Showing posts with label Prezi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prezi. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Trope Diagram
The review last week in class was very helpful in that it led me to diagram the operative slots of my Prezi in relation to Kovitz's project.
Kovitz
Tenor: utopian social planning
Vehicle: pig farming
Trope: evokes the horror concentration camps
Contaminates the Tenor: The conceit-link between utopian social planning and pig farming renders the former grotesque, especially in the instances where the material signifiers of pig farming (eg., barbed wire) correspond with the stuff of concentration camps.
My Case
Tenor: standardized testing based curriculum
Vehicle: the Jacquard Loom (first machine reader)
Trope: evoke a sense of Derrida's theories of writing and his critique of metaphysical hierarchies
Contaminates the Tenor: The metalepsis of the tenor and vehicle should emphasizes the ontological import of technics (ie., machinic reading) on the conception of knowledge in contemporary K-12 education policy.
In pataphysical terms, I'd like my Prezi to--if nothing else--"exhaust the imaginary potential" of standardized testing as a practice for learning via machinic reading. The trope then should at least open a space for considering modes of learning/writing with machinic reading other than the literate metaphysics of standardized testing.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
On Kovitz's Style: Quotes and Anecdotes
Ultimately, my reading of Pig City Model Farm focused on the style of the book -- looking intently for elements of Kovitz's style that we could learn from and make use of as we begin our Prezi.
Quotes
One of the most striking features of the book is of course that it is made up of about 95% quoted material. For me, this was cause for frustration that lasted for about the first 25 pages. Most of us are use to reading for the author's position/stance, and, as Jake pointed out, Kovitz complicates that very notion of positionality. Thus, after getting over my frustration, what helped me "get into" the book was paying close attention to the sudden shifts in one discourse to another (ie, from quotes of farm-handbook discourse to stuff like Donald Barthelme). These shifts, as well as the juxtapositions between images and quotes, seem to be the location of Kovitz's work. When discussing "normal" books, we tend to point the presence of words, sentences, paragraphs, etc. as the location of the author's thought. Whereas, with Kovitz, we may do better to locate thinking in terms of absence -- to prioritize the white space as the mark of his most profound gestures, which is to establish (conductive) relations among disparate discourse. Like Kovitz, our consulting reports will perform a lot of quoting (whether it's verbal or visual), so I think we can learn from ambition (as I see it) to "write with the white space" -- to really stress the generative role of combination (collage/montage) in our composition. In the band presentation, I also plan to discuss a potential difference between Kovitz's book and our Prezi: Kovitz's quoting is primarily verbal and our quoting is likely to rely more on visuals. Through some examples, I'll try to show how we can try to make some of Kovitz's tactics work visually.
Anecdotes
Given the dominance of quotation, the anecdotes of Kovitz's summer work in the meat packing plant (spread over two different pages) really stuck out. Though the tone differs from Blanchot, these anecdotes reminded me a lot of Blanchot's inclusion of his primal scene in his book The Writing of the Disaster. In both books, the inclusion of the anecdote adds another layer of relationality, in Kovitz's case: the intersection of architecture and agriculture in Kovitz's early life which become two of the prime discourses in his book. Though I don't think we've put this on the list of instructions yet, the subtle inclusion of a brief anecdote (especially if written in the Hemingway/Chekhov style of Kovitz's, which seems to emphasize the object) in our Prezi may give our consultant's report an added dimension, as it does for Kovitz.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Syzygi and Conceit
"Jarry does not borrow scientific concepts so much as scientific conceits..." (29)
"Jarry may posit this notion [ie, syzygia] within a medieval context...but such a principal of alliance does provide a pretext for postmodern philosophy about the theme of syncretism...conceits which conjoin as much as they disjoin, inverting, while equating, the values of the binary that must support them" (40-1).
In his commentary on Jarry, Bok points to the role of conceit as a 'pataphysical interface between poetry and science. Conceit, as a literary device, can be added to our list of the four rhetorical tropes -- or at least be acknowledged as a specific brand of metaphor. In particular, "The metaphysical conceit involves the use of paradox, images from arcane sources not usually drawn upon by poets, and an original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar things. The originality of a metaphysical conceit often derives from ordinary or esoteric materials used in a previously unthought-of way. A single metaphysical conceit may function as the controlling image for the entire poem" (Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms).
The prezi could be approached as a 'pataphysical conceit, wherein we -- like the poets -- develop a visual conceit as the controlling image or guiding figure of our consultant's report. This visual conceit could stand as the large, establishing shot/image, which contains the smaller images that get zoomed in on throughout the path. Perhaps each zoom shows an image that somehow tropes the meaning of the controlling image when we zoom back out. The controlling image could be ordinary at first glance, then inch closer and closer to a conceit as the viewer moves through each zoom in and out, ultimately coming to see that initial controlling image in the light of the syncretism generated by each of the close-ups.
"Jarry may posit this notion [ie, syzygia] within a medieval context...but such a principal of alliance does provide a pretext for postmodern philosophy about the theme of syncretism...conceits which conjoin as much as they disjoin, inverting, while equating, the values of the binary that must support them" (40-1).
In his commentary on Jarry, Bok points to the role of conceit as a 'pataphysical interface between poetry and science. Conceit, as a literary device, can be added to our list of the four rhetorical tropes -- or at least be acknowledged as a specific brand of metaphor. In particular, "The metaphysical conceit involves the use of paradox, images from arcane sources not usually drawn upon by poets, and an original and usually complex comparison between two highly dissimilar things. The originality of a metaphysical conceit often derives from ordinary or esoteric materials used in a previously unthought-of way. A single metaphysical conceit may function as the controlling image for the entire poem" (Bedford Glossary of Literary Terms).
The prezi could be approached as a 'pataphysical conceit, wherein we -- like the poets -- develop a visual conceit as the controlling image or guiding figure of our consultant's report. This visual conceit could stand as the large, establishing shot/image, which contains the smaller images that get zoomed in on throughout the path. Perhaps each zoom shows an image that somehow tropes the meaning of the controlling image when we zoom back out. The controlling image could be ordinary at first glance, then inch closer and closer to a conceit as the viewer moves through each zoom in and out, ultimately coming to see that initial controlling image in the light of the syncretism generated by each of the close-ups.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Caillois's Relevance for our Project's tale
Caillois's linking of gaming and culture is predicated upon Huizinga's thesis that "culture is derived from play," which has always been an important form/force of invention (58). Furthermore, games as such occur only within the pure space of play; the spatial and temporal boundaries of play separate it from the pressures, obligations, and stakes of "ordinary life." These restrictions enable the players to partake in the logic of potlatch and gift economy: "Play is an occasion of pure waste [of time, energy, skill, etc.]" (5).
One way to conceive of our perspective work with Prezi is to see this phase of the project as a pure space of play, in the sense elaborated by Caillois. Not to say that it is a waste of time, of course, but to say that the fatal strategies of our consultant's report embrace waste: our method experiments with modes of thought/expression that run contra to those deemed "useful" by conventional consulting practices, and we are also making it a point to notice the waste evident in our accident.
Moreover, in defining his game catagories, Caillois description of mimicry and ilinx seem especially applicable to our work with Prezi. Particularly his claim that, "Mimicry is incessant invention...it consists in the actor's fascinating the spectator" and his claim about the seductive appeal of ilinx, "which consist[s] of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind" (23). In our case the role/agency of actor is replaced by the fatality of the object. We can also think about the cinematic movements of Prezi as a kind of ilinx-generating machine (Caillois points out that the speedy machinery of the Industrial Revolution were crucial to the development of ilinx games).
If we do approach our Prezi reports as a space of pure play (invention in spite of--or by virtue of--waste), then, for framing purposes, we can appeal back to Baudrillard's comment about the relationship between fiction and reality: "Somehow, whatever happens on the level of pure appearance of the tale always impinges on the real" (169). Play-as-consulting does not solve the accident but playing with the accident affects our perception/conception of it, enables us to see it differently, and possibly introduces something new/unthought into processes of deliberative reasoning and policy formation concerning the accident.
One way to conceive of our perspective work with Prezi is to see this phase of the project as a pure space of play, in the sense elaborated by Caillois. Not to say that it is a waste of time, of course, but to say that the fatal strategies of our consultant's report embrace waste: our method experiments with modes of thought/expression that run contra to those deemed "useful" by conventional consulting practices, and we are also making it a point to notice the waste evident in our accident.
Moreover, in defining his game catagories, Caillois description of mimicry and ilinx seem especially applicable to our work with Prezi. Particularly his claim that, "Mimicry is incessant invention...it consists in the actor's fascinating the spectator" and his claim about the seductive appeal of ilinx, "which consist[s] of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind" (23). In our case the role/agency of actor is replaced by the fatality of the object. We can also think about the cinematic movements of Prezi as a kind of ilinx-generating machine (Caillois points out that the speedy machinery of the Industrial Revolution were crucial to the development of ilinx games).
If we do approach our Prezi reports as a space of pure play (invention in spite of--or by virtue of--waste), then, for framing purposes, we can appeal back to Baudrillard's comment about the relationship between fiction and reality: "Somehow, whatever happens on the level of pure appearance of the tale always impinges on the real" (169). Play-as-consulting does not solve the accident but playing with the accident affects our perception/conception of it, enables us to see it differently, and possibly introduces something new/unthought into processes of deliberative reasoning and policy formation concerning the accident.
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