Experimenting with Media Ecology, Embodiment, Original Japanese Translations, Interface Humanities, Film Studies, Social Media and Communication Studies. Or, Hermetically Sealed in Suburban Nihon
Yesterday I made a viral video reading of Samuel Beckett’s poem “Neither.”
It is silent. I had originally recorded myself reading the poem and layered it over the top of the video, but decided against inserting it into the video. Watching it silently after reading the poem left an interesting resonance, which hopefully you will appreciate.
To put you in the context, I will provide the poem for you:
Samuel Beckett: Neither
to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself
by way of neither
as between two lit refuges whose doors once
neared gently close, once away turned from
gently part again
beckoned back and forth and turned away
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam
or the other
unheard footfalls only sound
till at last halt for good, absent for good
from self and other
then no sound
then gently light unfading on that unheeded
neither
unspeakable home
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The content of the video is a men’s large size dress shirt that I hand painted.
The link provided will take you to my Vimeo page. Thank you for watching.
The following is a systems approach to the increasingly popular website Friendfeed. Recently, there have been many articles written about this site (I will provide links at the end of this post). I have written what follows through a Media Ecology systems framework with the hopes of “fleshing out” the system known as “Friendfeed.” The inspiration from this piece comes from various writings by Neil Postman.
Where Lies The Purpose
The purposes of Friendfeed are to accumulate and aggregate shared content from different social media websites. In turn, the aggregated content can then be re-shared, commented upon and “liked.” One can find purposes in this such as tracking brand popularity and public opinion, finding other relevant sources that may relate to content that you like or creating a network of information (a “feed”) as deemed relevant by certain “friends” that you subscribe to. Also, there is the purpose of oneself pushing likable or relevant content into the stream.
The Roles
People are assigned the role of “feeder” and “subscriber.” If one achieves a large amount of subscribers, then one’s shared content will potentially reach more people, which then could possibly be fed again back into the system creating a ripple effect of information flow. Subscribing to a large amount of people also results in a dramatic increase in one’s daily information intake depending on the social media activity of the person (or people) whom you are subscribed to.
Assumptions, Keywords and Change
The underlying assumption is that the information that others feed is of importance to themselves, their world, or to those in their knowledge-network. Some keywords that could be assigned to Friendfeed are the following: aggregator, aggregation, social media, lifestream, information-network, media accumulation, sharing and perhaps responsible browsing. The system is changing to the extent that users are starting to post comments about the shared content directly on the Friendfeed stream and not on the particular blog post or shared item’s page. This has upset some bloggers who wish to have their community gather and comment directly on their own blog. Also, it seems that the system will continue to change depending on the social media feeds that are available for feeding. Finally, with the development of various Friendfeed applications, the site is beginning to act as a nexus from which one need not stray too far from. Firefox has already created the “MySocial” Add-on, which neatly integrates Friendfeed into the Firefox Browser.
The effects
The actual effect of Friendfeed on users could be an increased willingness and openness to share content in a public space, the ability to keep track of others through their online activity and even as a search engine function whereby one can search fed content. On a different note, Friendfeed creates a mixing spot where the content that one feeds and “likes” are grouped together under the same feed. Friendfeed works against fragmentation by opening the stream flow of social media, while at the same time creates fragmentation by allowing others to comment on fed material directly through Friendfeed and not through the actual article’s site.
Alternatives and Otherwise
As of writing this post, I am not aware of an alternative to the service that Friendfeed provides and perhaps it is because of this that it has gained so much attention as of late. This leads to the next question: Can we do without Friendfeed? The answer would be “yes, but…” What I mean by this is that due to the fragmention that occurs through the stretching out of oneself via social networking and social media, there is a lot of switching to different websites to keep track of friends and others. Through Friendfeed, one can gather the activity of certain others and monitor activity from a centralized location. Through a Friendfeed application, one can even Tweet through the Friendfeed website itself. While we can do without Friendfeed, it does create an interesting spot from which to perpetuate interesting web media.
This is system is related to other systems of knowing and behaving in a couple ways. First, with the proliferation of social media, there seems to be the desire to “keep in touch” with others, and by keeping in touch I mean, following their web activity. At this point, Friendfeed serves the purpose of being able to stay updated on one’s friends’ social media activity. Also, Friendfeed allows the anonymous tracking of certain others by the creation of an “imaginary” friend, a kind of online social media peeping, in which one can feed the “imaginary friend’s” content. Moreover, this site is a social networking site stripped of its symbolic overload of images and personal self-identification. That is, one’s Friendfeed page is minimal and based solely on streamed content.
Finally, the million dollar Neil Postman question “To what problem is Friendfeed the answer?” It seems that Friendfeed answers the problem of social media fragmentation, information-desire and the interest in anonymous tracking. Also, it acts as a stripped down social networking service constructed solely by one’s and other’s fed content. In this system, the human user is the food that sustains the site, food largely gathered from afar…and shared.
I have been quite busy this last week, but should have time to catch up on things within the week. Thank you for your patience and I hope the archive serves you well. It has been a dark and dreary weekend here in Nihon. Last night I sat alone at a dingy diner reading Samuel Beckett. Here is a bit of Beckett for you. Have a pleasant day.
A Poem by Samuel Beckett:
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where ebery instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it’s ballast dust
what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness
When one deals with money, one is already in the realm of the religious, with the worship of a holy item. The accumulation of money when well achieved and comfortably at bay provides an almost heavenly comfort. When money is forced away from us, a kind of existential loss is forced away as well. The loss of one’s monetary supply is more than just the loss of an object, but a threat to one’s very grounding in the world. In industrialized countries, money represents, among other things, safety, status, power and control. The religious nature of money can be felt also in times of mass earnings. We are always happy when it is “payday” or when we receive a monetary bonus from our job.
Spending money, too, is religious. An item high in price, perhaps a rare item, is precious to us, shines for us and momentarily enchants us with its wonders. Or, conversely, an item which we know is worth a pretty penny, when found for a lot less than its asking price, sends shivers up and down our spines. Sometimes, we may even tremble knowing the secret monetary value of the “cheap” object.
Money slips from us and we wait again for its arrival while either trying to amass what fortune we have while spending bits and pieces on daily necessities or concentrating our powers on some elusive ever out of reach object, which calls to us though just outside the range of our pocket book.
We live this life passing money from hand to hand and find ourselves surrounded in this realm of cash or credit. Money, money, money….
From Nick Cave’s song “Easy Money,” …”Money, man, it is a bitch…the poor they spoil it for the rich.”
Today I observed two people playing the game known as “Shiritori.” I was not involved in the game, only an observer. Basically, the game known as “shiritori,” involves connecting words by their last letter. In this way, “snake” can connect to “elephant” and so on creating a chain of connected words. The two people drew little pictures above each word they passed to each other and this served as a mode of communication between them. That is to say, they were not randomly choosing the words as I just did (”snake”/”elephant”) but carefully choosing each word as something relevant to their daily life. So, words and pictures were drawn of their favorite animation characters, food they liked, objects they owned, etc. This was a representation of their selves.
At the end of their playing, they studied the piece of paper commenting on the overall choices of words/images and their faces shined with delight at the completed project as identity was blossoming and the list of images/pictures served to bring them together, opened up a new space between them and their friendship. I think that this kind of play is healthy for us and can perhaps bring things out of us that we didn’t know were there while at the same time it can conjure up things from our lives that we have perhaps forgotten about. Moreover, we can connect.
How we connect to each other through shared interests under the rule-umbrella of this game can also be seen as a metaphor for how we talk to each other in our daily lives. That is, how we relate to the other and how we can inspire each other and grow together.
What exists between you and I, even though it may seem far apart, can be brought together through our interaction and gestures. Moreover, what can be created in the space between us can be realized; something can come into existence through us. Also, in this way, by carefully choosing the words that we say, we can learn to have better control over our speech and perhaps participate in more fruitful conversations, more enriching conversations, more aesthetically pleasing conversations and more humanizing conversations with each other.
“Three Questions” is a song by the Kentucky based musician Bonnie “Prince” Billy from his “Master and Everyone” album. This haunting and beautiful song has been with me since winter 2004 and today I would like to incorporate the idea of “three questions” into The Eyeslit-Crypt. It is really quite simple. I choose one person and ask them three questions. Since this is my first experiment with this kind of blogging format, I kept the questions very simple and accessible. The honorable person whom I chose for this first endeavor is none other than Ken Tanaka…three questions were asked and this evening a response was received. As the beloved “Hero” Hiro Nakamura may say, “Yattttttta.”
If you are not familiar with Ken Tanaka’s video work, I suggest the following links:
Q:What kind of adventures have you been up to these days?
A: I recently have been traveling to a few locations searching for my parents…I just got back from Hawaii today. I am hoping to put up a video soon, but I am having some bad technical difficulties. I will also be returning to Japan sometime in May, hopefully. I hope to do some more videos about life in Japan if I can get my camera fixed.
Q:Any musical or literary recommendations from Ken Tanaka?
A: I have recently been reading some American authors. I like Kurt Vonnegut Jr. He seems like a very nice man. I have also been enjoying traditional American Blues and folk music by Leadbelly, Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie. I recently heard a song at a vintage clothing store in Los Angeles by a New York folk/punk singer called Adam Green. I hope to listen to more of his music soon.
As far as recent manga, I am reading Gantz and 20th Century Boys (20seiki shonen).
Q:What are some of your favorite things about your home country, Japan?
A: Well, here are the things I miss most about home. Onsen and ofuru. It’s very hot in Los Angeles and I often wish I could go to a nice onsen for refreshment. There are Korean style spas in LA but they aren’t quite the same. When I arrive in Japan, I will go straight to a Sento. I also miss the quality of food. In the Japanese countryside, there is lots of tasty food everywhere. I have found that it is quite hard to find good food here, even in the city. There is very good food in Los Angeles, but you must do research in order to find it.
I also miss Game centers. Sometimes I want to play video games but it is hard to find them in Los Angeles. I miss trains and subways, and bento and sakura and anmitsu and matsuri and depa-chika and yakiimo too.
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Thank you for reading the first installment of “Three Questions” and I hope you learned something new about Ken Tanaka.
Baltasar Gracian, in his book “The Art of Worldly Wisdom” writes, “Keep your imagination under control. You must sometimes correct it, sometimes assist it. For it is all important for our happiness and balances reason. The imagination can tyrannize, not being content with looking on, but influences and even often dominates our life (Gracian 15).”
Our imagination covers over and creates what we call our “daily life.” The bubbling emergence of images, sounds, voices and ideas well up and overflow through the imagination. Our social networking and online identities also take shape in the imagination we have of how we would like to be perceived, how we would like to see ourselves through the eyes of others. The imagination is all-powerful, perhaps one of the most powerful gifts we have. Minds have imagined iPods and atomic bombs, mobile phones and the Tokyo Tower. The cityscape begins with imagination and is realized through imaginations. That is, a city or on online community is only as powerful as the imaginations that gather there.
Our cities and Web communities are convergent points, networks of imagination. Through Twitter, I can imagine the other and, moreover, am forced to imagine them, for they are not here with me. Their voice points me to links, to ideas or perhaps only to an imagination of a simple part of their day (eating breakfast, preparing for bed, etc.) The facebook profile as well requires imagination and perhaps I imagine some “you” that you have not yet imagined.
However, the imagination has a way of haunting humans as well. Perhaps we have all experienced the recurrence of a certain image, a kind of film that flashes before one’s eyes, a film that we would rather turn off and forget about, a film that comes from the other side, from the abyss of the imagination. The fear of the hacker is not only fear of monetary loss, but also the terrifying image of one’s identity being manipulated…having someone else’s imagination manipulate oneself.
This morning my friend asked me if I was ever haunted by something and how can one deal with an overactive imagination. I turned to Gracian’s wisdom of controlling the imagination and recognizing the haunting image as being imagined. When the haunting image is recognized as imaginary, perhaps it can bring some solace to the day. Perhaps one can move out and sweep the floor or fold the clothes with some new peace. Moreover, a controlled and balanced imagination may help one to create better art, music or text. That is, a more precise imagination may be cultivated and striven for.
How can we imagine ourselves into a better life? Is the life that we are leading the best possible life? How has one’s imagination of oneself served to shape that self in actuality? Can we imagine ourselves and our situation in a different and possibly more fulfilling way? Perhaps this is worthy of our attention.
Blogging from the mobile device allows one the freedom of interacting with your environment in a different way.The pathway to the network of the rural via bluetooth existentialism.Now the bus with its chattering and silent passengers.The invisible side of faceless communication and seamless connectivity surrounded by trees.
There are no piles of books around,only the evening breeze and the smell of the exhaust mixed with the fragrances of spring.Instead of having partners of the written word,the books and articles that one enjoys,the partner becomes the unknown other sitting near or the music of the earphones.
Over there the the blossoms are pink and the grass is an almost neon shade of green.
"The Eyeslit-Crypt" is a flooded umbrella with its tentacles flailing in the direction of audio and viral video production, interface humanities, cultural studies, mental health and creative expression. We don't need sleep. We only need caffeine.
ENTANGLEMENT
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