CS A2: A new draft with peer feedback

This is now much more focused on a specific line of inquiry.  I feel like this has put me in a better place to begin putting words down for A3. (I hope!)

rewrite- CS Assignment 2 Can you be dead and alive at the same time_ Draft 6

Comments and some reflection to be added later.

Adding 5/12/2019 (although they arrived prior to that nad presented here in the order they arrived  – my responses in Orange)

• Something I picked up from the UCA (site links below) was that the list of illustrations goes before the bibliography. I’ve followed these for mine. I wasn’t sure about the sentences under the images. Should they be in the text? (yes, I am really pushing boundaries here – something to look into. – I wrote in an email discussion
  I expect if it repeats what’s in the body it’s fine, if it echoes what’s in the body one is flirting with danger, if it adds info – it’s probably not such a good idea. )

  The intimates using text examples e.g (see fig 1).
  Like Doug, I thought you had to refer it back to your BOW. (God there are so many opposing suggestions re. this point from students and staff. My BOW and CS work is clearly very much connected but BOW is as it should be right now, an unfolding emergent thing – at the moment the CS work is informing the BOW ideas but there is nothing to see except for experiments of A1 and A2 which might feel completely unrelated, an email from eBay confirming a purchase of some Super 8 film shot in the US in 1971 (my year of birth) and a bunch of disparate bits of text. I suspect for any students reading this – that in each case it will be different. It will depend on your work and your process. I suspect there are no hard and fast rules, rather tendencies. The tendency would be to include some reference to one’s own work but it is not necessary especially if not relevant (although how one makes work and then writes about something that isn’t related is puzzling) – or if it doesn’t further your argument. 

  https://www.uca.ac.uk/library/academic-support/harvard-referencing/

  https://xerte.ucreative.ac.uk/play.php?template_id=93

  The formatting is obviously something one wants to get right  – good habits are great to get into and I will revisit. I am confused (as I think many others are too) about what is expected of us if we have already mentioned citation info in the body – which we might do if relevant  – then thereafter we need only put the page number or ibid if continuing. I am not sure if this convention is acceptable or if it is what my peer is referring too but I have been looking at and taking on board what academic writers do and noticing when they seem to be following Harvard guidelines (as far as I understand them). If one need only put (date) or (pagenumber) after a quote or reference rather than (name, date, page number) because the information has already been established, that should suffice – surely. Even if that is not what we do every time. Is this comment is referring to, I wonder. I will need to clarify in case it is about something else which I’ve not cottoned on to.

   

  

   

• I’m going to put these here & have included an annotated doc with more suggestions.
  • There are two main topics of conversation in the introduction: Why is the narrative of quantum theory relevant to representing our sense of reality today? & Is digital or analogue more suited to this type of representation? I am not sure I see this as a problem – but will re-look at my phrasing. The main issue I have and which I am working against all the time is how entanglement functions, is seen by modern Westerners and effects academic practice, and how the separation of related topics is discussed. I am also coming round to the idea that the issue is not about the difference between analogue and/or digital although that is a relevant issue – but rather than the difference between fixedness and dynamism. Still analogue speaks to a world in which things are fixed. Moving image, regardless of media conveys less fixedness. Digital media has dynamic movement and possibility built into it – regardless of what happens thereafter, i.e. whether we focus on a single frame or many (giving the illusion of movement) and speaks to and conveys a world that is not fixed but dynamic.  Fluidity is not some kind of Nirvana for me – it has its problems as we see, but it is what we are dealing with in the world today. 
  • I think you then go on to talk more about the perception of reality as it has been moulded by the invention of photography, and I’m not sure that the digital/analogue debate is as relevant as the question of technology. Gosh!! – this is what all my work is ALL about – I must have completely failed to convey the crux of my entire inquiry – the anatomy of the media we use emerges from and feeds back into culture/perception : see notes which I dropped from DI&C essay re Victorian mechanics (Early draft example of DI&C essay (draft 3)The author of the article explains film cameras are like vinyl records amongst millennials, which suggests analogue and film are a curiosity from a foreign land, the past, amongst people who were ‘born digital’; perhaps in a similar way to how the aesthetics of Victoriana are adopted by a popular sub-genre, Steampunk. Steampunk references Victorian technology and mixes it with futuristic, (which might be seen as a reversal of Derrida’s Hauntology where the past acts as a spectre within the present.) Within the Steampunk astheatic, the future haunts the past, as narratives are often set in alternative histories, where our future fantasies become embedded. Such fantasies might be interpreted as fascination in its truest sense, as our fear of transforming from human to post-human, and then on to non-human expresses itself.
    ) – The digital/analogue debate is critical within multi-layered, entangled, issues related to representation ∴ representationalism. Digital is the media (for now) of the masses which allows people from all walks of life to express themselves – it is also the language of control and manipulation used by advertisers (of all kinds, inc. political ones). It has led to the proliferation of ‘voice’ across the whole spectrum of society. It has also allowed propaganda to be spread much faster than and further than previously. We should not/cannot separate social media or digital photography and how it is used from data in general:
  • See Self & Other A5 text  – “Photography (still and moving) attracts plenty of attention as the possible culprit for “destabilising truth and reality. The bombardment of images makes valuing them a challenge. In an article querying their reliability LA Times journalists, Carolina Miranda and Jeffery Fleishman, tell us “…in our social media-frenetic world, images careen at hyper-speed across a politically divisive and dangerous landscape, where they are celebrated, manipulated and often degraded. A picture can be altered and a video edited with such alarming swiftness and precision that it is difficult to scroll back to its unadulterated original…Alternate realities have become hobgoblins of our time.” (2018)
    Just under two decades ago, Andy Grundy for the New York Times wrote, “In the future, it seems almost certain, photographs will appear less like facts and more like factoids – as a kind of unsettled and unsettling hybrid imagery based not so much on observable reality and actual events as on the imagination”. He continues, “This shift, which to a large extent has already occurred within the rarefied precincts of the art world, will fundamentally alter not only conventional ideas about the nature of photography but also many cherished conceptions about reality itself.” (1990) One might justifiably argue conceptions of reality are changing dramatically in light of digitisation. However, they’ve done so frequently in the past, throughout our relatively brief history and often due to previous technological advances. They will undoubtedly continue to evolve. To borrow Mr Peachum’s excellent words: ‘that is all there is to it’. And beyond that, humanity may indeed be ‘shit’. However important and destructive and godlike we think we are as individuals, however collectively critical we might be about NOW, we have long been full of it.” (Field 2018 – extract) 
  • See: “I think it’s an oversimplification [social media being to blame for a distrust of science]. We know from history that you don’t need social media to spread disinformation, you can do it with old-fashioned media. However, I do think social media has made it worse because it’s now possible to get disinformation out to incredibly large audiences rapidly at very low cost. A bunch of guys in a basement can now do a lot of damage and do it pretty quickly” (Lawton/Oreskes 2019)Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432580-600-naomi-oreskes-turn-your-anger-at-science-denial-into-political-action/#ixzz67EaekWF6Analogue is limiting. Although women and non-male, non-white people, non-dominant ideology subjects, of course, have made work with older tech, the space, money, time one needs to use analogue materials prevents many from doing so. This impacts heavily on the perception of reality – so much media made privileged and arguably quote myopic people who have limited experience of life, literally never had to think about being black or poor or uneducated –  and my DI&C essay is all about that issue. Within an entangled discussion about an entangled subject – this is key. 
  • The ‘Flexible Unlearning’ section is too dense and summarising the ideas in the quotations will also focus your thoughts. I am looking for places to cut words but I am not sure this is the place – although I will relook. I was encouraged by Andrea (previous tutor) about comments regarding my ‘sophisticated use of quotes’  used to ‘drive arguments forward’. Something to speak with Matt about
  • The two bits on moving image and consciousness don’t seem to fit here (p7-8)
  • I agree that the examples are too long and that there are examples within Photography that might be worth looking at (see below). Have noted that this section is where I can make cuts but I very clear that the first two examples are absolutely right  – although I need to set up a dialectic in the second example which I can do, having seen tutor feedback to other student’s work which clarified things a little for me about images being a phenomenon and or object/memori mento. Another peer’s comments made me realise I need to really underline and heavily signpost why I have used these two examples – this comment underlines that need. The final example can be replaced by another  – and I think I may have found one I’m happier with. 
  • I like the ‘Another Life’ example but can’t see the link to the Haraway and Lupton in the last couple of paragraphs. Condensing this section will, again, focus your ideas. Hopefully, this will be more obvious once I’ve spelled things out but just to reiterate, William is a Cyborg. He is also the future of a photograph. He is also an obvious human Other – see many, many, many texts relating to Cyborgs to Otherness. See page 183 – Fred Ritchin quotes Harraway–
  • You mention Elkins saying that photography is boring but don’t actually reference this in your main section on him (p6). Useful point
  • The last paragraph feels very much what the focus of the review should be and I kept looking at your extended essay question which I think is much more precise.
  • Suggestions for examples section:
  • • Noriko Yamaguchi – performance artist http://www.mem-inc.jp/keitaigirl/artist.htm
    • Juno Calypso ‘The Salon’ https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/england/london/articles/see-this-fantasy-beauty-salon-by-juno-calypso/
      I know this work is very popular – I am not convinced by it despite the fact it is striking and obviously very effective. 
    • Armin Linke – for photography as intra-related
    • Sohrab Hura ‘The lost head & the bird’ – for contemporary reality – ThinkI will be including this artist but not this work and came across it via 
    • Vincent Morisset – for game / interactive / installation / performance – merging of media & technology
    • Possibly (I couldn’t get them to download onto my v old iPad) see BJP April 2016 ‘Weird Science’ & April 2017 ‘Scratching the surface’. Should be in the UCA library.
• I found this mostly engaging, but found the Examples in Popular Culture and Art section problematic for two reasons:
  • • A lot of words per example – feels like two much detail for this length of essay Agreed. -it’s the section that isn;t working for me tight now. 
    • That the examples are all moving image See previous blog – this also tell to I need to spell things out more – I know you address this in the essay but your question (about whether still photography is embedded in a dying ideology) risks undermining the premise that this subject is worthy of an extended written project on a *photography* degree

 

There is some useful feedback here. Mainly because it shows me where I need to make things much more explicit – since I use the process of writing to think, to inquire, to figure things out, it is through reading and re-reading what I write, and then seeing how others receive it that I begin to understand the complex ideas I’m exploring in others’ writing and how that fits with my overall inquiry. However, the conservatism mentioned by Daniel C Blight (see below) on Twitter or the ‘Cartesian habit of mind’ Karen Barad discusses is strong in photography – and in academic photography training – and I feel like (even if I were the clearest simplest writer in the world) one is constantly working against that trend.

It is also very important for me to see that others have not been on my journey – my inquiry is long and expansive. My inquiry ‘explores debates beyond a simple education course forum’ (DI&C feedback 2019). It dates back to my time as a child watching grownups behave weirdly and noticing moments getting lost forever, people copying each other. To when I first began reading child/baby anthropology books because the usual baby fodder was boring, reductive, ideologically-informed and at times, quite, quite mad. i.e. ‘Don’t look your baby in the eyes’ !!!!!!

I also think when sharing these ideas with other photography students I will need to tread carefully – I am not saying their work is ‘boring’ (it isn’t). I am saying still photography is limited and limiting and ‘such and such’ may be the structural reasons why.

https://twitter.com/DanielCBlight/status/1199286943533731840?s=20