Orientation week
It is hard to get going again after such a fabulous Christmas and New Year break. With the arrival of Sian’s email , welcoming us and outlining some of the requirements for the orientation week, a wave of excitement, nervousness and panic set in!
However, Hand (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, and Bell (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: material and symbolic stories, have reassured me that it will be an accessible module. Watching the videos on the EDC13 Lino Wall has also whetted my appetite for learning more about Digital Culture.
My feelings at the moment can be somewhat personified in the artform by Kasey Mcmahon found on this site: http://www.switched.com/2010/04/22/kasey-mcmahons-connected-cables-elevate-ethernet-to-art/
Mcmahon’s sculpture of the Wire Woman, is interesting, as although it is named connected, it seems to have captured or bound the person up, indicating both the positive and negative dimension of digital culture.
At the moment I am not sure which camp I belong to: utopia or dystopia view of digital culture. Certainly my exploration this week, has already helped debunk some myths I had about cybercultures.
Finally, I have to say that my favourite terminology that I have come across this week is cyberpunk.
Reference:
Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.
Bell, D (2001) Storying cyberspace 1: material and symbolic stories, chapter 2 of An introduction to cybercultures. Abingdon: Routledge. pp6-29.
Welcome Chantelle. I love the ambiguity of the image you’ve chosen here. The play on the link between being connected and being bound is really well done. I was struck the pornographic pose of the artist too – it seems to me she’s making a related point about representation online too. That’s a dystopic gender angle we don’t really touch on in this week’s films, though in previous runs of the course we did look at this World of Warcraft spoof http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbFnH66eGtU : )
Hope to see you online tonight so we can discuss the utopia/dystopia divide a little more…
Thank you, Sian. I look forward to week 2 film festival having now had a look at the link you sent. The study of online representation so far has been fascinating. It is interesting how people respond differently to the sculpture! The pose adopted by the sculpture is definitely provocative, along with the cables tied around the body.