Final Thoughts on Ulmer: Part 4

In this first chapter of the final section of Ulmer’s book seeks to take Turing’s imitation test and move it to be utilized in the process of a MEmorial, while paying attention to the idea of justice and injustice.  Turing’s imitation test takes a man and a woman and places them behind a curtain.  They have to speak to a judge via text speak and the judge has to decide which is the woman and which is the man while the man tries to convince the judge that he is the woman.  Ulmer proposes a version of this test, this game, for the electrate society using a computer.  The computer has to convince the judge that it is a man being a woman.  To illustrate this concept, Ulmer proposes using Carman Miranda and Wittgenstein, two people who are different from each other both by sex and by aesthetics. 

                Miranda poses a new set of concepts to interact.  Carmen Miranda is a famous dancer of the Samba in Brazil, a dance which is about freedom.  Her name is also the same as the Venezuelan general who attempted to gain freedom for his state.  It is also the name given to the Miranda rights, which allow those who are arrested to the freedom of silence, among other rights.  Miranda is also used in other ways, such as the root word “to look with wonder” (197).  This one name interlocks three types of freedom, a freedom that a MEmorial has.  Ulmer asserts that a MEmorial can be similar to a dance, the freedom of the Samba—emotion felt.  As Ulmer says, “it is not about the dance but what is felt” (203).  The MEmorial selections “certain ‘gems’ from the flood of materials available in each of the popcycle discourses” (197).  When deciding on one’s MEmorial, one must look through the news stories and popular culture, discovering the gems that help them experience the MEmorial.

                The second  chapter in the third section of Ulmer’s book deals more exclusively with Ulmer’s initial project—the 9/11 MEmorial.  In this chapter he details Will Pappenheimer’s, Y Tour.  The Y, which Ulmer speaks of earlier in his book, deals with the wishes and questions people have surrounding the tragedy.  It is also the shape of a wishbone (which requires a collaborative effort).  It seems as though the questions which the MEmorial seeks not to question, are the very ones which help to create the MEmorial.

                Pappenheimer’s MEmorial came from a mystory of his own.  Music featured prominently in his mystory, as well as the Y figure.  From the tuning instrument to the art he created as a child, the Y figure constantly found its way into his life.  Taking this mystory of his own, combined with the desire to create art from pompoms and the 9/11 tragedy, Pappenheimer creating a Wishing Tour around the streets of NYC in the proximity of Ground Zero.  This project, entailed a peripheral of Pappenheimer walking in a Y pattern down the streets of NYC while he placed pompoms in bright colors on the ground.  Each pompom stood in direct correlation with an algorithm created from the wishes and questions individuals inputted.  Ulmer’s own 9/11 proposal takes Pappenheimer’s idea and alters it, fitting it more to his idea of a MEmorial.

                Perhaps the most important ideas taken from these last two chapters, at least for me, are the further solidification of what the MEmorial is.  Ulmer’s explanations are as nebulous as they were from the start, but he brings in the idea of divination here at the end of the book, tying in Chinese divination with the tarot tradition.  All divination begins with a question, as the MEmorial is meant to do, and when the asker gets a question answered from a Tarot, they engage in a type of flash reasoning (reasoneon), much like the reasoning that should come with a MEmorial.

 But, even more so, Ulmer attempts to recall the MEmorial to a personal tragedy, a tragedy that happens within the general community that can affect everyone, a tragedy that is both private and public.  A MEmorial should call “attention to the disaster ongoing in the private sphere that is equally worthy of collective recognition as a sacrifice” (217).  The MEmorial wants to highlight a value but not question it.  By highlighting the value, Ulmer posits that a MEmorial allows us to consider and think about the policies which create that value.  Is the value good?  Bad?  Do we need to change it?
                In the 9/11 MEmorial, Ulmer suggests that the abject loss was one of “livelihood” (245).  The deaths and loss of jobs are one way in which the 9/11 MEmorial can resonate with its viewers.  It examines the personal tragedies of those who lost their livelihoods in the 9/11 attacks. 

As Ulmer’s book closes, the idea of a MEmorial is more fleshed out, but it is not fully defined.  We are still left to question, to examine what a MEmorial is supposed to be, even though Ulmer provides several examples that allow us to navigate the mood of a MEmorial.

Questions:

1) Now that Ulmer’s book has come to an end, do you feel as though the MEmorial is clearer?  Or is it still a confusing topic?

2) Can there be more than one policy that is being examined?  More than one value being examined?  Is this fixed or can we see a theme arise that may different than another viewer (much like the obtuse third meaning)?

3) Has your process throughout the MEmorial you are preparing (in groups) helped you develop a stronger idea of what a MEmorial is?  Have you sufficiently gone “outside the box” so to speak?

MEmorializing the sacrifice of abused children--Ulmer Part 3

In perhaps Ulmer’s best example from the third section of Electronic Monuments, Ulmer’s idea seems to be completely realized, at least in theory.  Continuing his ideas from the previous chapters and sections of the book, Ulmer delves deeper into the MEmorial project in the chapter entitled “Formless Emblems.”  I choose to focus mostly on this chapter because it was the chapter that produced a strong feeling in me while reading, a sense of disgust and attraction.

                The example presented is that of child abuse, in particular child abuse that has happened in relation to potty training, child abuse that results in death.  Ulmer presents first the case of Bobby McGee, a young boy who was violently killed by his mother’s boyfriend because he had soiled his pants.  Ulmer writes that “the process of Memorializing begins with a sting (punctum) received from a news item, a story from the dailydose of information circulated by journalism” (118).  In this case, something in the story accounts of this boy’s death and others sparked something that Ulmer could relate to, could see the “I” in the incident. 

                The example throughout the chapter builds, presenting other cases of child abuse and death due to potty training mishaps.  While he does go into theory relating to the process of excrement and the inner you and the outer you, Ulmer relates the entire thing to the shame of America.  The abject, in this case the sacrificed children, is shameful, like excrement coming from inside, and America does not acknowledge the sacrifices implicit with these shameful acts, the values underlying them.  The act was created when the freedom was created.

                Ulmer goes on to speak about the idea of the emblem, which is, according to Peter Daly, “a mixed form compromising a motto, a picture, and an epigram” (121).  This emblem has meaning because of the event, the words.  It is through the use of this emblem (that is created as the MEmorial forms) that an enigma exists.

                The “purpose of a MEmorial is to witness and testify regarding the event of a public problem, to shift it from the private, individual status of one at a time, each case in isolation, to a cumulative public status of sacrifice on behalf of an unrepresented national value” (136).  Again, Ulmer develops the idea of the MEmorial, pointing out to the reader, the creator of a MEmorial that it is meant to honor the sacrifice of the abject, to bring to light a problem, to affect policies, to mourn the loss so that a freedom or a value can be maintained.  As stated previously throughout his book, the MEmorial is composed of two parts—the peripheral and the testimonial.  The peripheral’s purpose “is to make a case for losses of life whose public, collective relevance as sacrifice are not recognized” (131).  It is to make their loss known and acknowledged, to make it known that they were a sacrifice and that their death (or otherwise) was important in maintaining that hold.  The testimonial dramatizes the public’s inability to see the sacrifice or why the sacrifice was necessary.

                Within the second chapter, Ulmer transitions to more of the peripheral of the MEmorial, continuing with the Bobby McGee example. Stating that a MEmorial “shows us not our fate, but our situation” (176), Ulmer describes in further detail what a MEmorial is, the fact that it does not ask the “why”/Y questions.  Instead, it feels, investigates without judgment.  In the case of Bobby McGee, Ulmer proposes a peripheral that would go side by side with the Space Mirror at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.  The name of abused children would show up during a solar eclipse when the names of fallen astronauts could not be seen.  The MEmorial does not call for a judgment or a question of Y.  Instead, it calls for an acknowledgment of the sacrifice loss and perhaps an eventual change in policy.

                Ulmer speaks about the MEmorial as not a text, but a felt.  He uses felt in two ways—one in that MEmorial is to produce a response, a feeling.  A MEmorial is “felt” instead of read or analyzed.  And, in the second way he uses the word, Ulmer draws parallels between a felted object and the MEmorial.  Like a felted object, the MEmorial has many layers and textures, composed of various aspects to create a completed thing.

                Perhaps the one quote that stood out within the course of these two chapters was from Paul Compos when he says, “The next morning we read the newspaper’s account of this almost unimaginable atrocity in our midst—this act that in some sense connects and implicates us all—and then we turn the page” (174.).  We witness these events, these sacrifices that strike us and render us shocked, but we easily forget them.  Ulmer is calling for us to remember and bare witness.

Questions

1) Ulmer gives the example of the Marlboro icon as an emblem.  Can all brand logos/slogans be considered emblems then?

2) If part of the MEmorial is to find a way in which it relates to you, to find a way in which you can relate to the event, how do we go about doing that?  Especially in the case of child abuse?  Or, will some of these MEmorials not really sync with some of their viewers?

3) Do you find it easy or difficult to not ask “why” when faced with headlines from the news that show something particularly horrible?

Art and Trauma- Ulmer Part 2

        A MEmorial intersects art and popular culture.  Due to its nature of being an abject monument, the MEmorial relies on popular culture for it’s inspiration, for the images and stories which cause the egent to see meaning and importance in the abject, the everyday.  The art is created around the event, the monument to the abject within culture.  The art springs forth from the emotion and personal memories and associations with the trauma.  The art stands as a testimonial to the trauma.

A MEmorial, composed of both the peripheral (the electronic device to be placed near the monument, reminding everyone of the abject sacrifice) and the testimonial (a website which mediates on the sacrifice), helps to stand as testament to the notion that Walter Benjamin puts forth, that “history was most accessible through an image” (58).  This idea of history seen through the image is not new, and we can see by our desire to erect monuments and photographs throughout the ages to commemorate different events.  If history is most accessible via images, than the images we put forth for everyone to see are the pieces of history we want to be remembered—the sensational, the “important.”  The idea of a MEmorial repositions the sensational.  Instead of accessing history through the images of the sensation, a MEmorial seeks to view history through the local accidents, the supposed “unimportant.”

The idea of history accessed through an image relates, according to Ulmer, to Roland Barthes idea of the third meaning of an image.  The third meaning is “obtuse, indirect, based on an involuntary memory or association triggered by a scene” (62). The viewer is wounded by what they see in the image, pricked by some memory or association that only they could feel in the image.  For instance, if the artist paints a landscape of a beach, two different people will have different memories pricked.  One person might recall a beach day that stood as the last time they were together as a family and the other might think of a nice day they had on the other side of the country at a beach there. 

Now, if we extend this image association to popular culture and events, the same thing happens.  Ulmer gives the examples of someone experiencing the collapse of the Twin Towers.  While they might recognize it and be shocked for the event being what it was, they might also see it as their own life falling apart.  Maybe they had lost their job and found themselves sliding into debt.  The fall of a cultural symbol could remind them of their own fall. 

A disaster should “stimulate creativity” (64).  It does stimulate creativity. And it begins as fragments, as small images from the news and culture.  Those fragments are turned into art—be it sculpture, book, or painting—and the MEmorial allows the viewer to gaze upon everything, finding recognition, resonating with the viewer.  These arts allow for consulting to begin to take place.

It seems to be that the MEmorial begins with a response.  For the abject to become a monument, the egent needs to have a response to the news.  For the monument, for the MEmorial to take form, there needs to be a “connection between the incidents reported in the news and personal experience” (65).  MEmorials are intensely personal.

Perhaps one of the main things that these monuments must be is “by the people” (80).  MEmorials are created by the personal experiences and the reported news.  They focus in on the third meaning, speaking in third voice.  They are the personal experiences of the egents and the viewers.

Ulmer writes that “The MEmorial, performing the EmerAgency motto (Problems B Us), treats the disaster as a source for understanding contemporary values, specifically as a mode of self-knowledge, rather than attempting to impose on the disaster a predetermined meaning” (109).  Perhaps the central idea of the MEmorial, the meaning of a disaster should not be imposed.  The MEmorial gives viewers the chance to see the disaster how they need to see it, through the emotion and images of the disaster.  The combination of the peripheral and the testimonial allows for both the viewer to be reminded of the sacrifice and the emotions to be called up, emotions which may link the viewer with other associations and memories involved with the disaster.

Art and trauma are inexplicably interlinked.  It does not seem as if one can exist without the other, and yet, trauma seems to constantly come before art.  Art can be seen as a testimonial.  Art, combined with the news of popular culture create the testimonial of the MEmorial.  It is the emotional aspect, the search for self knowledge within the disaster.

Questions:

1) Could all emotional art be considered a MEmorial if it is created in response to a disaster?

2)     If a MEmorial is, in many ways, a reconstruction of a personal story, how do we know what we are putting out there?  For instance, we might put up a MEmorial to call attention to a specific event, but does it matter if the meaning we want is missed? 

3)  How do you know the right emotion to put into the MEmorial?  Is there a “right” emotion?  Or does it all rest on the third meaning?

Electronic Monuments, Part 1

In Electronic Monuments, Gregory Ulmer presents the idea of a MEmorial, a type of commemorative practice that allows for the creation of a monument that is of value to both the individual and collective consciousness.  The internet becomes the “civic sphere” (xvii) and a local accident can, in essence, become global.  Ulmer phrases it as, “A MEmorial visualizes at least a part of this formation of coherence, in which electrate society is held together not by a master narractive but by collections of meaningless signifiers” (28).  It is a combination of various medias, incorporating both word and image, a monument that reaches to people in various ways.

Ulmer traces, briefly, how we, as a culture, have moved from a culture of orality to electracy, as well as how we tend to live within the public sphere—especially due to the internet.  Electracy, Ulmer states, is “to do for the community as a whole what literacy did for the individual within the community” (xxvi).  We are moving or perhaps have already moved, according to Ulmer, from a singular existence to a social one.

                The idea of a memorial that is cohesive and created by an act of collaboration is an interesting one, but one that seems, especially according to Ulmer, to be very proper in this age of electracy.  Ulmer begins his book by speaking about the 9/11 tragedy, using it as a catalyst for many of his other points, but also as a way to define a “general accident” (xii).  A general accident is one which everyone seems to experience in the world at the same time.  Before the internet this phenomena was not really possible, but now, because of the internet, we are able to experience what might have been a local accident together.  We see these large general accidents together, experiencing the loss that takes place in their wake, but at the same time, popping up in their presence are the unremarkable disasters, the vernacular disasters, as Ulmer refers to them.  And, these vernacular disasters lead to monuments which allow for personal memorials alongside cultural ones.

                While speaking of the MEmorial, Ulmer begins to speak about the task of building a virtual Rushmore in Gainesville, FL.  This monument was supposed to adopt the ideas of the actual Rushmore, a monument which stands to express the American ideal.  This memorial adopted the general ideas of the original Rushmore and adapted it for a more collective society. Ulmer and the Florida Research Ensemble (FRE) team developed this monument in FL which allows for a virtual Rushmore, one which required the viewers, or tourists, to provide mystories with pieces of information, stories, family anecdotes.  According to Ulmer, a mystory “condenses/displaces into one account information from the four core discourses used by Americans: family anecdotes, school history textbooks, popular media, and disciplinary expertise” (22). These mystories, provided by individuals who went to visit this monument, were then composited and a new face was made utilizing the important faces from the stories and the tourist was provided with both a print out of the composite and the chance to see their composite on this virtual Rushmore.  This cultural monument was created through individual stories, giving viewers a chance to collaborate and be a part of a cultural monument. 

And, along with that gained collaboration, visitors are able to be theoria.  This type of tourism one allowed for tourists to become “self-conscious, reflexive, and hence potentially intelligent” (13).  Theoria would travel, see, takes chances and get lost, all while intervening on another culture.  It was an active sort of experience, and while it has been much pushed aside, the prevalence of the internet and the possibility of MEmorials might help to facilitate this type of travel.

                Perhaps the most important item, at least to me, within this first section of the book was the idea of bearing witness, of being one to testify.  Ulmer states that a “MEmorial witnesses a disaster in progress” (xxvii).  It is important to bear witness, but it is, notoriously difficult, and discussion on witnessing and testimonial is often focused on Holocaust survivors.  While Ulmer is not clear what the MEmorial witnesses, the MEmorial allows collaboration and input from individuals, allowing testimony via text and image.  An example of this would be the crosses and signs and stuff toys that go up after a school shooting or that went up after 9/11.  Individuals were able to bear witness to the tragedy on a more vernacular level.  They helped to shape the memorials of the individual and collective identities for disasters.

               

                Questions:

1) Is there any such thing as a local accident/tragedy anymore with the prevelance of the internet?

              

2) Can a MEmorial be an honoring of the daily?  Or does it have to be an accident?  Would you

                classify the Gainesville project as honoring the daily or a general accident?

 3) Can the displacement of a real city by a telecity harm a city?  How does the loss of a “lived public space” (xviii) alter the community of humans?