deaths a choice
September 25, 2006
idea of the invisible
the cor face
Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin
The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.
Or THE DARK PHOENIX SAGA:
I didn’t agree with all of the specifics in the observations and can’t place many of the references in this work, but I do think he is a great thinker and a gentle man. In the writing he makes some strong points about public to private psychology and the mechanism of the technologies that influence them.
I do see that personal relationship has been supplanted through the mechanism of explicit reproduction. Starting with print matter, there has been a shift of human touchstones away from shared experience to an objective other (which has become known as the media). This has created a new language of social image and personal identification. For instance, since the creation of media, when making an acquaintance instead of referencing your personal life in relation to theirs, the common experience of sitcoms (and the commercials around them) takes precedence as a premade language of interaction. This causes a break in effective use of personality, because personality is based on a larger one-way interaction with media and not a dialogue that is immediate and participatory.
Benjamin’s speaks of this when “addressing the camera”, the camera machine creates a context of time and space, it can place represented action into existence anywhere at any time and these actions (since they come from a machine) seem to be an objective touchstone. So the way a thing is viewed in a social context becomes the definition of its use and meaning, more than it use within a personal interaction (you know your G.I. Joe through a TV show and not as the experience of a plastic doll sitting in your living room).
Masses are then created by a singular point of reference; this point does not change or changes so slowly that it is perceived as a fixed thing between people. With the making of mass identity people instinctually attempt to interact and influence the mass social identity that has entombed them. They can do this either by representing themselves as themselves within the identity (the soviet film reference), or positioning an enhanced reality, one of promise and psychological extrapolation (the futurist/Nazism reference). The counter point to a mass identity is the fulfillment or perceived fulfillment of these pathologies, so in the 20th century there was nation war.
War became the fulfillment of a singular aesthetic of the individual’s nation. War contained the embodiment of what they saw as whom they can and want to be. Corporatist consumerism takes the place of war in the 21st century. The pathologic fulfillment of Nazi/Facist aesthetic need is seen as granted by the physical act of purchasing. It is used to fulfill the emotional promise of media and therefore ourselves since we view the self through the lens of media. It is inherently a distant prospect because the represented reality (the social touchstone of TV, movies and so on) always keeps ahead of us.
These representations are a cumulative expression of selective human notions and not traditional places of identity (they make real, words and not what they represent). Example: when New York is portrayed in film you turn a corner and move from Brooklyn to Manhattan, this is done by pasting together selected images of circumstances with a completely different original order (like they are doing today (Sunday) down the street). This emphasizes one group’s concept as to what New York is and can be. This concept is then showed around the world and creates a cultural language that IS New York, it is the place that everyone is moving to. END Example.
Different technologies create and allow for the interactions that define the space in which people live aesthetically and verbally. There is no change in social-psychological space because there is a pervasive ability to be in a quasi space all the time. The lines between public and private are blurred creating a personal stagnation in social relation and technique. Example: when you go to a party you enter what is a psychologically public space but you can function within a private space by talking on your cell phone. Or conversely at home you can be in a public space by watching TV or interacting online. END Example. In both public actions a one sided conversation takes place you are addressing or being addressed by an assumed mass public that is a created convention. So with no immediate dictates of physiological action or reference, media is reemphasized as the solid space in which to interact. Just as in the dark phoenix saga, where Jean Grey is manipulated by a fictional world (created at the hands of Mastermind) to unleash the dark phoenix side to her abilities. The corporatist media has created a fictional environment tailored to the production of a skewed mass identity. And using what she and we think as normal emotive responses to the fictional scenery, we have the ability to support what we hate and destroy what we love…………
But Thanks to Stan Lee and Walter Benjamin.
Hope springs eternal.
September 19, 2006
What was I thinking?
I sat back and thought where on this earth would I like to talk from, in what town square is my soap box ? and I thought snorkeling, snorkeling and cheap rum and cheap rum automatically speaks to a close proximity to Cuba, or at least the Caribbean. And this place has to be in the u.s. because I speak in American and it would look weird if I said “ hey, how’s it go’n” from Liepāja. So where could this place be? Florida, maybe? It is close to Cuba. But where’s the best snorkeling in Florida? Key west! Yes! And so then the question what time in Key West? What is the time when people are the most out going, when it’s ok to say to a passing stranger “hey, how’s it go'n” and Christmas time came into my head and made itself at home. So I sat and looked at code and changed code and then changed it back till I felt like I returned home to Key west at Christmas, let’s drink to the hardworking people.
September 11, 2006
everquest week one
Everquest I just didn’t know.
I don’t think the world of everquest can represent the total of human social interaction, but it did highlight some social strategy and perception quite clearly. It was interesting to see what problems could be authored out of the game, and what problems persisted, intentionally or unintentionally. For instance, one had to develop social interactions to play the game (trading, cooperative hunting ect.), but when put into practice a climate of dissatisfaction arose from these cooperative systems. The social organizations were too complex to be written over like a bad glitch where you step somewhere and end up falling forever. So to fix the problems of economy the rules are manipulated, this gives eerily similar results compared to what happens in the “real” world when fixing the problems of the guarantor state vs. socialism vs. hierarchal corporatist capitalism.
This got me wondering what has been authored out of our own socioeconomic system. What are the problems we have agreed to negate or “solve” and what problems do we come back to, churning them over and over in our own social interactions. All the recurring problems in everquest seem to be with the social economic relationships and not with the structure of the world itself. The question whether to play or not becomes more influenced by social interaction and not by the option of being able to build an ice castle or have a medieval spaceship. This seems to say to me that there might be a certain level of physical stimuli that is important only in relation to the social network it can create. Pong comes to mind as another game example where the physical stimulus is quite limited, but allows for more than enough structure to make it addictive when you combine it with another person’s psychology.
So what is the purpose of the game? what enjoyment can you receive? what is the wealth of the game? In everquest wealth being only revealed in a visual and auditory sense, (lacking much of the other stimulus related to enjoyment such as taste, touch, chemical reactions, ect.) creates a representational possession and not one of direct physical stimulus. So except for the awe at the graphics of your new castle, wealth is enjoyed as a representation of your social ability in the game. And the procurement of wealth depends on; A. the time spent in the world abiding by the rules and B. your ability to problem solve the strategies of the game. The respect you receive is a acknowledgement of your skill in dealing with the structure of Everquest. This wealth is protected and held true from a collaborative social decision. The game needs a complete effort of everyone that plays to say yes, by these rules they are more or less wealthy than I and I consider what they have more or less valuable. Diamonds have the same mechanisms at work. Because of the fact of an individual’s ability to stockpile all necessary wealth at will, a socially agreed upon substitute had to be found for “virtual” fulfillment.
What do you get someone that could work for a week and go out and buy three rooms full of bread? You would have to buy them something that is not as physically demanding to own, but gives socially what a whole house of bread would. So it doesn’t surprise me that the world of everquest is the 77th largest economy because there is no appreciable difference between the needs and mechanisms of the virtual and “real” world. All this is much the same way as Marxists have their table that gets up and dances with the “specter of commodity” (social valuation). When you have to relate not just to the object but to all other human need a new value arises from an object. You are creating value from the combined living situation and desire of everyone else that participates in the social exchange. And in Everquest all the people involved come from good base economic situations, such as being in a position to have a computer and Internet access and all that comes with it. Probably if you averaged all the people that played everquest their social standing would be much higher than a 77th ranking, but scaled to what they actually invest into the game it works out to the 77th place. This would be a good description of mental wealth or how much resource is used to fulfill their social desire.
It is the same way large corporations get their economic status by vying for your participation in their economy, trying to get your portion of resource in their system. And many of these other “real” blue chip traders are just as ephemeral as everquest. They produce the same mechanisms of social pleasure embodied as designer jeans, Rolexes and one thousand dollar omelets. All have real physicality (just as Everquest does) but the values generated by them are of a socially representative means. The specific meanings generated by the placement of the objects in the systems are as different as the systems themselves. But these meanings are all non-dependent on the physical use value of the object (buying a thousand dollar omelet does not presuppose you are a epicurean or a great humanitarian, but it does mean that somehow you have the social cache to spend a thousand dollars on eggs), when they are filling a very real demand. The deficits of the mind are just as engrossing as those of the body and if your body is relatively satisfied the minds troubles are all that there is, it is your world. so I don’t think it is fantasy to wonder how a dark elf could love I think it’s a very pressing problem or one we at least like to get ourselves into.
55 words
55 word story, in a place no one who reads this will be and no one who remembers this will go. Yohan has just lost the love of it’s life the one thing more important than all others, quietly taken by the second most important thing without warning, leaving only a sense of.