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Paul Miller on Remix as “Database Rhapsody”

16 Tuesday Mar 2010

Posted by John in Digital Studies/New Media, Media Ecology, Memory, Quotes, Rhetoric and Composition, Teaching

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About two minutes into his segment in the To the Best of Our Knowledge program “Remix Culture,” Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid), comments on remixing as a new literacy, a practice of composition I’ve taking to calling database rhapsody:

“Take a Wikipedia page entry, you know, copy it and paste it into a William S. Burrows novel and take that remix and put in The New Yorker and you’ve got new fiction or something, you know? The pun for me is that we’re looking at new kinds of literacy: digital media, cut and paste imagination, non-linear thinking, you know, kind of the whole twentieth century, McLuhan The Medium is the Massage kind of thing. It’s just come home to roost.”

More on Databases as Mnemonic Practices

02 Wednesday May 2007

Posted by John in Memory, Mnemonic Practices

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The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society has an article on the Mundaneum, an early Twentieth “index card internet”:

When the Mundaneum opened in 1910, its purpose was to collect all of the world’s knowledge on neatly organized 3″ x 5″ index cards. The brainchild of Belgian lawyer Paul Otlet and Nobel Peace Prize winner Henri LaFontaine, the vast project eventually totaled 12 million cards, each classified according to the Universal Decimal Classification system developed by Otlet.

Le Corbusier was one of many prominent figures enthralled by Otlet’s scheme of a “Universal Book.” He described it as a panorama of “the whole of human history from its origins,” and signed on to design an international “city of the intellect,” centered around the Mundaneum. [Read more.]

It wasn’t long after seeing Ong’s research card files, especially the Ramus cards complied while while working on his dissertation, that I realized the traditional method of using index cards to take notes was a database practice. (Actually, I think I had decided this before hand, but seeing Ong’s extensive files with cross-references made it painfully clear.)

I’m going to try to work this into my dissertation chapter on database composition, at least as a footnote to my discussion of Ong’s index cards and my own practices. I’m also going to try to work it into my Computers and Writing presentation “Database Rhapsody from the ‘Singer of Tales’ to ‘Geek DJs,’ which is based on that chapter. (( The ‘Singer of Tales,’ of course, refers to Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales, and ‘Geek DJs’ is a term for bloggers used by Johndan Johnson-Eilola in Datacloud: Toward a New Theory of Online Work. ))

Via Johndan at work/space.

Conceptual Blending and Metaphor

17 Thursday Jun 2010

Posted by John in Cognitive Studies, Memory, Probes, Quotes, Reading

≈ 3 Comments

[I ought to have a category label “my cognitive turn.” You might call this part of the series “My Adventures in Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Rhetoric, and Cognitive Poetics” that began with “My Cognitive (Re)Turn.”]

conceptual blend diagramI’ve read a fair amount of books and articles on blending, a topic with which I seem to have, metaphorically speaking, a “tip of the tongue” relationship. I understand it and understand how it describes the cognitive processes behind various mnemonic practices I’m interested in, but I have a hard time explaining it. Sort of. I mean, I can explain it and do so in such a way that people seem to understand what I’m talking about, but, at the same time, I feel like I don’t get it. Maybe my problem is with diagramming blends beyond something simple such as the diagram on the right, taken from Mark Turner’s “Blending and Conceptual Integration” page and used in a number of publications authored and co-authored by him. (( Truth be told, I never been able to do more than diagram a simple sentence, so maybe it’s diagramming and not blending I have a problem with. )) Any way, having read a fair amount of this stuff, I thought I’d post a good, succinct definition of conceptual blending or conceptual integration since I always find myself rereading to assure myself I’m not missing something:

Blending is a process of conceptual mapping and integration that pervades human thought. A mental space is a small conceptual packet assembled for purposes of thought and action. A mental space network connects an array of mental spaces. A conceptual integration network is a mental space network that contains one or more “blended mental spaces.” A blended mental space is an integrated space that receives input projections from other mental spaces in the network and develops emergent structure not available from the inputs. Blending operates under a set of constitutive principles and a set of governing principles. [From Mark Turner’s “Blending and Conceptual Integration” page.]

Gilles Fauconnier, co-developer of conceptual blending and frequent collaborator with Turner, explains that “the essence of the operation is to construct a partial match between input mental spaces and to project selectively from those inputs into a novel ‘blended’ space” (1). ((From his presentation “Conceptual Integration,” available online as part of the proceedings of the 2001 Workshop Emergence and Development of Embodied Cognition. )) Actually, in contemplating this, I think I struggle with identifying the generic space as well. But I’m getting a head of my self here. Let’s back up and I’ll provide a concrete example of a blend and explain it in terms of the diagram.

I think I first encountered the theory of blending in Turner’s The Literary Mind. One example was the anthropomorphic personification of Death, the scythe-carrying hooded skeleton. This representation of Death, Turner explained, is a blend that emerged out of agrarian medieval Europe. Mental spaces provide for us the inputs from which the blend emerges. In this case, Turner suggests, we have clerical class and their clothing, particularly monks, from which we get the cowl and scapular; dead and decayed bodies, from which we get the skeleton; and harvesting, from which we get the scythe. So, for this blend, we have three mental spaces providing three inputs. The generic space, if I had to guess, is death/end of life. Clergy, Turner explains, are connected to death because of funerals, funeral processions, and praying for the dead. I assume I don’t need to explain the connection dead bodies and the harvest have to death. 🙂 Okay, so, the three input mental spaces (medieval clergy, dead bodies, harvest) selectively project into our new blended mental space, the concept of an anthropomorphic personification of Death (aka Grim Reaper) that functions as a harvester of souls.

If this sounds similar to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s theory of conceptual metaphor, that’s because it is. (( See Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By and Lakoff’s Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things )) Both emerge out of cognitive linguistics and serve as evidence for embodied cognition. Traditionally, while rhetoric and poetic have regarded metaphor as a special use of language, these theories argue that metaphor underlies all thought to such an extent that we don’t recognize most thought as metaphorical. From the places and images mnemonic and the cognitive images of monastic rhetoric to understanding how social memory functions rhetorically—to say nothing of database rhapsody—metaphor has its tentacles throughout my scholarship. My pedagogy too.

I’m scared of metaphor.

I’m scared of metaphor because I could become lost in it. I could just dive into the study of metaphor and never return to anything else. I also ind myself flailing around until I go cross-eyed and develop a headache when I try to read some of the more complex theories of metaphor. So, metaphor scares me. For me, studying metaphor is a studying a black hole. No matter how close I might get drawn to into it, there’s an event horizon I dare not cross, only, the closer in I go, the more strongly it pulls me in and that damn event horizon isn’t clearly marked at all. So I’m scared of metaphor.

Today I decided I needed to delve in again by reading Paul Ricoeur’s “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling” (Critical Inquiry 5.1 (1978: 143-159), an article I’ve been avoiding for a few years now. (( Avoiding, of course, because I’m scared Ricoeur might be an event horizon. )) Good stuff. What I found most interesting about this article is that Ricoeur sets the stage for the work of Turner, Lakoff, Johnson, and Fauconnier. Ricoeur, writing in 1978, demonstrates the inadequacies of traditional theories of metaphor and concludes that “there is a structural analogy between cognitive, the imaginative, and the emotional components of the complete metaphorical act […]” (159). The theories of blending and conceptual metaphor and other related concepts provide the cognitive model Ricoeur argues we needed.

The Making of a Technorhetorician: A Technological Literacy Collage

16 Tuesday Mar 2010

Posted by John in Life, Media Ecology, Medieval/Medievalism, Mnemonic Practices, Rhetoric and Composition, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Teaching, Teaching Resources

≈ 3 Comments

This semester, I’ve assigned a technological literacy collage as the first assignment in both the first-year composition course (Rhetoric and Composition: Media and Their Effects) and the advanced composition course (Advanced Composition: Image, Sound, Text). The assignment is a technological literacy autobiography done in the form of a collage. Call it a mash-up of assignments from Cynthia Selfe, Dickie Selfe, Gail Hawisher, and Karla Kitalong with that of Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff because, really, that’s what it is. (The advanced composition course is an accelerated half-semester course that starts this week.)

I so much enjoyed reading the first-year students collages that I decided to write one myself. I meant to write one before the semester started but didn’t, so I’m sharing what I wrote with the advanced composition class. Since it’s going to be up on the course web site, I thought I’d post it here too. So, here you go, my technological literacy collage, the full title of which is:

On the Dangers of Reading Conan Stories and Playing Computer Games; or, The Making of a Technorhetorician: A Technological Literacy Collage

I’m the new media specialist in Creighton University’s English Department. Terms to define my academic specialty include computers and writing, technorhetoric, digital rhetoric, and new media studies. Continue reading »

Mnemonics

03 Wednesday Oct 2007

Posted by John in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Kevin Brooks reminds me why I need read more deeply into Greg Ulmer‘s work as well as reread what I have read. Some of it I get intuitively, such as “To adapt a phrase from McLuhan and Ong, electronics is not secondary orality but secondary mnemonics” (Heuretics 191), which is one of the passages Kevin refers to in his post. Other parts of Ulmer I have to struggle through. (( In one of those citing your sources like moments, I feel compelled to acknowledge Jeff Rice, Bradley Dilger, Brendan Riley, and Michael Salvo who have all taught me about or strongly encouraged me to read Ulmer’s work at various times. )) While those who know me will understand why I’ve highlighted that particular sentence, I want to place it into its immediate context to demonstrate just how relevant Ulmer’s work is to mine (although you could just read Kevin’s post, which summarizes most of the highlights of this paragraph):

The Greeks developed mnemonic picture writing as a supplement to the alphabet in order to deal with the information overload that resulted from manuscript culture (Bolter, 56) . It survived through to the Renaissance but became obsolete with the advent of the book (and hence served as an example of the cycle of invention in the institutional dimension of the apparatus). The practice was codified in the Rhetoirca ad Herennium, whose equivalent today might be something like the Saint Martin’s handbook. As part of his reform of education aimed at simplifying the complexities of scholasticism, Peter Ramus eliminated the mnemonic art. “Ramus abolished memory as a part of rhetoric, and with it he abolished the artificial memory,” replacing it with his own method of dialectical order (Yates, 232). Heuretics is part of a movement that will be to the Saint Martin’s handbook what the handbook is to the ad Herennium. To adapt a phrase from McLuhan and Ong, electronics is not secondary orality but secondary mnemonics. (Heuretics 191)

Kevin’s post reminded me of this passage just as I am working on refining the so-what of my database rhapsody chapter (boringly titled “Memory and the Art of Database”). For instance, while research note cards are a database technology used as compositional tools, we don’t think of them as such because we’re taught to use them in support of print noetics. We conventionally use them, if I understand Ulmer’s term correctly, as part of the apparatus of print. While we can find counter-examples throughout the history of print, Ramus’s dialectical method is at the heart of Western print-based compositional practices (especially the Anglo-American tradition—we loved Ramus on both sides of the pond). (( See Sharon Crowley’s The Methodical Method for a detailed discussion of method in composition. ))

My argument is—my so-what is—that we can look backward past print culture as well as forward into electronic/digital culture to recognize the limitations of print-based compositional strategies, which has often been taught as an odd mixture of method and romantic inspiration. (As Ong explains in Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology, the Romantics mark a break from (oral) rhetorical culture (and with it the commonplace tradition) and the modern world. The Romantics invented/were drawn to their myth of the solitary poet (writer/composer) inspired by the muse because, culturally, they were in a culture that no longer valued the compositional practices of rhetorical culture. (( They did have access to it, of course, as we do have access to it because past practice is part of our consciousness even if it’s not foregrounded, but the logic of the age was driven by another noetic. )) Left with method as the compositional theory (a compositional theory based in method rather than rhetoric, to put it another way), they turned to the classical concept of divine inspiration as part of their larger affectation of natural supernaturalism to use Abrams’ term (maybe a bit too loosely, as I’m also referring to the romantic poet’s (i.e., Wordsworth’s) affectation of common, everyday language and simple, natural, childlike imagery, settings, and themes). (( If you find the idea of the Romantics existing in a methodical age, recall Abrams: “The retention of traditional Christian concepts and the traditional Christian plot [of history], but demythologized, conceptualized, and with all-controlling Providence converted into a ‘logic’ or dialectic that controls all the interactions of subject and object, gives distinctive character and design to what we cal ‘Romantic philosophy'” (Natural Supernaturalism 91). ))

Looking both backward as well as forward, I suggest the term database rhapsody as a metaphor for a different way of thinking about compositional practices. Rhapsody, of course, looks all the way back to the rhapsodes of Greek oral culture as well as much more recent Ong’s essay “Typographic Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger, and Shakespeare” in Interfaces of the Word, which is a study of residual orality within early typographic culture. (The essay was originally published under the title “Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger, and Shakespeare.) And, of course, the term database comes from electronic databases, more importantly, from the concept of database logic of digital culture and new media. What the database metaphor lets us do is re-embrace non-analytic thought as a compositional strategy even when we are engaging in print noetic composition. (I think this is what Ulmer would call a haptic rather than analytical mode of thinking governed, or at least open to, free association, juxtaposition, linkage, etc.—very similar to and most likely including, if not itself outright, Ulmer’s notion of chora.)

To give an concrete example, let us return to the research (index) note card. As Ulmer explains in an interview: “Analytical argument or reason, when you are writing a research paper, tells you where to go: what books to look for, how to retrieve the in formation in the books, indexes, etc. It tells you how to organize what you find, how to put it back to somebody else so they can understand something they didn’t know before.” The research note card, then, becomes the places, the topoi, one stores information found during the process of that research and those topoi are called upon (organized) as the analytical argument dictates. The cards exist as part of the apparatus of print noetic.

The database rhapsody metaphor, however, asks us to think of those note cards as having a greater potential as compositional tools. The cards aren’t just static places where we store information until our argument calls for it. The database rhapsody metaphor asks us to think of them as a locus of invention and meaning making, as a database from which we rhapsodize. Just as the point behind the places and images mnemonic was not to store information statically but to bring disparate things (res) together to compose something new, (( As Mary Carruthers explains it, “conceive of a matrix of a reminiscing cogitation, shuffling and collating ‘things’ stored in a random-access memory scheme, or set of schemes – a memory architecture and a library built up during one’s lifetime with the express intention that it be used inventively.” )) we can use index cards to form new meaning through juxtaposition, linkage, and association. We can, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, brush information against information and explore the growing web of meanings that result. (( It’s worth noting that the image juxtaposed with that statement from The Medium is the Massage is a close up of the legs of a woman wearing fishnet stockings. )) What I am describing, of course, is Mary Carruthers’ concept of memory and mnemonics as a machina memorialis.

Rice on the Network as Rhetorical Strategy

25 Saturday Aug 2007

Posted by John in Computers and Writing, Digital Studies/New Media, Rhetoric and Composition

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I wanted to blog about Jeff Rice’s post “Situated Networks: Practices in Teaching Writing” earlier, but my own situation didn’t allow it. I’m a bit more settled now in my new place, establishing myself within new networks while maintaining (or not) old ones. As always, Jeff’s work intrigues me, in part, I’m sure, because its often situated at the intersection of rhetoric and composition studies and media ecology.

In response to 17 reading strategies suggested in a new edition of an old composition textbook, Jeff writes:

Why not add: to situate? Indeed, why not add such a “strategy” since, among the text’s table of contents, I struggle to see myself as situated in these reading selections: “Why Not A Football Degree?” “Working at McDonald’s,” or “Dating.” Admirable subject matter, no doubt. But situated? Not really. What pulls me into such a reading? The questions at the end of each chapter? “Explain how dating is socially constructed….”

Situations, or networks, are the result of intersections. For the sake of pedagogy, they don’t have to be assumed as random or treated as avant-garde methodology: shooting randomly into the crowd. Rather, guidance as to where to locate the intersection is encouraged, particularly for those, as McLuhan taught, who are schooled to think differently. Ulmer teaches via the mystory. The Rhetoric of Cool extends hip hop pedagogy to the scholarly level, disciplinary intersections at the level of topoi (cool).

A textbook always feels like the last place to find intersections. A textbook, for instance, cannot account for the here and now intersections motivated by impulse or inspiration. The “why did I just think of that” series of connections. The blog invites such connections through its emphasis on the “post”: post it. Write it daily. Respond. Connect.

Many reasons why I find this blog worthy, of course. Situated networks as a rhetorical strategy, as Jeff discusses them, is a form of memorial composition (to use Sharon Crowley’s term). As a rhetorical strategy, it asks us to consider our situatedness, our environment, as a database from which we may draw material for rhapsodizing (rhapsody shows up as an important concept in both Ulmer’s and Rice’s work, and both Ulmer’s Heuretics and Rice’s The Rhetoric of Cool are, at least in part, I argue in my dissertation, memory texts).

I’m also interested in the post because we’ll be reading Rice’s “Networks and New Media” (part of the College English symposium “What Should College English Be?” (69.2 (2006): 127-133) in the New Media Writing and Online Design course I’m teaching this fall. And, in fact, I’m using this essay’s focus on new media and networks as one of our preliminary working definitions of what new media is/can be (along with definitions from Anne Wysocki, Cheryl Ball, Lev Manovich, and Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin) of new media.

And thirdly, I’m interested in the idea of the network, as Jeff discusses it, because I see so much overlap here with Ong’s discussions of ecology, which make up part of what I call his “digital turn.”

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