Wednesday 17 October 2007

Semiotics, Semioticks, Semidiotics


The following is an excerpt from Semiotics, Semioticks, Semidiotics,a short semiotic analysis of Fashion Now, an anthology of contemporary fashion, edited by Terry Jones and Avril Mair.


Roland Barthes introduces semiology as a term given by a general science of signs, the existence of which was conjectured by Ferdinand Saussure, who is widely considered as the father of 20th century linguistics. Saussure was the first linguist who decided to call the science of understanding signs a semiology. Later on many sociologists and linguists developed on his work and settled upon a world of identifying cultural meanings from objects that possess signs.(Barthes, 2006) Whatever object or language it may be, they all indulge us into a Semiological analysis. The meanings that are to be found in a visual are not just personal views based on individual conscience, nor are they representations of a unanimous syndicate specialized in cultural interpretations. Shields (1990) notes that the ability of a visual text to communicate meaning involves an intricate interplay between the codes and messages encoded into the text at the time of its production and the cultural experience and subjectivity the spectator brings to the viewing of that image.(Shields,1990) The meanings of the visual picture, whether its characteristics be still or moving, transparent or substantial, heavy or light, dark or bright or all together combined, the hidden meaning(s) of an image can be found in the midst of such characteristics and the dominant ideological perspective of that individual. Semiological interpretations are not a science that is coded by natural laws, but a radical system of language, unlike the usual literature that constructs a loophole free from procedural laws. This is how the use of semiotics in this essay will attempt to challenge and analyze the popular culture and Fashion. So an interpretor must constantly and tirelessly separate the object from its meaning like a centrifuge. This is how the meaning is clear from the object that represents it and the object is made independent by the textual blindfold wrapped around it.

stonefree13 publications© Yaseen Z.

(The rest of the essay uncluding the citings are available upon request. If you would like to use my essay please let me know by leaving a comment below.)

Monday 15 October 2007

Safety Pin as Signifier.

Friday 5 October 2007

Wednesday 3 October 2007

Remember ATARI?

The phenomena of video gaming from arcades into homes has turned it into a modern cinematic subcategory which is currently influencing the entertainment business at large and highly reflecting upon understanding cultural discernment. The Hollywood Entertainment business and the North American culture are not the only two spheres in which influences and reflections are currently being discussed as cultural subjects, there are other spheres within which the same subjects can be more complicating to comprehend or even to link with. However this paper will discuss the influence of ATARI and its reflection to American culture including other gaming consoles in North America. This article does not attempt to define the clear image of interactiveness or cultural labour between the human body and the TV screen but it will make a textual collage of technological advances and cultural effects of video gaming.

Despite the personal, cultural and political indifferences that prevail as barriers of interconnection between people of diverse cultures, somewhere a checkpoint is always available and necessary where cultures can exercise their diversity. The virtual gaming space is now the place where such a checkpoint can be found because of its diverse participants. Virtually speaking, a spaceship is more likely to win and go to the next level if accompanied by a second player. This shows that an effort is made by both the players towards achieving a common goal. This is one of the inexplicable natures of individuals that make jazz combo teams in new paradigms of business management(Drucker,1998). Drucker(1998) states that in a jazz team each participant does his or her own thing but together they make great music. Similarly in the virtual engagement of games like Spacewar (PDP-11, 1961)1 such nature of a team can be seen as a universal checkpoint that can be found and agreed upon by gamers, whereas in the case of ATARI's pong (Atari,1972) the game engages the playing minds and bodies in competing attitudes and gestures. Even though Spacewar was unsuccessful image wise and commercially, it gathered players under a friendlier atmosphere regardless of its failure upon entrance into the "world of play".(Wilson,2004) The entrance of ATARI into the homes from arcades was mainly because of the simplicity of pong which broke down the focus from emphasis over controllers and instructions to easier tasks. So games have various functions that can shape cultural identities. Whether it be Grand theft Auto (PC & Playstation, 1997) or Winning eleven 52 (Playstation 2, 2001) , the role of the virtual surrogates in the screen reflect upon the interests of the player, sometimes literally and at other times arbitrarily. It is not necessary that a gamer likes to play more violence related games because the person has violent tendencies, it is also possible that a gamer who plays Need for speed Underground3 (PSP,2003) could highly fancy the visual upgrades and customizations that she/he has made to the Cobalt SS.

Gaming cultures brings us under an umbrella of intellectual apprehension without having to speak about our intellectual self initially. Traditional board games like ludo, chess and monopoly are still prevalent but their transition to the form of digital media is more popular simply because there is a larger network through telecommunication (Internet & online gaming). The first popular video game to enter the American homes from arcades was the pong, which made the computer game industry a big business but Grifitths(1997) notes that video gaming has become more popular among a larger audience with the advent of the arcade game Space Invaders. This phenomenon is seen as something that happened particularly within the youth culture. Arcade video gaming and home video gaming are new forms of cultural practices, now they are so substantial in the sense that they have become a form of addiction specially for groups of youth. Which in turn has changed family and friend gathering norms, and more importantly identities and personalities. Youths have now become closely attached to videogaming, so much that it is effecting them socially, and also physical and mental symptoms are beginning to show among them. However Griffith(1997) argues that it is problematic to only a small minority of the youth. The view that video gaming is a negative influence over the youth culture is real but simplistic. Contemporary videogaming covers even intellectual human games such as chess. Through chess we understand that war gaming is an old pastime between two individuals where the player is everything from the low rank soldiers to the Kings. Similarly digital video gaming today have opened visual horizons for such players, where the gamer's conscious is tacitly immersed into history lessons. Age of empires (PC,1997) is a strategy game that lets multiplayers participate in online gaming. Carr(2003) relates that this type of gaming brings about a checkpoint where thousands of strangers share a gaming world. Such games offer action, theatrics, community, improvised and sociable role play, or open slather "frag' fests.(Carr,2003) The gaming consoles today are apparatuses between the playing body and the TV by which the player learns about history. However we have to keep in mind that these games are not an effective way of learning about history because all the depictions of historical information are not necessarily authentic(Schut,2007) just how we may argue that all history is not completely true.


The problem solving mind of the human have become over active since the emergence of multi-faceted video games. Our subjective instincts signal us about our wants that turns objective to almost all our limbs and possibly the whole body. If your first gaming console was ATARI, you may remember the grip of that erected joystick with the red button on the panel. Remember the struggle in trying to make sense of how it all works? The engagement in this activity of figuring out what to do, is itself the act of learning to perform a new cultural labour. As the games keep developing cultural labours associated with them also advance. Wilson states that a subject is adapted to flexibly accomplish a greater burden of labour, where labour is increasingly concerned with the production of cultural and informational goods.(Wilson,2004). Schut (2007) draws the relation between a culture's dominant media and the behaviour of the culture. The media ecology perspective that he presents reflects on how our tools of communication surrounds us as our cultural environment. The medium is an important focus in the media ecology. In the context of video gaming the medium is the apparatus between the body and TV. The cultural labour shaped by this medium has its strengths and weaknesses. (Schut, 2007)

Wilson (2007) also contrasts and compares significant works of art in order to relate early video games, video art and abstraction with possibilities of attention. He shows how Barnett Newman's Onement IV ,Videosport's videogame Tennis, Nam June Paik's Zen for TV and Participation TV are all related in a visual resemblance and as moments in tradition. Newman as an Abstract artist is associated with post-war and North American Modernism. (Wilson,2007) Wilson relates Pong to Onement IV because of its pictorial flatness and simplicity. By comparison the vertical line that divides the pictorial space into two halves clearly represent the lines in that of a tennis field, a ludo or a chess board. This is the first commonality that a viewer and a player experiences while looking at Onement 1V or playing pong. Participating in some of his paintings required body movement, this occupied the viewer's visual field and also engaged the body to move in order to get a sense of the whole artwork.(Wilson,2007) His concern was to draw on the dots between the art work and the body. Similarly many consoles bring out the same ideas. When ATARI was first launched, it was an arcade video game in a bar, the participation of the people demonstrated a bodily immersion into the screen. The players were more into the games, but the ongoing pong sessions also has spectators like any still work of art. Both the body work and the mind is more intensely working in a gaming session than in observing an artwork in an art gallery.


Nam June Paik's Zen for TV consists of a TV set with a magnet on one side that serves to horizontally compress the TV image by confining the movement of its CRT; the TV is then upended so that the line is seen vertically. It takes a similar charecteristic from Newman's work into a satirical remediation of abstract art. (Wilson,2007) This abstract work of art reflects more on the interaction between the TV image and different possible dimensions in which we look at a screen. Here the body work and the mind utility is also highly relative to gaming, precisely because Paik stresses on the TV content and the viewer's perception. The way in which a spectator might perceive GTA's violent content is quite different from the perception of someone who is playing the game. The fever of criticizing a game for its visual content can spread easily but its hard to challenge the aesthetics of the very same visual contents.(Carr,2003) Paik further goes into a more elaborate explication of the human body's virtual relationship with the technological advancement by presenting his Participation TV. This conceptual work is a vibrant kind of art that speaks in deeper context of interaction between human body and technology. It is an artwork that achieves the conditions by which the spectator might act upon the new kind of flat victoria space Paik makes of the screen in Zen for TV. (Wilson,2007) Here the artwork unlike those previously mentioned, engages both viewing and participation at the same time. Participation TV's first impression is the image of Karaoke, which means "empty orchestra" in the Japanese language. In the case of Karaoke, the human body is indulged by the screen to sing what the eyes see. Here the human voice before giving instructions to the microphone actually receives the electronically eliminated instructions in form of texts that constitute the lyrics for the vocal. As Wilson(2007) notes Participation TV is one of the first conceptual works that incorporates the audience into the feedback loop of its production. Also the cultural labour that one experiences in this activity is seen as heavy. In comparison to the Nintendo wii this artwork is a vivid representation of the 'aesthetic auro' between the machine and the spirit.

Conclusion

Video gaming is an activity that reflects upon a culture. The technological advancements in this field has been changing the way we communicate with each other. Virtual reality is a whole new horizon where Utopian checkpoints can be created , found and shared by diverse networks because of its infinite space, cultural durability and endurance. Not all video games are negatively influential, video games also have educational and aesthetic purpose. It is easy and simplistic to criticize the violent and unnecessary contents of virtual gaming, but it is even more challenging and interesting to conceptualize video gaming as an important element of American culture. There is a substantial and a metaphysical relation between post-war artworks and ATARI's ping pong. This is where ATARI's auro of cool can be experienced. In understanding that video gaming is not just a novelty or a pastime for adolescents but an enduring culture that teaches us our constant changing nature. The 'auro of cool' is an experience of widening our perspective and strengthening the relation between the technological environment and the physical actions of the human body by discerning upon their various levels of interaction.





Stonefree13 productions© Yaseen Z.




References


Drucker, Peter F. (1998) Management's new paradigm,5,6.

Wilson, Jason (2004) 'Participation TV': Early Games, Video Art, Abstraction and the Problem of Attention: The International Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies 95,97,86, 87, 88. 90

Griffiths, Mark (1997) Computer game playing in early adolescence: youth and society,223,224

Carr, Diane (2003) Game on: The culture and history of videogames, Visual Communication163 – 167

Schut, Kevin (2007) Strategic Simulations and our past: The Bias of Computer games in the presentation of History. Games and Culture, 213, 214, 215, 216

Other Readings

Apperley, T.H (2006) Genre and Game studies: Towards a critical approach to video game genres, Simulation and Gaming

Schott Gareth R et al. (2000) Girl gamers and their relationship with the gaming culture, Convergence: The Journal of Research Into New Media Technologies

Thrush, Emily et al (2000) Virtual Reality, Combat, and Communication: Journal of Business and Technical Communication









cd:7143279

Tuesday 2 October 2007

wt??




these bengees are upto no good!!

Monday 1 October 2007

Art Mart



A lot of what i have to face in the academic world has to do less with the real world and more with the perpetual jargonistic attitude of the 'DWM' as noted by Dag in his explication of tradition. Thankyou Dear Vagabond school Teacher. You may be empathetic towards those who are under excruciating terms and conditions i.e amatuer dilettantes like me but dont you worry. Almost through out the year vacuous pseudostatements of the Dead white men in several attempts of 'canonized' literary texts, instead of confining us in their Kingdom of boredom, they actually loosen our shackles of axiological skepticism, for now it is politically ever correct to twist in the mist of Western literature as they are already able to shoot while they loot in the midst of the great war in East.

I wrote of tradition, and now i see that it is true to most people in the West that Tradition is seen as somethink akin to moral and intellectual fly-paper. Only what is new is interesting to them, all else being "so yesterday!" Comes to mind the reduction "DWM". Anything written or conceived by dead white men is seen to be bad, uncritically so, and unarguably so. God help us, we are swarmed by teenage fools with grey pony-tails. People have no better understanding of the term Tradition than they seem to of Revolution.
---- Dag


Who gets to say what's beauty and what's not? Like Yvor Winters' decisive nature to rank-order artists or the rest of the DWM labelists who 'intellectually' quarelled on evaluation of fact and value in the literary academy for a living must've enjoyed every bit of the 'Philological Phoolosophy' as much as I am despicably enjoying right now. So as a Traditionalist I wish to show gratitude towards them by condescending them from Dead white men to the Dead whimsicles, which ofcourse by no means do I propose to effect the well abbreviated DWM. Which offers them the same credit card with the same intrest rate but a different reward option that will let them earn their "art miles" faster, quicker and cheaper under economical terminology.

If one feels that she/he is still undergoing torture from impositions of the Dead Whimsicles' justification in the science of fact and value evaluation , the only way to make sense of the melodrama is to perceive the whole by condescending in a subjective arena where in its dwellers are a similitude of those who swim in deep axiological skepticism. The methodology of which is constantly altered, changed and improvised in an egrigrious manner to an extent that it has been taken for granted by scholastic wits who collectively turned it into a public restroom where the responsibility of tidiness is often abandoned and left for the next one to come. With this normative attitude, methodological researches has left no choice for the offcially employed janitor but to quit her/his job.