Distance No Object

I have just started to re-read the Haraway article, and only now realised she also discusses boundary breakdowns. She mentions that cyborgs represents a transgression.There are 3 boundaries: boundaries of humans-animals, animal-human and machine, boundary between the physical and non-physical.

Harraway suggests:

We are dealing with polymorphous information systems (the informatics of domination) , with the cyborg a kind of disassembled and assembled,postmodern,collective and personal self. Communications technologies and biotechnoogies are the crucial tools re-crafting our bodies. These tools embody and enforce new social relations for women worldwide.

I thought Chantelle’s IVF blog was a great illustration of this, although it is perhaps a bold statement to say that blogs can be seen as conceptual (immaterial) cyborgs…  And there will no doubt be other blogs and fora on similar topics appearing rhizomatically . The associated tags of these blogs support a computer-manipulated, machine-enhanced search, stretching enforced boundaries (html, web 2.0) which are always changing. Forum members and bloggers exist through the computer, through internet flows, yet as humans operate individually, the flow of ideas and electricity blended.

The Cyborg as a blog…. a cyblog?

I thought the Katherine Hayles article was pretty captivating. What struck me in this article is the concept of ‘boundary’.

As she gives a definition on posthuman – the posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction – I think key is our interaction with these boundaries. Boundaries shift, mutate, engage, can be sharp and fuzzy. Embodiment itself implies a boundary and ‘erasure of embodiment’ similarly implies to me a distinction of where embodiment is defined, and where it might dissolve.

Boundaries indicate an environment in which there is a manifestation of boundary. This environment can be material (matter) and immaterial (information) and again considering a separation of these, as Hayles is discussing, involves the idea of boundary. The idea of abstraction to multiplicy seems impossible, unless there is a boundary.

All this is pretty complex, I get lost in the reflexivity!

[ I find it takes a lot of re-readings to digest, hope to do more on this]

This week directed my focus on a new (google) blog I developed for the micro ethnography, incorporating a study on YouTube. My choice of a BBC documentary (Schama on Mark Rothko) is relating to my forthcoming dissertation topic on aesthetic spaces.

My activity on the Google blog turned my attention away from the WordPress course blog, extending the ensuing narrative and course interactions into different directions –  it gave me the ‘rizhomatic’ insight which I then used to illustrate the blog.

The choice of online platforms to illustrate the ethnography was overwhelming in view of the time constraints. I looked at Timetoast, Glogster, Prezi and Issuu, but in the end settled for Thinglink. Here I opted for an image that could visually map or draw together my blog posts and ideas.

I am interested in how technology affects online academic discussion and attempted at using my blog along an X and Y axe as a 2-D timeline,  with X representing the linear timeline and Y some of the emerging concepts.  This resulted in writings on  ‘rhizome’ and ‘alloy’, with future suggestions (‘affordance’) to be developed.

In the meantime I also continued with the online serial of ‘love sick’, and illustrated the ethnographic blog with a soundscape (another YouTube upload, a cover of an old favourite).

The diverse ethnographies of my fellow students have offered me a better perspective on how to create visuality within the various online platforms.

‘In this project, the author(s) tried to understand “What happens in nicovideo [a service similar to YouTube]  by visualizing the inherent tag co-occuring networks. Tag co-ocurring networks on Nicovideo represent relationships of content and subsequently, evolution of content. ‘

I thought the idea of ‘evolution of content’ was an interesting concept. The internet grows discussion, like a digital farm, it is being cultivated and harvested.

(more)

I have spent all week checking through the YouTube upload of the BBC’s Simon Schama’s Power of Art – part 1 to 7

This was a tasks that took longer than originally anticipated. The observations will be offering an interesting perspective of the YouTube platform, with a sample of postings recorded over a 4 year period.

I decided to use a Google blog and am now investigating which artifact to draw the ethnography into that may be best suited. In view of the limited time available I may have to rely on existing expertise, although I would prefer using a new platform.

The coming week will be spent revisiting the readings of the block, with additional commentary.