Is THAT art?!?!?! I mean a child could have done that?

I have much to say and engage with in regards to these two questions and I do not plan on writing it all down now, or even get close to addressing all the problems with these two questions but I wanted the conversation to start. So I have been doing some Saussure reading lately, for a class mind you, I don’t think I could do it for myself yet in life, and well more specifically I have been reading his Lecture Notes from the University of Geneva, 1906-11, compiled and published by his students after his death. Okay that all being said the part of these notes I want to draw attention to is the three ways in which a word, a linguistic sign, is arbitrary. The three ways come from first breaking up the sign into its two parts, signifier (the sound) and signified (the idea or concept). For example when we say “chair”  the sound associated with the concept of a device for sitting on are not inherently combined, that’s easy enough to understand when one travels to a place where one’s native language is not practiced. Try saying chair somewhere where they don’t speak English and see if they understand you. So with these two aspects defined what is then arbitrary? Well as is suggested above the relationship between the signified and the signifier is completely conventional, why call a chair a chair and not a table? It is just what we have chosen. Second the sound itself is arbitrarily defined, why not chairy or chaaaair? Lastly the concept is also arbitrarily defined. A stool and chair are separate in our language, not all languages and a desk chair and table chair both use the word chair, in other languages they don’t have the same signifier.

We can spend all day talking about Saussure but the only thing important for the art question is the arbitrariness of language.  given that I want to know bring up C. S. Pierce who studied sign. Pierce, 1839-1914, defined three different signs: Icons, resembles what it points to, Index, related to its object through forceful interaction, and Symbols, anything that requires information to form the connection. Language as it is arbitrary and conventional falls under that third category. Renaissance paintings fall under the first category and photograph falls under the first two, as it is both representational of what it points to and it is a consequence of it (that’s why photos can be evidence and paintings can’t, for the most part).

Okay NOW back to the question at hand, what is meant when someone says “a child could have done that?” that’s what I am now going to address:

So last weekend I was at our university’s annual sculpture show and had a wonderful and exploratory time observing and being part of the exhibitions. But of course, with the art being student created (ie experimental) there came a slew of questions or rather comments regarding the validity of the art. For example when looking at one of the more hidden pieces that was made up of plaster, grocery bags, hot glue, wax, and a globe it was stated that the piece was not for sale. The response of one individual to that knowledge was “why would someone even be interested in that? they could get it at a supermarket for far less, hell it comes with your order at a supermarket” he was obviously referring to the enormous number of plastic bags used int he sculpture’s creation. So therefore the question becomes creatability? I guess you could say, or rather that he and many others were measuring the “artistic merit” of the works based on how “easy” or “accessible” they were to create. Here is where I bring up Saussure, to remind us that our “conventions” for what is easy and hard, and what is beautiful and ugly, and especially what is and isn’t art is NOT based on any fundamental truth, for there isn’t one, but rather it is based on our own arbitrary definitions. One may be able to easily translate beauty linguistically between English and French but you’d be surprised at how the term may be applied very differently in the two cultures. I bring this up to suggest that when we talk about certain elements that “should” be striven for in art, those elements have no universality in them and furthermore are completely relative based on what we define them as not.

Okay then so let’s briefly talk about what is implied with that child statement. First let me say that I am not going to take the time here to debate it but rather just understand it, later we’ll debate it. So typically the “a child could do that” statement applies to the works of art that appear to have no talent applied during the creative process. One that I always think of in this argument is Kasimir Malevich’s Black Square or Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. In either case the artistic object is not something that requires a mastery of representational ability. By that I mean to suggest that when this statement is applied to either work the implied meaning of it is that neither work achieved the same level of representational, iconic, achievement that say the Mona Lisa did. So in the end I bring this up now to ask, do you think that what is implied by this statement is a comparison with Renaissance art? After all nothing can be defined independently, everything is always negatively defined. Therefore for this to be slated with being less than art, what other artistic objects are being conjured up to mark this objects failure? Furthermore I want to bring up the question of “talent” and to suggest that we are applying to this word an age old convention of something physical. That the talent required to be a superior artist is some sort of mastery over representational, some kind of ability to recreate life through a medium. I would argue that it requires the SAME amount if not MORE talent to produce something so iconistic as to go against convention. Why seek only to use convention when defining art?

 

But I must also add that by bringing up Saussure we are going down a path of arbitrariness that may conclude with that unnerving realization that art itself is arbitrary.

 

Let the discussion begin,

Huysmans

Catching up and going places

My last semester of college has begun and I have been busy actually writing my thesis and working for classes that this little blog has been somewhat neglected. I promise that soon i will post some of the work I have done for the thesis itself but until then I would like to engage the blogosphere in a discussion of some of the other discussions being had around the digital world.

First I came across a post today regarding blogs and their ability to be critical. Kassia over at Booksquare has suggested in a recent post that blogs do not have the abilities print does to be critical and therefor are not a threat to print. I have posted a response to this suggestion and would encourage everyone out there to join in. What is important is that we identify where critical work is being done online and see how the blog is functioning to support or hinder that work.

Through technorati I found this post commenting on the rather long NY times article on the books on blogs. The author is giving a roundup of the Review of Books essay. This essay should prove very helpful in looking at the publication world’s response to blogs. A huge component of the thesis will focus on the literary community that exists between blogs and books.

Another blog has picked up the same article for review. Writing for the Web, has submitted a response to the tone of the article along with correcting a few of the gross generalities presented.  In general this author’s blog is very thoughtful and insightful when it comes to writing and the web 3.0.

The Blog Herald, a metablogging site that has proven very helpful with this thesis has just announced the expansion of Google’s Blogger into the Arabic World. Let the tools of the internet tear down the walls blocking communication.

Another post at The Blog Herald is in regards to blogging anonymously. It is a very good article and provides links to some very interesting posts where the authors describe their own struggles to be public about their online identity. It would appear as if the age old American debate of free speech has found a new forum in the blog world. Can someone be critical of their employer, professor, government and be honest and open about who they are as well? It would seem as though the answer to that is leaning towards the “no” with those fighting for it to be a “yes”. As being one who was personally effected by this fight when I decided to leave a class due to the professors misgivings about the blog world, I would like to see it lean towards the yes and end the days of digital silence.

if:book again provides us with updates on the progress of Grand Text Auto by announcing the completion of part 1, Expressive Processing. A meta-discussion is to follow in the next phase, check it out. Here is the meta of Grand Text Auto.

Another post on the if:book blog proved to take me back a few years, and I only mean a few as I find myself one who is pretty well in tune with my inner child. I love discussions of creativity, especially when the discussions themselves are creative. After all it is one thing to talk about the futurizer, it’s another to believe it, or believe in believing in it. For myself I am looking to one day invent my timechangeizerfying machine, perhaps I’ll do it for this blog, who knows.

What will come of the book

In working through aspects of this thesis I have come across a fair amount of literature on the future of the printed book. I knew going into this project that I would find such discussions but what is curious to me is our desire to weigh in on such a what if conversation. Yes the book in its printed form has been a fundamental tool to our society since its inception and yes today for the first time in history that which the book offered can now be offered by something else. But this new technology, right now culminating with the Kindle I guess but I have yet to see this new device in action, can it really replace the book? Or rather is this really a conversation worth having. Now I know that I have defended the value of this artistic conversation and in so doing have met many individuals who believe the entire conversation of defining art has no value and ultimately hurts art in our culture, I obviously disagree with that sentiment. But with the discussion over the plight of the book I really see no value. This new medium will create a new art, not a new platform for the same art. So the better question is will the old art die? I don’t think so either, writing has not died out after typing became available, and with that I don’t think print will go out even if this Kindle and its super screen that doesn’t strain eyes really does work. 

I guess the point of this post is to get that out, I’d rather these authors focus on what makes internet writing unique and new rather than waste time describing it as an improvement to the book. TV is not an improvement to film and VHS did not replace the cinematic experience. But on the flip side I don’t think those comparative arguments work either, because radio I do believe is on the out thanks to the internet and soon TV will follow. 

 But both of these mediums never established themselves like the book did and that may be its saving grace. It is part of our history and its tangibility along with its content is what makes it unique. 

 

So here I am complaining that this argument is occurring in these texts and by doing that I too am contributing to the discussion. Oh well back to the thesis…

 

Huysmans  

We’ve got blog

I am finally back from vacation and have finished the collection of essays titled We’ve got blog: how weblogs are changing our culture. It was a very interesting collection, very diverse, and will be very helpful in understanding more of the specifics in regards to the history of the blog. However the funny thing about anything in print in regards to this topic is that it becomes immediately dated. All the essays in here are from the late 90s through 2002, which makes sense since the book was published in 03 and for a book that’s recent. But still in regards to the “A-List” blogs they talk about in the book, well many don’t update anymore.

 

But the important part is that it gave me some good perspective on the blog’s development. It’s interesting to me, but yet not surprising, that it started as a filter, as a collection of interesting links within the internet, one could say that that purpose is still around today, in fact most probably would, if not through the posts and tags then through the blogroll, but the blogroll isn’t updated regularly like the original weblogs were. I know from the book that the debate on which is a real blog still exists, or at least it did then.

 

Something I find rather interesting about this collection of essays is that there is no discussion of art in the blogs, these writers don’t identify as authors, many as journalists and probably a few as strictly writers or bloggers, but what is interesting is that they don’t see their work as art.

 

Something that I have been toying with is the idea that the public journal aspect of a blog, the type of blog that has become the most popular form of blogging today is in fact a genre of literature, a theme for writing if you will. I believe that it is a hybrid of an autobiography with the essences of a collaborative work such as the Surrealists would do. I know or rather can imagine that there are bloggers out there that honestly write what really does happen to them in that given post but they are still adding opinion, interpretation, hopefully artistic exaggeration, and lets not forget style and format, all of which are artistic and literary themes so therefore I would almost venture to say that these blogs if they were to be found in say a Barnes & Nobel they would be found under the section of Blog Journal, which would be next to Magical Realism and Autobiographies.

 

Just my thoughts and I know it’s a week late but.

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR and good luck in ‘08

 

Huysmans

Community and Art

Today was the last day of school for my old high school of which my sister is now a senior. I being an alumnus snuck myself to watch this winter tradition. I bring it up here because I think that it so perfectly describes the power of art in education.  The performance was one hour long and consisted of different acts by different grades, for example some 6^th graders read their own poetry while the first graders performed a procession and high school groups both sang and danced. The most memorable for me was what the fifth graders did; the sword dance. A highly choreographed performance involving swords that are incorporated into a star by the intercrossing of the dancer who are marching in a circle, sounds complicated, looks complicated, but as being once a fifth grader who did it, it isn’t that hard to pull off.

 

Regardless of what was performed, the performance as a whole brought the school together, from kindergarten to twelfth grade, from students to faculty, and my push will be to get alumni there as well. What I am trying to say is that it helps connect that community; it removes the boundary of age, of position, of background and allows us all to enjoy something together. Even better is the fact that there was no one dominating medium of artistic production, we had costumes, dancers, musicians, singers, writers, and of course an audience interaction and response (which I count as a whole other medium).

 

Sorry I don’t have much more to say just yet but I guess I want to add this one final thought.

 

I talk about art and write about art and produce art because it is fundamental to community.

 

Huysmans.

Facebook as Literature

I used to think, and by used to I mean up until this week, that these new fangled applications on facebook were not just a waste of time but a disgrace to the essence of what is Facebook. Well that was back when I was elitist for being a college student and couldn’t get over the fact that now high schoolers had accounts. Though I wouldn’t say I am passed that phase of my Facebook relationship I have come to see some value in these applications.

 

I bring it up here because it is rather interesting to see how the literary world has utilized it. First I want to introduce a rather interesting and simply engaging application I found through Chris Joseph’s blog. The novel is called Why Some Dolls Are Bad and it is a graphic novel and is dynamically generated through a Facebook application by the same name. I highly recommend looking into it.

 

It is works like this that are key resources for reviewing the literary potential of blogs, though this app itself is not a blog it does use many of the unique blog features I plan on discussing, such as hypertext, mixmedia, and a community set up through the app users. But again it isn’t a blog in that we cannot directly communicate with the novel author, Kate Armstrong.

 

Anyway it is something worth checking out and thanks to Chris for pointing it out.

 

On another note on Facebook I have also added the scrabble game, a game I like to think helps stimulate writers and with it on Facebook I can enter multiple games at once with my friends that take place over a long period of time, a cute way to remind me about how bad my vocabulary is. For example below is my attempt at trying to make words with the letters I had, I have decided that it makes some rather interesting phonetic poetry, or just crap. You can decide for yourself.

 

Huysmans.

 

Dif tif dif nif wintow woodin wid

 

Woodint winotod

 

Windoo windot wondit wond windo woodi n tinwood nitwood woodnit inwood

Being Dated.

So since I know have the ground working for working on this thesis something that I have been thinking about a lot lately is the momentary aspect of my research. The moment I make a statement about the current situation, that statement becomes dated. Today we are dealing with a system that’s most fundamental tradition is a tradition of change.

 

I bring this up now for one reason in particular, my roommate has just recently started a flickr.com account and we both have become rather excited about the potential it has for him. I myself have begun to ponder on the idea of creating one for my photos, for no other reason then to pack them up on the internet. But also because it is nice to be able to share travels and experience and for those who are trying to become photographers like my roommate, it is a good way to get out there.

 

So why do I bring up flickr when talking about blogs? I’m sure the answer is obvious to most of you (it wasn’t to me at first) but because perhaps the blog is not a literary tool. I am excited to do my thesis and will work it to its conclusion but what I am pondering right now is the reality that we need to move away from placing these new tools in old media and just establish them as new media. I intend to do this with my thesis but at the same time my goal is to look at their literary potential, by that I mean I am not using flickr for my research.

 

If I was to write a book rather than a thesis though I think that looking at these online blogs,vlogs, photo blogs, and so forth should be brought under one new medium, the internet, a medium that has no restrictions save one, it is not tangible. Everything created exists and only exists on the internet, in that specific format.

 

So here is to being dated and to always need those addendums.

 

Huysmans.

Happy Birthday Blog World!

Yesterday marked the ten year anniversary of the blog. So in the language of the Wall Street Journal I too say Happy Blogiversary! The story is simple enough, starting with Jorn Barger and his weblog, a filter for web content on December 17^th, 1997.

But now a blog has become so much more, maybe that’s good or bad, but regardless it is.

 

Now I can do this and run a muck of my own post.

There can also be still some very thoughtful web filtering. But as those who frequent my blog know, I am more interested in the literary merit that is coming out of them.

So in recognition of this 10^th anniversary of the blog world and ten years of development, I present this:

My city as it was seen in 1865. Why do I present this here? Because when it came out it wasn’t art. But where is it now, a museum, why? Because it is art today, it represents a world that doesn’t exist anymore, a green Manhattan. Its potential as an artistic representation has now been realized by the changed interaction it has undergone with us the viewers.

The irony is that it is still very much a tool for developers, a tool that lets people know where the water is hiding deep under our metro system and trump towers. I see the same with blogs, they aren’t all art. Hell most aren’t. But those other blogs are serving an extraordinary purpose today for the world. They are media checks, augmenters of the news world, critics, fans, friends, communities, and in general spreading the communication of our world farther than it has ever been able to go in the past.

Here is to the blogosphere, may it continue to establish itself in these next ten years.

Huysmans out.

Outline for my Thesis on blogs

What follows is an outline for my thesis on the topic of the literary merit of blogs. I am very eager to receive feed back and suggestions also advice on where to search for more content. Thank you in advance.

Huysmans.

Introduction:

Here I want to introduce the topic starting with describing both the intermediality in art today as well as the multimedia aspects of the internet. I will begin this thesis and the introduction with a discussion of my own blog and my own travels in the blogosphere. I know the idea of an intro is to introduce the topic so I plan to extend the conversation here to touch upon how blogs have affected much more than just an e-community.

·         The story of my own blog

o   I feel that the best way to dive into this topic is to describe how I dove into it. I don’t plan on this being long at all but I do intend for it to wet the pallet of the reader and to engage them into why this might be of interest to them.

·         Art in the 21^st century

o   This section will focus on two major trends: intermediality in “old media” and multimedia in “new media.”

§  With the study of intermediality I want to focus on works like The Pillow Book and the popularity of adaption to emphasis the cross media work being done today. The thesis of this section is to suggest that old media (Print, TV, Radio, Film) are working very hard today to interact, TV shows based on films, films based on musicals based on films, films acting as visual novels, and of course novels made into musicals made into films. The idea of all this cross over and what may be driving it, to enhance the story and bring the story to multiple audiences, or both.

§  The second aspect of this section is to look at the role the internet has played in this. Again here there are two trends I want to focus one. One is the role of the internet in regards to old media, viral marketing campaigns, characters from television shows having their own blogs, publishers adding literary content to accompany a novel on line. The second part is to look at art that can only exist online. This will work to introduce the blog but it will also look at a graphic novel made exclusively for a Facebook application, digital/visual poetry as well as the new version of blogs that incorporate every type of media (visual, auditory, and textual).

o   I will conclude this section by connecting these two elements to suggest that when in modernism the importance of the medium was fundamental to advancing its specific art, the 21^st century has abandoned such uniqueness in favor of a new medium, a multimedium (the internet).

Section 1: The Blog

This section will focus entirely on getting the reader acquainted with the blog. Here is where I plan on providing the history of the blog, beginning briefly with the history of the internet, and followed mostly by the development of the weblog and then the blog. The goal of this section is for the reader to understand all the elements that go into the creation of a blog today and how that is new and different from say ten years ago. I want to stress the development of user friendly software along with the development boom of the internet itself. Since I plan on discussing the online literary community later, I want to make sure the reader understands the power of such organizations such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Second Life, Blogger, WordPress, and a few others that are key players in the literary world of the internet.

·         The Blog: Past, Present, and Future

o   This part is pretty self explanatory; it will describe in brief the history of the weblog as well as parallel it with the development of the internet and later the development of social software and web 2.0. This terminology is important and will all be explained here.

o   This chapter will then focus on the world of the blog today. I want to provide the reader with an understanding of how the blog is being used today.

§  Starting with the original weblog feature as a web filter.

§  Moving on to discuss the most popular use as a public diary.

§  Briefly touching upon its new role in journalism.

§  Lastly talking about its community development power.

o   Before moving on to the future aspects I will provide a section on the use of blogs and other social software tools, such as the examples mentioned above. The ultimate idea is for the reader to understand what is meant by “digital life” and how one might experience a “second life” through their online persona.

o   The third part will be to talk about the blog’s potential future and where bloggers today want to see it going.

§  This will mostly focus on its potential as a new form of publishing as well as its untapped power as a community builder.

·         NOTE: It may be beneficial to break up this into three sections instead of slating it all under one. To be honest I have not put much thought into exactly how I am to organize all of this beyond dividing it up into sections. Perhaps this section would have three chapters: Past, Present and Future. There is arguably enough material to do that. Or perhaps this section may not be as pertinent with the discussion of literary merit and should be reduced to just a chapter in the following section.

Section 2: The Literary World Online

            This section may be the largest as it will focus on the developing literary community on the internet. The key components of this section are the literary blogs. There are two major types of literary blogs, blogs that are producing their own literature and blogs that are acting as book reviewers. In addition to these two types of blogs I will also focus on the extensive community elements built around blogs of this sort: annual writing competitions, online literary journals, blogging communities voicing opinions about the established literary authorities, and published writers blogging about the writing process.  

·         The New Literary Medium

o   This first section will delve into the literary merit of a blog. I will divide this into three aspects, which will be first is yet to be established but generally I see it going as follows:

o   The Public Journal: I want to look at this “genre” as fiction itself, similar to an autobiography. This genre has no regulations forcing it to be factual and has no pre-established criteria save the general concept of what one logs in his/her diary.

§  Thus I want to explore what makes this genre unique: it has no fixed end, it is written by one author but is aided by the contributions of the general public who choose to contribute, it has no limitation as to the type of medium used in an entry (videos, images, and sound bites can all be added), and it uses the power of hypertext (text that can be linked throughout the web allowing for the artistic experience to then incorporate more writers and more readers and more communities from across the internet).

·         Each of these points will be further explained, especially the last on hypertext theory. I plan on spending some time discussing hypertext theory and its original research long before the blog existed.

o   The fictional blog: This section will look at how the same aspects of the public journal are then applied to a piece of fiction that is submitted to an audience via a blog. Basically this section will look at writers who are publishing through blogs rather than print.

§  Questions to be raised in this section are how the blog format affects narration; what role do the commentators play; and how the story is being presented (this is different from the first aspect in that the first point will focus on how the blogger is utilizing the specific attributes of a blog to expand his story, such as hypertext and multimedia elements; while this section will look at how these elements are being presented in the blog, what makes up a post? How are they archived? And so forth).

§  Another aspect of this section is how the blogger relates to the work of fiction; is it explicit that we are reading fiction? Does the blogger chime in with commentary on how the story is progressing? In general does the writer acknowledge his own separate existence from the story or does he allow the entire blog to be part of the fictional story. These aspects are important to evaluate how narrative is being changed when fiction is being written for a blog versus print.

o   The portfolio blog: this final section will expand on the blogs where the author controls the blog beyond any one specific story. For example a novelist may make one blog for just that one novel. This would fall under the previous section. But that same novelist may have a blog for submitting poetry and short stories, that blog would go here. The idea is to look at how fiction is being presented in compilation.

§  Other things I want to touch on but they may end up in other sections are the works of blogs by multiple authors and the literary works done in other online mediums, such as Facebook and Second Life.

·         The New Literary Community

o   This section will focus on the literary blogs that discuss literature. General trends of these blogs are to provide book reviews, assist in online marketing of authors through interviews and promotional pieces, discuss events affecting the literary world such as the writer’s strike, independent book store closings, the release of the Amazon Kindle and so forth. More specifically I want to focus on the literary blogs that are run by writers themselves as some of the time they discuss the writing process, making it much more personal for their audience as well as aspiring writers who my stumble upon their site.

o   Literary Blogs by Writers:

§  This section will arguably be the most dominant in this part of the thesis as these blogs have had some large scale affects on the literary community. I have yet to outline the specific ones I will look at but for sure this will include The Elegant Variation and Bookslut two book review blogs that have taken a lot of readership away from the New York Times.

§  The goal of looking at these blogs is to look at how they change the way the community looks at reading, these are not critics writing at us but rather with us and trying to engage us in a discussion of the merits of the texts they are reviewing.

§  I also plan on commenting on the fact that in response to these blogs, The New York Times created their own blog called Papercuts.

§  In this section I will also look at how these writers describe their own work and engage their audience in the writing process, providing updates on how they are conducting research, going through the motions of writing each day, working with copyeditors, and lastly the feeling of having a published book arrive for your approval.

o   Literary E-Journals

§  In this section I want to look at the movement to collect and catalog work electronically and avoid printing almost entirely. There is one being formed through facebook that I plan on reviewing as well as blogs that are attempting to archive literary blogs themselves as well as help in a wiki movement to archive sources of electronic literature.

§  I will describe in this section as well the phenomenon of the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo which takes place in November and is a competition for anyone interested to attempt to write a novel in one month’s time while blogging about your progress through their website, or linked to their website should you already have an established blog.

·         There was much discussion along the way with this event and many bloggers described in depth the struggle to meet their goals.

·         Many bloggers blogged each other words of encouragement and such.

·         Surprisingly everyone is very friendly to each other, not really any signs of competition.

o   Connecting with the Real World

§  Here I want to look at how the literary world is incorporating blogs into the print world of literature. I will define the “Virtual Book Tour” here and discuss how it is quickly becoming a necessity for any up and coming author. I also want to look at the roll of programs like Myspace and Facebook in the marketing aspects of book promotions. This will not focus as much on blogs but rather discuss how Web 2.0 and 3.0 is augmenting the literary community.

§  This section will also focus on the death of book review sections in newspapers and suggest the correlation between the decrease in print reviews and the increase in digital literary communities.

Section 3: Publication

Finally with this third section I want to look at the question hidden behind this entire discussion: will blogs replace the book? To answer this I want to introduce the new forms of publication: Print on Demand or POD publishers. I will make the suggestion that the democratization that blogging provided for writers has been further established by the development of these POD publishers who will assist independent writers with publishing their books, each POD is different and some bloggers have blogged heavily on which are the good ones and the ones to avoid. Furthermore I want to look back at the journals I described early to discuss the differences between print journals and e-journals. In the end I will suggest that the printed book will continue to exist but its existence will most certainly be challenged by this new community.

·         PODs and traditional publishers

o   This section will focus on the development of POD publishers; I have some that I am looking at specifically to use as explanations for how they work. Also many bloggers have discussed using PODs and have thus incorporated them into the literary blogging community making them important when describing the role that publishers play. I will also discuss that they are still a print service but one created for an internet world. So this small section will have two parts.

o   The history of the PODs

§  This section will provide the history of the POD publications and look at their use today. I will also provide here examples of PODs and talk about how they are used and their popularity among writers.

§  Many articles have been written about how they are affecting more traditional publications.

o   Blogger response to PODs

§  Here I want to briefly address how bloggers are responding and communicating with PODs, many bloggers share their lists of which ones they like and don’t like and so on.

·         Digital publications

o   This section will return to the digital journals I mentioned earlier and discuss them more form the aspect of how they differ from their printed cousins. I want to look at how those differences affect their form, content, and readership. What is also important is to look at how digital writers perceive them. Do writers write differently know that what they are writing will not be printed but rather digitally presented? So to stick with the same form as the previous section this will have two aspects.

o   An aesthetic analysis of the digital journals themselves

§  I am still working on choosing which ones to follow but the idea is to compare them to print journals and look at how they work differently and similarly and what compels these differences or maintains these similarities? Is the medium of the internet being used affectively to establish these journals? Are they just digital replicas of what could be printed?

o   A community analysis

§  Here I want to look at the people who both contribute to these journals and those who subscribe to them. What do bloggers have to say about digital journals? How do writers write differently for them?

·         The Future of the Book

o   With this last section I want to expand the discussion a little to introduce the new Kindle device by Amazon along with some other anecdotes I have come across in regards to digital presentation of literature. Writers are looking to write for digital screens and devices, such as cell phones. I want to engage the reader in thinking about how the book might be affected not by digital publication but simply by digital democracy and community. And were the book to be replaced, would writers then write differently knowing it would never take that form? Will the Kindle change the way we write if it succeeds in changing the way we read?

Conclusion

            Finally with this last section I will conclude the thesis by suggesting that the blog may in fact be a new style of literature, rather than a degradation of language. But I will also look to describe the current literary community both online and off. Two very important points I want to stress here is that even this paper will be dated from the moment it is written and that much of the discussion has been on the potential and not the actual. It is important to concede the point that no work of fiction that has appeared on a blog has had the readership of a New York Times best seller. But like the former point states, this thesis is dated and that might not even be true come March. I want to look at the possible reasons why this is still very much a potential outcome and not an actual one, mostly I will discuss the newness of this medium and that like Film it will need time to establish itself.

·         The power gone bad

o   To start the conclusion I want to share the story of Kaycee Nelson, a fictional character who had a blog and blogged about being a college student with leukemia. She became very famous as her words were extremely encouraging and empowering; she was even quoted by the New York Times. But eventually it came out that she was entirely fictional.

§  Thus I want to talk about how all this creative power can be abused and used to deceive. But on the flip side it is still art, it is shocking like Duchamp was but in a new way. 

·         The potential may or may not become the actual

o   This section as stated above will look at why we are still discussing the potential of blogs and not the actuality of them. Though much of my discussion will be on the actuality very few have utilized blogs to the full extent of the medium and this section will look into why that is. More specifically I want to focus on the theories that suggest this dilemma is due to the newness factor of blogs and that a new medium of art needs time to establish itself before its masterpieces are produced.

·         Final Thoughts

o   This last section is where I will suggest my own opinion that a blog represents a new genre of literature while also suggesting the fact that even my own work is dated in regards to this topic, that tomorrow will bring a totally new perspective. Furthermore I will use my idea of what a blog represents to connect all the elements of this thesis back together, the multimedia aspect, the literary community online, digital journals, public diaries, printing on demand, and everything else back the blog.

Now for a little bit on film.

I’ve been avoiding this subject as I find myself split on the issue. Part of me, the forever a kid part of me, loves big blockbuster films, the types of films that employ numerous special effects and great action scenes with good comedy and epic adventures. One such example of a film which ended a trilogy I find myself one of few who enjoyed all three is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. I know this film was too long for many people and for others it was just too far removed from reality, with all its supernatural elements, that it failed to live up to what the first film had created. But for me it was perfect. I loved that it went too far and was too long and even utilized elements directly from the ride to remove itself a little too much from the rest of Hollywood.

 

Yes, it did do that! You see when the whole team was entering that weird ghost world called World’s End, there was roughly thirty seconds of white screen with sound bites from the ride itself, having the effect of removing us from the cinematic world and dropping us back in reality, reminding us where this trilogy comes from. This very subtle use of that technique is the trend in cinema I feel has been lost in recent years.

 

Now enter that other part of me, that part that wants cinema to challenge conventional ideas and especially this superhuman hold that narrative has on film. Why does film have to be a narrative to be a film? The answer is it doesn’t and I’m sure there are many out there that can point me in many directions to films that don’t follow a traditional narrative, but the point I’m trying to make is that a complete removal from narrative makes film video art, and it ends up in museums rather than cinemas. So what I am really asking for is that artistic desire to challenge and push the envelope, that break from rules and traditions that is controlling film so closely these days. I think that no other medium suffers from such a financial hold as film does.

 

I want to be proven wrong so let the recommendations for “artsy” films start. But also I hate that they have that title, I hate that this traditional narrative form of film has become The norm. No one goes around saying I want “artsy” paintings, painting has retained itself as an art, what happened with film? I’d also suggest that this isn’t limited to film but rather that film has the larges financial hold on it. Music, theater, literature all suffer similar industrial blocks.

 

Now the better question is are these blocks? Are these media being controlled and suppressed in order to turn a profit and turn are into an industry or rather is the industry where art is today? Perhaps what I am complaining about is no different than someone from the turn of the century complaining about the loss of perspective in modern art, perhaps this entire complaint is no different than those who thought modern art was the end of art. Hmmm can we except that industrialized art is just as much art as those that “do it for the art and not the profit?”

 

That is a question I leave for the discussion to decide…

 Huysmans