LIT 20S-02 Media Archeology: Time, Space and Techne – 1.1
LIT 20S-02: Media Archeology: Space, Time and Techne
MF 2:50-4:05pm
White 105
Syllabus up to Week 8, v.1
Course Description
From clay tablets and the stylus to word-processors and voice-recognition software; from Kythera, the ancient Greek computer, to today’s high-processing computers; from magic lanterns to digital films/videos; pottery/conches to IPods, mediation is more than what we see on our electronic screen, and media archaeology allows us to dig into both our known and less visible past to discover practices and histories of knowledge creation, archaeology, and transmissions that forms and transforms our civilization. In this course, we will discover that what we consider as disciplines and knowledge subjects are not bounded and constrained by artificially enforced delimitations. We will look at what media means within media studies, as it exists today, and at how media has always been present and in constant evolution with civilization from Sumer, Babylon to current nation-states. We will attempt to understand what media means to different groups of people across different civilizations and different knowledge traditions, exploring that demarcation between the East and West. We will learn that the history of art, history of the book, history of informational sciences, history of music and the moving image, and that of scientific instruments are all significant contributors to the history of the technology of media. We will then tie in all with the question of what constitutes the practices of ethics in media and what are the ways in which such questions are pursued. This class will study the history of media in relation to developments in the history of science and technology.
Course Outcomes
By the end of the course, you should be able to:
- Connect media history to an understanding of how technology and its politics shape our modern world;
- Identify the alignment of seemingly different histories and knowledge fields in the creation of the history of media objects;
- Produce a final project in an object an area of immediate interest to you while relating that to what has been learnt in the course;
- Able to evaluate and write critically about what that is being presented as facts and to always question the veracity of the ‘facts.’
Course Materials
Required books (you may purchase them at the Textbook stores or obtain them through other means). They will also be available on 3-hour loan at the Lilly Library.
Deep Time of the Media: Toward the Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means by Siegfried Zielinski.
Optical Media: Berlin Lectures 1999 by Friedrich Kittler.
Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications and Implications eds Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka
Turing: A Novel about Computation by Christos H Papadimitriou
Optional
Literature, Media, Information Systems: Essays by Friedrich Kittler with John Johnston
Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen by Barbara Maria Stafford and Frances Terpak.
New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader eds Wendy Chun and Thomas Keenan
All the other readings will be available on Sakai or be circulated as attachments
Learning Process and Expectations
The first half of the semester will have us going through selections of readings in the required books, including the novel, as well as look at some other reading excerpts that will be posted accordingly. At the same time, there will also be visits to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, participation in online forums and working groups, and other workshops to be determined. The purpose for doing so is to provide a strong theoretical and historico-factual knowledge that you can then use to work with more applications-based and interdisciplinary materials in the second-half of the semester. By Spring break, you should begin thinking about the kind of project you would like to do at the end. This will be discussed further the week before the break.
There are a number of events that will be going on in Duke during the semester whereby you will be requested to attend and then write about, such as the CHAT 2012 Festival (Feb 6-9, http://www.chatfestival2012.org/). These events will also be good places to acquire ideas and inspirations for your final projects. Now that writing has been mentioned, this will be a good place to bring up course expectations on your end.
Each week, one of you will be posting on the topic of the week on our class public blog, taking any angle you like but still keeping to topic, by Tuesday evening before midnight, in about 500-600 words (max 800 words), and the rest of you will be required to write articulate comments in response to the post by Thurs before midnight (of about 150-200 words). Some of these posts may also be about specific ‘field-trips’ to festivals, workshops, and sites done in conjunction with the class. There will be some exceptions to the week when you will be asked to post in public discussions boards or public forums, and hence be not required to post on the blog. At the same time, you are all required to post your questions and comments on the readings of the day by noon on the day of the class. It is encouraged to keep your questions and comments concise and to the point. Comments and questions will be posted on Sakai’s class message board.
As for your mid-term writing assignment, you will be asked to hand in a 8 – 10-page response paper (double-spaced) on a particular media object (or a group of media objects) of interest to you and discuss that in relation to the readings we have done (citations of works must be included). You are not expected to produce a research paper so you are not required to include external references (though you will not be prevented from doing so if you so choose). You can use the material from your weekly postings to help you in writing the response paper. Please adhere as much as possible to the page-limit and use it as a practice in concision (overly long response papers will not be received favorably). The assignment should be printed out and handed to the instructor at the beginning of the class on Monday, Feb 20, 2012. If you are unable to attend class on that day, please inform the instructor beforehand as late submissions will not be accepted otherwise.
For your final project, you have the choice of either writing 10 – 12-page (max 15, double-spaced) research piece in a topic that is relevant to media archeology that include ideas, thoughts and objects that have not been directly explored in class. Or, you can create a multi-modal object (webpage, physical mockups, program) that you need to provide a critical description and analyses of, in about 4-5 pages (double-spaced) of documentation. However, the objects should explore writing in some form.
No late submissions of the mid-term and final assignments will ever be accepted without notice, except in cases of extreme duress.
Tardiness in the regular postings will also result in the penalization of one-point for every day one is late (unless reasonable notice is given in advance). Try not to be late when you are the main blogger for the particular week as that will reduce the amount of time your classmates will have to read and respond properly to your post. Three weeks of consecutive tardiness in any of your posts will be counted as an equivalent to one unexcused absence.
If you would like to receive feedback for your midterm paper, please submit that to me at least 2 weeks in advance to allow for sufficient time to respond. However, this is optional.
For your final paper, you are required to submit a draft, or at least a detailed outline, of your paper 2 weeks before due date and you will have a conference as part of the feedback process and to discuss your plans for the project. On the final week of the class, we will have a small conference where you can present your final projects. On the final day of class, you will be asked to write a self-evaluation of your own progress in relation to the class. This will be counted towards your final grade.
Attendance and Class Participation
Attendance is compulsory and you must notify your instructor at all times if you ever have to miss a class (a failure to do so will result in the deduction of 2 points from your regular postings). You are only allowed to miss up to 2 days of classes without an excuse but with notification to the instructor. Beyond that, you will have to provide a medical certificate, or strong explanation for the circumstances of the absence). All unexcused absences, and absences beyond 2 days (without prior permission), will have a negative impact on your grades. Your final grade will drop by half a grade for each day of unaccounted absence beyond the two days of allowed absences. You are also expected to participate in class discussions at all times.
Grading Rubric
Attendance and Participation in class discussions 15%
Postings, comments and participation in outside class activities 30%
Mid-term 20%
Finals 35%
When your assignments are being reviewed, resourcefulness, originality, creativity in expression and thoughtfulness will be strongly taken into account. While you are not expected to understand everything that you have learned, you are expected to grapple with what you have learned, and your effort in trying to deal with questions and ideas that are difficult to you will be recognized. Also, make sure to edit your work, especially the mid-term and final assignments, as thoroughly as you can so that the typos will not detract from the clarity of your arguments.
You are expected to cite any references that you make use of for your work at all times. Research and reference help will be posted on the course site. Please abide by the honor code.
Working Schedule
Week 1
Introduction: Archaeology of Media, Anthropology of Media
For this week, we will try to grapple with the why and what of media archaeology as theory, history and critical methodology. How do some of tools and theories in archaeology/anthropology help in ‘excavating’ and connecting the cultures of media with developments in the cultures of science, technology, art, design, and literature, and archives of knowledge.
January 11
Introduction/administrative aspect of the class
There is no reading required for today but we will be watching a film in class, and you will watch the other at your own time.
In-class watching: Inhaling the Spore: A Journey Through the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Out-of-class assignment: Landmarks of Early Film (watch by before next Monday, Jan 16).
Look under the assignment section, at the first assignment, for the guiding questions to the films.
January 13
Archaeology as Historical Science by Bruce G. Trigger. Varanasi: Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture, and Archaeology, 1985.
“Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology” in Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications and Implications.
Week 2
Image, Sign, Movement and Sound
Understanding the important elements that constitute a media object, as well as the archive of media archaeology. This week will have more emphasis on the discussion of the readings that will also connect with the second film you’d have watched the week before.
January 16
“Technologies of the Fine Arts” in Optical Media, pp 47-69.
“Technologies of the Fine Arts” in Optical Media, 70-81 (up to “Travelling Players”)
January 20
“Optical Media” 145-155 (before “Marey and Muybridge”), 160-202 (before “Color Film”)
Optional Reading: introductory chapter of the book, “Theoretical Presuppositions.”
Week 3
Experiments, curiosities and scientific worlds
Here begins the exploration into that relationship between the history of scientific objects and ideas with media archaeology. How is science related to media? This will also be a good place to re-evaluate what you’ve observed from “Inhale the Spore.” We will also be looking at how online exhibits of these objects are being curated, and how their digital presence changes the way we study and interact with them. What new categories of knowledge (epistemology) does a digital platform construct? You should go through all the exhibits that are on the site, with particular attention to the exhibit about the microscope. We will be discussing the virtual museum in relation to our readings in class.
January 23
“Seeing and Believing: The Experimental Production of Pneumatic Facts” in Leviathan and the Air Pump by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer.
Waywiser Harvard’s Digital Collection in the History of Science (you should also begin looking at this database collection from now).
January 27
Waywiser Harvard’s Digital Collection in the History of Science (cont’d from Mon).
“Well Connected to Your Digital Object? E-Curator: A Web-based e-Science Platform for Museum Artefacts” by Mona Hess, Francesca Simon Millar, Stuart Robson, and Sally MacDonald in Literary & Linguistics Computing, 26.2 (2011), pp 193-215.
“Objects and Contexts” by Frances Terpak in Devices of Wonder, pp 143-197.
Optional Reading: “Objects and Contexts” pp 197-220 (you may want to take a look on the section relating to microscopes.)
Week 4
Technics of Writing and Technology of Print: narrating the book and the archaeology of knowledge provenance and transmission.
This week, we will look at the theories and histories relating to the technology of the book; manuscript and print. Also, Week 4 will extend onto the Monday of Week 5 since we will have field trip on that day
January 30
“The Ancient Book” by William Johnson in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, ed Roger S. Bagnall, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
“Book and Science Before Print” in Books and the Sciences in History eds Marina Frasca-Spada and Nick Jardine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
“Printing the World” by Jerry Brotton in Books and the Sciences in History.
February 3
“Books and Bits: Texts and Technology 1970–2000″ by Paul Luna in A Companion to the History of the Book. Eliot, Simon and Jonathan Rose (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Blackwell Reference Online.
“Magic and Experiment: Giovan Battista della Porta,” chapter four in Deep Time of the Media.
Optional Reading: “Google and the New Digital Future” by Robert Darnton in New York Review of Books, 2009.
February 6
[Fieldtrip]: Visit with the Rubenstein Rare Book Room. You will get to see some of the materials we will have been talking about first hand. All of you will be writing your impressions of the visit in the blog (ca 500 words). Good chance to find material for your mid-term response paper! Class will meet by the sofa area near the computers and the entrance of the von Heyden Pavillion at 2:50 and we will proceed to the beginning of our tour one of the librarians there.
Week 5, 6 and 7
Codes, Cryptography, Simulations, Softwares, Physical Computing, Security and other machines.
We will be focusing on the constitution, medium and concept of the code, and how that relates to issues of data security relating to encryption, cryptography, viral codes and built-in loopholes. At the same time, we will also look at that relationship to softwares and physical computing. There will be one or two workshops held during this time, and you will also be asked to observe an online working group (details TBD). The specific days for particular readings may be moved to accommodate the days for the workshops once they are confirmed. There will be no specific readings for Feb 20 in light of the deadline for your midterm but we will still be doing something for class.
February 10
Turing: A Novel About Computation
Optional Reading: Turing, A.M. (1950). “Computing machinery and intelligence.”
February 13
Workshop on cryptography, cryptology and physical computing at 2nd Floor, Bay 11, Smith Warehouse.
February 17
“The Anti-Kythera Mechanism” by Jarrett A Lobell, Anthropology 2007.
“Dot-dash-diss: The Gentleman Hacker 1903 Lulz” by Paul Marks. 27 December 2011. New Scientist.
“The Style of Sources: Remarks on the Theory and History of Programming Languages” by Wolfgang Hagen in New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader.
“Archives of Software – Malicious Code and the Aesthesis of Media Accidents” by Jussi Parikka in The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital Culture eds Jussi Parikka and Tony D Sampson, eds. Cresskill: Hampton Press, Inc, 2009.
Have a browse through http://www.textfiles.com/.
Optional Reading: “The Anti-Kythera Mechanism: A Computer Science Perspective” by Diomidis Spinellis in IEEE Computer Society
February 20
No readings. Activity to be determined.
February 24
“Objects of our Affection: How Object Orientation Made Computers a Medium” by Casey Alt in Media Archaeology.
“Mutant and Viral: Artificial Evolution and Software Ecology” by John Johnston in The Spam Book: On Viruses, Porn, and Other Anomalies From the Dark Side of Digital
Watch the videos in http://workshop.softwarestudies.com/. If you have no time to go through all, focus on the talks by Mark Marino, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Lev Manovich, and Rita Raley.
Week 8
Deep Time in the Machine
For this week, we will round up the first half of the semester by revisiting some of the theories of media archaeology, and the media artifacts we have examined, by connecting them with the concept of the machine, space and time. This opens up a discussion into the question of media geography and ethics in relation to the media machine.
Feb 27
TBD
March 2
TBD
Time for a change, again
The new year has eased in quietly for me this year, as it did last year, the way I really like (I am a quiet person at heart). The only difference is in the location and what I do. Last year was filled with tentativeness and ambivalence due to the passing of certain episodes, adjustments made to life and also the pending prelims + orals. This year will see ever more challenges in the form of dissertation writing (the actual writing), grant applications, and also, in making that major move (+ a series of less major ones). Of course, the last year had been amazing in its own way even if things don’t always go the way I wanted them to. There were some pleasant unexpected events, new relationships forged and old ones renewed, and a greater certainty of certain choices made. Though I am less ambivalent this year, there is a certain amount of apprehension as it will be ever more challenging with projects to work on full time, classes to teach, and working with new people and in new environments.
Here is a toast to 2012, the year when the (old) world is supposed to end (as had been at other times too).
Public Transit Proletariat
Traveling around DC the last week, followed by traveling around here in Durham this week to get things done, had me thinking about the obvious and less obvious differences between the big city and a suburban town. For example, it is normal to see well-dressed people traveling on the bus or metro in big cities (even if many still drive around, especially those of the top percent earners), and many who would never think twice of riding a public transit in a big city would balked at doing so in a small town, especially those below the Mason-Dixon line.
In Durham, NC, a suburban town, one would hardly see university students on the buses, as most have their own cars to drive around (or they prefer to take cabs or use the Zipcar or, for Duke, the newly introduced WeCar that is a dollar more expensive). Very few of the middle-class or the aspiring middle class really comprehend the workings of a public transport system in Southern suburban towns. I remember having to find things out for myself as nobody I knew, when I first moved to Durham 3.5 years ago, had ever taken the public bus. I was reminded of an episode of the Kardashians that I’d, unfortunately, watched (I had no inkling who these sisters were at the time) who were taking the subway in NYC for the first time, having never been on a public transport their entire lives until adulthood). Prior to moving to the States, I’d been driving around Malaysia for more than a decade, though I still took the public transit now and then to save on gas and parking. Unfortunately, the city I moved to for college and which I stayed on was not very bike friendly so I never thought about purchasing a bike until after moving here, to a small town that was not bike friendly for quite a long time until fairly recently, where measures are taken towards that end. Incidentally, the college town of Chapel Hill is completely opposite to Durham, being both bike-friendly while also possessing a more organized town bus system that are taken by the UNC-Chapel Hill students who were of a different variety from the Duke students.
Granted, the old bus system in Durham used to be a real pain(and it has only improved a bit more recently). Buses never came when they were supposed to and you never know when the next one you are waiting for will come. I used to take the bus here once or twice a semester since 2008. However, since late last year, with the introduction of the free downtown circulating bus, I’d started using the bus to downtown a lot more (though I sometimes also prefer to bike, if I don’t happen to be able to hitch a ride). I did not use the town bus that circulates all over Durham, or even the Triangle Transit (that connects between the 3 major towns of the Research Triangle), since early last May until this week, when the need to attend to an appointment for three consecutive days rendered it necessary for me to do so. I went for the first appointment in a car, having rented a car for 24 hours to do some shopping, visiting, and chores that included acquiring a GoPass from my university’s transportation office that will enable me to use all the buses in town and the Triangle area for free. I was spurred to do that after taking the town bus back from the terminal to home upon arriving there from DC on an inter-state bus. Being stingy, I didn’t like to keep spending on Zipcars and suchlikes, or on cabs, unless absolutely necessary (unlike a majority of my compatriots living here who own cars, I’d given up on the idea of buying my own car until I graduate or when it becomes absolutely necessary, due to financial instability and the desire to save whatever money I have for more worthwhile purposes). While at the bus terminal, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Durham’s Transit Authority have installed an electronic information system, not unlike what you usually see around Europe in cities and also at metro stations around the world, that will inform the passenger when the bus they are waiting for will arrive. Of course, as of now, there is still much room for improvement, especially in coordinating between buses and time, but things have certainly looked up.
However, one can see that there has not necessarily been the widening of the spectrum of people who take buses, other than perhaps the commuters around the Triangle or the occasional student who actually does not own a car (or have friends who can drive them around all the time). Moreover, many of those who take the buses to work are the bottom-feeders of society, underpaid for their hard labor, or are probably facing hard times, as their demeanor suggest even as some manage to stay cheerful. Some school children (usually non-whites) would use the bus system during the holidays to get around (while middle-class suburban kids, the majority of whom are white as well as Asian, usually get ferried around, the lower-middle to working class that consist mainly of blacks, Hispanic and Latino/Latina kids find their ways around the public transport system). This being the festive period, many boarded the bus to go shopping at the malls nearest to their neighborhood (though some may venture slightly further). Sometimes, one can tell that the bus has not arrived but will be arriving soon when one sees many others waiting at the same stop. When one of the buses I boarded stopped inexplicably for a long time at what seem to be ‘the middle of nowhere,’ I chatted to the only other passenger on the bus to find out the reason and was given a lesson on the bus system and scheduling from an obvious veteran who also owns a car. I found that most buses only come by a stop every half hour, though this varies by the hour and depends quite on the stop (sometimes, one can wait for a long time at a stop near a shopping mall only because most of the people who shop there had driven over to shop). I had waited for buses ranging between less than a minute to the region of more than an hour (I found I finished reading a paper and was partially through the second while waiting for that bus that kept me waiting for more than an hour). I am fine when I can read, think or am in no hurry to get to the bathroom. If it is the latter third or if I’ve developed a headache, I become cranky and peevish. One does not go anywhere on public transport without bringing something or having something to keep one occupied, though, for someone who does not drive around much, or who do not get to see much of the town, going around on different buses is also the occasion for ‘sight-seeing.’ In taking buses to shops outside of my pretty middle-class neighborhood that also happen to be not too far from the ‘inner-city’, I could see the differences in the target consumers based on the type of goods on offer, the selection of goods, presentation of goods (there are some ‘classy’ goods that demonstrate upward mobility aspirations of those who have not quite made it to comfortable middle-class), and the price ranges on offer. The same goes for services. Of course, one could faint from the chemical fumes in a nail spa parlor targeted at the lower economic classes while those of the ‘classier’ class will go to one with smells and sounds of ‘nature.’
People tell me cars are cheap and that fuel is even cheaper. Having driven around on rentals where I had to top up, I choose to differ. If cars and fuel were that cheap, we will not see people who consistently take buses to work and to shop in small towns (and these are not all senior citizens who can no longer drive), though the convenience of the public transit was never in their favor. We live in a society of people who take self-autonomy to the extreme (one of the reason in most parts of the unenlightened West, public transit is underdeveloped). This has a lot to do with the idea of capital, self-reliance and convenience (it is a society that wants things fast and wants things to be convenient, except on ‘Black Fridays’) and is willing to pay a lot of money for that, even if it means going bankrupt. Many foreigners who came to live in the US as students, migrant laborers and professionals have also begun to imbibe the same attitude, to whatever limits afforded them. This is especially prevalent among those living in the south and the interior. One understands too that owning cars is a necessity in many even smaller towns than Durham, or some big cities, where public transit is ever more complicated, unreliable or non-existent.
However, riding the public transit takes you out of the bubble you live in. You see real people whose lives are affected by the decisions made for them and also by the way in which their environment is structured. If you are a writer, artist, musician or scholar, you find new material between those seats and in the scene outside the window you probably have no time to properly savor while zipping past in a car. You get to observe the stories told between the lines and creases on the faces, through passing conversation made in the bus and even from over-hearing the conversation taking place. Some buses also offer WIFI connection for those who want to check emails but do not own a smartphone. While I did not quite enjoy the overly-long train rides from Durham to DC most of the time (thought I’ve seen discovered quicker alternatives to DC, I hope to take the train again to some other places), I had begun to learn to enjoy the time when I could look out of the train window to see the stations of small towns I probably will never get to without a real reason. I read the history that was not yet written; or that are not written in words through the human and natural artifacts I see.
The past two days, having been on the bus for as much as I have of late, I became acutely aware of the sound of the buses passing outside my apartment in an otherwise usually quiet street. In this season of celebration and the holidays, we should remember those whose lives do not involve packing in boxes of gifts into overloaded SUVs, or planning a holiday trip somewhere. Some will be working their shifts, some just could not afford to really ‘enjoy’ the season that seems to become increasingly about spending and buying new things. If you have never taken a bus in a small town anywhere, this is your time to do so, and be aware of your fellow passengers.
Late night post
I started out the day feeling unproductive because I just did not know how to start re-writing that outline for the prospectus that I started on a little last Tues before becoming terribly sick. That sudden productive burst towards the later part of the evening helps me feel better about myself (and about adjusting to 5 pm darkness). Tomorrow will be another long working day.
Before I leave for the night, I want to catch up here on the different events that have shaped the news in the two weeks leading to Thanksgiving and even on the Thanksgiving week itself. I was away at two physics conferences in Europe in the middle of November, and was thus regale with news mostly of what is going on in Europe. I was ‘fortunate’ in being able to catch a glimpse of some social protest going on in Paris (which also led to train delays that made me miss my conference dinner cruise but brought to me acquaintanceship with two members of artistic Paris. But my twitter feed, that I checked occasionally, brought to me news of fresh bout of violence taking place during peaceful campus protests about tuition hikes (among other things). I started tracking news relating to the UC of Davis, student debt, continued political exigencies in the Middle East that never abated and various protests on hyperconsumerism.
The economy is bad in Europe and the US. That, however, did not prevent the spirit of holiday shopping even while Thanksgiving was still going on. My email and snail-mailbox have been bombarded with various Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals (I tried looking for books of interest to me but their prices remain the same). Even ‘free’ episodes of your favorite show is sponsored through the ads for all forms of coupon deals. There have been many articles written about consumer behavior (ranging from ‘strategy’ shopping), price gimmicks, profits, budgets, and deal trends. I’ve been tracking news on that to help me connect to all that has been going on since the onset of Occupy Wall St and the critique on corporations. It doesn’t seem that the shopping behavior of the bargain-addicts have changed, though it is highly likely that these shoppers hold jobs, however tenuous the position. Of course, the shopping season is in the air for many across the globe, and hyperconsumerism will certainly be at play in my own country of Malaysia.
And then, I have been reading about the latest sex scandals involving politics in Europe (Italy) and football in Penn State (US) that led to the termination of a presidential term and the firing of a ‘beloved’ coach. My own homeland is replete with its own scandals though when one puts its influence in context, its political impact is rather miniscule on the rest of the world (however much of importance they are to its citizens). Economically, Malaysia is supposedly doing better than my adopted country of residence though even a tint of corruption is enough to upset the cart of a small country, and thus render it a lot less profitable than it should have been.
That point of convergence; whether protests, shopping or sports, seem to be violence. Violence from rioters, violence from those in authority and violence by half-crazed, frenzied shoppers. Protests or shopping, the issue of scarcity or perceived scarcity and privilege is at play here.
As we are about to hit December, I have to say that this year seems to be the turning point, globally, in terms of economics and political processes.
P.S. In case anyone’s interested, I’ve updated my research blog and now that I am working more concentratedly on planning out my dissertation, it will see more frequent updates. 
Class Poster!
Undergrad class on Media Archeology I am offering at Duke, Spring 2011. Poster and Syllabus to come.
In the system, my name is registered as Ai Ling Lee instead of Clarissa Ai Ling Lee, even if I am the latter in almost everything.
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Spring 2012
LIT20S-03: Media Archeology: Space, Time and Technics
MF 2:50PM-4:05PM
West Duke 08A
Graduate Instructor: Clarissa Ai Ling Lee
Class Attributes: ALP, STS, CCI, CZ, W
SYNOPSIS:
From clay tablets and the stylus to word-processors and voice-recognition software; from Kythera, the ancient Greek computer, to today’s high-processing computers; from magic lanterns to digital films/videos; pottery/conches to IPods, mediation is more than what we see on our electronic screen, and media archaeology allows us to dig into both our known and less visible past to discover practices and histories of knowledge creation, archaeology, and transmissions that forms and transforms our civilization. In this course, we will discover that what we consider as disciplines and knowledge subjects are not bounded and constrained by artificially enforced delimitations. We will look at what media means within media studies as it exists today and also at how media has always been present and in constant evolution with civilization from Sumer, Babylon to current nation-states. We will also look at what media means to different groups of people across different civilizations and different knowledge traditions, exploring that demarcation between the east and West. We will learn that the history of art, history of the book, history of informational sciences, history of music and the moving image, and that of scientific instruments are all significant contributors to the history of the technology of media. We will then tie it all with the question of what constitutes the practices of ethics in media and what are the ways in which such questions are pursued.
In this course, we will be reading selections from books such as Deep Time in New Media by Siegfried Zielinski, Media Archaeology co-edited by Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, Optical Media by Friedrich Kittler, New Media, Old Media edited by Wendy Chun, and Ghost in the Turing Machine. At the same time, we will look at some essays by Gilbert Simondon, Michel Serres, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel Foucault, Lorraine Daston, Bruno Latour, Steven Shapin and Harry Collins, and some articles from the Leonardo Journal.
In addition, the class will have the opportunity to examine counter-culture worlds such as the culture of tinkering, hacking, phreaking, electronics and radio hamming, look at the development of communications technology as that ties in with the history of scientific objects, the pre-history of the internet and the culture of gaming, and developments of animated film/cartoons/comics from the magic lantern/zoopraxiscope to 3D simulation. The class will have a chance to look at special exhibits in relation to the class, relevant films, and also a selection of speculative and science fiction stories that use media archeology, in the broad sense of the word, as tableau, plot and objects of narration. Where relevant, will also attend related seminars or special events as part of class work.
Students are encouraged to come up with their own research project, that can include writing a long essay or writing a short essay to accompany a media object of their own creation, as an outcome of their learning process.
Human Trafficking – brief thoughts
Since yesterday evening, I’ve been attending a symposium organized at Duke about the sociology, historicity and presentism of human trafficking. I’ve sat through panel consisting on border crossing and potential for trafficking of Haiti women, issues of relating to trafficking in the US (if anyone has been to the US recently on a visa, they would have received a pamphlet on human trafficking), and also the boat people of Senegal. Given great public ignorance of what constitutes human trafficking (it does not merely involved the transportation of human ‘chattels’ across state or national lines for illicit activities), there is certainly a need for more awareness. Moreover, we do not necessarily understand the definition of coercion, ‘structural violence’ (borrowing the phrase from one of the speakers) And in most developing countries (even richer countries within South East Asia such as Singapore and Malaysia), there is widespread ignorance. This boils down to how the citizens of these countries and the authorities treat and profile migrant workers/aliens from lower GDP countries.
Yesterday, I was able to attend the keynote by Siddhart Kara, a former member of Wall Street who ended up dedicating his life to uncovering the truth behind the business of human trafficking (putting his training in law and business to good use). Now that I’ve heard his talk, I am interested in getting a copy of his Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. Through his comparison between the economics of slave-trade in former times to what amounts to a modern, and less clearly defined version of it, one gets a sense that there is certainly an increase in profitability when the risk is low (repercussion of trafficking a live human for coerced labor of any kind is probably less than that of trafficking drugs). He also showed how unclear and ambiguous it is to sometimes define a person as a victim of trafficking when coercions are much less clear-cut (NGOS dealing with migrant workers are probably aware that many of the undocumented workers who were sent to work in low-wage sectors also include trafficked individuals). While traffic of victims for sexual bondage is probably a minority among all those trafficked, they contribute the highest turnover in terms of income, and are therefore the most valuable ‘chattels.’ Many countries in the world are complicit in the use of coerced or indentured labor by supporting the purchase of these goods (though some people may argue that the conditions for these slaves may be even worse if they are out of a job). Just a couple of weeks back, he had been to Malaysia and Singapore to consult with the authorities on issue relating to migrant workers in the construction and domestic sector (including the working conditions of these people).
Today, I found out from UNESCO that male victims of trafficking were not accorded the same sort of help that female victims received, and tend to be ignored in most due process (based on the assumption of laws in countries such as Thailand that men cannot be victims of trafficking).
Many countries have very uncertain laws on how to deal with individuals who were trafficked in through ‘legal’ channels, and many of the victims are obliged to cooperate with their handlers since going home good probably be a worst fate for them. When we discuss the ecology of debt, we spend much of our time focussing on people involved in formal sectors. However, there is seldom recourse for those who accrued debt because of dealings with less than savory channels. When it is a choice between extreme poverty and death through hunger, a number of parents had no compunction in selling a few of their many children; even if they did, they had no choice but to send the child away to often unknowingly dangerous situations. As we all known, victims of trafficking are densest in countries ravaged by war, famine, poverty and all forms of natural and unnatural disasters.
As consumers, whenever we seek for the cheapest goods in the market, whenever we go holidaying in poorer countries trying to look for bargains, do we give much thought to the sellers or the producers of these ‘cheap’ goods (I admit to being among the guilty ones always seeking for a bargain). Do we think of how many lives are possibly ruined to produce these goods: do we also realize that many sweat shops operate through the informal labor market that also ride on the labor and bodies of trafficked laborers.
While some forms of trafficking take place within the same state borders and are probably less detectable, there are many cases of border crossing, often through cramped and horrible conditions, that led to high mortality that is not unlike what one witnessed in the centuries of overt slave-trading. Curiously, the proportion of such deaths are of an epidemic nature but very little resources are dedicated to combating them, probably because these trafficked individuals are less valuable (we all know that some nationalities are more valued than others when it comes to the distribution of resources: studying the sociology of visa requirements would be a good indicator).
I have always been uncomfortable with having lived-in domestics, growing up with none and being responsible in helping my parents with household chores. In Malaysia and other South East Asian countries, we have been given horror stories of maids running amok, engaging in illicit sex (as if their sex lives is any of our business), or stealing from their owners. I understand that this is a real concern, having friends and relatives who had such experiences. However, what we fail to understand is the lives of these domestic individuals before they came to the household: the pressures that they were under that would be unimaginable to their middle-class employers and also probably the potentiality of them being victims of human trafficking. Many employers are completely dependent on agencies to procure these helps for them with probably no clue as to how that chain of procurement is done. Moreover, I know, sadly, of individuals, including my own family members, who do not think it unnatural or have any qualms about locking their maids in the home when they are out the way they would lock in a pet dog or cat. The fact that these helps/maids are humans apparently escaped their notice (just because these employees had limited to no education, they were treated as no better than lived-in slaves). Of course, there are enlightened employees who do care about their employers and there are some genuine bad apple among these workers who do take advantage of their employers. However, if we were to try to do the math, my guess would be these are probably in the minority.
I had to leave the final panel session to get back to work but I hope to be able to attend and discuss the thoughts that would come out of tomorrow’s final panel on media representations.
Reading, writing, teaching, publishing
As a not so new-ly minted ABD (All-But-Dissertation) of almost 6 months (probably just under months if I choose to exclude the summer), the gear seems to be shifting up rather than down. In the past, if it used to be juggling the heavy load of seminar readings with semester-end (or mid-semester) papers and projects (or weekly postings), on to of one’s duties as graduate assistant or instructor, now one has to read at an even higher plane and speed (with unsurpassed paranoia), think about one’s teaching and publication portfolio, full-length projects where you can no longer say “I would have done so-and-so but the limits of time for this semester prevented me from doing so” and probably other extra-curricular academic activities (extra-mural ones not yet included) that is supposed to be part of that professional training. And course, there’s also writing that full-length dissertation and the accompanying research.
Now, I need to think as to how all the different collaborative groups I am involved in can help enrich my work and vice versa, while probably taking the lead in some of these groups. I need to get grants to finance some aspects of research that will evolve into many permutations of objects. I have to figure how to make seemingly a broadscope of interests (or a lifetime of interests, as some have informed me), can actually be constituents of a rosary of connected interests that will telescope into one main thesis. Of course, I’ve decided to pick up learning an ancient language for fun, while ignoring the fact I have not been attending a foreign language for academic purpose class I was supposedly auditing for some weeks now.
I certainly need to find better ways of organizing my so many documents for so many things. Maybe I will invest in a file management system that will keep track of all the latest developments in all the fields I have my replicated foot in (though I probably will then get myself lost in a different sort of maze) and also to keep tabs of the growing number of documents I have for the different notes I have taken for the very varied readings I will be doing (though I still suck at proper note-taking; not even studying and having to write for my preliminary exams has made me an any better note-taker).
At any rate, beginning very soon, I will be posting my progress on this blog and that other blog, not just in my actual dissertation but in all that I do (working groups, conferences, interesting discussions (which boils down to me needing to take notes properly) and every other intellectual project. Oh, and my trial-by-error approach to pedagogy on how to be a better university teacher.
Now, back to completing my job as a paid minion.
PS: I must say that I am rather excited by the mass mobilization of social movements that has taken place since January. Sure, nothing major or really revolutionary has happened. But it speaks well to the fact that postfordist people are not all necessarily an apathetic bunch. But desperation do play a big role. Whether at the individual or social level, it’s when one feels threatened, challenged or miserable in one way or another that one is spurred to any form of action that one hopes will either heal oneself or heal the society one lives in.
In thinking about senses, disability and communication
Over the summer, while studying German, I had the privilege (though I probably did not appreciate as much at that time) to take some undergraduate classes in areas I probably would not have had the chance to explore as a graduate student. One of the classes was about minority rights in languages and cultures, and of all these, the rights of the deaf to their own forms of ‘language’ and methods of communication got me intrigue, especially as someone who also studies aspects of a visual culture.
Increasingly, visuals as a manner of intellectual communication is taken seriously, especially for those who now understand its importance even in serious research work particularly in the sciences, no longer relegated to the realm of pop-culture for ‘less-educated’ masses who need pictures to help them understand a narrative. Or the especial hobbies of adolescence and hobbyists. At the same time, visuals are used to demonstrate a more inclusive picture of different worldviews by those who may not be competent in painting in words yet have an expressive way of addressing their audiences. I got reminded of this in reading an article about Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night Time, which communicates perspective through the use of iconography and even mathematical tables. People who wrote mathematical fiction (a rather niche area of fiction) have been known to do that in the past, though they have also attempt to use words to describe almost ontologically unimaginable situations even for those of us with all our ‘senses’ intact. In the case of the protagonist of Mark Haddon’s book, a boy who is autistic, mere words cannot enable his desire to express his thoughts succinctly. In the same manner, a person deaf from birth may not appreciate being coerced into the dominant discourse of the hearing and their desire and need to communicate through sound.
At the same time, for those bereft of sight, sound is the tool for carrying sensations (besides that of touch). We have the case of Helen Keller who was both deaf and blind, who sole source of communication is through touch and the written word (though she also learnt to speak and lip-read through touch, as signing is beyond her). In the case of the autistic person who is also blind, when too much sound can become a world of frightening noise, how would he/she therefore express the intellect that needs to be communicated? I have been thinking quite a bit about the notion of ‘disability’ and how its theorizing can help in the theorizing of the reading of non-intuitive ‘texts’ and extra-textual materials, or in learning how to read again in ways less natural to us (such as a person with a stroke trying to learn to speak again). It is probably time to revisit literature on how sensory ‘disabled’ people navigate their world and the existing technologies to deal with them, and extrapolate that to think about less conventional forms of reading.
Thinking about language for the blind, the deaf, the deaf and blind, or the autistic (and blind-autistic), we probably have to throw out the Chomskian model and look at other possible models of cognition and communication, and also rethink the existing theories of reading.
In a decade since the planes crashed
Weekend though it is, there is no rest for the weary or the dissertating. Therefore, I just want to record my non-sequitur-aus manner my public encounters with tragedy and trauma, a number of which are less directly
Sept 11, 2011 – my college flatmates and I stood aghast when we saw the US brought to its knees when two planes crashed into the WTC. The entire episode was in an everlasting loop as news commentators went on lamely and with no greater insight as to what was going on then. Part of the world cheered while the others, especially those with friends or relations involved in the tragedy, were keening and probably suffered from non-combat related PTSD. It could have been any other day, business as usual, just as today is, in an affluent area. If the same thing happened in Africa or the Middle East, that would have been ‘business as usual’.
Years that follow sees plentiful rhetoric on the Al-Qaeda and what happened, really, on that day (not too different from that filmed play, Copenhagen, that I just caught yesterday night). Of course, authors make heaps of money as people scrambled to bookstores to find answers. Of course ,talking heads make even more money since not everyone likes to read thick books on what might had happened. I remember being that opportunist who wrote a paper on media and the Al-Qaeda for my cultural studies seminar. That was 2003. Of course, US embassies and non-profits everywhere were sponsoring events that saw ’11/9′ (the rest of the world do the dates in reverse to the Americans) sprawled on banners, flyers and whatever medium these events were publicized on. Of course, many of the seminars taking place in territories that built their capital from criticizing US’s foreign policy (and the ignorance of ‘middle’ America) was about the multitude of ways in which the US have gone wrong (they weren’t wrong in that regard, though the holier-than-thou attitude would definitely come back to haunt them should the position be reversed).
For awhile, any references to the event (or even uncanny resemblances to the event) within pop culture were banned from being screened (remember that film, Collateral Damage?). Of course, that banned was lifted some years later. For the first time since Holocaust, the Americans are reacquanting with the term ‘trauma.’ If the Holocaust trauma was vicarious, this trauma is ‘real.’
Then, we had the war against Afghanistan, we have journalists murdered, we have Bush, Jr, declaring that unfinished war his father had started on Saddam Hussein (the actual war is finished but the mess will be long from every being finished). I was on a plane en route to the UK in 2003 (yes, that year again) that had to be rerouted away from the war-zone (so I did not get to look down at the great plains of Afghanistan on my way to the UK, though, surprisingly, I managed to do so on my way back, in the space of one month)
In 2004, we saw the US elections that rode on culture of fear and of the need to protect the ‘sanctity’ of the US soil. So, Bush got back his mandate to wreak more havoc in that Gulf region. Everyone was watching the elections though we all know the outcome would be more or less predictable. By 2005, though the attention is still there (definitely, the attention towards the US post Sept -11, 2001, is way longer than most people’s interest in any civil war or revolutions on earth, the most recent being the Egyptian/Tunisian revolutions).
By 2006, things cool down somewhat. Of course, TSA now rules and regulations on travel, at least to the US, has tightened. Malaysia now has to get visas to enter more countries than they had to, pre Sept 11 (couldn’t resist sneaking in mention of my ‘country’). Of course, regulations, some ridiculous and frustrating to frequent world-travelers, were fluctuating as the authorities were trying to determine which safety measures are the ‘safest.’ But by then, things have somewhat stabilized, though many people with many Muslim affiliation were either denied visas or told to get visas (even if they come from countries with visa waivers). We all know of course that the acts of a few ‘brethren’ will tar the image of the rest of the family house.
The discourse of Sept 11, the new genre of popular fiction that grew up around it (such as Don Delilo’s Falling Man) never completely wane, if you continue to follow such worthy journals such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic or Mother Jones (or their conservative equivalent). Since I came to the States, the only time I could catch up on any of these political issues was during the summer, particularly during long-haul travel, though, due to weight limits, I have even stopped buying news magazines in airports (because I am already bringing too many other reading material along). Trauma literature in the US has also gone one to embrace Hurricane Katrina and Haiti, which is a good thing, even if not without irony).
Today is Sept 11, 2011. They are showing a film based on what has happened since that day in 2001, tonight. That film is called Rebirth. For some, today is the anniversary of their death.
American media, digital and analog, are broadcasting various stories as part of the 10th anniversary.
MEMORIAL UPDATE. We remember this day that the victims included those attacked, who were ‘collateral damage,’ and the innocents who became the scapegoats for the attacks, and all those closely connected with them.
