed to a logical scramble of reality. However, it was a great analogy for Japanese characters.

Reaction to "Image" by Kristine Nielsen

Ahhhh. What an awful reading. So painful. Using A LOT of words and citations, Kristine Neilsen states that everything except direct experience falls under the category of image: "So what is not an image: an image is not unfiltered, noise-free access to the world. It is not simply lived experience unless that experience is in some form "set aside," distanced, reproduced, or referred to in its absence by way of a semblance." What is helpful about this all-encompassing definition of image? Who knows. Maybe to push our understanding of this class? There is reason for breaking things down into bite-sized chunks. Maybe "media" could be defined as such, but why not let "image" stand for creations in the visual realm? why not stick with Webster: "a visual representation of something"?