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The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function
No full textThis thesis is situated within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia, and explores the mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture compared to that of a Read/Only tradition. The hypothesis of this study is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such, represents new functions and attributes, distinct from a more conventional concept of authorship, in which the roles of audience and author are more separate. Read/Write and participatory culture, as defined by this study, is focused on collaboration, and includes the influences of D.I.Y. culture, Open-Source practices and the production of text by multiple authors. Multi-authorship presents a re-thinking of several concepts which support the notion of the individual author, since the focus of multi-authorship is not on attribution and ownership of a finished text, but on the continued malleability of a text. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Alan Smithee and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, whilst concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names form an important context to this study, since primary research involves the construction of an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology and the interaction of thirty nine participants, who are invited to create a body of work under the collective pseudonym Karen Karnak. The data generated by this experiment is analysed using aspects of Michel Foucault's author-function to identify and determine power structures inherent in the WikiMedia context. The interplay of power structures, including concepts such as identity, ownership and the body of work, affect the resulting mode of authorship and contribute to the construction of Karen Karnak, suggesting further areas of research into the emerging multi-author
The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author function
No full textThe context of this article is the changes in authorship that have occurred within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia. The mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture, compared with that of a Read/Only tradition, is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such represents new functions and attributes. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Karen Karnak and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, while concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names forms an important tool of deconstruction involving an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology in the creation of a collective multi-author pseudonym, Karen Karnak. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of multi-authorship on the concept of the body of work, ownership and copyright
Trash aesthetics and the sublime: Strategies for visualising the unrepresentable within a landscape of refuse
No full textLiving in a technology-dependent society, it seems inevitable that our vision of the world is mediated and extended through our interactions with technology. We often realize the extent of technological mediation when our machines cease to function correctly. When a machine fails, we leave the predictably functioning world and enter into another realm. Think of the primitive magic of lighting candles during a power cut, where there is the potential of experiencing something sublime—something beyond the order and structure that technology imposes on us. On the other hand, when technology breaks it is also an opportunity to experience a myriad of emotions such as frustration, rage, loss, or boredom. In the face of technological failure, our ingrained response is to obtain a replacement, an upgrade, that promises greater freedom and a new way of visualizing the world. The old piece of technology turns to trash and falls silently and invisibly from our consciousness, as new technological vistas take command of our attention. The failure of machines can also be an intentional consequence of industry, such as the kind of in-built redundancy that drives the production and sale of new products, as discussed in Vance Packard’s book The Waste Makers or Slavoj Žižek’s commentary in Astra Taylor’s 2008 documentary Examined Life. While, in this sense, trash is intentional, there is also something about trash which has moved beyond function and human purpose: this is the link between trash and the realm of the sublime that I wish to explore in this essay
The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement
No full textDo it Yourself (DiY) is a participatory culture which exemplifies a particular ethos in its approach to technology and materials. Rather than engage with ‘complete’ technologies, such as a technology supplied as ready-to-go item, the DiY practitioners examined in this thesis engage with the raw materials of garbage and recycling, ‘incomplete’, broken and discarded technologies. In this type of DiY practice the emphasis is towards creating individualised and custom-built forms of technology: often made from components and materials which have been re-functioned from their original intention to produce new and unexpected functionalities; practices which disrupt the dominant discourses of technology. This thesis involves a situated application of theory to DiY practices in the field: focusing on three case studies featuring New Zealand-based DiY sound practitioners and their embracing of functional ‘errors’ as a means of increasing the participatory potential of materials.
My initial argument is, that the social perspectives and ‘human-biased’ view examined in current literature on DiY culture, depicts an attitude towards power and knowledge which obscures the recognition of material agency. In this thesis, ‘power’ is defined within a social constructivist, or as a ‘human-biased’ view, whereas ‘agency’, as the ability to make something happen, is more expansive and incorporates the capacities of materials to become active participants in the production of cultural artefacts. Through engaging with the work of contemporary theorists relevant to material agency (including Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Levi R. Bryant, Susan Kelly, Lambros Malafouris and Bruno Latour), the limitations of the ‘human-biased’ view of DiY culture are highlighted and the emphasis is shifted from DiY participatory culture as a social phenomenon towards the idea of ‘extended agency’: agency which includes both human and material actants within the entangled assemblages of DiY practices and the material environment.
When extended agency is applied in the three case studies, the initial question asked is: ‘How does the intra-action of human and material environment influence the processes of DiY practices and what specific strategies are used to increase the participatory potential of materials?’.
In this sense, DiY culture challenges the way we see ‘power’ and ‘structure’ as being exclusively human traits, influencing our way of relating to the material environment and creating consequences and considerations which extend from the localised DiY practices examined in this thesis. The suggestion is that the extended agency of DiY culture represents a timely re-evaluation of the relationship between the human and the material environment, challenging prevalent discourses which place the human at the centre of power and knowledge
From ideology to algorithm: the opaque politics of the internet
No full textThe emergence of new technology has a recurring history of being understood in terms of emancipation, as if access to new functions provides the potential for liberating social organisation. Walter Benjamin has argued that new technologies of mechanical reproduction have the potential to liberate and politicise humans. This argument has been applied most recently by Marcus Breen in his book Uprising to the internet’s potential for liberating politicisation. However, questions remain about the emancipatory power of the internet. Is it really a tool of liberation or a space of control? Focusing on the underlying systemic structures of the internet, the stance taken in this paper is to dispute the possibilities of new media functioning as an emancipatory tool. Central to the approach taken in this paper, is a consideration of the role of the algorithm in controlling the flow of internet data. Algorithm is a mathematical term used to define the binary code that enables command operations in computer systems (Judit 157). In recent years the algorithm has been used to describe the technology behind the internet search engine. A search engine such as Google uses algorithmic processing to electronically decide the order and importance of search results. Similar algorithms are used to link search terms with product advertising. Algorithms work at the level of the network and produce difference. They order and control the way internet users gain access to information and knowledge. As such, they are not inherently liberating, but constitute a powerful tool of intellectual oppression which, I argue, replaces the ideological oppression of the older technologies. My hypothesis is that the public sphere – a space of centralising ideologies in which a general consensus can be formed, as proposed by Habermas -- becomes a network of differences when applied to the internet. Differences within the internet are broken down to the level of the individual and at such a micro-level that the macro, i.e. the political, has already disappeared. In the enhanced subjectivity of personal monitor space (Breen 110-111), ideology becomes subjective and individualised. In such a space, the unifying modality of ideology gives way to the differential processing of the algorithm which shapes social space as a controlled experiment, and which may be adapted to create different output results. I will argue that in its capacity to shape the social space of the individualised internet user, the algorithm has now become a more effective method of intellectual oppression than the ideology of the outdated mass media technologies
‘It’s on the tip of my Google’: Intra-active performance and the non-totalising learning environment
Full text linkTechnologies that expand the learning environment to include interactions outside of the physical space of the classroom, such as the use of Google as an aid to memory, represent one aspect of learning that occurs within several seemingly decentralised spaces. On the other hand, it can be argued that such interactive technologies are enclosed in what Bruno Latour calls a ‘Black-box’: a ‘totalising’ enclosure that delimits interaction and channels users towards yet another form of centralised learning space. Used as a starting point, the focus of this article rapidly shifts from the constraints of the ‘Black-box’ towards a type of engagement that embraces material agency: an engagement with materials and fragments of knowledge that emerge from the ‘non-totalising’ assemblage. To assist in this trajectory, Karen Barad’s concept of intra-activity is employed, where agency is seen as distributed between human and non-human actants. The space in which this engagement between human and materials occurs, as a non-totalising learning space, is the concern of this article, which uses an interactive audio/visual performance event called Bingodisiac as a case study to examine various ways in which we can learn to move beyond the constraints of totalising structures. Bingodisiac is a project initiated by the researcher in 2002, as an informal collection of musicians who are assembled for a one-off improvised performance. This article draws upon interviews and journal notes collected at the time of the performances to explore the analogy of ‘noise music’ and how this can be related to ways in which the learning space of the classroom and the types of knowledge produced have become decentralised
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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