One of the most amazing things about the communist manifesto and the ideas that it espouces is the fact that it was written in 1848, and yet it still feels relevant and up to date today. I personally still feel that it is relevant not so much as an effective model for a future ecconomic system but closer to using it to point out what is wrong with the current system. In a cruel twist of irony, in many ways we have gone backwards from Marxist socialization in our country. While most trade jobs, teachers, and actors all have unions which tightly monitor the amount of labor buisness people do not. So they end up getting paid fixed salary jobs and are forced to work hundred hour weeks without any extra compensation. A total victory for the burgeosie, all the unionized production jobs have been moved out of country to places filled with exploitable labor and then they just started exploiting a new class of amercians who are far more spineless. Join the winning team kids, they have nachos.
So they got some things right. No doubt. However, at the same time, they also got some things wrong so we need to take a look at that. Marx claims that the burgeoise maintains its grip on power through constantly revolutionizing the means of production. At the time of its writting this was more than true. Factories were new and all the times new ways were coming out that allowed you to build things bigger better and faster. There was a generalized blizzard of technology that swept up all of the world in its wake leaving the common person dizzy and confused.
This still happens. However, when Marx made the statment that the Burgeosie is capable of infinate creativity allowing them to never run out of ways to advance the means of production he was more right that he knew. See constant revolution is expensive, so instead of dealing with constant revolution the burgeosie simply moved their workforce and who they exploited to elsewhere. So we exploit now third world countries and white collar workers. We also exploit the fuck out of the retail industry holy shit those people get so hard core shafted it is INCREADBLE and they put up with it too! Oh well that is a diffrent topic for a diffrent time.
By now you are either on board with me or you think I am a crack pot. WAIT no... okay no I am good lets keep going. This is where I come in.
The artist fits into the marxist paradime in an unusual way. See the artist themselves are a means of production. Sure the burgeoise can provide them with new and expensive tools, but that doesn't cover things like preformance art, found art, and the dozens upon dozens of art forms which neatly circumvent the burgeosies neat little means of production. As they themselves change the means of production art grows and changes with it. This is where I go off and maul Benjamine but I think I am going to re read the essay and do that up proper. The artist hasn't been swallowed up by cinema and big budget holywood productions. For contextual evidence consult the works of Peter Jackson, Robert Rodreiguez, and Quienten Tarrintino. All three started off as balls to the wall men with cameras and friends who went out and made a movie. Then they became famouse.
This brings me to my next point is that ordinarly the proletariat is seen as the general source of consumerism, and the burgeosie is the force that provides the goods to be consumed which conversly conmsuming little in return. However, especially in the case of high art, this is specifically not true. Take the surrealists who attempted to turn this paradime on its head. They were really the first to understand that the burgeosie is the primary consumer of art. So they sought to shock the burgeosie into submission by creating the most bizzare, outlandish, art known to man. What they failed to take into account is the emense situational flexibility that the burgeosie can demonstrate. As a result, despite all the subversive subtexts, plain wierdness, and their best attempts rattle the burgeosie from their thrones the burgeosie instead managed to conquer surrealism and turn it into one of the defining charecteristics of good taste IE burgeosie crap.
As the burgeosie relies on the proletariate to produce for them, and in turn consume that which they produced, the artist relies on the burgeosie to provide production materials and consume what is produced. The artist forms a similar relationship to the burgeosie that the burgeosie has with the proletariate but it don't quite have the same trappings of mega wealth that is normally maintained by the burgeoisie. This right here is key. The burgeosie don't consume much in the way of produced goods. They can't for despite all their wealth they simply don't need as much as say the filthy unwashed poor which spend every penny they have on day to day essentials. To cause the burgeosie to consume is a momentus event, you can tell when some rich dude buys your piece of blue canvas for 30 million dollars. Hrm I can't really think of a way to explain how momentus this is. I think I'll need textual evidence to really do it justice. Speaking of which either tonight or tomarrow I really need to grab a copy of the book and go back and put in a whole bunch of quotes everywhere to back up what I am saying. I hate going back and doing it, I really should of done that while I was going. I think what I am going to do is just to make a seperate post where I do nothing but shore up arguments. So I am going to end this one here. Buh bye for now
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Just revolutionizing the role of the marxist artist
So I talked about this a whole bunch and then never produced. I'm sure this was to the relief of some but whateva it is happening now. The thing is that I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it, because a lot of what I am doing is actually new. SO I guess I am going to do this in big person article style by starting big and working my way down into the nitty gritty details.
There are a couple of big ideas to work with though. So lets start at the beginning.
Marx sets up a sort of transhistorical paradime with his quaint little ecconomic theory where there is the people who control the means of production and the people who produce. Throughout history these people had diffrent names, currently it is the ones most of you should be decently familiar with, the burgeosie and the proletariate. Man at one point I knew how to spell both of those words. Oh well. They are set up a dimetrically opposed paracites. The burgeosie needs the proletariate to live and function blah blah blah.
One of the most important parts of where I come in though is that there is a section of the communist mannifesto where Marx talks about a splinter group of Bourgeoisie which will break off and help with the proletariate revolution. The burgeoisie isn't an inherently evil organization, it just happeneds to be a side effect of its excistence, similarlythe proletariate are not just a group of disoranized retards that simply need leading. It is important to remeber both of these points as I will be significantly complicating the marxist paradime should I ever actually really get into this.
Next there is the siginficant number of theoretical issues which are frequently ignored by Marx. Marx and Engles were both increadble realists and they largely ignored the theoretical implications of the communist project, hence the oft repeated criticism that if I were to rise up and destory the burgeosie tomarrow eventually there would be an uprsing within the proletariate and and we'd be back to square one. See Animal Farm for the clearest example ever of how this works. What needs to be done is that the bugeosie needs to be adressed both as an ideological issue and a physical one. Only then can we start to make actual, honest to goodness headway against the problems faced both by capitalism and the predicted evolution into communism.
Lastly there is the problem of the Marxist/post marxist technophobic hysterics that predominated the theoretical landscape which precists more or less to today. This is the main part where I am going to come in and I am more or less going to work my way backwards. The Burgeosie constantly revolutionize the means of production, That is part of the marxist mantra and it is one of the fundamental pillars that makes the burgeosie so unasailable to the proletariate. In addition there was a great deal of fear first from Marx then from others that this constantly evoling techonolg would cause art to become fundamentally pushed to the side. I am going to commit the cardinal sin of praphrasing when I say that Marx questioned if the greek myths would be able to be created with things like the printing press, would we still be able to believe in achillies when we have things like guns, (ironically there is the story of the native american geronimo but we'll be getting into that a little later). When motion pictures hit the scene Benjamin lead the charge against them claiming that they diced up visions and all sorts of other things. I love Benjamin and I will attack him properly when his time comes. The point is that Marx and his little fun bunch believe that art is brought under seige by technology.
Tangentally related critics and theorists alike realized that there is something strange about the Marxist eccomic modle and the way art fits into it, or rather how it does not fit into it at all what so ever. People have tried to pigeon hole art into the current modle but for the most part they have compleatly failed. What I am going to do is reset things up from the ground up, first by modernizing some aspects of marxism and them expanding out wards with what it means to be an art in an era where the means of production are so tighly controlled. Here is a hint, it equals rebellion of the purest form, and I get to kick around the surrealists because THEY FUCKING DESERVE IT. But for now I am off.
There are a couple of big ideas to work with though. So lets start at the beginning.
Marx sets up a sort of transhistorical paradime with his quaint little ecconomic theory where there is the people who control the means of production and the people who produce. Throughout history these people had diffrent names, currently it is the ones most of you should be decently familiar with, the burgeosie and the proletariate. Man at one point I knew how to spell both of those words. Oh well. They are set up a dimetrically opposed paracites. The burgeosie needs the proletariate to live and function blah blah blah.
One of the most important parts of where I come in though is that there is a section of the communist mannifesto where Marx talks about a splinter group of Bourgeoisie which will break off and help with the proletariate revolution. The burgeoisie isn't an inherently evil organization, it just happeneds to be a side effect of its excistence, similarlythe proletariate are not just a group of disoranized retards that simply need leading. It is important to remeber both of these points as I will be significantly complicating the marxist paradime should I ever actually really get into this.
Next there is the siginficant number of theoretical issues which are frequently ignored by Marx. Marx and Engles were both increadble realists and they largely ignored the theoretical implications of the communist project, hence the oft repeated criticism that if I were to rise up and destory the burgeosie tomarrow eventually there would be an uprsing within the proletariate and and we'd be back to square one. See Animal Farm for the clearest example ever of how this works. What needs to be done is that the bugeosie needs to be adressed both as an ideological issue and a physical one. Only then can we start to make actual, honest to goodness headway against the problems faced both by capitalism and the predicted evolution into communism.
Lastly there is the problem of the Marxist/post marxist technophobic hysterics that predominated the theoretical landscape which precists more or less to today. This is the main part where I am going to come in and I am more or less going to work my way backwards. The Burgeosie constantly revolutionize the means of production, That is part of the marxist mantra and it is one of the fundamental pillars that makes the burgeosie so unasailable to the proletariate. In addition there was a great deal of fear first from Marx then from others that this constantly evoling techonolg would cause art to become fundamentally pushed to the side. I am going to commit the cardinal sin of praphrasing when I say that Marx questioned if the greek myths would be able to be created with things like the printing press, would we still be able to believe in achillies when we have things like guns, (ironically there is the story of the native american geronimo but we'll be getting into that a little later). When motion pictures hit the scene Benjamin lead the charge against them claiming that they diced up visions and all sorts of other things. I love Benjamin and I will attack him properly when his time comes. The point is that Marx and his little fun bunch believe that art is brought under seige by technology.
Tangentally related critics and theorists alike realized that there is something strange about the Marxist eccomic modle and the way art fits into it, or rather how it does not fit into it at all what so ever. People have tried to pigeon hole art into the current modle but for the most part they have compleatly failed. What I am going to do is reset things up from the ground up, first by modernizing some aspects of marxism and them expanding out wards with what it means to be an art in an era where the means of production are so tighly controlled. Here is a hint, it equals rebellion of the purest form, and I get to kick around the surrealists because THEY FUCKING DESERVE IT. But for now I am off.
Abort, Retry, Fail
Every time I've seen this in a computing context I want to put my head down on the desk and weep. It is an option with three choices that all lead to the exact same result, a repatition of the question and an increasing amount of frustration. Oh yes some things have very definatly gone wrong, no doubt, but there is nothing you can do but hit the reset button, cross your fingers and hope that you will not see the trinity of failure again.
Fortunatly I am not a computer and I don't have to deal with the trinity of failure on an internal level. Cause, god damnit did I ever crash hard this last week or so. That last blog post, it was the start of the end. I don't know what happened, or why it happened but I did not like it. Raw unfocused anger running around my body is not something that I approve of. It reminds me of both a path I would of rather of not taken and of people who I don't really like very much. As a result I pulled the plug. All creative endeavors, thought processes, residual memories, all of it got scrapped. I took it all threw it out, buried it deep, and pissed on its grave. Take that you motherfuckers. I really did pick the best tool ever to grind my thought process to a stop too, and that is a good old fasioned Korean MMO. Ironically that game actually happens to be a great deal of fun, and highly engaging but we'll work on that element later. I think it is more than a little wierd that I just sort of yanked the plug on my forebrain but these things do happen. I could feel it to start back up when while playing atlantica I got the distinct desire to learn arabic script.
Lets face it now Arabic script is some prolly the most beautiful form of writting on the face of the damn planet. Whatever I don't care if you agree or disagree. The thing is though I am not even sure of how their alphabet works. See part of the problem with chinese/japanese is that I more or less have to learn the language from the ground up to do calligraphy. This is especially true when I try to treat the individual Kanji as one singular unit instead of a grouping of randomized lines. In order to do that you have to essentially memorize not only the Kanji but how to properly put it all together. Chinese calligraphy is weird.
However is Arabic calligraphy is based off of an alphabet then I could just learn the letters and do some half assed translation from english to arabic...you know what I am going to figgure this out right now. TO WIKI!
Yeah okay so they have a an alphabet, but I would need a linguistics text book to understand it because sometimes that is just how Wiki rolls. That is okay though because wiki has a linguistics text book, and I'm sure once I get the basic charecter's down this whole thing will flow much much better. Of course every letter having a diffrent form depending on where it is in the word is more than slightly annoying and might be beyond what is quickly becoming a passing interest. Or not, I need a book on the subject because WIKI is pissing me off and royaly distracting me.
ANYWAY the point of all of this is to get the ball rolling again. It reboot my sagging thought process and make it move once more. Crashing definatly has its disadvantages primary among them is the amount of momentum I just had smashed into dust. I worked hard for that momentum and I am now looking to get it back and the only way to do that is to just start writting, reading, thinking, and moving no matter how bad or off the wall it is. Starting here.
I think I am now going to go mentally run after the marxism thing.
Fortunatly I am not a computer and I don't have to deal with the trinity of failure on an internal level. Cause, god damnit did I ever crash hard this last week or so. That last blog post, it was the start of the end. I don't know what happened, or why it happened but I did not like it. Raw unfocused anger running around my body is not something that I approve of. It reminds me of both a path I would of rather of not taken and of people who I don't really like very much. As a result I pulled the plug. All creative endeavors, thought processes, residual memories, all of it got scrapped. I took it all threw it out, buried it deep, and pissed on its grave. Take that you motherfuckers. I really did pick the best tool ever to grind my thought process to a stop too, and that is a good old fasioned Korean MMO. Ironically that game actually happens to be a great deal of fun, and highly engaging but we'll work on that element later. I think it is more than a little wierd that I just sort of yanked the plug on my forebrain but these things do happen. I could feel it to start back up when while playing atlantica I got the distinct desire to learn arabic script.
Lets face it now Arabic script is some prolly the most beautiful form of writting on the face of the damn planet. Whatever I don't care if you agree or disagree. The thing is though I am not even sure of how their alphabet works. See part of the problem with chinese/japanese is that I more or less have to learn the language from the ground up to do calligraphy. This is especially true when I try to treat the individual Kanji as one singular unit instead of a grouping of randomized lines. In order to do that you have to essentially memorize not only the Kanji but how to properly put it all together. Chinese calligraphy is weird.
However is Arabic calligraphy is based off of an alphabet then I could just learn the letters and do some half assed translation from english to arabic...you know what I am going to figgure this out right now. TO WIKI!
Yeah okay so they have a an alphabet, but I would need a linguistics text book to understand it because sometimes that is just how Wiki rolls. That is okay though because wiki has a linguistics text book, and I'm sure once I get the basic charecter's down this whole thing will flow much much better. Of course every letter having a diffrent form depending on where it is in the word is more than slightly annoying and might be beyond what is quickly becoming a passing interest. Or not, I need a book on the subject because WIKI is pissing me off and royaly distracting me.
ANYWAY the point of all of this is to get the ball rolling again. It reboot my sagging thought process and make it move once more. Crashing definatly has its disadvantages primary among them is the amount of momentum I just had smashed into dust. I worked hard for that momentum and I am now looking to get it back and the only way to do that is to just start writting, reading, thinking, and moving no matter how bad or off the wall it is. Starting here.
I think I am now going to go mentally run after the marxism thing.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Crimson Teared Farewells
Holy fuck I don't get this. Okay so here is the deal because I don't have a lot of time. I haven't updated my blog very much lately. There have been reasons for that, I've been writting more fiction, learning to streamline KOL, vacation, et cetera. I've also more or less stopped sleeping when I am at home which seriously cuts into my ability to write. No matter.
It isn't that I don't have things to say either. Last week I went to New Orleans, in that week I had enough experiences to fill a decent sized book with essays. As a genra I hate travel essays too so that is saying something. I'd really like to get some of them down on paper but something else is happening.
See I fucked up sasha's birthday present. I had two diffrent groups of people flake out on me, and mail not come on time. In two frenzied days I got something together then forgot it.
I am dumb.
So now I am going back and making it shine, like really shine. After all I might as well take my time with it now and just give it to her when I go back in three weeks or so. This means that I won't be writting here for awhile. That is slightly sad.
I do believe in something called warmup writting, which is when I just sort of pound out some random paragraphs of fiction just to get me going, followed by haikus. I might start posting them. I am not sure though sometimes they are laughably bad...although it would be fun to show some of that off so who knows. Whatever.
About that title... yeah I don't know either. I have this increadble amount of agression running around inside of me. I feel like I am some sort of caged animal about to die of adreniline poisoning. I have no idea why though, and it is starting to freak me out a bit. Like I sat down to warm up before this and 3 of the 5 haikus I banged out were really agressive...here look:
Even the ants run
Smoke clouds are blocking the sun
The rain will not come
A return to grass
Nothing can resist the fall
Heaven’s gate crumples
The bitter wind blows
Oranges wither and die
Killing off July
Twilight hit’s the town
Golden light retreats to night
Cats begin to prowl
Horizon gives way
As dawn starts to break on through
A new day rises
After the third one I started making a consiouse effort to calm down. So yeah... kinda scary. Agressive black metal haikus means I need to chill the fuck out. I've been like this for the last three days too. Huh. Oh well I'll figgure it out. Maybe I'll blame it on sexual frustration and call it a day, or maybe not. I don't know. I guess it is just an unpleasent reminder that I once used to be a very very angry young man and you never truely leave anything behind for good.
It isn't that I don't have things to say either. Last week I went to New Orleans, in that week I had enough experiences to fill a decent sized book with essays. As a genra I hate travel essays too so that is saying something. I'd really like to get some of them down on paper but something else is happening.
See I fucked up sasha's birthday present. I had two diffrent groups of people flake out on me, and mail not come on time. In two frenzied days I got something together then forgot it.
I am dumb.
So now I am going back and making it shine, like really shine. After all I might as well take my time with it now and just give it to her when I go back in three weeks or so. This means that I won't be writting here for awhile. That is slightly sad.
I do believe in something called warmup writting, which is when I just sort of pound out some random paragraphs of fiction just to get me going, followed by haikus. I might start posting them. I am not sure though sometimes they are laughably bad...although it would be fun to show some of that off so who knows. Whatever.
About that title... yeah I don't know either. I have this increadble amount of agression running around inside of me. I feel like I am some sort of caged animal about to die of adreniline poisoning. I have no idea why though, and it is starting to freak me out a bit. Like I sat down to warm up before this and 3 of the 5 haikus I banged out were really agressive...here look:
Even the ants run
Smoke clouds are blocking the sun
The rain will not come
A return to grass
Nothing can resist the fall
Heaven’s gate crumples
The bitter wind blows
Oranges wither and die
Killing off July
Twilight hit’s the town
Golden light retreats to night
Cats begin to prowl
Horizon gives way
As dawn starts to break on through
A new day rises
After the third one I started making a consiouse effort to calm down. So yeah... kinda scary. Agressive black metal haikus means I need to chill the fuck out. I've been like this for the last three days too. Huh. Oh well I'll figgure it out. Maybe I'll blame it on sexual frustration and call it a day, or maybe not. I don't know. I guess it is just an unpleasent reminder that I once used to be a very very angry young man and you never truely leave anything behind for good.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Me wrestleing with subjectivity and loosing
Yeah guess what? I have two versions of this theory anthology and I just brought the old one cause I figured I’d work on the marx thing at lunch. Guess what this book doesn’t have? Yeah I am pissed. It has some Marx but not everything I need. I definatly need a lot of stuff out of the communist manifesto. I could just hop over to gutenberg and get it but you know? My copy of the book is all highlighted and has all the notes on everything I need. So screw that. So I think I will try poking at the issue of subjective vs. objective art.
There is no objective art DONE!!! I r a theorist give me teh sex & a doktorate.
Still doesn’t anyone find that to be just the slightest bit reductive? I know I do. If you don’t then go away. No for reals though, all art is subjective and we are done with it. The thing is that not all art is subjective. Some of it just is. For example, we’ll use me. The whole Outer Church Politics thing in relation to how it worked with relationships is a highly subjective undertaking. I was sad confused and frustrated over the dissolussion of my relationship, especially when it is something that neither of us wanted. So in order to deal with it I wrote theory…I am the biggest fucking dork on the face of the planet. Subjective no doubt. However, lets take this current project here. It stems from the fact that I am in the mood to theorize, that I left the Marxism I need at home, and that I want to wait on sasha’s email and I want to mentally go over some of the NA25 stuff I came up with in my head before typing it up. Also not in the mood for video games at the moment. I have little to no stake in what I am writing right now, and if you thought it was the most billiant thing in the world I would gladly accept your compliment, otherwise I couldn’t care less if you don’t like it or not.
So when we look at subjectivity, especially as the opposite of objectivity all the sudden the case for this being a subjective piece of work starts to seem just ever so slightly silly.
To use another example. I get pretty riled up about people blaming violenc on video games. So I write a story where they use the bible as a reason to commit violence and they blame the bible, et cetera. So there is a senator running around trying to ban the bible because it causes people to do bat shit silly things far more often than video games, et cetera. it’s a great story and you love it LOVE IT!. I have lots of stake in it. It is a highly subjective piece of work.
I write a poem for class. I scribble it down on a test I get back the class before in under 5 minuts. I don’t even remember what it is about. Some people will love it anyway, that is just the way things go.
I can smell the question. If it isn’t subjective and it isn’t objective than what is it? Well it simply is. It is inert. Well then how do we tell the diffrence between a subjective piece of art and an inert one? This answer is also simple. We don’t.
Art has no intrinsic value. The only value it has is the value we asighn to it when we make it the subject to our thoughts. Art is designed in such a way so that it is potentially a pleasing or at least interesting potential subject. However, until it becomes a subject of our thoughts and thus enters into our subjective universe it is mearly an object that can be just as easily looked over as a particularly uniteresting brick.
I am not one of those people who believe that the world ceases to excist if no one is observing it. Those people are weird and they place far to much self importance on our flawed sensory perceptions. Rather I would have the argument reframed in the perspective of the viewer, or more appropriately the critic. There is a large and colorful movement arguing for the artistic importance of literary criticism. I would like to take it one step to the left and argue that it is the central focus that makes which allows for art to be interacted with. Even if it just involves shutting off your brain and enjoying the visceral thrills of Transformers 2 you are still engaging in a very primal sort of criticism.
Or not. See I don’t like this line of reasoning at all and I am going to abandon it here but not before kicking the compleate and utter crap out of it. See I am on the right track bringing the end value of art back into the viewer. That is what makes the Kantian Sublime special. The problem with this idea, is that it takes away a lot of the intrinsic value that art has. Sure sure I am a critic by trade, it is how I deal with my life problems apparently. While that is fucking weird you know what I am going to do? Criticise that. It makes sense that I would put criticism up on top. It also makes sense from a practical perspective. Kid to the left of your shoots 20 people after dying again in mega man 9 we blame the video games, even though it is clearly the kid’s fault. It still isn’t worth it to me, to have that slight advantage. Especially since I have most of the argument on lock is.
The other problem is pretty obvious. This is definatly one of those hair splitting arguments that I loath in general. It does however, have its purposes. Here look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective now look at this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective, notice the philosophical under objective opposed to subjectivity. See now this is a problem. Granted it is wiki, so take it with a grain of salt. However, I do think that this very moment is extremely telling as it shows that there is a dimetricly opposed situation here between the two beliefs. So much so that one person decided to define one in terms of the other. That’s not cool. Ideas can be opposite, but they also need to stand on their own as independent units. An idea can’t flourish if it is only the by product of some other idea. So some middle ground between the two needs to be established.
This is where I get crazy, but I worked it out during lunch, however I was dehydrated so I don’t know if it will still work out in the same way as before. Alright here it goes. Above when I took all the value out of art and placed it in the critic, I went to far. I saw that as soon as I typed it. However, I do think that there needs to be a sort of categorization between objects of critcism. For example putting a Harlequin Romance novel on the same plate as Heart of Darkness is a little silly. One is the by product of an average writter that is looking to make a quick buck, the other is Heart of Darkness a book written in such a way so that every sentence is imprinting as a sentence in poetry condemning the practice colonialism. Are they the same? See there is a whole branch of theory talking about this. The thing is though the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on what the critic can engage in. So if you can write a 5 volume treatise on a bunch of harliquin romances, great! And if you can’t on Heart of Darkness, well I might think there is something wrong with you but these things happen. The critismsm prodiced is just as valid in either case.
This way art has intrinsic value apart from criticism…if I didn’t make it clear it does deal with it, criticism maintains its value, and we have strains of objectivity and subjectivity. It is a little bit messy, but this is something I came up with over lunch because I was bored so it isn’t bad.
One of the most important things to bring away from this is that I replaced one reductive argument with another one. I made fun of the fact that there is no objective art book closed. But then I moved all subjectivity into the critic which is also reductive. Doing a reductive argument against a reductive argument isn’t cool. Again keeping the value in art is important, and keeping the rampant individuality of the critic is very important. Most importantly is allowing the critic to draw from any source necessary to do their rampant individuality.
Not bad, for lunch time thought rambling.
There is no objective art DONE!!! I r a theorist give me teh sex & a doktorate.
Still doesn’t anyone find that to be just the slightest bit reductive? I know I do. If you don’t then go away. No for reals though, all art is subjective and we are done with it. The thing is that not all art is subjective. Some of it just is. For example, we’ll use me. The whole Outer Church Politics thing in relation to how it worked with relationships is a highly subjective undertaking. I was sad confused and frustrated over the dissolussion of my relationship, especially when it is something that neither of us wanted. So in order to deal with it I wrote theory…I am the biggest fucking dork on the face of the planet. Subjective no doubt. However, lets take this current project here. It stems from the fact that I am in the mood to theorize, that I left the Marxism I need at home, and that I want to wait on sasha’s email and I want to mentally go over some of the NA25 stuff I came up with in my head before typing it up. Also not in the mood for video games at the moment. I have little to no stake in what I am writing right now, and if you thought it was the most billiant thing in the world I would gladly accept your compliment, otherwise I couldn’t care less if you don’t like it or not.
So when we look at subjectivity, especially as the opposite of objectivity all the sudden the case for this being a subjective piece of work starts to seem just ever so slightly silly.
To use another example. I get pretty riled up about people blaming violenc on video games. So I write a story where they use the bible as a reason to commit violence and they blame the bible, et cetera. So there is a senator running around trying to ban the bible because it causes people to do bat shit silly things far more often than video games, et cetera. it’s a great story and you love it LOVE IT!. I have lots of stake in it. It is a highly subjective piece of work.
I write a poem for class. I scribble it down on a test I get back the class before in under 5 minuts. I don’t even remember what it is about. Some people will love it anyway, that is just the way things go.
I can smell the question. If it isn’t subjective and it isn’t objective than what is it? Well it simply is. It is inert. Well then how do we tell the diffrence between a subjective piece of art and an inert one? This answer is also simple. We don’t.
Art has no intrinsic value. The only value it has is the value we asighn to it when we make it the subject to our thoughts. Art is designed in such a way so that it is potentially a pleasing or at least interesting potential subject. However, until it becomes a subject of our thoughts and thus enters into our subjective universe it is mearly an object that can be just as easily looked over as a particularly uniteresting brick.
I am not one of those people who believe that the world ceases to excist if no one is observing it. Those people are weird and they place far to much self importance on our flawed sensory perceptions. Rather I would have the argument reframed in the perspective of the viewer, or more appropriately the critic. There is a large and colorful movement arguing for the artistic importance of literary criticism. I would like to take it one step to the left and argue that it is the central focus that makes which allows for art to be interacted with. Even if it just involves shutting off your brain and enjoying the visceral thrills of Transformers 2 you are still engaging in a very primal sort of criticism.
Or not. See I don’t like this line of reasoning at all and I am going to abandon it here but not before kicking the compleate and utter crap out of it. See I am on the right track bringing the end value of art back into the viewer. That is what makes the Kantian Sublime special. The problem with this idea, is that it takes away a lot of the intrinsic value that art has. Sure sure I am a critic by trade, it is how I deal with my life problems apparently. While that is fucking weird you know what I am going to do? Criticise that. It makes sense that I would put criticism up on top. It also makes sense from a practical perspective. Kid to the left of your shoots 20 people after dying again in mega man 9 we blame the video games, even though it is clearly the kid’s fault. It still isn’t worth it to me, to have that slight advantage. Especially since I have most of the argument on lock is.
The other problem is pretty obvious. This is definatly one of those hair splitting arguments that I loath in general. It does however, have its purposes. Here look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective now look at this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objective, notice the philosophical under objective opposed to subjectivity. See now this is a problem. Granted it is wiki, so take it with a grain of salt. However, I do think that this very moment is extremely telling as it shows that there is a dimetricly opposed situation here between the two beliefs. So much so that one person decided to define one in terms of the other. That’s not cool. Ideas can be opposite, but they also need to stand on their own as independent units. An idea can’t flourish if it is only the by product of some other idea. So some middle ground between the two needs to be established.
This is where I get crazy, but I worked it out during lunch, however I was dehydrated so I don’t know if it will still work out in the same way as before. Alright here it goes. Above when I took all the value out of art and placed it in the critic, I went to far. I saw that as soon as I typed it. However, I do think that there needs to be a sort of categorization between objects of critcism. For example putting a Harlequin Romance novel on the same plate as Heart of Darkness is a little silly. One is the by product of an average writter that is looking to make a quick buck, the other is Heart of Darkness a book written in such a way so that every sentence is imprinting as a sentence in poetry condemning the practice colonialism. Are they the same? See there is a whole branch of theory talking about this. The thing is though the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on what the critic can engage in. So if you can write a 5 volume treatise on a bunch of harliquin romances, great! And if you can’t on Heart of Darkness, well I might think there is something wrong with you but these things happen. The critismsm prodiced is just as valid in either case.
This way art has intrinsic value apart from criticism…if I didn’t make it clear it does deal with it, criticism maintains its value, and we have strains of objectivity and subjectivity. It is a little bit messy, but this is something I came up with over lunch because I was bored so it isn’t bad.
One of the most important things to bring away from this is that I replaced one reductive argument with another one. I made fun of the fact that there is no objective art book closed. But then I moved all subjectivity into the critic which is also reductive. Doing a reductive argument against a reductive argument isn’t cool. Again keeping the value in art is important, and keeping the rampant individuality of the critic is very important. Most importantly is allowing the critic to draw from any source necessary to do their rampant individuality.
Not bad, for lunch time thought rambling.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Little Slices of Life
Day 3 No Regret Yet
I very rarely feel buyers remorse. Usually this is because my purchases are planned so thoroughly ahead of time that I don’t have that problem. Of course I am human and these things do happen. So as I sit here typing up things on my new Eee machine I wonder, do I feel regret? Nope! And that’s a good thing. I am a little annoyed that I had to buy a mouse for it, however, I am incredibly happy that I did so. Best choise ever. When I pulled it out to show someone on wensday I got all sorts of questions about it so I thought I would answer them.
First of all, as long as you do only one thing at a time it works out just fine. Other than that? Prey. So having 62 billion browser windows open at the same time isn’t the best of ideas. I makes the poor computer cry. I didn’t really notice it getting bad until I had about 7-8 browser windows going at once. So for those people that like to go tab crazy don’t get one. Also wireless interwebs isn’t the fastest thing in the world, remember that.
The computer also doesn’t like having more than 4 PDF’s going at the same time. Granted I was looking at some pretty intense graphic heavy PDF files but still. Keep that number low.
It gets along well with Microsoft works I am happy to say. I kinda wanna go get Microsoft word for it but not right now. For now works supplies all I could want and ask for in a word processor, namely it stays the hell out of my way and has a menu bar that makes sense. Unlike word. God how do you fuck that up?
It plays videos just fine, but shut down everything else before you get started.
I haven’t gotten around to win amp and mp3s yet but I hope to do that in the near future. I don’t know I don’t norally write to music and that is primarly what I have this computer for so I don’t see the reason really to import anything more than a moderate mp3 collection. I like it better than the palm by far and if I have any regrets about this situation currently it is the palm pilot itself. I’m kinda waiting to move into the computer proper though until next wensday, that will either make or break whether or not I am going to keep the thing or bring it back demanding money and sexual satisfaction.
No seriously all these touchpad things are utter crap, I don’t know why they bother with them.
In other news I got a decent amount of writing done! I am actually quite pleased with myself, and it is a good sighn for future projects. This is the first time I’ve actually had tools sutible to my productivity now it is time to see if my productivity is up to task. I think it is. Soon I am going to start fleshing out the NA25 game world and getting that up to par, something I am VERY excited about. I am also going to do RPG writing for other games to get my brain meats in gear. I’m thinking SLA Industries to start with even though the people on those forums are a bunch of asshats. I might end up getting a copy of A-State and writing for that too. I haven’t decided yet. I could always do Obsidian though since I already own it. Hrm, or maybe I should dig out some of my indie games and give them shots in the arm. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll figure it out though.
Oh in other news I am a little sad. I am going to have to temporally bow out of my rp group. That sevearly disappoints me. It is just that I am between a rock and a hard place. I helped get the whole thing moved to wensday afternoons so that it would be easyer on everyone. And yet, despite that things started to immediately fall apart. Tyson has problems getting there, Brian won’t leave his house, and I just realized that I can go visit my girlfriend now. That is going to happen. However, it means giving up hanging out with my friends and ropleplaying. It was actually a pretty tough thing for me to do. Not to decide, there was no real contest, but to do. That was kinda hard. Fortunatly in the fall we are moving the day again so I’ll be able to participate. YAY!
Okay that is about it really.
I very rarely feel buyers remorse. Usually this is because my purchases are planned so thoroughly ahead of time that I don’t have that problem. Of course I am human and these things do happen. So as I sit here typing up things on my new Eee machine I wonder, do I feel regret? Nope! And that’s a good thing. I am a little annoyed that I had to buy a mouse for it, however, I am incredibly happy that I did so. Best choise ever. When I pulled it out to show someone on wensday I got all sorts of questions about it so I thought I would answer them.
First of all, as long as you do only one thing at a time it works out just fine. Other than that? Prey. So having 62 billion browser windows open at the same time isn’t the best of ideas. I makes the poor computer cry. I didn’t really notice it getting bad until I had about 7-8 browser windows going at once. So for those people that like to go tab crazy don’t get one. Also wireless interwebs isn’t the fastest thing in the world, remember that.
The computer also doesn’t like having more than 4 PDF’s going at the same time. Granted I was looking at some pretty intense graphic heavy PDF files but still. Keep that number low.
It gets along well with Microsoft works I am happy to say. I kinda wanna go get Microsoft word for it but not right now. For now works supplies all I could want and ask for in a word processor, namely it stays the hell out of my way and has a menu bar that makes sense. Unlike word. God how do you fuck that up?
It plays videos just fine, but shut down everything else before you get started.
I haven’t gotten around to win amp and mp3s yet but I hope to do that in the near future. I don’t know I don’t norally write to music and that is primarly what I have this computer for so I don’t see the reason really to import anything more than a moderate mp3 collection. I like it better than the palm by far and if I have any regrets about this situation currently it is the palm pilot itself. I’m kinda waiting to move into the computer proper though until next wensday, that will either make or break whether or not I am going to keep the thing or bring it back demanding money and sexual satisfaction.
No seriously all these touchpad things are utter crap, I don’t know why they bother with them.
In other news I got a decent amount of writing done! I am actually quite pleased with myself, and it is a good sighn for future projects. This is the first time I’ve actually had tools sutible to my productivity now it is time to see if my productivity is up to task. I think it is. Soon I am going to start fleshing out the NA25 game world and getting that up to par, something I am VERY excited about. I am also going to do RPG writing for other games to get my brain meats in gear. I’m thinking SLA Industries to start with even though the people on those forums are a bunch of asshats. I might end up getting a copy of A-State and writing for that too. I haven’t decided yet. I could always do Obsidian though since I already own it. Hrm, or maybe I should dig out some of my indie games and give them shots in the arm. I haven’t decided yet. I’ll figure it out though.
Oh in other news I am a little sad. I am going to have to temporally bow out of my rp group. That sevearly disappoints me. It is just that I am between a rock and a hard place. I helped get the whole thing moved to wensday afternoons so that it would be easyer on everyone. And yet, despite that things started to immediately fall apart. Tyson has problems getting there, Brian won’t leave his house, and I just realized that I can go visit my girlfriend now. That is going to happen. However, it means giving up hanging out with my friends and ropleplaying. It was actually a pretty tough thing for me to do. Not to decide, there was no real contest, but to do. That was kinda hard. Fortunatly in the fall we are moving the day again so I’ll be able to participate. YAY!
Okay that is about it really.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Transformers dues
Things! Okay then so I left all my Marx at home because I am a god damned genius. So no Marx comic book goodness today for me. Damn. That’s cool though I’ll do it tomarrow on my day off and really get into it correctly and such. The 45 minut lunch break just isn’t enough to get anything done and blah blah blah. So Time to do something else.
Transformers 2. No I haven’t seen it but it is something that has been making me think a lot lately. Michael Bay has actually had a temper tantrum over some of the negative reviews regarding the movie and claimed he was going to break away from action movies. Riiiight. He took it back a few hours latter and basicly called the internet stupid. Good for him. But I listen to people. I do. And while people like me cringe at the thought of transformers, more mainstream people seem to love it. It has been hanging out at the top of the movie charts for awhile now, it’s raked in all sorts of money, and there are pleanty of people who saw it and loved it. Calling these people stupid would be a gross injustice, because these are the bread and butter of america and they all liked Transformers 2.
Here is the kicker though. They know it isn’t the greatest movie of all time, and they know that the plot is essentially non excistent, and they knew that going in. These are people who did not want some big complicated exposition before their coveted action. No instead they wanted their action right then right now and they got it in a specatcular way. So I can criticise it for being a bad movie but really why would I? It didn’t disguise itself as an art film, or as a thought provoking piece of cinema. It is a summer blockbuster action extravaganza. To compare it to Syncadoche NY, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, or Fitzgeraldo is a mistake of the higest order. The movie set out to do one thing and one thing only, wow people with over the top action. It did so with scalple like precision and I see no reason why I should shit all over it for being a terrible movie, when it isn’t. I just decided to distill down part of the essence that makes a movie up ie the spectacle, and refine it to the point where it is made of sheer awesome magic power.
That list I did earlier: Synchadoche NY, Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, and Fitzgeraldo were all mentioned for a special reason. These movies much like Transformers 2 are very spectale based pieces of entertainment. All three of them rely heavily on visual wonderment…oh the Fall fits in there too. Replace the Piano Tuner of Earthquakes with The Fall that works much much better. In these three movies the plot is a relatively thin membrane which excists more or less to drive the visual spectacle forward. It can be argued (Correctly at that) that these movies tell the story through their unique visual style. This is true much of the richness of these movies relys on distinct visual cues provided by the movie. However, at the end of the day Fitzgeraldo isn’t remember for its subtle underming of the traditional post colonial modle. No it is remembered because a two ton steam ship gets carried over a mountain. Synchadoche isn’t famouse for the incredibly crushing story of an utterly failed artist who thought it best to piss away his brilliance. No it is remembered for the scale model of New York that they built in a warehouse. Seriously that movie is against everything I stand for and it has given me nightmares. Lastly the Fall, the plot to that movie is very simply man convinces little girl to steal him morphine pills so that he can off himself. He tells her a story which is represented in the most utterly lavish visual spectacle you are going to see this side of Cremaster, but broken record. The plot is there to excuse the visual, not the visual aiding the plot. This is fine. Not knocking these movies down a peg. In fact I believe this is what movies are supposed to be. They use a visual medium so why not take full advantage of the resources that the medium offers yeah? There is nothing inherently wrong with visual spectacle, it is just that Transformers is about aesthetic zed destruction whereas the three movies I named all fall under different forms of aethtics. To pan one while lauding the other is ever so slightly hypocritical. Sure sure I think movies should do more than Transformers 2 did, but to write the movie off as compleate and utter crap is giving it the short end of the stick.
Still not convinced? Then ask yourself what is cremaster to you.
Transformers 2. No I haven’t seen it but it is something that has been making me think a lot lately. Michael Bay has actually had a temper tantrum over some of the negative reviews regarding the movie and claimed he was going to break away from action movies. Riiiight. He took it back a few hours latter and basicly called the internet stupid. Good for him. But I listen to people. I do. And while people like me cringe at the thought of transformers, more mainstream people seem to love it. It has been hanging out at the top of the movie charts for awhile now, it’s raked in all sorts of money, and there are pleanty of people who saw it and loved it. Calling these people stupid would be a gross injustice, because these are the bread and butter of america and they all liked Transformers 2.
Here is the kicker though. They know it isn’t the greatest movie of all time, and they know that the plot is essentially non excistent, and they knew that going in. These are people who did not want some big complicated exposition before their coveted action. No instead they wanted their action right then right now and they got it in a specatcular way. So I can criticise it for being a bad movie but really why would I? It didn’t disguise itself as an art film, or as a thought provoking piece of cinema. It is a summer blockbuster action extravaganza. To compare it to Syncadoche NY, The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, or Fitzgeraldo is a mistake of the higest order. The movie set out to do one thing and one thing only, wow people with over the top action. It did so with scalple like precision and I see no reason why I should shit all over it for being a terrible movie, when it isn’t. I just decided to distill down part of the essence that makes a movie up ie the spectacle, and refine it to the point where it is made of sheer awesome magic power.
That list I did earlier: Synchadoche NY, Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, and Fitzgeraldo were all mentioned for a special reason. These movies much like Transformers 2 are very spectale based pieces of entertainment. All three of them rely heavily on visual wonderment…oh the Fall fits in there too. Replace the Piano Tuner of Earthquakes with The Fall that works much much better. In these three movies the plot is a relatively thin membrane which excists more or less to drive the visual spectacle forward. It can be argued (Correctly at that) that these movies tell the story through their unique visual style. This is true much of the richness of these movies relys on distinct visual cues provided by the movie. However, at the end of the day Fitzgeraldo isn’t remember for its subtle underming of the traditional post colonial modle. No it is remembered because a two ton steam ship gets carried over a mountain. Synchadoche isn’t famouse for the incredibly crushing story of an utterly failed artist who thought it best to piss away his brilliance. No it is remembered for the scale model of New York that they built in a warehouse. Seriously that movie is against everything I stand for and it has given me nightmares. Lastly the Fall, the plot to that movie is very simply man convinces little girl to steal him morphine pills so that he can off himself. He tells her a story which is represented in the most utterly lavish visual spectacle you are going to see this side of Cremaster, but broken record. The plot is there to excuse the visual, not the visual aiding the plot. This is fine. Not knocking these movies down a peg. In fact I believe this is what movies are supposed to be. They use a visual medium so why not take full advantage of the resources that the medium offers yeah? There is nothing inherently wrong with visual spectacle, it is just that Transformers is about aesthetic zed destruction whereas the three movies I named all fall under different forms of aethtics. To pan one while lauding the other is ever so slightly hypocritical. Sure sure I think movies should do more than Transformers 2 did, but to write the movie off as compleate and utter crap is giving it the short end of the stick.
Still not convinced? Then ask yourself what is cremaster to you.
SMT Devil Survivor!
Shin Megmi Tensi: Devil Survivor!
Oh yeah so I’ve been playing this game pretty hard recently. It is hard not to the game itself is fun as fuck and it is SMT on a portable. I’ve been wanting this for quite some time now. The game itself is good and if you want to know more about it go use a news sight like a big boy/girl/android/androgine/whatever. One of the main problems I am having with it however is that, well, it ever so slightly feels like a rip off of The World Ends With You.
Ugh that shit burned. Calling a SMT game a rip off of The World Ends with You is like calling War hammer a rip off of Warcraft. You just don’t do it if you know fucking anything about anything. Yet it is hard to deny. They both take place in the same part of Tokyo. That is what really gets to me. That and the visual style. The thing is that the SMT games have always had this amazingly distinctive visual style that you can recognize instantly from anywhere. You might not be able to tell what game it is right away but you are going to know it is SMT pretty much right a god damn away. Even the sprite based persona 2 lays the foundation for the sort of toned down cell shading that is found in the previouse gen SMT games. Devil survivor though? The charecters look like they are lifted right out of The World Ends with You, especially Hara and Gin. Yeah this goes beyond the idea that both of the main charecters wear headphones okay, this is about how the charecters are drawn on the screen and the way cut scenes are played out.
Oh well, like I said the game itself is amazing though and honestly it might just be a Tokyo thing and not one game copying the other. Maybe that is how people actually dress over there and they are just being true to reality. Oh well one of the mainy frustrations I have when trying to learn about Japanese culture. I want to go over there in the worst way. GAH end of lunch time to escape!
Oh yeah so I’ve been playing this game pretty hard recently. It is hard not to the game itself is fun as fuck and it is SMT on a portable. I’ve been wanting this for quite some time now. The game itself is good and if you want to know more about it go use a news sight like a big boy/girl/android/androgine/whatever. One of the main problems I am having with it however is that, well, it ever so slightly feels like a rip off of The World Ends With You.
Ugh that shit burned. Calling a SMT game a rip off of The World Ends with You is like calling War hammer a rip off of Warcraft. You just don’t do it if you know fucking anything about anything. Yet it is hard to deny. They both take place in the same part of Tokyo. That is what really gets to me. That and the visual style. The thing is that the SMT games have always had this amazingly distinctive visual style that you can recognize instantly from anywhere. You might not be able to tell what game it is right away but you are going to know it is SMT pretty much right a god damn away. Even the sprite based persona 2 lays the foundation for the sort of toned down cell shading that is found in the previouse gen SMT games. Devil survivor though? The charecters look like they are lifted right out of The World Ends with You, especially Hara and Gin. Yeah this goes beyond the idea that both of the main charecters wear headphones okay, this is about how the charecters are drawn on the screen and the way cut scenes are played out.
Oh well, like I said the game itself is amazing though and honestly it might just be a Tokyo thing and not one game copying the other. Maybe that is how people actually dress over there and they are just being true to reality. Oh well one of the mainy frustrations I have when trying to learn about Japanese culture. I want to go over there in the worst way. GAH end of lunch time to escape!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
