Mystery Notes: ??

Reading/Writing

Computer: icon, object, metaphore about what it is to be human

Machines, networks, programs, robots - all can process info and execute actions Cybernetic in that they complete tasks

Automated but intelligent behavior

"Just as the camera has come to symbolize the entirety of the photographic and cinematic processes, the computer has come to symbolize the entire spec trum of networks, systems, and devices that exemplify cybernetic or "automated but intelligent" behavior. "

Transformations in relation to our ideal of the self

to carry Benjamin's inquiry forward and to ask how cybernetic systems, symbolized by the computer, represent a set of transformations in our conception of and relation to self and reality of a magnitude commensurate with the transformations in the conception of and relation to self and reality wrought by mechanical reproduction and symbolized by the camera.

How to distinguish between human vs non human agents

Data streams vs tools of mechanical reproduction

Writing is a technology but after its long presence, we dubbed it "natural" and think of writing as something we do naturally but its a language which was created as a technology for communication

Images becoming montages. Communication, visual language. Symbolic alphabet

morality and ecstasy : walter ong

Socrates: valued speech over writing Ironically, plato wrote these conversations down Writing tradition vs oral tradition Orality and literacy

Levi strause: the savage mind

We occupy mediative systems

Walter bj: lets cut the bullshit-the aura of the object was an illusion But if you think this way, the world ( and art) loses its romance

Hermeneutics: how to interpret things The republic of letters Suspicion and revelation

Revelation: art is not spiritual but technological But this is a less beautiful way to interpret works

But reproduction of these works made this more obvious and technically undeniable

ontology:

Epistemology :

Ethics : what is right

Aesthetics : what is beautiful

" establish a central metaphor with which to understand thes e cybernetic systems, and then ask how this metaphor acquires the force of the real " - how metaphors become real

Our interpretations become representational of our surroundings

In the photographic this can be interesting to look at because photos are considered to be representational if the real, but as a photographer, i look at photos as representational of the personal fiction of the author of the images

Phenomenon: reality as it appears to us

The real: The imaginary: The symbolic: Where those 3 overlap is where the"self " lies

Accumulation of cultural data shape reality