The Wikipedia Assignment!

This is a screen shot where I modified portions of Sonny Clark's--a hard bop pianist--wikipedia page as it was partially misinformed.

Presentation Paper

I failed several times writing a response to Fredric Jameson’s “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” because I had taken everything that Jameson posits to heart. That is to say that whether or not I agreed with Jameson, I did not question what he wrote, hence my writing stagnated on each attempt. But as I kept this paper and more importantly Jameson’s article on the back burner, I realized that my lack of skepticism was incredibly naïve as Jameson seems to implicitly define fundamental terms, for example, what art is. In other words, Jameson defines Postmodernism as reactionary against modernism and as a tradition (perhaps the better words is condition) of a cultural, sociological, and technological age, but undercurrent to all this lies what I think his definition of art is: that art arises out of opposition to popular or institutionalized aesthetics. For the sake of argument and sounding unlike a book report, I intend to focus this paper on the question that Jameson poses in closing: “We have seen that there is a way in which postmodernism replicates or reproduces—reinforces—the logic of consumer capitalism, the more significant question is whether there is a way in which it resists that logic” (125). Barring my interpretation of Jameson is incorrect, given his definition of art and the postmodern, postmodern art seems to marry the dominant aesthetic as it ceases to oppose; thus it cannot even be considered art, as Jameson seems to define art.

The most logical place to start in all this is how Jameson defines postmodernism. Although complicated, this task is not that difficult. He starts by saying that postmodernism arises as opposition to the acceptance of modernism into academia. In other words, modernism opposed the institution—the university, high society—but as the 60’s roll around, universities begin teaching modernism, thus institutionalizing it. As well, Jameson posits that postmodernism arises because of consumer society. Jameson describes postmodernism as reliant upon the cultural production of consumer society, which also means the boundary erodes between high art and pop art. A cliché yet fitting examples of this is Andy Warhol’s work, where icons from popular culture, like the Campbell’s Soup Cans, become art. To finish outlining Jameson’s article, he lists two characteristics of postmodernism: the pastiche, which means that no new genres are created, merely artists mix old genres together, and schizophrenic ahistoricism, where there is a disconnect between past and present to the extent that art remains perpetually present.


To focus, it does not matter whether or not Jameson defines postmodernism correctly because I am not concerned with his fundamental definition of art. It seems that Jameson defines art as motion. In other words, Jameson defines modernism as an art movement that actively subverted high culture. Also, he defines postmodernism as reactionary against modernism inclusion in the high culture that it initially opposed. So, the constant, the key characteristic that Jameson bestows on art is that art arises out of opposition. If we take this logic a step further, it is possible to say that once an art form cease to resist—to innovate—culture it stagnates and loses what makes it art. I chance to say that art that does not oppose is kitsch.


If my interpretation is correct, then how can Jameson consider postmodern art to be art as he says “there is very little in either the form or content of contemporary art that contemporary society finds intolerable” (124)? In other words, because postmodernism is so tied to mass culture in which it “reinforces…the logic of consumer capitalism,” it seems to cease to resist or subvert. If art as Jameson posits arises out of opposition, then how can postmodern art exist as art if it not only does not resist consumer culture but also reinforces it. Jameson raises this question in closing, and to answer, tentatively, it seems that works like Warhol’s celebrate mass media.

Typography and Text-Image Recursion

Typography is a curious example of relationship between text and image. Where, to use a classic example, Magritte’s Ceci N’est Pas Une Pipe unifies image and text or language if you will in their arbitrariness, typography solidifies this connection because the image is made up of text or language. Whereas before to reiterate in Magritte, text and image unite in that they both become portions of the painting, typography takes this connection one step further in that the image becomes language and the language, recursively, becomes image. So, the curious relationship that occurs is that text makes the image yet the image also expands on the meaning of the text. I have three separate examples of typography, the most curious M, which exemplifies this recursion because text becomes the image and the image is text but an image nonetheless—if that has any semblance of sense at all. Thus, to me, what M suggests is a paradoxical relationship between meaning: that there is an absence of meaning of the whole, while parts of this work create meaning through this absence.
The relationship between text and image in M create an absence of meaning. Consider this relationship: M is a work that has a three dimensional M that is made up of various phrases that are sized and oriented differently. Because the letter M is three dimensional, that depth affects the text-ness. In other words, as the letter m takes on another dimension of physical depth, it also takes on another level of meaning in that m becomes an image as well. The phrases that make up the letter m create unintelligibility because they do not relate to the meaning of m—whatever that be. Further, as m stands alone, m remains abstract. That is to say that “m” connected to, say, “oon” has concrete meaning, but m alone means m which has no concrete meaning—other than it succeeds L and precedes N. So this discord between random phrases and the thirteenth letter of the alphabet seems to be unintelligible.
Also, an abundance of cliché phrases in M and the overall unintelligibility of the piece create intelligibility. That is to say that phrases in M, “Because we are told that’s why,” “Now entering zero gravity,” “God,” “normally,” enjoy a popular recognition, a hackneyed existence, coupled with the absence of complete cohesive meaning suggest that these phrases, as the whole does, also lack meaning. I interpret this lack of meaning to be a criticism, on one level, saying that cultural clichés because of overuse tend to be accepted rather than challenged. That our minds believe or buy into cliché simply because we recognize and not necessarily because we understand what they mean. Because I am able to make some sense of M, because one can navigate through the haze, suggests that the absence of meaning is significant and thus, intrinsically, meaning.
On another level, whether or not M is a criticism on clichés, it still becomes an example of meaning at work in art. That is to say that M may be overall devoid of meaning, but the simple fact that there is no meaning paradoxically means there is meaning. To me, what this suggests is that possibly art cannot exist as just art, or perhaps, that for something to intrinsically mean nothing that inherently suggests that there is meaning. So it seems impossible for something to simply exist without meaning, because to not have meaning is to “mean nothing”.
One possible objection to this is that M as a whole piece does have cohesive meaning. Of course this objection is conditional, i.e., if one accepts that there are no great truths within a work, that all meaning synthesizes through reader response, then it seems impossible to prove that a higher truth does exist within M. Further, whether or not a higher truth does exist is unimportant because I am theorizing about the interaction between meaning of the whole and the parts that make it, of form rather than content.
If the whole piece lacks meaning but portions of the work have meaning, then how is it possible for the whole to be made up of parts and loose their content. Partially, it seems that the recursive nature of the piece traps its significance. Because it is an image of text that is made of smaller bits of text, which become part of the image, there seems to be no concrete way to say that M is either image or text. This recursive interaction parallels how the piece makes meaning. Because significance arises out of connotation from the parts, the phrases that have some concrete meaning, clashes with the lack of meaning of the letter m, a message is born between the recursive relationship between meaning and meaning nothing.

Assignment Numero Uno

Personal blogs are, in nature, a selfish enterprise.  Consider, they are about that person; they only—usually—sport that author’s opinion.  The blog I read, however, had a separate element—a tendency, by nature, human.  What I mean is that the author of the blog listed that the purpose of her blog was “to be seen, heard, noticed, and remembered” and that her goal, ultimately, was to get more “visitors to my blog”.  In these two quotes, there seems to be an undertone of alienation or a discourse of struggle against isolation.  The quotes suggest that one turns to a personal blog to become more connected to others, to dispel that isolation, which is, I think, central to the human condition—as the cliché puts it best, we all die alone.  I said earlier that Personal blogs are selfish, but I had never considered one would write exclusively about their self to associate with others.  Yet, that must be the conditions of the relatively new, blogging phenomenon.  Since blogs are not contractual or based on reciprocating with someone in the moment, a level of intrigue becomes necessary to forge any connection. 

            Under the surface lies a quandary, why turn to the internet, to blogging, to be noticed?  Constructing a copy of yourself and using that to network with others seems ridiculous when one could grab coffee with a physical person or whatnot.  It seems easy for someone to be disingenuous when blogging.  For example, the blog I read clustered the page with pictures of the outdoors, which might signify the author’s love of the wilderness, camping, etc.  Since choosing background pictures is a deliberate choice, I wonder whether she identifies with being an outdoors person, she thinks she identifies that way, or she merely is constructing a façade to increase her viewership.   In other words, it is interesting that people turn to personal blogs for attention, to combat alienation when, inherently, the line between what the author wants to convey to her readers and what actually is true about the author is skewed.

What this blog suggests is counterintuitive, that social, internet relationships are as ideal or fulfilling as their physical counterparts or that sharing one’s life through a personal blog is synonymous with face to face conversation.  Perhaps, the volume of people, connections to be made, increases.  The author of the blog mentions that she worked on her blog to “get more visitors”.    Again, the potential connections to be made through a blog medium is infinitely greater than what is possible and proximal, however, to what depths do these connections satisfy social needs. 

New Blogger...

Greetings!  This, being my first blog, is all new to me.  I have created this blog for my Digital Media class that I am taking at the University of Colorado.  I have lately thought of myself more and more as a luddite, or perhaps I just have tendencies to resist change.  Whatever it be, I named this blog "A digital life?" because I wonder what the implications are for us, humanity, as our lives begin to be more and more digital.  As sadistic as this I may sound, I like reading words off paper, so I can mark, write, and doodle, especially on Proust, when I get bored.  Even now, I am sitting at my desk typing at 11:41 PM.  Personally, I think or I worry that humanity will lose some of that humanity with the availability of technology.
       Anyway, I hope that some of you will enjoy my caffeine rants and insanity.  Have a good night.