Monthly Archives: October 2018

Fire the Canons: Ramsay’s Screwing Around

From the initial paragraphs of Ramsay’s The Hermeneutics of Screwing Around, I expected this article to be about how the massive uptick in availability of digital texts and modes of information access has affected the landscape of the canon™.  As Ramsay writes, “What everyone wants—what everyone from Sargon to Zappa has wanted—is some coherent, authoritative path through what is known.”

As a poet, my reflex perception of the canon is not as a guide to reading, but as an expression of cultural power.  Who gets lauded, who gets read and whose lens is authoritative?  When I was an undergrad, I innocently appreciated the guiding principle of a body of great works; since then, however, I’ve felt alienated by it, pressured by it, far more than guided by it.

In the discussion of two modalities of research Ramsay highlights, search and browsing, there is no mention of what texts are discoverable. What are the power dynamics resident in their preservation, digitization and availability?  This question doesn’t change just because there is so much more data available. Further, what lenses are guiding our inquiries? What questions are we asking?  What led to us asking these questions? What are we interested in and why? How does authority manifest itself in the possibility space of inquiry in general? If history is written by the winners, and culture is grooved by authority, who are we anyway?  Are we always defined in relation to our canons?

To the extent that we have freedom of choice, we can decide to browse into elements that are defined as relatively “off the beaten path”.  Zappa can look for Varese. And Varese’s obscurity, I’m sure, formed no small part of his interest. But once we take the prismatic course of browsing, we come under the authority of search engines and availability, Google’s black box search engine, conditioned by the behavior of anonymous others, and unreported pay schemes to foreground certain sites and data, entities like JSTOR who shutter crucial information behind a pay wall, etc.  So much more data is available now, it’s true — and iI’s nice to have “choice”, for sure — but we do have to recognize that the possibility space of said choice is limited by many forces beyond our immediate perception and control.

I love screwing around on the internet, pursuing one thing only to be surprised by another and changing direction — exposing myself to things I would never have run across in a directed search.  I believe the Situationists called this derive.*  It’s now my main mode of inquiry; and this might be true for most people who spend time on the internet.  But to consider the derive as transforming one’s relationship to the canon would be a bit too optimistic a claim.

I realize, too, that what I’ve written about here is beyond the scope of Ramsay’s article — which sidesteps debate about canon-formation and boils down to an epistemology of research modalities.  I want to end by saying I love reading Ramsay; like Carolyn, I appreciate his style and clarity. I’m trying to read the entirety of Reading Machines right now and keep stopping to soak in the pleasure of a new idea.

*Edit: I do want to note that the Situationists were very aware of the limits of serendipity in the derive, incorporating a recognition of what contraints are present even as we “screw around”.

My mapping project.

Mapping Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.

This project was more challenging than the text analysis project, but I still enjoyed it. I decided to map information about Abraham Lincoln’s life because I am an amateur presidential historian, so its information I’m familiar with. If I’m doing a test run on new technology, I want to use knowledge I’m comfortable with, so I don’t feel overwhelmed.

I used ARCgis online to put this together. It was relatively easy to use, but I did have some issues with it, which I’ll get to later.

I assembled the information that I wanted to use. The sites included Abrahamlincolnonline.org, the National Park Service’s website, AmericanRhetoric.com, and the Morgan Library and Museum’s 2015 exhibition called Lincoln Speaks.

It took me three tries, though this part was not about the system itself, rather it was about me trying to do too much.

The first time, I wanted to do a map of all the major points in Lincoln’s life. I soon realized that that way madness lies. The map was just simply too cluttered. I couldn’t follow what I was doing, and if I was lost, I figured anyone looking at it would be as well, so I scrapped it.

Once I realized I needed to narrow my focus, I decided to focus solely on his adult life. This was still too cluttered, but it was certainly an improvement.

On the third try, I thought that his speeches would be a good focus. After all, Lincoln was perhaps the greatest speechwriter to be president. We all know quotes from them, like “With malice toward none” and “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. When I teach Voice and Diction, all of my students have to recite the Gettysburg Address[i].

After that, I organized what I wanted to represent. Since Lincoln’s debates with Stephen Douglas in 1858[ii] launched Lincoln onto the national stage, I figured they would be a good place to start. After putting them up on the map, I tried to label them one through seven and draw out the path Lincoln and Douglas took when they were debating.

That turned out to be too messy, so I deleted the lines and the numbers.

After that, I decided to add selected stops on Lincoln’s trip from Springfield to Washington, DC for the inauguration. Lincoln spoke at many of these stops, though, when pressed for information about the looming war, he was very vague. I tried to draw a line here, showing the train’s path, but again, too much for my tastes.

Speeches Lincoln gave while president were up next. I picked a few because they were mostly in Washington, DC. Here, I added his trip to Richmond in 1865 after it fell to Union forces even though he really didn’t give a big speech there.

I thought about adding a section on the train that took Lincoln’s body from Washington DC to Springfield, but that trip was almost identical to the inauguration trip[iii], so why bother?

However, I realized that some of his most famous speeches, like the speech at Cooper-Union, were still not included. As a result, I added the “speeches before Lincoln became president” category. Finally, because I saw the one from Illinois College in 2009[iv], I decided to add his honorary degrees.

I was struck by how limited Lincoln’s travels were. In the 21st century, we’re used to our leaders visiting many places and meeting with the people there, but, then, travel was considerably more difficult[v], so traveling to many places wasn’t going to happen. He was also a president at war, which encouraged him to stay close to home.

Of course, he may have been considered well-traveled by 19th century standards. I don’t know.

I think this gives an interesting visual overview of Lincoln’s speeches and the audiences present[vi]. We are used to immediacy, but then, they just didn’t have it.[vii] Notice that he didn’t spend much time in the South, which, given his stance on slavery is unsurprising.

ARCgis was for the most part easy to use. It helped me organize things with the map notes function. I created a different set of map notes for each category, which helped me with organization. The Map Notes function also allowed me to put information on the map. If you click on one of the dots, a pop-up will give tell you when Lincoln was there and why. If you click on a location with more than one dot, say Springfield, it will give information for one dot, and then say that it’s the first of X, and let you click to the next one.

The save and share functions are easy, and they have a “create an app” function, though I did not try it.

That’s all great.

Some down sides. The map’s default setting may change when you save it. For instance, I was setting up the information on Gettysburg when I was interrupted and had to save. When I reopened the map, it defaulted to Gettysburg. I wasn’t thrilled about this, and almost scrapped the map. However, I was interrupted again[viii], and saved it. When I return to the project later, the map was set up properly again.

My biggest issue was trying to insert a legend. I wanted to have a legend running down the left hand side of the map, defining the different colored dots. I could not manage it. Well, that’ not strictly true. I did put a legend together, but it was this giant clunky mess. I think this happened because I was using the web-based free version[ix]. When I looked up tutorials online, they were talking about clicking on things that just weren’t on my screen.

I got around this by turning it into a presentation (another nice feature). The presentation let me add a title onto each slide, so I created two slides (not difficult), and put in the legend on the second slide. It’s not where I want it exactly, but it’s there, so everyone can understand the map a little better.[x]

Would I use ARCgis again? I’d consider it. If I were to work on mapping things frequently, I would probably buy it, because that version looks like it has all sorts of interesting features.

 

 

 

[i] I actually do this because rhythm and breathing in the right places are important in Gettysburg. It’s not a long speech, but it isn’t an easy one to recite because it’s essentially twelve run-on sentences.

[ii] They were running for U.S. senate from the state of Illinois. Douglas won that election.

[iii] The Pittsburgh and Cincinnati stops were dropped from the funeral train, and Chicago was added.

[iv] Which… I mean, I guess so… but REALLY? 2009?

[v] This is why presidential inaugurations used to happen in March. They figured that the worst of winter was over, so travel wouldn’t be as rough.

[vi] I am also aware that I left places out

[vii] In fact, one of things that revolutionized warfare during the Civil War was the use of the telegraph. Its use was concentrated in the North, and the ability to communicate faster than the South helped the Union cause.

[viii] I’ve been busy.

[ix] It’s also possible that I just couldn’t manage to do it. It’s always easy to blame the software, but, sometimes, the fault is with the person using it.

[x] We’ve all dealt with technology. Sometimes we have to be able to improvise.

 

CALL FOR OBJECTS!

Hi DH Cohort,

Here’s that striking flyer that you’ve been seeing around the GC (again!)

ALL are INVITED to bring an object (no larger than your head) to:

Bring-A-Thing-A-Thon, the participatory launch of The Object Library on Tuesday, Oct. 16 and Wednesday, Oct. 17 12-6pm in the James Gallery.

I’ll be happy to catalogue it in The Object Library with you, and all are invited to enjoy some bubbly at the Launch party Tuesday, Oct. 16 at 6pm!

What will U bring 2 The Object Library????????

@
@

An article that’s important to our interests

Dieter Rams Wants Silicon Valley to Stop.

Dieter Rams is a famous industrial designer who worked with Braun from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. He was a believer in simplicity of design (a descendant of the Bauhaus movement, I suppose.)

Rams is the subject of a documentary by Gary Hustwit (who also did a documentary of the font type Helvetica). Hustwit is interviewed here, and he says that Rams believes that we’ve gone too far towards the digital and that it’s alienating us from each other.

Not sure if the doc has come out yet, but it sounds interesting.

NYC Media Lab’s Demo at Exploring Future Reality

Hi friends,

Here’s another opportunity at NYC Media Lab. You can apply to demo or register to attend.

NYC Media Lab will partner with university labs, media and technology executives, and startups from the CIty’s innovation ecosystem to bring 30 demos to Exploring Future Reality. Demo participants will receive complimentary admission to the event, which will host relevant discussions and ample networking opportunities.

DEADLINE: ROLLING UNTIL FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9. APPLYING IN EARLY INCREASES YOUR CHANCES.

On “Backward Reading” and experimental poetry

As a fan of contemporary poet Lyn Hejinian’s expansive “language” poetry practice that, in my opinion, has culminated in ‘the book of thousand eyes’ (2012), I was delighted to read this week’s assigned article “Deformance and interpretation” (by Lisa Samules and Jerome McGann, 1999). The article showcases the deformative reading-practice of poetry and its implication of multifaceted interpretations of poetry in the field of inadequate and performative language poetics. The article goes back to Emily Dickinson’s appraisal and defense of  ‘Backward Reading’ and displays some examples of reassembled, omitted, and re-spaced texts that reread — literally, from end to beginning — and reorder Wallace Stevens’s exemplary two poems: “The Search for Sound Free from Motion” and “The Snow Man.” What these experiments demonstrate through the reconfiguration of the word-order isn’t probably new in poetry writing practice as a variety of similar practice have been done in surrealist typographic and collage poetry since the advent of modernist poetry (in the least of romance language tradition) and objectivist poetry (speaking of history of American/British poetry) that includes Louis Zukofsky, Lorine Niedecker, and Myungmi Kim, among many others. Also, Susan Howe’s facsimile poetic experiments continue this graphic modernism at the intersection with language poetry while it serves the archival intention of poetry writing as well (which I will not further discuss in this post.)  However, I still believe that the article’s ‘displays’ of sample poetry deformed by “backward reading” effectively present the functions and effects of these ‘reversing,’  ‘rewriting,’ and ‘undoing’ experimental reading activities in pursuit of the open-ended interpretations through the looking-glass of the text as opposed to a service to the undecodable intuition, mystery, and authenticity in the tradition of romantic poetics. Backward Reading or deformative interpretation first estranges a reader from the text’s supposed directness and adequacy and deliberately operates a new machine of reading the words in different – both semantic and graphic – compositions.
In these activities or displays, what matters more is the performative transformation of relationality between words in relationship with various reader-responses than the original (if any) ‘content’ of the poem. In these practices, the original ‘content’ undergoes its own reduction and is exposed to the de-hierarchical and re-configuring system of language and its varying operative and interpretative relations. Even if it might first appear as technical or mere engineering of words, this unlocking and remapping of the text as an open self indicates a further philosophical dimension of learning the new constitution of poem-words (in particular, nouns and pronouns) with redistributed semantic weight on each word (as demonstrated in the case of rewriting of “The Search for Sound Free From Motion.” Reordering and redistribution of the words can open the ambiguous texture and meanings of poetry and possibly the socio-linguistic imagination of the indefinite and transformative networks of readers with different approaches to the text-net. Also, as one sees the different graphics of rewriting of “The Snow Man,” the text can also create new interpretations thanks to its visual compositions which remind us of Mallermean visual poetry. While the article didn’t mention Mallermean or post-Mallermean poetry tradition in either romance language literature or American avant-garde poetic lineage, one can further research the practice of seeing a poetic-text as a self-mutating organism in consideration of modernist techniques of internal textual permutations, ellipsis, mirroring, and so forth. Importantly, the article suggests that these techniques of estranging the text and revitalizing it in new assemblages are not just the text-centered practice. The article keeps referring to the reader’s positionality in seeing the text and reconstituting the meanings of the text. So even if Wallace Stevens’s poetry is often discussed as poetry of ‘nothingness,’ one can witness that, through these word-shifting experiments, it can operate many minuscule somethings in the mind of the readers. In addition, I’d like to point out, whereas the article, being written in 1999, didn’t discuss the moving-image transformation of written poetry in contemporary visual art, both analog and digital (as well as hybrid-media) moving image artists have ventured into graphing word-poetry towards visual poetry in motion, which would even more complicate the possibility of the text as a transformative work upon the viewer’s (beyond the reader’s) semiotic and aesthetic engagement with it, especially on digital platforms of literature.        

Computers (and algorithms) as… objective entities?

The title of this post was originally going to be “Computers as… objective machines?” but since Stephen Ramsay’s Reading Machines: Toward an Algorithmic Criticism focuses on algorithms, I had to change up the noun just a bit. I wouldn’t consider algorithms to be machines, but after typing out the title of the reading, that’s another interesting thought.

Ramsay opens up the text, specifically in his “Preconditions,” by setting the scene with the idea of computers as objective machines:

“Against this view stand those who regard computers in the humanities as providing a welcome relief from the radical skepticism of contemporary humanistic thought. Here, after all, is a machine that not only gives answers but demands them—a device that is wholly intolerant toward equivocation and uncertainty. In this view, the computer represents an emancipation from the ironic imprisonments of postmodern excess. Even without supposing that computation leads toward (or even begins with) objectivity, some see it as a way to get beyond the beached solipsism that characterizes modern discours and toward its right and proper end in raison.” (page ix)

What interested me about this excerpt was not that the idea was new to me, but I realized I had not really given much thought to how some people and institutions have come to the belief that algorithms could also be objective entities. It all began with computers themselves, though that’s another intriguing idea in itself. What exactly does it mean for computers to be objective machines? Does that include computers’ pre-installed applications and the intricacies of the applications themselves? I actually can’t remember the last time I used a computer solely for its pre-installed applications because as far as I can remember, a computer and the Internet have come hand-in-hand — even if the Internet connection was as slow as a snail. What I’m trying to get at is I just can’t place my finger on what exactly encompasses computers when it comes to this idea that computers are objective machines.  

Next, while Ramsay discusses algorithms in the context of text analysis, I want to bring up damage that algorithms have been responsible for in other contexts — especially in education systems. I suppose this is my “algorithmic criticism” of education systems (thanks Ramsay!). Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil is a very good book I read last semester that discusses the shortcomings of algorithms in many different contexts. In one chapter, O’Neil writes about how many college admissions offices use algorithms to rank students and predict their behavior, which isn’t an idea that should be new to anyone. You can read the relevant excerpts from Weapons of Math Destruction in this article, but some of the quotes are below:

“Enter the age of big data. Recently, college admissions offices have begun to use algorithms that work on an individual-student basis to profile and predict their behavior. They use social media data, as well as the data supplied by the applications, to compute the likelihood a given student will enroll if accepted, the extent of financial aid needed by the student—or needed to seduce a relatively well-off student—and the chances that student will graduate. It’s the big data version of the exact same game, with the exact same goal: to increase the college’s ranking.”

“What about poor kids? There’s an algorithm for that. The College Board website has a matching algorithm to pair high school students with suitable colleges, and it’s free. This could be a useful tool for many. But the college readiness advisors I interviewed said their inner-city students are almost entirely paired with expensive for-profit universities, the diplomas of which have been shown to be no more useful in landing jobs than high-school diplomas.”

“The college admissions process has become a minefield, and the current algorithms are the mines. If we are to regain control over our education system, we need to do better, and that means a better definition of quality education, with an eye on containing costs. We can start by demanding college rankings, for example, that are tailored to our needs and that take into account cost and future debt loads. The U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard is a great start. Big data can help but only if we scrutinize the algorithms instead of unquestionably following them.”

I want to end with a quote from Ramsay’s Reading Machines, since I feel it encompasses all the shortcomings of algorithms regardless of context:

“If algorithmic criticism is to have a central hermeneutical tenet, it is this: that the narrowing constraints of computational logic—the irreducible tendency of the computer toward enumeration, measurement, and verification—is fully compatible with the goals of criticism set forth above.” (page 16)

Similarly, as we saw last week when reflecting on our text mining praxis assignments, many of us ended up doing more of a close reading — when the goal/expectation was distant reading — because it was nearly (if not completely) impossible to determine the context of the words without inserting ourselves into the text mining process. The human factor inevitably cannot (and should not) be completely eliminated.

Savoring Ramsay & Digesting Drucker

I’ve been savoring the Ramsay reading and also trying to digest the Drucker reading.

Ramsay is now on my desk next to Walter Benjamin and Adorno & Horkheimer as an essay with LONG legs.

I’m loving his writing style and am resonating to phrases such as “soul-crushing lack of order” to describe Web 1.0.

I appreciated the “design your own path through culture” rather un-scholarly path that he recounts about the Frank Zappa/Varese axis (via Look magazine no less!) Amazing how he applies this to illustrate the differences between “search” and “browsing” and how “search”, in my opinion, is killing all the creativity in all of us.

As much as I’m nearly always engaged in the “purposive experience” I have always truly valued the “serendipitous experience”. The thing that falls into your lap. The puzzle piece you find without looking. LOVE those moments.

So I actually had a WHOLE different kind of weekend courtesy of Ramsay’s writing which gave me permission to BROWSE again. While I also did have to “search” in my weekend studies, my mindset felt different, and being bombarded by all the “prescripted” yields didn’t bother me as much. Thank you, Stephen Ramsay! And anyone who can riff on Erasmus AND Barthes et al is a hero in my book, all pun. (I’ve studied Barthes at length for my MA in Media Studies and tweeted about his essay Camera Lucida on #dhintro18.)

Now, on to Drucker, wow…

Having read many screenplays, which sometimes give cues to the readers/actors such as shy, bold, flirtatiously, etc. I was wondering if she was citing a famous scene from a well-written screenplay when I came upon the infamous p. 12-13 section with flirting as an XML example. I was so perplexed about it that I took to search (apologies to Ramsay) and Googled:

“why does johanna drucker use flirting as XML example in speclab?”

Here are the results: DruckerFlirtingExampleGoogleSearchYieldScreenShot

Hannah’s “hot take” post is in the Top 10 search yield results for my Googled question.

I realized the Drucker passage is not from a screenplay and I also got a clue toward WHY she uses flirting, from the search yield results, due to a sentence being highlighted, which I’d also highlighted while reading:

“In the [flirting] example… the concept of ‘flirtation’ is far more elastic than that of ‘conversation'”.

My first thought to myself was, why didn’t she use a less charged example like coughing to demonstrate a concept far more elastic than conversation?

So I have to wonder if she purposely used “flirting” to inject a feminist agenda, much like Donna Haraway does in The Cyborg Manifesto. Maybe I’m reading in to it too much.

Personally speaking, the flirting example coming so early on in the reading was distracting to me. I was simultaneously trying to rectify flirting as an XML example while also trying to grasp the data science of XML which Drucker attempts to illustrate through it. Very circuit jamming. And it catalyzed the conversation over in Hannah’s “What the hell, Drucker?” thread about using this very flawed “sexist” example to demonstrate plasticity in XML (agreed) which Patrick noted to Hannah detracted from the XML itself (also agreed).

So, in my opinion, while Ramsay is successful in illustrating search/browse with the unique example of Zappa/Varese, Drucker is not as successful in illustrating XML with her unusual choice of flirting.

Back to savoring Ramsay after some dinner…

NYC Media Lab Prototyping Challenge

Hi everyone,

Thought some of you might be interested in this new prototyping challenge NYC Media Lab launched.

Havas: The Future of NYC Transportation

Application Deadline: Friday, November 16th

Havas is a company devoted to building meaningful brands and meaningful experiences. While big brand campaigns are needed, we also strive to make a positive impact on real people’s lives and better our communities through building experiences. Impact comes in many forms. It could be utility, inspiration, or support. And a little can go a long way. Key is to be alert to shifting needs and proactively offer solutions and support when they are needed most.

This year, we’ve chosen to focus on a topic that impacts all of us New Yorkers—the Future of Transportation and the role technology can play to support upcoming needs. Havas will partner with NYC Media Lab to launch an open call for NYC universities to imagine the future of transportation in cities:

Guiding Questions:

  • How will technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision shape the future of transportation in cities?
  • How will data and technology transform how we experience, access and move within cities?

Challenge Areas:

  • Challenge Area 1: Supporting Growing Commuter Needs
  • Challenge Area 2: Improving City Transit Efficiencies
  • Challenge Area 3: Helping Businesses Embrace Change and Prepare for Future Demands

More details here:

https://nycmedialab.org/projects/2018/9/27/havas-the-future-of-transportation-in-cities

What the hell, Drucker?

This is a very hot take and I’m only up to page 13, but I’m posting this anyway.

I want to like this reading selection because I think it’s important to question how our cultural beliefs about logic and computing affect social structures… but I don’t like it. I think the introduction comes off as overwrought, self-serving hand-wringing and it’s really putting me off.

As I was reading this I thought of Richard Jean So’s article “All Models are Wrong.” The picture Drucker paints of the DH world is a model. Maybe in 2009 DH was as unthinking as she portrays, or maybe she distant read digital humanities projects without close reading the thinking around them to test her assumptions. I’m not in a position to say, with my 2018 perspective and only 5 weeks of studying the field. What I can point out is that this piece is riddled with absolutisms and sweeping declarations that strike me as iffy. To me, it feels like Drucker’s read of the DH field and DH projects lacks the very nuance, sensitivity and interpretism (whatever spellcheck, it’s a word if I want it to be) that she claims are missing in the DH work she critiques.

Drucker claims that consideration of design as a means of communication and usability, “plagues the digital humanities community” (p. 6). This is a cheap shot on my part, but has she actually used many DH tools? The user experience for many of them quite closely aligns with design as meditation, freestyle, or opportunity for idiosyncratic thinking.

Also what the hell is that weird conversation on page 12 where Drucker is trying to demonstrate that XML doesn’t communicate flirting?

In the example Drucker gives, a woman is bewildered and a man is “graciously” giving that woman knowledge and validation. The woman has big blue eyes that drop submissively as she blushes and asks him to guide her. No aspect of the man’s physical appearance is described. As always, it’s women who are fair game objects of a one-directional, sexualizing gaze.

I’m going to go stress eat about sexism (haha, I’m such a woman!). If, when I come back to this, further reading makes me reconsider these POVs, I’ll mea culpa in the comments.