“A picture held us captive”
(Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889 – 1951)

Week three, a MOOC, modality and transliteracy. Three epic encounters! The first of my posts in week three takes the opportunity to juxtapose Kess with Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein has engaged my thinking for a number of years. In my opinion Kress echos (and possibly learns from) Wittgenstein. Kress tells us “Only that which is worded can enter into communication; or else, that which is to be represented gets squeezed into the ill-fitting semantic shape of the existing word”. In that remark Kress directly echos Wittgenstein’s understanding of language as a limiting entity “A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably”. The comparison I have just made informs modality and transliteracy by acknowledging the limited capacity of words with relation to subjectivity.

Hodgkin breaks the limitation of the frame by painting over the frame, and in some cases beyond the frame. Is there a relation here to modality and transliteracy? I would suggest that Hodgkin, by reversing the metaphor of the frame, opens a door to subjectivity, imagination, notion and creativity – those that precede language (the word).

The leads me to the first #edcmooc. In a previous post I refere to the MOOC as a spectacle of education. Education beyond the frame? Opening a door to subjectivity, imagination, notion and creativity – those that precede language (the word).

Education as a spectacle? An entity to view! What then determines the notion academia? Image and design to facilitate critical thinking – Critical Design (as Hodgkin?).

Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Deconstruction >>

“Here, capital has employed the apparatuses of media, fashion, and entertainment to accelerate its shift from a regime of accumulation founded on the production of goods to one based in the circulation of instantly disposable spectacles and services, each dependent upon the creation of desire”
(RYAN MOORE, The Communication Review, 7:305–327, 2004)

“turning appearances into refractions, like mirages: refractions not of light but of appetite, in fact a single appetite, the appetite for more”
(John Berger, The Shape of a Pocket)

Is our forthcoming MOOC continuing this trend. Education becoming a spectacle, the creation of desire and an appetite for more. A bad thing? This interests me in that to identify a cultural digital artifact do we need to look outside of the digital domain?

For instance the Culture show BBC2 (last night) 23 Jan 2012. Andrew Graham-Dixon discusses the Manet exhibition at the RA London. He sites Manet’s Le Chemin de Fer as a representation of modernity, the child gazing into the future at what industry and technology is to be. Maybe the railings and the child are a metaphor that allows / encourages the viewer to paint a picture of the future for themselves?

What would Manet paint in 2012? Can we use, lets say Manet as a vehicle to consider our technological futures, as Manet used Diego Velázquez (previous post). What are the artifacts of the digital domain that reflect modernity in our time, and what metaphor should we use help us consider our futures? I suggest that we may need to look outside of the digital domain to begin to understand the impact of digital cultures. Is the ‘web’ simply a mechanism for reflection, as is drawing, painting, photography and film? If this is the case then how can we use the web to reflect our modernity, what is unique to the digital domain that has the capacity mirror our existence and to gaze into our futures.