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?