Clarissa AL Lee's Lateral Worlds

In reading through Aspet's work on the meaning of Ergodic Literature, in light of the class discussions and blog posts (and I found David Gruber's post on this very enlightening), I a now thinking as to what is it about media art that is poignant or ground-breaking compared to hand-crafted or even machine-crafted art (after all, art created with the help of machines and the skills of artisans, be they smiths, welders, machinists, furniture makers, builders etc, have been in existence, in different modes and forms according to existing tools (I refrain here from using the word technology, as it has been over-utilized in very unclear terms). One thing we do know about art, as Jonathan Harris himself would agree, is how it invokes our emotion. One need no sublime art to do that, even the cheesiest forms that hits at a raw nerve or emotional events that is within our recent history, would be enough to break the dam. But what is this new level of emotional access that we could and...

A database of imagination with a psychological nature. I kinda like this phrase I've read in Lev Manovich's article The Language of New Media . From the examples cited, maybe I should start thinking of it in terms of the database of consciousness. I am thinking along these same lines. Also, I was asked this very pertinent question, what the heck is critical theory, really? And as a friend suggested, I need to start putting visuals to illustrate my long-winded texts :)

Ok, I know that I am suppose to post this in a blog for a class but I thought I'll post it here, since the topic of remediation, based on the introduction (for now) of a book I'm reading for class called "Remediation: Understanding New Media" by Jay David Boulter and Richard Grusin, is something which I should be thinking about in light of my own work. 1. Is remediation concerned with the retooling of existing mediation for hyperimmediacy? If that is the case, what's the equivalent of Planck limit for media in terms of the ability for an individual to bear an onslaught of data streaming through their visual and aural systems before being processed by the brain? 2. Remediation, which the authors concur begun before the digital age, seems to be denoted as the reworking of existing media for the chance of manipulating perception (their arguments about the usage of lines, perspectives, illuminations in medieval manuscripts. Their words on p 11. A painting by the seven...

And read! It started out really slowly. I was on a downbeat despite looking forward to vegetating after an exhausting tour, which I have yet to blog about. And after one week of being back, a week to recover from exhaustion, I find myself having no more time..arrgh DVD driver working perfect now, which is great. Time to go through all the stuff from Siggraph, and also some. I told a class today that my project is on semiotics and signs, and the unlocatability of consciousness studied through epistemology...and I said physics and mathematics (Wissenschaft) are my game...yet I have not read anything beyond Karen Barad's "Meeting the Universe Halfway" in the last few days. And I still have to write that damn conference paper (topic excites me but the idea of trying to find enough time to do it isnt...why am I always so overly ambitious with my topics?) TA slots switch...schedule still a mess...it is almost midnight and what the heck am I doing awake?? Time runs and runs away...

It has been a hectic two weeks, thus the lack of posts. I am now in New Orleans, Louisiana, attending Siggraph 2009, an almost direct transversal from Paris, France, via Dublin, New York, RDU, and Atlanata, before arriving in NOLA. I’ll blog more about what I’ve gathered about from my European tour, and also to revisit some of the ideas and material I’d first thrown out in my previous blog post once I get myself back to Durham. At the moment, I’ll like to talk more about my experience of immersing in the technological euphoria that is a big part of the Siggraph, as well as the more nuanced and paced discussions on theories that would direct the way in which we would study the artwork in games, aesthetic computing, the use of algorithms and even the rather bizarre biologic art. I’ve got the supposedly full-DVD of the conference and I was hoping that would help me go through a lot of the sessions I’ve missed but unfortunately, the DVD is not as ‘full’ as I expected it to be, so there wer...

Due to the hecticness of my schedule, running around for the last 2 weeks, it has been hard to settle down to blogging. I'll write more about my European tour in scandalousthoughts when I get back to Durham. Right now, I am in New Orleans, attending Siggraph 2009, the conference for all CG geeks, whether gamers, film-makers, designers, animators, writers, directors, or students. It's been a rather unsettling week, and multi-tasking is truly the word. As the Benjamin Button's "We are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss" rang as true in this conference as it does anywhere else in one's personal life.

It is best to begin this blog by outlining some of my intellectual absorption and obsession. I have to admit that I came from a highly eclectic background; to many, I epitomize the very personification of the dilletantte in this age of professional specialization. Yet, I want to argue that it is this very unstructured and unformal nature of my thoughts and personality, one that is at once ambitious and idealistic in its intellectual project. But unlike a blog which was more haphazard, in this blog, I intend to explore ideas which I will follow through in the form of academic papers, semi-intellectual (but more researched articles which I may eventually elsewhere), fictional works and finally, culminating in a dissertation project. I already have a different blog by which I look at my more random thoughts that I like to communicate to the world, http://scandalousthoughts.wordpress.com/, that actually needs more regular updates, and which I will begin updating with some thoughts I have...