Lessons/Misc.
Chapter 1: More of intro into Ulmer’s views of electracy, cementing the idea of “What does this mean for me/how does this effect me?”
-basics of the popcycle (4 dimensions), MyStory
Chapter 2: Image/ in relation to idea of Wabi-Sabi
Punctum-emotional sting of a photograph/concrete detail, studium-the nameable part of the photo
-importance of the thought—->expressing it, not explaining/analyzing it , surface meaning
Attunement—personal “ear,” mode of perception, mood/standpoint/stance/orientation
1)punctum, 2)Haiku reason, 3)Wabi-Sabi, 4)Middle Voice/Reflexive, 5)write and reason with state of mind, 6)realization
Chapter 3: Home and Family
Homepage sick, idea of where we come form helping to tell the story of we are, what we go through, Endocept/creativity
Chapter 4: Cosmogram
-Chora or sacred space, an idea of atmosphere, a feeling or mood perhaps, the text descibes the concept as a theoretical invention, p.100
-adds a sense of identification, identity to the mystory, comes in four elements according to Plato
-idea relates to Stimmung, helps to ground our being in the world, our mood of life
-with these ideas comes the principle of the personal sacred, a choral space, something personally definitive, having an identifying factor or essence
-mapping the popcycle, the exercise that outlines, confines, defines my experience at home and my experiences now
-Cyberpidgin, and the importance of my home/natural voice and vernacular to the essence, atmosphere or chora to my mystory
Chapter 5: Interface Impressions
-the interface metaphor, something known and unknown and using one to define the essence of the other
-begins the second part of the popcycle of entertainment and community, stresses the idea that we often use things from entertainment movies and music
-What TV/Film character’s personality would portray me? My favorite video game as a kid? (a different fantasy world, etc.)
-think of my earliest movie memory
Chapter 6: Cyberpidgin
-the concept is discussed in chapter four
-remember the importance of my way of speaking and conveying feelings on my writing (i.e., word’s I use whether from home or language I picked up elsewhere, my manner of speaking)
-look to the writing samples in the text for this p. 163-end , most notably Logic Switch and Crossroads (personal faves)
-Emblematics, the grammar of the discourse
-also note how we create speech, colloquialisms
-p.176, “The virtual mood (modality) supports creativity
Chapter 7: History (School)
-beginning of the community section
-the hero/donor relationship, the donor being the character relation (actant) which is exemplified in the text by the “The Silence of Lambs”-the relationship between Clarice Starling and Dr. Lecter, their sort of creepy back and forth and each character’s inner and outer problems
-Value and the sender/receiver p.186
-from the class discussion; the idea that communities do influence and yet we influence back as well
-though I think that we have more control than we think, not a big believer in the reductionist theory and the almighty presence of our home and hometown life (this diminishes our human capacity and our experiences), every decision made whether to accpet or reject what’s around us and whatever group we’re a part of is our choice
Chapter 8: The Bar (Street)
-Stresses the importance (to me) of vibe and atmosphere in writing, such as the feeling or mood that a bar or city street has by comparison
-Blues/Jazz music genres were presented as an example of the chapter’s namesake, each of these styles has their own feel, and conveys whatever the musician is feeling at the time of their playing, an individualistic feel which gets the vibe across, p.213
-might want to use thees styles in work to express my feelings, importance and value of song, which in being a musician I find easier to relate to on a personal level
-Duende being an important concept in this chapter, which I struggled to understand but got it better when I read Ulmer’s entries (see his site), see also p.227
-a fluid atmosphere in writing, in being amorphous and lacking traditional shape or conformity, all ties into the concept of chora from Ch. 4 (see above notes)
-this chapter really necessitates person feeling and annotations, conveying feeling or mood implicitly as opposed to a literate/narrative/concrete style
Chapter 9: Emblem
The purpose of this chapter, I felt, was to be the almost culmination of everything we have been exploring to this point in the semester.
-Ulmer takes the concept of advertising and uses it to explain his theory of the emblem and its subsequent usage in the popcycle.
*In class, we used the projection pitch from Mad Men to concretely illustrate this. The idea of nostalgia is key here. A way to kind of take the viewer back and really allow him to be personally effected by the ad/image/story, and aptly apply his own memories and experiences in order for him to identify with whatever you are trying to convey.
-Ulmer notes his ideas about how to create an emblem on p.249-250
Chapter 10: The Ideal of Value
I feel that we have been touching upon this the entire semester. The idea and concept of value and what that means to our writing. This entire chapter is pretty much stories from Ulmer’s life and his learning experiences.
The best and most powerful idea that I received from this chapter was the idea that our lives and our memories and our experiences only serve to inform who we are as people. Evrything that is personal to me can be important to the way I write and the values that I convey. I picked from this chapter that I cannot separate parts of myself for certain forums of my life. I operate with all of my experiences, good and bad, behind me. My past tells the story of the person that I have become and my future experiences will inform the narrative of who I am going to be.
