cyberspace
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Monday, June 09, 2003
we did it!! it is done...for now. take a look at the site and feel free to add your comments. we have used this blog to document our process of creating the site and content. feel free to contribute to this project. it will be ongoing.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
hi, checkout the website. the images are all up. tema, there are images on the "body"page for analysis. take a look. if you have any others in mind we can add them or replace the ones there.
Okay, I am studying our blobby introduction and I have edited it a little bit with Irina's contribution. I will send it to you, Tema (the Jewess) for further refinement. So far, it looks like we have the following research questions (in order of appearance in the draft I am working on):
Does the conception of the Internet as space instead of a network of text allow for the Internet’s governance?
Does the metaphor further allow for a colonialist approach to the Internet or for a neo-liberal capitalist appropriation?
If physical space may vary across cultures, we also ask what implications might these cultural differences have on the conceptualization of cyberspace as a space. How do these cultural physical spaces relate to (audio)visual space on the Internet?
Our central question is how does discourse and uses of space vary across cultures and how does that affect discourse and experience of cyberspace?
Also, from our draft, it looks like this is what we are up to:
In order to examine the concept of cyberspace as it relates to culture and space we will look at two main dimensions: the use of spatial metaphors and narrative in textual forms and the organization/conceptualization of space in visual forms. We will also look at these dimensions’ relationships with the use and conception of physical public space in real life (iRL) and the physical/spatial modalities of the user’s cyberspace experience (e.g. cybercafes vs. personal workstation).
Let's all more or less stick to this or let's subvert, but let's decide fast!
Finally, this seems to be the ultimate goal of our paper (I say it seems, because I am open to change, I am just reporting here...):
In completing this project, our goal is to denaturalize the spatial assumptions of cyberspace and to examine their cultural and ideological implications.
Friday, June 06, 2003
Yeah, I am blogging as Irina is blogging and I am reading what she is typing before it is actually published (this is hallucinogenic...).
I think we should make a point in slipping in each category some transition from the "previous" one (e.g. bodies should mark the transition to text) and a number of hints to every other one. I like the twofold hierarchical/sequential structure, I still think sequences can be fascinating and powerful in a nonlinear environment, not as a logical rule, but as an evocative device...by which the discourse on bodies in cyberspace is also the entrance into the one on text, so that there is no apparent compartmentalization between different nonlinear chunks of the same hypertext. Something like, you know, bodies in cyberspace are inscribed in text, both in constructive/performative ways (e.g. role-playing, presentation of self) and in constraining manners (forms and categories defining who you are in terms of gender, race and so on and so on).
Also, I just wanted to announce that I am not seeing an end yet to this quarter's labor...hope to survive until next friday!
cool, i mean hot. i think that the crossover of all the categories is great because it shows that these are not isolated but intertwined. i propose that we point out the crossover as much as possible. to me it seems perfect that they are turning out somehow related to one another. maybe because it makes them more real? we can even talk abut the photographs in other categories to make transitions and connections between all the separate parts.
yes, i agree, the web is a much more convenient medium for our web-like project than a linear paper would be.
maybe being drawn to images is a natural gestalt-like escape in the overload of information that we get?
Thursday, June 05, 2003
and the body in public space can also be text based as in cyberspace. the textures are altered to hide the blemishes, the images are projected into physial space as they are in cyberspace. Wherever we go, as we walk through the agora, we see in the ads, the body, the text abd the texture.
...and the body, the text and the texture in the text of resistance. less visible, in an alley. most often illegal. the body, the texture and text are different in this less visited space...much like in cyberspace.
ok and one more thing. here is an image created by an artist from Belgrade. i got this image from the memefest website. the subtitle brings out the current tensions between textures and physical body.
it is possible to remove or cover the mole from the body to make it look the way that a doll's body can look. The artist, Natalija Savic writes about the title "The title of our project also corresponds with an idea of people becoming “covered” with a non-transparent layer that masks natural and more personal characteristics of a human being. Artists protesting against uniformity and non-consciousness. " I think that this is a very cyber way to talk about what she thinks is happening in the real physical world to real physical bodies.
this takes us into the hybrid mode. the real and the layers of plastic and the masking of moles, perhaps with "Healing Brush" in photoshop. here visual digital imagery is used to blend the virtuality and the physical body. or to comment of the blending of the two.
however, look at this wall, the texture, the text and the man in this photo on the center of town in Oaxaca, Mexico. The texture of the building and the face and the placement of the text and the content of the text. more later.
Tema, here is a thought about your discussion of the body in space. I was writing about texture and thinking that the two can be very related.
(but first let me tell you that Giorgia came up with three main terms for our writing discussion: blurb, blob and blog. first one of us blurbs, then we blob and finally a blog results.) so here is a blurb--
back to textures and bodies. this link will take you to the tutorial in Photoshop that takes you through the process of taking "blemishes" out of a photograph.
"The Healing Brush is a wildly souped up version of the Clone Stamp tool." this is a quote from the above page. two things are telling here, the use of digital photography and photoshop to allow for mass editing of the body representation. although we know that this is common in the magazine industry, it is now available and easy to use on a mass scale. the other thing is the "clone" tool in photoshop which allows you to take textures from other parts of an image and apply them to blemishes, etc. the idea of cloning texture to alter an appearance and the chioce of words is interesting..."healing tool" and "clone," both seem to relate to concepts of cyberbody.
i think that i will just get a job delivering wonderbread and buy a nice office with windows in Everquest. i think they go for about $500 on ebay. i can eat sandwiches that never go stale and frolick through the sunlit meadows of virtual reality without needing to go outside for log periods of time.
Okay, we just found out that our new office will have no windows. I want to start a serious discussion on the effects of material conditions of our physical space (absence of light) on our imagined community of scholars as well as on our individual psyches. As Iole once said, what sense does it make to use computer and multimedia technology (and thus also cyberspace) in a bunker that could be anywhere? I might as well have stayed in Bologna, believing to be a scholar in my own basement...well, maybe not quite.
Sorry about this meta-rant, but I am suffering and I cannot help to think of this as I speculate on the relationship between the material conditions and the symbolic organization of our space...I'll get into Everquest, so I can run through a forest right from my office-cave.
Ciao, sigh.
I am trying to write about text in (physical & cyber) space. We intend text as the combination of verbal and visual communication that is available in space, as a way to communicate a function or an appropriate use of the space, sell a product or indicate a business and, finally, demonstrate an act of self-expression or resistance (e.g. graffiti). I guess this is a rough and convenient summary of what we want to include in our discussion, but I am still brainstorming.
Also, I would like to talk about how human bodies in cyberspace are entirely inscribed in text (words and graphics) and how
they move in a space created by text in a highly structured and structuring way (e.g. MUDS) or in a more negotiable and flexible one (e.g. lesbian café).
Feedback on this? Please...
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Okay, I just changed the template to include a comment form. The discussion can officially start, although I would wait until the 9th of this month at least :-).
Monday, June 02, 2003
Right on, we made it...here you are the first two sample pages of our website on the different uses and functions of public space. The text is still nonsense, but the pics are cool. Click here.
