Welcome to the surreal world of a blog about digitextuality. When I type "digitextuality" in this word processor it appears underlined in red. Probably because this is a spell checker, not a theory checker, and digitextuality is a theory. I conclude it's a new theory which Einstein might have had trouble with.
The trip begins when Anna Everett qoutes Julia Kristeva on her term "intertextuality;"
"The term textuality denotes this transposition of one (or several) sign system(s) into another... (And) demands a new articulation... If one grants that every signifying practise is a field of transpositions of various signifying systems (an intertextuality), on ethen understands that its 'place' of enunciation and its denoted 'object' are never single, complete and identical to themselves, but always plural, shattered, capable of being tabulated... Every text buildes itself as a mosaic of qoutations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text."
And only to be obvious, I just quoted Anna Everett quoting Julia Kirsteva and I did it on this blog.
I'm going to try to rip off Jorge Luis' Borges here and draw attention to the digitextuality which Everett discuses, and question the never-ending nature of our immersion in a digital world a la Borge's short story "The Library of Babel."
What Everett's article leads me to believe is that we are so completely submerged in technologies which present media that draw off of previous media. What we are presented with nowadays plays off the tradition of intertextuality. The message as well as the very media we consume are shaped by that which we have culturally agreed upon as deserving of meaning, the literature and films we reference, the language and symbols we use.
At the same time, we as selves and individuals and bodies and souls are embedded into the technologies and the media. "Cinema becomes a slave to the computer," yes, and do we also? I think what (Everett quoting) Lev Manovich means is that the idea of art cinema, of the message and the story, the genre, the serious understanding of cinema as a guiding force, must bend to the forces of the flash of the computers ability to create a reality which is 'more real than ours.' Instead of looking for "recognizable separations between representational strategies of realism or verisimilitude..." we look for technological magic.
This idea does not finish once the conversation has moved away from cinema, though. All of the extensions of ourselves (I think I have Mcluhan to thank for that idea) are being pushed far beyond the realm of necessity (eg a practical technology like a telephone) and entertainment (we prefer digital music to a piano or a guitar) to surpass drives to reflect reality. Now it seems the colours of the natural world are dull and the clearer image is found on the screen. Check your facebook from your phone, travel through an underground tube to your next destination, turn on the television and see what's happening at the community centre, talk to your friend Betsy who lives two doors down on the internet. The 'computerization' of everything is occurring.
And then there is the 'click theory.' "I propose the fetishizing of the term click, and its attendant iconography... operate through new media's lure of a sensory plentitude presumably available simply, instantaneously, and pleasurably with any one of several clicking apparatuses." Here's the thing, we're submerged in the media and messages of technology, we're surrounded by it in every way and are allowing it to replace many of the way we experience life and all that it entails, and now we're getting off on it?
And then Everett has the audacity to explain, "the web’s content may be inexhaustible, but our very human or bodily attention spans and leisure time are not.” We click, and click, and click and we still can't get no satisfaction. So then what does one do? At this point, I imagine one route many take is to turn to another technology not realizing it's just another kind of "click."
I don't mean to paint such a pessimistic view. I do intend to draw attention to that which we should be weary of. Like Borges story the idea is that the immersion into technology and information and entertainment we relieve from it is infinite and unknown. We are so very immersed in technology we don't even know sometimes that we might try to get out. (Vive the arts and crafts revolution)!
So here, on this blog post, where I qoute Anne Everett quoting other people, who play on the traditions of those who come before them, I paint a "Danger" sign at the fork in the road.
Where do we go now? Click circle bored flash click bored circle pull click flash bored circle click pull flash check bored circle
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