Annotated Bibliography
Angelique L. Jenkins s2096605
Project Development-
Books-
Bogue, Ronald (2003) Delueze on Cinema , New York: Routledge
Professor of comparative literature Ronald Bogue from the University of Georgia wrote the first book in English on French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. In Deleuze’s death, his second book about the philosopher, Bogue arranges and brings to us eight of his essays written since Deleuze’s death in 1995. These essays are all tributes to Deleuze’s thoughts, and add to the wider dimension in the sharing of his ideas, especially the way they relate to the aesthetic structure of his work.
Bogue extrapolates on how Deleuze sees philosophy, and in the arts, as additional domains of creative activity that can induce ‘new ways’ of thinking, perceiving and feeling….
The book addresses questions of style, writing, language, cinema, painting, music, politics, religion and philosophy in that of Deleuze’s texts.
Deleuze on Cinema continues the approach that Bogue adopts in all of his works, with ease and stye. Reader friendly! Bogue explains that his job is not only to further Deleuze's analyses of a ‘new’ studies on film but proposes to encourage both how Deleuze's analyses are positioned in relation to a contemporary philosophy, but may be thought about via coherent and conceptual frames.
Upon reading sections of this book I am able to further my knowledge’s on Cinema 1-thee movement image and Cinema 2-the time image by Gilles Delueze. This reading fills the gaps in linking these philosophical approaches by the situations and spaces we have no longer have ways to describe, in film studies, classification of image and the ways of understanding narrative in capturing the image.
Things like Deluezes review on Bergson’s account of specialized images- the perception –image (living image senses outside the world), the action-image (structure of space surrounding the living image) and the affection-image (that connects the living image’s outer perceptions, inner feelings, and motor responses to other images). And this goes further to the suggestion of ‘impulse-image’, ‘reflection-image’ and ‘relation-image’, three signs in the taxonomy of images -one genetic, and the two other compositional…
When conceptualizing these ‘things’ (ideas perhaps?) I like to grapple with the response, and the senses provoked in those spaces, then finally in the traces that will be made, or remain there… In the final product!
Bowring, Finn (2003) Science, Seeds and Cyborgs Biotechnology and the Appropriation of Life, London: Finn Bowring.
Finn Bowring from the School of Social Sciences from Cardiff University research interests are in Marxism and critical theory; existential phenomenology; the critique of work; political ecology; biotechnology, has made and eloquent reporting associated with the puzzling issues as expressed in the ‘title’ of this book.
Science, Seeds and Cyborgs in its detailed examination and critique of the DNA-centric paradigms. Those of molecular biology, and of the biotech industry it has spawned. It questions that the genetic manipulation of organisms is proceeding along a perilous path, where even the successes of the new genetic technologies produce corrosive cultural effects, making it progressively easier to think of organisms - including the human one - as disposable.
Exploring the wide region of modern biotechnology, and the genetic modifiers of plants and animals- to genetics, assisted kinds of reproduction technology, and human cloning -it offers the opinion that we are losing sight of the ‘human being’ in favour of changing that ‘being’ to an inhuman world.
This really interests/excites about ‘our’ fears in discovering the machine of cyber-beings… Perhaps ‘our’ future; and what it means to be post-human? Since my linking for now is that of the spaces in between I am able to see our conflicts; and current understandings on these issues. What this does is invent a fear of the future; I guess what I am on about here is that I am keen to bridge the gap with more than mere speculation. The moment we move from one point to the next, that threshold?
Our thought process so to speak…
Aborting concern perhaps?
But it contains a wealth of discoveries and considerations…
And about the pressing issues we may harbour; and the need to face about our realities remaining as ‘flesh and blood’ humans of the now, as we then move into the next stage of human life form.
As a mother, and a female form of the species, the concern is whether the ‘female form’ will be made obsolete? Finding the gap, and sharing the meditation on this is… Perhaps an idea I like to play with in the ‘other’ perceptions of the mind and in finding ways to create/provoke this mood/emotion.
Botton, Alain De (2000) The Consolations of Philosophy, London: Hamish Hamilton.
Philosophy is always in the background of my making sense of things, so after reading this book and other philosophical writing I find ironies that result in my way of thinking/perceiving what it is I am trying to express in my work, in ways of justifying I guess…
Alain de Botton uses a kind of compare and contrast style and this is displayed in image with words. So you can ‘see’ the examples he is sharing, I like the style of how he makes this tell more about the subject he approaches. I am humbled, and moved in most cases. He uses images of the photographic kind, and in the use of the characters he describes in famous paintings and so on… It impacts on me, so I hope that I am able to also make impact by understanding his style and import this to my own working practice, in practical and philosophical terms.
Alain de Botton has in this book used six of the finest minds in the history of philosophy to work on the problems of everyday life. Here then are Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche on some of the things that bother us all: lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety, the fear of failure and the pressure to conform . The anarchist in me appreciates these close observations of human nature, and the societal expectations we have been in witness to so far.
In fact, de Botton began his career writing novels about love, so it is with particular in ironic amusement that he offers Schopenhauer's consolation for a broken heart. That this ominous philosopher believed that we are attracted to our opposites (and thereby virtually guaranteed disappointment) because we are secretly seeking a co- parent for the next generation and need someone different to make up for our defects.
Well these are descriptions of the author and his work. Need I go no further than to suggest myself that I too dwell in the love of wisdom? And the virtue of love matters. So my reason behind my work always lies at the human core, and could be based in the romantic allusion of ‘human’ lives. In as a far as the ability to love with compassion and depth… The ideal virtue of what it means to be passionate about anything including love…
So these elements may be underlying in the reason for linking understandings with misunderstandings. And be creepily met in the video work itself?
After all we as humans face challenges at ever turn in the existence of how things are or come to be…
Deleuze, Gilles (1985) Cinema 2 the Time-Image, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
Hetherington, Kevin (1997) The Badlands of Modernity- Heterotopia and Social Ordering, New York: Routledge.
Heywood, Andrew (1992) Political Ideologies an Introduction, Hong Kong: Macmillan
Hovenden Fiona, Janes Linda, Kirkup Gill, Woodward Kath (2000) The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader, London : Routledge
‘ The Gendered Cyborg’ explores the relationship between representation, techno science and gender, through the metaphor of the cyborg. The contributors argue that the figure of the cyborg offers new ways of thinking about the relationship between culture and technology, people and machines, which disrupt the power of science to enforce the categories through which we think about being human: male and female. It considers Donna Haraway's Manifesto for Cyborgs, the articles make you think about how the ‘cyborg’ has been used in cultural representation from reproductive technology to sci-fi and question whether the ‘cyborg’ is as powerful an icon as is seems to be. Sections of the reader explore: the construction of gender categories through science and the interaction of techno science. Gender characters in contemporary science fiction films such as Blade Runner, and the Alien series… Debating modern reproductive technology such as; IVF and ultrasounds- considering their advantages, and the constraints for these feminine issues relating to artificial intelligence, and the wide world web.
To understand my position, my views, the angles at which I come from. These issues that are debated and influence my ways of understanding a ‘lively disposition’ here… From the filmic perspective I am influenced from the visual and in between condition of a female in the eighties. In her new representation, how she is seen, in the way that a branding of femininity remains and therefore the human trace that lies outside representations of gender.
McNay, Lois (1992) Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and the Self, UK : Polity Press
Plant, Sadie (1997) Zeroes and Ones, London UK: Fourth Estate Ltd.
Sadie Plant is a ‘cyber-feminist’ of the second –wave type. Considered to be a highly problematic in its theoretical framework, there seems to be no real definition of a ‘Cyber Feminism’. She merges form the early nineties from a group of artists and activists from Australia.
Questions of gender relationships in technology, and how technology can overcome patriarchy; and in the relationships, which examine the questions that surround digital machines being fundamentally male or female…
Zeroes and Ones a computer coded, and non-linear or logical response to the re-telling of a feminine western history of women, Cyborg Manifestos, switches, matrices, automata, cybernetics, wetware, dryware, digital women and the new techno culture.
I am encouraged by such writings that inform, and support my feminist feelings toward these particular spaces, and I would re-invent ways of sharing these notions in the visual sense. My work could be a reflection of this? Like zeroes and ones, I am interested in presenting the masculine and feminine qualities, provoking the boundaries. Technology is creating our future so it is with this research I am able to explore the ‘Cyborg’ myths that seem to be in glitch at the moment. The glitch video for Image Production may be representative of that.
In that video there is at play of discovery of the psychedelic kind, with colour at first, and in the interplay of pixels- this in turn transcends into a kaleidoscope of egg meeting sperm, and that is made by pure experimentation with image manipulation/production.
A little girl hums a melody, and the looking down a tube at guitar frets. The beginning of a fairy tale… The water ascends and descends also.
Procreation…
It is not unlike being inside a machine of thought as these interactions evolve. In it’s womb! So this is the ‘narration’ in my head. The story so to speak as I invent a structure…
Since my work is made with, and in the form of CD/DVD sampling, I consider how this is transferred to become data
Digital signals in the states of on/off that Sadie Plant was referring to, this may aid to further my understanding of conversion, production methods, glitch, gray code, sound synthesis, polarization of light, digital data, interfaces and so on…
In discovering ‘clock pulse’, waves and states of on/off that seem to occur in my work using digital/audio…
Silver, Lee M. (1998) Remaking Eden Cloning, Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humankind? USA: Pheonix Giant.
This book explores many aspects of cloning, genetic engineering and the future of humankind. Lee M.Silver is a professor at Princeton University in the Departments of Molecular Biology, and the program in Neuroscience, researching in genetics, evolution, reproduction, and the developmental biology, with a current focus on behavioural genetics. Professor Silver also teaches and lectures widely on the social impact of biotechnology, with an emphasis on reprogenetics.
It is an guide to the properties of human germ cells, and the procedures that parents may now adopt to tip the odds in the reproductive lottery in their offspring’s favour, as the stimulating possible consequences of this in reproductive revolution.
What is life, Creating Life, Cloning, Mothers and Fathers variations on theme and Tomorrows Children- the Virtual Child; and Designer Child are all titles of chapters that this science/non-fiction examines, the he delivers with a combination of scientific and ethical clarity.
This has enabled me to extrapolate the relationships that bind culture and art, and my interest in the scientific. Whilst upon reading I have been encouraged to think about the visual images I am trying to achieve from the ‘real’, and how culture affects contemporary arts practices inside the future. It uncovers for me at least the ‘predicted ideas’ by the qualified researchers and scientists in this area, and aids me in the understanding about ‘us’ as humans as a collective, and ‘our’ future on this planet, and the treatment of these things…
Smart, Barry (1993) Postmodernity, USA: Routledge
Barry Smart's (1993) depiction of the term 'postmodernity' Postmodernity as a contemporary social, cultural and political condition…
Postmodernity as a form of life, a form of reflection upon and response to the accumulating signs of the limits and limitations of modernity. Postmodernity as a way of living with the doubts, uncertainties and the anxieties which seem increasingly to be a corollary of modernity, the inescapable price to be paid for the gains and the pleasures associated with modernity.
Thus 'post-modern' can refer to a certain socio-cultural-political condition and our experience of it in our life-world ('a form of life'), but it also refers to a mode of theorizing ('a form of reflection') that is critical of the credentials of modern philosophy and science.
Several aspects of the modern credo are questioned and problematised by post modern theory, for instance: 1) belief in a linear and universal history, and in progress as the main thread of the modern occidental history, 2) idea of an individual, self-identical and basically rational subject as the foundation for all meanings, all knowing and learning, 3) concept of centralized, controlled, foundational, and systematic formation of knowledge as the starting point and ultimate resource for teaching. (See e.g. Lyotard (1979), Best & Kellner (1991), Bauman (1992), Smart(1993), Usher & Edwards (1994), Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman (1995),Slattery (1995), Doll (1993), and others).
Interestingly, as post modern theory problematises our way of perceiving the socio-cultural context, the modern subject, and the modern concept of knowledge, it puts into question all the three modern determinants of curriculum: society, learners and knowledge (as presented by Tyler (1949), but widely acknowledged later, as in Galen Saylor et el. (1981, 4th ed.) and Oliva (1992, 3rd ed.), for instance).
Post-modern theory does not only question the modern depiction of society, subject, and knowledge, it also questions their role, meaning, and use in understanding curriculum in the context of late modernity.
Prof. Barry Smart
Position: Professor of Sociology
Faculty: Humanities and Social Sciences
Department: SSHLS
Type: Academic
I am interested in the contribution social and cultural theory and analysis can make to our understanding of contemporary social life. My work draws on both classical and contemporary social theory and explores particular aspects of the transformation of modern forms of life.
In my work I draw on material from a range of disciplinary fields, including sociology, philosophy, and political economy and the inter-disciplinary field of cultural studies.
Current research interests include critical social and cultural analysis; sociology and economic analysis; and the cultural economy of sports.
http://www.port.ac.uk
This fully explains the misconceptions of the post modern condition, and for me contributes in the virtues of modernity inside a post modern time. Leading into the future of post-post-ness…
I guess?
Richard Wolff (1997) Possible Urban Worlds, INURA: Switzerland.
This book is a result of an international debate about new concepts in local action and new ideas for solidarity, democratic and sustainability in cityscapes. An eight year international network for urban research and action ‘INURA’…
Involving many authors and action groups!
It oscillates between concrete and urban experiences and theoretical considerations, with well known academics, and urban movement groups. The books appeal is about the global restructuring of cities today.
My work is influenced by environments from the ‘real’ to the ‘surreal’, these also are places/sites of the ‘heterotopia’ I may further explore. The urban infrastructure dominates the cyberspace, or the machinations of them, therefore exporting impressions into those spaces.
I am interested in using artistic visual/sounds that are made in the urban locations. I will further these in this work hoping that receiver may be immersed into new understandings/feelings by interactivity conveyed in the sound scapes and visual ambiences created. It may help in creating ‘mood’ environments and those places in between.
Warner, Marina (1998) No Go the Bogeyman, Great Britain : Vintage
HREF-References
http://www.vdb.org/
Founded in 1976 at the inception of media arts movement, the Video Data Bank is the leading resources in the United States for videotapes by and about Contemporary artists. The VDB collections feature innovative video work made by the artists from aesthetic, political or personal point of view. The collections include seminal works that, seen as the whole, describe the development of video as an art form originating in the late 1960’s and continuing to the present. The videos in our collections employ innovative uses of form and technology mixed with original visual style to address Contemporary art and cultural themes.
Through a national and international distribution service, the VDB makes video art; documentaries made by artists, and taped interviews with visual artists and critics available to a wide range of audiences.
This site further introduced to me ‘snit bits’ of artists works, that are an influence to my video art understanding- Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Peter Bode, Saddie Benning, Kristen Lucas, Jem Cohen and Lynn Hershem and are just some of the those whose work range from the synthesised imagery, general games theories, bugs, viruses, corner of the eye, sense of anxiety, structuring of video signal and operational metaphors of perception. This aids creating visual mappings and the technological machinery inklings that underlie in making video projections for me.
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