emblem

“When one enters a language, one takes up a place assigned in advance by this discourse…” (p.247 ), Ulmer said. One has to be familiar with this discourse with specific virtues and values in order to internalize the language as his/her own state of mind. It is like in the discourse of advertising emblems, Ulmer continued, one had to understand the context of the image so that they could read the emblems. Images in advertising are not created out of nothing, they are from the inspiration of the potential self images of products. The products may have diverse functions serving for different purposes; or the products’ own characteristics, say, color, size, quality, etc., all created an abstract self images which might be reflected by their advertising emblems. Many customers, when they buy the products, they do not only concern what these products could do for them, but also see what these products represent, what kind of potential emblems they indicate.

Ulmer connected the emblem with self concept by requiring students to do an assignment of making an emblem of their own images. “You want to know what an emblem is, and how to make one. The rule of extrapolation applies: everything that is said about the emblem is there as a relay for your own composition/ design. You should always ask: what is that for me?” (p.246) For him, emblems are like some kind of image value that are closely connected with self value, or maybe they could be seen as a part of the self value. Image value transmit certain ideas or information about self value to the society, and society through its own mechanism processing these self values and send them back to people as a common emblem of the public.

From Ulmer’s perspective, playing WOW is also like entering a discourse assigned in advance. Images in this virtual world have been settled beforehand by game designers and players have to be familiar with these images before they could internalize them as their emblems in this discourse. And this internalization process itself is the process of integrating alien images with the inherent part of our own mind and turning it as the emblem of ourselves as socialized individuals in WOW world.

Level 16 character

I reached the level 16 today. I usually came into the WOW after middle night, when there were not many people in there. But still, when I was playing, I was hoping if I could meet someone in our class. So whenever I met some people, I would come up and asked if you are in 813 class. But it was very unfortunate that none of them were. Someone just ignored me and run off, and some stopped and asked what 813 class is. Some people added me into their group, but when we found we could not share our quests, the group was dismissed. Basically, I was a lonely fighter, wandering around, talking to different people, trying to find my own group, but failed. But luck thing is I have a pet, a black wolf, with me. Usually, it is a live target to attract my enemy, I was just standing far away shooting arrows. I feel very delighted to have this sincere friend fighting together with me, though I got it only after I reached level 10. I fed and mended him frequently so that he could work better. Whenever he died, I know I could just retrieve him, I still feel a little bit guilty. Here is our pictures.

Baudrillard project

The Baudrillard project, part 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZAlUto7Lbk

The Baudrillard project, part 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI6-IjSn9R8

Entertainment discourse

Please see my blog on 3.25.

Baudrillard, part 2

I made two videos for this project. The URL will be sent here later.


Simulation is a modern technology, but the cultural values can dates back to ancient Greek. Plato claimed that poem and art are the preventative imitation of physical world. He called it “mimesis”. He believed that reality lies in mind rather than in presentation, and therefore, poem and art are far from reality (Plato, Republic). Aristotle contended that poem and art not just imitated reality, but represented it through creative ways as well. No matter how, both of them held that the original type is real and primary, while the imitation is virtual and subordinate. However, Baudrillard pointed out that in modern information age, the line that differentiates reality and virtuality is gradually disappearing. “There is no real, there is no imaginary...(p.121)”, because the whole world could be represented by the symbols with abstract meanings: “No relief, no perspective, no vanishing point where the gaze might risk losing itself, but a total screen where, in their uninterrupted display, the billboards and the products themselves act as equivalent and successive signs (p.75)”. In such a society, people started to produce counterfeit products, because there is no clear difference between the real and the counterfeit. I am going to discuss this whole book in three sections:


1. The ambiguity between the originary figure and its simulacra
The advancement of modern technology made people impossible to distinguish the real from its simulacra. How do people know if something is a real existence or not? They can watch by eyes, touch by hands, listen by ears, but what they get is actually the signal of light, the wave of sound, and the sense and impulses of hand nerve. In other words, even there were no this light, this sound, or even the existence of this real object, when you receive the information of the electronic signals about certain object, to you, this object is real. Therefore, once you receive enough signals, it is hard for you to tell if the object described by these signals is a real or a virtual thing, in a sense, they the same thing. In the digital age like ours, it is especially so. People’s ability of forging has gone far beyond their ability of discerning counterfeit. For instance, when there was no Photoshop, people could be sure that the images in photos are something of real existence. But now, who would trust photos? Given a picture, could one know it is a image made by 3d softwares or a real existence captured by camera?


2. Is the real real ? The mirror of what?
In light of Baudrillard, Not just the line between the originary figure and its simulacra is getting ambiguous, the existence of the orginary figure itself is open to doubt. For instance, in Halloween, people would dress up as, say, vampire, Spiderman, superman, etc., what they are acting? They are acting some symbols they received from TV, movies, cartoon, books, drama, etc.. How could they know whether their dress look like these figures or not? Still, from the abstract symbols. But are these originary figures real existence?

3. Hyperreality : more real than the real
Hyperreality is something more real than the real. Baudrillard cited Disneyland as an example to explain hyperreality. Disneyland is a miniature world of people’s dream, an utopia that represents beauty, peace, and happiness. As Baudrillard believed, It is a hyperreal world, a world more real than the real world and it covers all the real bloodiness of capitalism and cruelty of life. The postmodern capitalism therefore becomes a symbolic illusion. The substantiality, essentiality, and reality in traditional sense have encountered insightful question because life itself is turning into a process of copying the imagination. He therefore proposed that all the historical, political and cultural reality are the symbol of hyperrealism, and they would eventually disappear in the mist of images. It is the sincere comment to the postmodern capitalism and the warning to the potential crisis of virtual culture.

Many people believe that “si da jie kong”of Buddhism is nihilism. But is it? What would the nihilist Baudrillard think of it? Nature is the nature itself, but appearance is the appearance of others? Then what is similacra itself? is it the nature of itself or the appearance of others? If there is no hope for meaning, how would Baudrillard understand “Dao”? “One”from nothing, but “one” generates everything. God creates everything? And the simulation of God creates nothing? Is it so?

In the Matrix, matrix is the real leading role. It is the ruler of everything, the origin of all the misery. The real real is the virtual, is like what Buddism called “wu ming”. The most famous idea “the color is no color”in Buddism is what Baudrillard believed as“empty”. “The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no therapy of meaning or theropy through meaning: therapy itself is part of the generalized process of indifferention”.

Hyperreality is the speculation to the simulacra. How to understand hyperreality? “The universe, and all of us, have entered live into stimulation”(p.159), but is this stimulation a denial of the existence of everything in the world? Or is it just trying to imply from a more positive perspective that things are changing constantly? Whether God is dead or not? People are constrained by the hyperreality is because they do not or maybe would never could make it to reach the pure emptiness. When people die and become a pile of bones, when flower wither away and become the floating dust, when a shining shooting star flies cross the sky and fall down to the earth and become an ugly stone, is it possible to tell which form of them is real or hyperreal?

Foucault project video

Here is the URL of my video for Foucault project

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnPFIS7VuzA

Symposium: Dr. Ian Bogost

On April 8,2010, a rainy afternoon, I got a chance to meet the author of the book persuasive games, an excellent scholar in games studies, a professor in Georgia Tech University, Dr. Ian Bogost.

During the 1 and a half hours’ meeting, people posed like around 10 questions to Dr. Bogost. To each question, he gave a long and meticulous answer. I feel lucky to have chances posing four questions to Dr. Bogost during the symposium, here are my questions:
1. A lot of people think that games are something meaningless, a wasting of time. In your book persuasive games, however, you argued that games have their own culture. In addition, they transmit certain culture and ideas through their persuasive or rhetorical way. My question is if games could reflect and represent certain culture, do you think players and their behaviors in games could do the same? If yes, how and why.

2. In your book, you talked a lot about video games rather than online games. As far as I am concerned, compared with video and PC games, which have settled up the game content for players, online games grant players more freedom to play according to their own style and will and it is more possible for them to represent the developing trend of games in the future. But an interesting thing is, according to some game market report, the percentage of online games in the whole game market is only around 20%, (while in China, it is 77%) which seems like online games, compared with video and PC games are not that popular in the U.S., how do you see this phenomenon ?

3. Do you see games more like a platform? a cultural mirror? an entertainment tool? or a media?

4. Could I ask a little bit personal question? (People around the table all laughed, which made me feel embarrassed...T_T) Well, it is not that personal... Electronic games started at around the 1950s and 1960s, but the serious studies on electronic games in academic field had not begun until recent decades of years. And your research is one of the first attempts. I am curious why did you choose this field to research? Did you at the beginning of the studies already foresee the promising development of electronic games?

Getting his permission, I filmed this syposium. I am not sure if I could put that video up here without getting his permission. For those in our class who are also interested in games or this syposium but failed to attend it, you could email me linw@clemson.edu to get more information about this symposium.

Anyway, it is a wonderful exprience to talk with such a famous scholar in game studies. For me, it is more like an encouragement on my research. In China, game studies are still in a lower than average level, and there are not many Chinese scholars showed interest in this field. A lot of time, I am not very sure if my research would be meaningful to Chinese games, especially in China, they are called electronic heroin by mainstream media. But after talking with the forerunner in this field, I kind of getting a little moved. I see there are a bunch of people they are conducting the research on it, they are opening a wider space for the future research of electronic games. They are passionate and optimistic, they are insightful and persisted in their pursuit. I feel like he is transmitting a spiritual force that could drive others to walk further.

Google Wave and Ulmer: "Heureucs rather than Hermeneutics"

As I first saw the name of the book "Internet Invention", I thought it was some book talking about the Internet, culturally or techonically. As I read more, I found this book is more than just talking about the Internet, but the pedgagogy , or "the writing" with the approach of "electracy" (P.5). What is the meaning of electracy? I checked the webster dictionary, but found nothigng from there. Is it something related to the electric techonology? Why Ulmer call it as an approach rather than a tool? As I read more carefully, trying to make sure if it is the meaning as I guessed. Ulmer said "...I use the website as the medium of instruciton and learing in courses ranging from freshman general education composition courses...(p. xii)", which I think kind of explained the meaning of electracy: first, it has to be applied with the meidum of the Internet, the web; second, it has to be in some instruction or learning process. Or, maybe I should call it digital teaching. However, its meaning is more than these. Ulmer explained further that the purpose of using this approach is "trying to invent" (he also called it 'heuretics') rather than "interpret" (or "hermeneutics", as he called) (p.4). Then to invent what? What is his argument in this more than 300 pages' book? On page 6, he said "...the imaging condition of the spectacle therefore has a positive side, which is that the new media culturepotentially supports and could be designed to augment and enhance individual and collective creativity: that a wired community in princile may be fundamentally 'creativogenic' (p.6)".



So it seems pretty clear that it is a book talking about the application of new media in pedagogy (mainly English or Compostion). No offense, but I am not sure if I should call it an instructive book at this point of time because I checked the comments from readers and got some of these words "If purchasing for a class, I wish you the best of luck an advise you to develop an "Ulmer filter"; if you hang onto his every word, you will surely miss the central points to lead you to complete the project. If you are purchasing for your own personal edification, I simply cannot imagine why. I hope you enjoy media theory. (see amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Internet-Invention-Electracy-Gregory-Ulmer/dp/0321126920)".


Anyway, using google wave in/after class is an updating experimental practice to this book.I introduced this useful tool to some of my firends after the class. They all said they would try it but the funny thing is the friend who introduced it to me said he would not use it anymore. Any emerging thing has to experience the process from the weak to the strong, and the criticism is unavoidable. Google wave is a case in point. As a matter of fact, it is a good conceptual extension to the email, web forum, bolg, and discussion board, etc., even in practice they kind of have similar function. Also, compared with the chatting tools like MSN, Skype, OICQ, it does not require the conversation sides have to be online at the same time. People wrote down their ideas in google wave and leave. Then other people come, read what their group members wrote, add comments or anything they want to say, and leave. Then any other members could come and read and the starter could response them too. Conversation has been recorded for the future reference in text form. Even msn, skype and oicq has the same function in recording people's conversation in text, they could not do it so well as google wave does. Therefore, google wave is especially suitable to be used in the group projects that needs a lot of texts.

Verilio project in second life

Our group made three different kinds of buildings in
Second life and put these three buildings together

(My group members put theirs on the top of mine ).
It was not my first experience in second life,

so compared with my group members, I completed a

little bit faster. My building has larger size than theirs,

and its texture is brick. Walter's building is a round

room with glass material, while steve's is a castle with

the rock texture. Three buildings are totally different

in color, material, and style, but they are connected

closely with each other. I hope I had the pictures of

our buildings, but since they were located in a wrong

place, the owner of that place drove us away when

he/she found us there. It was a little bit ambarrasing

but a pretty fun experience, but because of that, I feel

sorry that I did not have a chance to take pictures

of our buildings.

Anyway, the experiece of building things in second

life is really a worthy trial for the understanding of

Virilio's ideas. For one thing, the modern digital

technology blurred the line between the reality and the

virtuality. Virtual world is no longer the simulation of

the real world, but the replace of it. Some people

claimed that virtual world grants insiders freedom to

do anything they can hardly do or not allowed to do.

It makes sense in certain perspective. Take second life

for instance, people can play differnt roles that they

been eager to become, or they can posscess many

skills they do not have in reall world, like fly, swim or

jump from high position, or change their appearance

like face, complexion, height, gender, etc., or, say, a

disabled person can become a healthy one like anyothers.

However, Virilio contended that this freedom would
be more and more limited since the simulated world is

gradually replacing the real world and this means that

roles in real world should also be applied in virtual world.

We were drove out of that owener's territory is a good

case in point. They have rules here, so that this world,

though a virtul one, can still keep orders in this world.

we have some freedom, but they are all under the premise

of following the rules of the world.

For another, in virtual world, the distance between objects

and subjects, as Virilio stated, has been greatly shortened.

In real world, to construct a building, for example,

our chance is almost zero, unless we are the designer or builder

of this building. For common people, we could do nothing to

change the size, the appreance, or the height of the building.

In a virtual world like second life, however, we can. Any users

of second life, no matter you are a professional architect, or

a perosn who knows nothing about architecture, you can build

a big house or an apartment, a garage, a mall, whatever you like

and also, you could make it as strange as you can without the

limit of physical construction rules. Additionally, you are not

restricted by time. You may build up a skyscraper in just a few

hours rather than years, or you can spend a year to just build

a simple pool. The time requirement in real construction is never

a problem in virtual world. From this point, the concepts of

time and space are changed radically.

Mystory part 1 Career discourse

For my career discourse, I choose to make a website reviewing the development of online games, especially focusing on the online games in early phases. I made this website by the software dreamwaver. When I was making it, I suddenly realized that I was actually using a very outdated thing to work. Why? you may ask. Is the version of the software too old? Are there some other updated software than dreamwaver? Well, no. By saying "outdated", I mean the concept of making website.

I would like to talk something about the early computers in my memories before going to the website. I remember the first time I saw computers was in my primary school. It was in some extracurricular activites, the tearcher introduced those 286 computers with black and while color dos system to us. I did not imagine this is something I would use everyday in future. I remember the early chinese input systerm is "wu bi zi xing", a system that requires people to memorizes many codes to just input one character or several. I had difficult time memorizing these code and I remember I was not quite understanding why people choose this difficult way to write rather than just write with a pen on a piece of paper. And because this machine was so expensive at that time(almost ten thousand for one), no family could afford it or at least saw it as a worthy investment. I did not see any of my classmates had one at home until I entered the middle school. Computers had upgraded to 386 then, and I first saw it in one of my friends' home. She was so cherished it that she did not allow us to touch it. Her 386 was surely not connected with the Internet. What she could do then was playing some pc games (one of them is Heros of Might and Magic) or input some chinese characters for practice. Besides these, I did not see any more founction her 386 had to her life. But still, it was evitable to have a comupter at that time.



I get to know the Internet when I was in high school. At that time I remember people were using html to code webpages. As a comupter language, it is not very friendly to common people, and not everyone at that time knew how to make a website or even knew what is website.Then in recent 10 years, as the Internet and computers became popular, more and more languages such as C++, VB, VF, have been arranged as required courses for college students in China. Though as an art student, I experienced again the hard time of learning these computer language in college, but I did realize that the popularity of these computer languages is a good reflection of the graduall importance of computer.



In recent years, the website making became more friendly. A lot of people choose to use online templates to build up their own websites. They do not have to learn the specific design language or computer languages to build a website. Building a website is no longer something professional, and it could be accomplished by anyone. The fact that human-computer relaitonship become more and more homonious is the result of the technology advancement, but it is also a temporary phase for future computer development.

Mystory part2 family discourse

For my family discourse, I documented some happy sections in my childhood memories with my mom, my dad, my grandparents, my cousins, my uncle and aunt, etc. by making a video. Unlike most of others in the class who use static pictures as their narrative way, I feel like when I was doing this assignment, my meomries about my families are like a film, frame by frame reflecting in my mind. 30 frames per second, in movie making, it means 30 pictures connected in one second to express the moment. But for my memories, it is more than this number.I love using moving pictures to express thoughts, and a lot of times, I regret that I did not have camera to document those childhood moments, which once passed away, would never come back again.



"Something in the present environment triggers a memory (punctum), information from the past intrudes into the present, leading to a hammered thumb (p.76)". A lot of "past" things could remind people of past stories, like a song. For me, the song in the video belongs to my past stories. The background music I choose named "mom in my dream" (but it is funny that all my memories about it is related to my dad), it is an old folk song sang by an Inner Mongolia kid. My dad is a lover of Mongolia songs. In my childhood memory, he sang a lot of such songs, when we took a walk after dinner, when we had a picnic in parks, when we had a break during the morning execise. I could not hear him singing anymore for some reason, and this makes me always have some special feelings to those songs, because they are not just songs, they are symbols of some emotions to the past.



Ulmer discussed "homesickness" in his family discourse (p.76). He said "The homesick person is not so efficient. A symptom of homesickness is the cognitive failure known as absentmindedness". I had been living with my families in Dalian for all the time before I came here. You could not imagnine how strong the homesickness I had in the first semester. We had familiy party almost every weekend and festival in my grandparents' hourse.My uncle's family, my aunt's family, my family, and my grandparents, a dozen or so of family members getting together, they all are the components of my familiy memory.

Baudrillard, part 1

When reading this book, I feel like wandering between the real and the virtual. I think people usually do not think too much of the differences between dissimulation and simulation, and of course, one of the reasons is they think they could use them properly in their daily life. But actually, they have obvious difference which according to Baudrillard “leaves the principle of reality intact (p.3), ” and which “threatens the difference between the ‘true’ and the ‘fause’ (p.3).” I like his definition of simulation, “to feign to have what one doesn’t have (p.3)”. In light of this definition, the object that is simulated is something that one doesn’t have, and the simulated image of the object is also something unreal, then what one does have? In a society that is constructed by more and more simulated symbols, the objects in real sense are left fewer and fewer for the society. The whole world, as Baudrillard pointed out, has been simulated, including history (historical events he mentioned, like strikes, crisis, demonstration), politics (Watergate), culture (mass media) and economy (Disneyland). “Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible (p.19)”.
One of the direct results of this ambiguity is the confusion of morality. An organized fake holdup or hijacking, how to punish such simulation of virtue? They “renders submission and transgression equivalen, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based (p.20)”. In the end, “it was capital that first fed on the destructration of every referential, of every human objective, that shattered every ideal distinction between true and false, good and evil, in order to establish a radical law of equivalence and exchange, the iron law of its power (p.22)”. The ambiguity also leads to the confusion of the “real” process of work and the “objective” process of exploitation. The whole world is still producing, but the spark of production and the violence of its stakes no longer exist (p.26). Simulation of virutality covers the previous naked production relationship, and replaced it with images of “social needs and demands”, and occupation in the work place.
Then what kind of a world it is? If there is no “real” as reference object, how to tell “virtual”? Why we use symbols created by ourselves to confuse our own world? Is simulation a praise or a disappointment to modern technology? Baudrillard reviewed the history of simulation from renaissance to industry revolution, from industry production to market production, from market-oriented modernity to symbol-oriented deconstruction. Reality during these phases has been gradually broken up, until the end, leaving the whole simulated images to uphold the mind and body of the society. Then what is the future of it? Where the society would head for? Utopia in fictions?

Mystory entertainment discourse

I made this website http://linmystory.yolasite.com/about-us.php for mystory, entertaiment discourse. Ulmer's assignment in this chapter is to do a website that documenting a movie or a TV that one watched during his/her childhood. It seems that by doing this, he tries to use a potential analogy to connect entertainment discourse with cerntain periods of memory. Is it a way of doing a conceptually spacial conversion like what virillio do in his book? I could sense what he is trying to make his students feel here when I was doing this assignment. My entertainment discourse documented a Chinese TV series, which has a special postition in my childhood memory:Dream of the Red Chamber, which was adapted from the novel with the same title. As one of four China's great classical novels, Dream of the Red Chamber has been adapted to movies and TV series many times. But the one I introduce is generally acknowledged as the most successful one which created great sensation in the 1980s in China.

This TV series was produced in 1985, and it almost has the same age as me. When it was first shown on TV, I was too young to understand it. The only vague memory is my family sitting before TV together, having snacks while watching it, a cozy picture. Then the memory jumps to the middle school. I had a lecture of this novel after school one day. I was moved almost into tears.I set up my mind to read it. It has five volumes and almost 200 chapters. Plus, it is written in classical chinese (before 1919, all the chinese writtings use classical chinese). It is a challenge for me at first and I spent alomst a year to finish it. Then I found that it is such a brilliant work that you would never feel boring no matter how many times you read it. It is like a deep hole, you can never reach the bottom. The research of it has become an independent field (called redology). The whole book includes 30 main characters and 400 minor characters. Each of them has distinct features and detailed psychological description,which makes you feel like they were live people around you.

There are hundreds of brilliant poems in this book. One of my favorites is "Song of the Burial of Flowers" (葬花吟). I found the English translation of it (Please see the second subpage of mystory web http://linmystory.yolasite.com/about-us.ph) I do not think this translation accurately reflects the poetic imagery it describes, but I still want to express some of my own feelings based on this translation. I especially like this sentence: "I hold a burial when you die today, But there’s no telling when I pass away.Others laugh at me that have buried thee, Who will be the one that shall bury me?". Sadness, everything around us is "Nichts", no matter how glorious they once were. I did not understand this when I first read it. But as time goes by and my experiences get enriched, I find that many shining things are like shooting stars, shifting fast and finally are not there anymore.Like flowers, they bloom and wither, or the earth, the galaxy and even the whole universe has a day to end. People's life, compared to them, is nothing but a moment. Humans, from this sense, have nothing different from other beings. I see an obvious Daoist spirit from this poem.Chinese Daoism pursues "Nature and Man in one". It believes that humans as a part of the nature would return to the nautre when we die.All the rules of the nature apply to us no matter how strong our self-awareness are. Thus, nature was positioned highest (even higher than gods), unlike western culture, which stresses the importance of spirit, such as Descartes's "I think, therefore I am", Nietzsche's will to power, Hegel's absolute spirit,etc.

Actually, when I was doing this assigment, I suddenly realized what Ulmer wants us to feel. I was recalling my past with my present thoughts, but my present thoughts are based on my previous memories. I was documenting the memory about a digital formed TV series, but I was storming my mind by the undigital formed mental action, and the sparking point could be anything including an entertainment work. Thoughts can run through the time and space,

like shadow, the further you are from the light source, the longer the shadow could be.

week 9

If time is matter, what is space? (p.5) Virilio discusses “space” in terms of relativity of time and nature at the beginning of the book open sky. If nature abhors a vacuum, so too does life-size. Without weight or meausure, these is no’nature’any more or, at least, no idea of nature. Without a distant horizon, there is no longer any possibility of glimpsing reality...(p.6) In some classic physicists’ eyes (like Newton), time and space absolute existence, which means all the matters and events are being measured on the dimension of transcendentality (see wiki). That seems pretty simple that people do not waste time thinking the fourth dimention of time and space. However, when Einstein proposed the relativity, we are introduced into a “expanse of real world”(p.15): in this world, when we reached the speed of light, we could catch up with the time. In other words, when we get to the limit of speed, we could see the end of time. Could we say, at that moment, that we win the time, or we maybe at the same time lose the space? Then what is the nature, or our life would be? And how do we measure things then? In light of Bergson (see wiki), time is a kind of inner experience, a psychological time that does not depend on clocks in physical world. It is a time that instinct by our own heart. Thus, philosophers like Bergson, or Proust (see his In search of time) believe that it is hard to say space and time which one is more essential, but our own spiritual activities, our own psychological peace seems more important than them.
It seems to me that Virilio uses this relativity of time as a metaphor to reflect the obscurity that exists between virtuality and reality caused by modern technology or civilization to human beings’thought (p.13). “ Speed enables us to see, to hear, to perceive and thus to conceive the present world more intensely(p.12)...but it is not so much light illuminates things(the object, the subject, the path)...(p.13) Distance, speed, geography actually lost their meanings in traditional sense, and instead, they are equipped by modern technology and obtained the power of simulating real world. “The question is then no longer one of the global versus the local, or of the transnational versus national...to gain real time over delayed time is thus to commit to a quick way of physically eliminating the object and the subject and exclusively promoting the journey...”(p.20). Therefore, not just time, but space/distance is also granted a relativity. If we follow this logic, many art majors, like literature, philosophy, logics, psychology, etc., they all go in for pursuing the relative infinity of time under the context of the relative finite space, and one of their ways it to close the door and read all day long, like Kant, who spent like 80 years staying at his hometown: though he was invited to teach in some university at other places, he refused for the reason that new environment would influence his thinking. So from the perspective of space, he had not been to anywhere, but from the perspective of time, he became the explorer of the eternal spirit of human beings.

week 7

Based on the analysis of archive, discourse and statement, Foucault summarizes four major differences between Archeology and traditional history of ideas, which he thinks are “the utmost importance”(p138): the attribution of innovation, the analysis of contradictions, comparative descriptions, and the mapping of transformations (p138). By examining these different points in four chapters, he is trying to “grasp the specific qualities of archaeological analysis, and measure its descriptive capacity”(p138) .
According to Foucault, history of ideas has two functions: on the one hand, it “recounts the by-ways and margins of history (p136)”; on the other hand, it “sets out to cross the boundaries of existing disciplines, to deal with them from the outside, and to reinterpret them (137)”. Therefore, history of ideas is a discipline with “beginning and ending, is a description of obscure continuities and returns, the reconstitution of development in the linear form of history (137).” That is why this discipline focuses so much on the originality, continuity, and totality, since they are the themes of history of ideas. But Foucault refuses the originality, continuity, and totally that history of ideas uses in its explanation of development of human beings’knowledge. He also refuses comparative method, which replies on the comparison and analogy to find the similarity of different ideas; he refuses typology method, which works on establishing the category, grade, class or attribute of diverse knowledge; he refuses any historical explanation based on the ideas or spirits of that historical period (p166-177). In other words, Foucault opposes metaphysical “totality”or “continuity”in history, and the history determinism. History, in Foucault’s understanding, does not exist the so called “ultimate goal,”nor is it in a “rational progress ”, but the one that plays the power transformation from one form to another. People, according to Foucault, are not the subject of history but the product of history, who are decided by the practice of discourse. History, essentially speaking, does not have subject at all. The objection to the existence of subjects in history means that all the concepts, knowledge, or ideas that related to their subjects are totally cut off, and the so called mainstream value standard, the rationality, the truth, or the progression, like madness, crimes, are constructed by specific practice of discourse in specific historical period, and are subject to possessing different meanings according to the change of the history, including modernity.
Modernity started from 18th century by the movement of enlightenment. It marks the birth of “the age of reason”. Kant and Hegel all suppost that reason is the original power of the advancement of history. Reason constructed the skyscraper of human civilization and will guide the history in a rational and advanced way. However, reason also takes the world wars, the Holocaulst, the economic crisis, the atomic bombs, and the increasingly enlarged gab between the poor and the rich. Similar to Frankfort school, Foucault also criticizes the control power of reason. When we use our reason to conquer the nature and other objects, we exert this control power to the every corner of the society, including the history. Foucault believes that reason is the result of the practice of discourse and power. There is not a pure, neutral, independent discourse that is not controlled by power. Reason does not just help to conceal the social caste, but also serve to establish this caste. Based on this, Foucault challenged sciences and disciples (p178-195). He proposes that the scholars in different disciplines established different discourse space by their own discourse skills, similar to Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms. These different disciplines are connected and restricted by the relationship of discourse. From here , we could see the difference between Foucault and Marx,: Foucault criticizes Marx’s totality way of analysis, pointing out that practices are always local, regional, or not total practices, and should not be used as tool to construct truth. The reason he said this is because he analyzes knowledge, disciplines and sciences from the perspective of discourse, which makes him easily avoid the risk of arguing the feasibility of practice in constructing truth.

week 6

Foucault part3 Statement and Archive

In Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge, “statement” is an important concept to understand his idea of “discourse”. Concerning the concept of “statement”, Foucault did not give an explicit definition of it for the reason that “I wonder whether I have not changed direction on the way; whether I have not replaced my first quest with another; whether, while analyzing ‘objects’or ‘concepts’, let alone ‘strategies’, I was in fact still speaking of statements,; whether the four groups of rules by which I characterized a discursive formation really did define groups of statements. (p80)” However, one can still find fundamental connotation of“statement”through a series of comparison between statements, propositions, formulations and languages.


First of all, “statements” are not propositions (pp81), sentences (p82), or an act of formulation (p83). “statements”are not propositions, for a proposition can be expressed by several different statements, and these different statements are just using the different “propositional structure (p81)”to express the same proposition (For instance, “No one heard”or “It is true that no one heard”p 81 ). Also, the meaning of a statement is not settled. Like if Nietzsche say “God is dead”, the meaning of it is different from anyone else who also say “God is dead”. Or saying “God is dead”in 19th century has totally different meaning from saying it at present time. And “Statements” are not sentences, because it would not appear to be possible to define a statement by the grammatical characteristics of the sentence (for instance, a logical tree, a classificatory table of the botanical species, an accounts book, the calculations of a trade balance...p82 ). It is also farfetched to recognize“Statement ”as an act of formulation, since a statement can be formulated by various languages, and one formulation can be practiced by different grammar structure, and“more than a statement is often required to effect a speech act (p83) ”. It is like we use Chinese, French, or English to report the same piece of news, though we use different grammar structures and linguistic symbols, we are still reporting the same content or meaning.


Secondly, statements do not exist in the same sense in which a language exists. (p85) “if there were no statements, the language would not exist; but no statement is indispensable for a language to exist...the language exists only as a system for constructing possible statements...(p 85).” A statement could have different subjects. For instance, it could be Nietzsche saying “God is dead”, it could also be some else giving the same statement. In different time or space, the position of subject can be taken by any different subjects. However, it is not important that who this subject is, but it is important that what kind of circumstance/ time or space that this subject exists and how this circumstance make this subject state in this way.


Thirdly, the function “statements”lies in the changing relationship between sentences, propositions, or other statements. In other words, a statement is described by specific network where this statement exists, and this network in constantly changing.
Lastly, statements do not exist abstractly, but materially (p88), “this materiality that characterizes the enunciative function reveals the statement as a specific and paradoxical object, but also as one of those objects that men produce, manipulate, use, transform, exchange, combine, decompose and recomposes, and possibly destroy(p105)”, and it is such materiality that determines the controlling position of subjects to statements.

week 5

Foucault: The Archaeology of knowledge

Part 1, Part 2

The word “Archeology” originates from Greek word “arkhaiologia”, the combination of “arkhaio” (ancient) and “logia” (logics, studies). So “Archeology” refers to the study of ancient things (see wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archaeology ).

It is very interesting that Foucault use “archeology” in his book to express the actually opposite meaning. His “archeology ” is different from the traditional meaning or our common understanding on “archeology”: the traditional archeology is one of the branches of history, while Foucault’s “archeology”, to my understanding, is “anti-history”. If the key point of traditional archeology is “continuity” or “linearity” in time, then Foucault’s emphasis on his archeology is “discontinuity” or “non-linearity”. According to Foucault, traditional form of history is to “memorize the monuments of the past, transform them into documents and lend speech to those traces which, in themselves, are not verbal…(p7)” , however, “in our time, history is that which transforms documents into monuments(p7),” in other words, “history is trying to define within the documentary material itself unities, totalities, series, relations. (p7)” However, Foucault’s archeology refuses or I may say is trying to challenge these concepts of history. He contends that those “pre-existing forms of continuity, all syntheses that are accepted without question, must remain in suspense (p 25)”, because the current knowledge, disciplines or culture that we have accepted with no doubt or thought to be proper are just the product of certain historical periods, which might be soon /“in foreseeable future ”out of use (p26).

Foucault even poses more penetrating questions to the existence of all the knowledge emerged in human history. “What are they? How can they be defined or limited? What distinct types of laws can they obey? What articulation are they capable of ? what specific phenomena do they reveal in the field of discourse? (p 26).”He is pretty sure the risks and danger of doing this, like he said in chapter 2: “instead of providing a basis for what already exists, instead of going over with bold strokes lines that have already been sketched, ...one is forced to advance beyond familiar territory, far from the certainties to which one is accustomed, towards an as yet uncharted land and unforeseeable conclusion...(p39)”.

Foucault also stresses the importance of freedom that should be granted to “discourse”, which according to him, is the not just the simple combination of letters or words, and which should not be circumscribed by some regulations or meanings of languages. “Discourse” is the medium that connects people and the world, and the relation between people and the world can also be described as a relation of discourse (p45). There is nothing or no knowledge can exist independently from discourse and “discourse” in Foucault’s discussion, is not just historically pluralistic but synchronically pluralistic as well.

Image source: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2514/3802658435_813ed2df0f_o.jpg

week 3

Image, there must have been a moment of truth--In the reading of this week,

Ulmer talks about the concept of electracy “image” with the discussion of

Roland Barthes’s definition of “photography image” (p 43). According to

Barthes, “image” in photography is “ a new dimension of signification”

that “characterized as a meaning that is ‘obtuse’, a ‘third meaning’,

neither literal nor figurative…(p 44) ” Barthes emphasizes the word

“Punctum”, something “stings or pricks one emotionally (p 44), ” and

something with opposite meaning to the literal meaning of “existence ”.

Images are neither “reality” nor “virtually”, but something that exist

between the two and can be hardly verified the truth them describe.

However, images are the emotional expression of the truth, as what

Ulmer discusses with the citation of Kant and Heidegger, they record

a “state of mind (p58)” , and “ In electracy, a state of mind is as

writable as the object of thought. To find the wide image we must

learn how to write and reason with our state of mind…(p59)”.

This reminds me of certain feeling I had when appreciating some

pictures: the visibility is gradually turning into transience. In

other words, the pictures in my eyes are not in correspondence

with the real objects anymore, but some virtual images that

duplicate the mind of myself. The current fast developing electronic

technology always make us hardly focus on one image, and the

outcome is that we are struggling among millions of images

produced by graphic designers while trying to find out the reality

or the truth in our own state of mind. Most of the time, we lose

the original intent to explore what the designers try to express

but subconsciously seek what ourselves want to see. So can you

say this is a state of reality or virtuality? Just like the film

“Matrix” try to express, the obscure boundary between virtuality

and reality, and self can freely wander between the two.

week 2

Journalists vs bloggers

Is blogging journalism? In light of Rettberg , “blogs and other participatory media are changing the ways journalism works… and blogs can give first-hand reports from ongoing events, whether wars, natural disaster, or crimes…” (p86) As a matter of fact, bloggers, in many situations, possess more superiority in telling or reporting ongoing events in detail than journalists for the reason that they themselves are the participants of the events. I ‘d like to share a fun experience I had last summer, which I think is a good example to support the point that how powerful bloggers could be in some situation/events than journalists and mainstream media. Here is the story: I went back home to China every summer vacation. Last summer, I did the same and during the trip, I was seated five rows behind the first H1N1 carrier in China for 14 hours in the airplane from Atlanta to Beijing. He was diagnosed after we landed in Beijing and then all the passengers in this airplane were quarantined in Beijing by Chinese government. Since this H1N1carrier (a Chinese student studying in the U.S. ) is the first case in China, the whole country took it extremely serious. We were quarantined in a hotel close to the airport. During the quarantine, we saw many journalists and cameras trying to catch the ongoing situation in the hotel, but since the government set up the cordon and policemen around the hotel, the media outside could do nothing but take some pictures in the distance or interview related officials. Here are some reports from the leading website, TV station and Newspaper in China:
1) Video report from CCTV (China Central Television), the most influential national TV station:

http://v.ku6.com/show/YenEvldln9G9KaLZ.html


2) Report from Sina:

http://bj.house.sina.com.cn/biz/news/2009-05-14/09393598.html


At the same time, many quarantined people posted much information about the inside situation on their blogs, which are more detailed and which, most importantly, could not be obtained from journalists outside. See the following blogs (each of them recorded the quarantined days with pictures):
1) http://blog.hsw.cn/114218/viewspace-417676.html

2) http://blog.scol.com.cn/zuoguantianxia/archives/209747.html

3) http://greedisgood88.blog.hexun.com/33001028_d.html

4) http://blog.huanqiu.com/?uid-31297-action-viewspace-itemid-149657


The above comparison between the reports from leading media and bloggers support Rettberg’s contention that blogs not only "fulfill much the same function as journalists do (p86)” , but also "provide valuable first-hand reports that journalists and mainstream media hardly have access to reach". They can describe a event from the perspective of participants, dig deeper and more detailed where mainstream media failed or “had little time and energy to trace. ” However, in most cases, bloggers are not journalists in that “they are subjective and independent, and come with no guarantee of truth, and do not necessarily have the same rights as traditional media (p92). ” According to Rettberg, “ blogs and mainstream media are in many ways symbiotic …(p99)”


Blog in China

In Blogging, “China” has been mentioned several times as the example of “less democratic country (p160) ” and “Chinese government attempts to quash free speech and a dangerous potential for increased surveillance and control …(p160) ” . As a Chinese, I feel like I could not just read it without any emotional sensitivity. The censorship in China is usually associated with “the freedom of speech”, “human rights”, “Tian an men Event”, etc. , which I usually see being cited by western countries to criticize Chinese government. As a matter of fact, the fight for “democracy” and the “the freedom of speech” has never been stopped in China: “Wuxu Reform movement ” in 1896 , “ New Chinese Cultural movement” in 1919 , “Tian An Men Event” in 1964, and today’s Chinese Internet users gathering at Google’s offices in Beijing and Shanghai with flowers in an emotional show of support for the company. These movements objectively promoted the democratic progress in China, who bears thousands of years of feudalistic autocracy. Today, the freedom of speech in China has already received monumental improvement, though Chinese government still emphasizes the function of national media as the mouthpiece of CCP. The appearance of Internet provides more channels for people to express share or give voice. And it seems that in China the censorship working on Internet is not so effective as it is on other media, or perhaps Internet itself is so powerful in disseminating information that once they are sent onto net, it is usually too late to take them back. Take “Yanzhaomen Event”as an example.
In 2008, a scandal has overtaken the Chinese entertainment industry: famous movie actor and singer Edison Chen's personal naked pictures and sex videos he filmed of famous women were leak onto the net when he had his laptop repaired. Later, Chinese government tried hard to prevent the circulation of these pictures and videos, and deleted all the pictures and videos sent onto the net, but it turned out it is something unprohibitable. So Chen had to make a public apology and drop his acting and singing career. Here is Chen’s apology press conference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGHZhtGb6Js

China is a huge country with 1.3 billion population, 56 minority groups and 7 different dialect systems. If China had not implemented unified Characters, language, moral system and cultural/political ideology, it would be pretty difficult to see today’s unified China. A strict censorship to Chinese government, is an important way that guarantees the unification and steady progress of the whole nation. The measure, however, is not easy to hold, just as what Aristotle says: truth and virtue lies somewhere between two extremes.