ENGL 668k: Digital Studies (Spring 2004)

The Second Coming of the Second Coming

My friend Doc recently reminded visitors to his site about a project he needs help with, and it occurred to me that it related to some of Manovich's ideas, and even Ong's. Doc says, with infinite world-weariness, "I really ought to be studied. Many would agree. Many would contribute money for my prolonged scientific incarceration." I try to do my part.

The Second Coming: A New Presentation

Things to think about when approaching the Second Coming project:

- The modularity of the new media object, and beyond that, the modularity of text itself. Paragraphs break down to sentences which break down to words, and web sites are built up from words and pictures... what happens when we break down the text, then build it back up with new media?

- On page 131, Manovich says "As became apparent by the early 1980s, culture... no longer tried to 'make it new.' Rather, endless recycling and quoting of past media content, artistic styles, and forms becaome the new 'international style' and the new cultural logic of modern society." Obviously this project relates to the collagist creative culture Manovich is referring to, but does it do so in the way he expects?

- What happens to the content? Is the content, the practical upshot, of "The Second Coming: A New Presentation" the same as the content of "The Second Coming"?

- What is the role of material objects here? As Manovich would put it, Doc is effecting a "shift from a material object to a signal" (132). But the material objects are the only things that lend the signal its interest or validity.

I don't have particular answers worked out for these questions, and they may turn out not to have answers or to have boring/irrelevant answers, but I think that the relation between this particular project and Manovich's new media theories is potentially pretty complex.

Also, if you guys liked Badgers, check out this one from the same site. Like Badgers, on my initial viewing I was in tears from laughing and could not pinpoint why.

Forget Norway! Kenya!

So scholarly, us.

Posted by Jess at February 27, 2004 02:50 AM