SURREALIST cinema; Un chien Andalou

I've been surfing the Internet these past days, looking for ideas for the PHASE 2 project. Working with video it's much more fun (html is ok, but well... it's not the same! :P) and I personally want to be creative. I'm a bit lost and need to define what I want to express, but I'm considering the exploration of two different areas: surrealist cinema and Panopticon theory.

I would like to use some images from the surrealist film Un Perro Andaluz, by spanish director Luis Buñuel. The film has no narrative, in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without the events or characters changing that much. It uses dream logic that can be described in terms of then-popular freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes that attempt to shock the viewer's inner psyche.

And I also would like to relate those ideas to the panopticon concept. In its origins, the Panopticon was a type of prison building designed by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscense".

I still have to work on these ideas, because I'm not sure if they're gonna fit well in order to produce a video with a little bit of sense. I link here some inspiring links:

Surrealist Cinema / Panopticon Culture / Anemic Cinema / Le Retour a la Raison / Un perro andaluz

presentation

The Garden of Forking paths / The Rhizome / As We May Think

I have already started to prepare my presentation for (if the strike doesn't change my plans) next wednesday. Basically, I'm going to talk about these 3 texts I've linked above. I'm still in the process (haven't read the The Rhizome text yet), and have to think which aspects I'm going to focuse on. I'm thinking about talking about the content and context of those texts, and making a comparison between them. They have very obvious connections that I really have to mention and explain, but they are quite different at the same time, because their authors come from different fields, are referring to different aspects and, in fact, the texts per se respond to a different genre.

I'm really amazed about these texts, and I'm quite sure I will focuse on these 3 aspects:

- the importance of these texts lie in the age at which they were written. One may be surprised to find out how many years ago they were written, and how visionary the ideas contained are. They are really pioneer texts regarding a conceptual approach to the links between information and technology.
- because they come from different fields of knowledge, they consider "the same idea" from a different perspective. These ideas relate to other ideas that have been developed afterwards during the XX century.
- they have had enormous influence in other areas of artistic and intellectual expression, such as the literature (hyperfiction), the mass media (the Internet), the academic research (the death of the author)...

I can't really talk more about my presentation, because I'm still in the process. I show you one of the drawings I'll probably show you in class. The Exquisite Corpse is so hilarious, isn't it?

Free Internet? Two more notes.-

This is a very interesting topic Jason chose for his class presentation last week. I think he summarized really well the problems adressed by the issue of the “fredom” regarding the Internet as a new way of communication and artistic expression. Although his presentation focused on the dangers of a potential “pay-per-use” Internet and the need of a “real free” Internet, I would like to talk about now about 2 other aspects that I find directly related to the “freedom” problem in the Internet. I'm referring to the progressive and alarming invasion on the user's privacy rights and the widening gap between rich and poor societies in the field of information technology.

I'm really worried about those “social networks” like Facebook or Myspace. Identity fraud, uncontrolled expansion of personal data or the possibility that companies spy their potential employees are some of the risks a lot of Facebook, Myspace or Hi5 users unconciously assume. For those who are not very familiar with these sites, they actually acummulate a bunch of personal and private data. An average user's profile includes name, date of birth, city, apart from photos and other stuff. Others give information about their religion, marital status, personal videos... The amount of information they have collected has alarmed a lot of official authorities in more than 30 countries all over the world, which have dealed with this problematic issue in the recent 30^th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy.

Moreover, I am also concerned about the need to create mechanisms for multilateral and democratic management of the Internet. This management is mainly controled by the North American, european and some Asian countries, and the income generated by those flows of communication is only in rich countries' hands. Such imbalances do nothing more than widen the gap between rich and poor in the field of information technology.

I don't want to prolong this post too much (as I understand it doesn't really deal with art and technology) but I just would like to note that “diversity” is another important matter. The vast majority of the web content is in English, and people whose languages do not use the Latin alphabet face enormous difficulties in obtaining their full inclusion in the network.

"To be percieved spatially and temporally...

... a structure appears "closed"
when it is experienced as integral:
coherent, comprehensive and stable"
[George Landow]

That is the main purpose of my project: the viewer exploring the pages and finding an integral structure (through the links, the associations, the pieces of hyperfictions, the quotes, the colors...). I think that is the main idea that actually summarizes the sense of my project. Only once the viewer has considered every quote and has understood its meaning, he would understand the meaning of the whole structure. Of course, (as it happens in hyperfictions) there is no just one strict and closed meaning, but just as many as the viewer may consider through his/her own interpretation.

This "trip" that I proposed starts with the Choose your own Adventure book series Manifesto:

Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's in which each story is written from a second person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions in response to the plot and its outcome. I thought that idea would be interesting as the starting point of the project (the idea of "choice"). Once the reader clicks on the world "choice", two different frames are displayed on the screen:

This part is very important, because as the viewer reads the 3 quotations, will have to chose which is the "path" that will follow afterwards. I've also played with the "black" and "white" common connotations. If the viewer chooses to follow the "white" path, the one about the "hypertext" theory (the one potentially pro-hyperfiction), the frames will display like this:

On the contrary, if the viewer choses the other path, he/she will encounter this:

The four different quotations the viewer will see are about different approaches to the hypertext/hyperfiction theory and consider the issue of authorship in the "digital" era. They divide into 4 frames as well, like this:

I personally think this last step in the project is the most interesting one, since the viewer will not understand the meaning and sense of the quotations unless he/she reads all the pairs (that would mean both paths have been considered at the same time, but the eight quotations will be neverdisplayed together on screen).

Explore the external links, create different meanings and enjoy the adventure!!! Remember, there are a lot of possibilities, a lot of choices...

HYPERFICTION PROJECT- References

We'll my hyperfiction project is already done. And today we all have had to present our projects (or part of the projects) in class. I think I'm going to talk a bit more about it before the end of this phase 1. To begin with, I'm posting my "reference page" because it is useful to clarify some things about my project. The viewer may understand the structure of my page and where I did find the quotations.

The quotations I have collected for this project come from a variety of sources. Some of them were originally in Spanish, so I tried to make an accurate translation. I have divided the quotations into 3 groups. In the first group we have "general quotations" about the hypertext theory and reflections about the idea of author.

• The first quote "The are a lot of possibilities: some elections are simple, others sensible...", is taken from the Choose your own Adventure Book Series Manifesto. The one I used is a translation from the spanish available here.

• The second quote "I mean a non-sequential writing, a text that forks..." is a Theodor Nelson's quote from his book Literay Machines. It is available here.

• The third one "Holding a fact or an idea our mind jumps..." comes from pioneer text As we may think, by engineer Vannevar Bush. He was trying to make a justification for his theoretical proto-hypertext computer system, Memex. The quote is available here.

• The fourth quote "The author still prevails in literature books, in biographies..." is taken from the essay The death of the author, by french writer Roland Barthes. Available here.

In the second group, we have another 4 quotes, which have been reached through the previous ones. These are much more specific and delimit two different approaches to the hyperfiction literature theory.

• The quote "Multiplicities are rhizomatic, and expose arborescent..." comes from the text The Rhizome, by Deleuze/Guattari and available here.

• The quote "Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era offers the patient reader..." is a Robert Coover's reflection quoted in the book Patchwork Girl review, by Shelley Jackson. Available here.

• The quote "Most of the time, literary criticism still asserts..." has also been taken from the Roland's Barthes essay, mentioned above.

• The last quote of this group, "the narration (...) runs the risk of..." is an extract of the text Las posibilidades de la narrativa hipertextual, by Spanish theoric Susana Pajares Tosca. She quotes Coover in her text to refer the risks of hyperfiction literature.

Finally, in the last group of quotes, I've tried to mix eight different really quotes but extracts of archetypical hyperfictions or literay precedents. They are related to each other by pairs of two (that is something the viewer has to find out him/herself through the links).

• The first group is formed by the pair "We have been seeing each other..." and "Oh, I should explain. We have code words...". These are two extracts from mythical hyperfiction Lies, by Rick Pryll and available here.

• The second group about Ts'ui Pên's labyrinth is two extracts from hyperfiction precedent The garden of forking paths, by hispanic writer Jorge Luis Borges. It is available here.

• The pair of quotes "Ultimately, every node, every piece of text.." and "Ignore people who have specific prescriptions..." are two contradictory quotes extracted from the Susana Pajares' text, mentioned above.

• In the same way, the last two quotes "Deep down, hyperfictions are not so different..." and "One of the reasons why it makes sense to include hyperlinks..." are a contradiction I've linked between the Susana Pajares' text and a piece from the Yo, el ornitorrinco weblog.

I'm having problems with the FTP to upload the project to the FACS server. I don't know what's happening, maybe some of the ftp settings are wrong. I'll figure it out!

done!

I haven't posted too much lately, but the truth is that I've been working hard for my project. I have it already finished, and I only have to fix some little things to have it done!!! I'm pretty proud of what I've finally achieved, although I don't know if it will really gather everything Nadine and Marc were asking for this phase. Whatever.

Maybe tomorrow or Tuesday I will post more details about my final project. I've spent so much hours in front of the computer and am so tired that I cannot write anything else now!!!!

Hypertext: Transfiguration of Writing and The Writer

I've found this interesting video about how writing in the hypertext format influences the usually called "common" writing style.