e n l i g h t m e n t - a n d - m a c h i n i c - s e l f / a n a l y s i s

Presenters post responses the rest of the class posts one question (or more) each for class discussion.

* * *
Although finding the introduction to Kittler’s book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter to be a bit of a rant, I was able to surmise that Kittler had two main topics of discussion in his introduction. The first shows the evolution of media and its three components: image, sound and text. The other is the earlier use of these three media components in history, some uses being more absurd then others.
Throughout the entire introduction I found one reoccurring theme to be interesting and comical. This theme is the idea that the advancement of media will be humanities undoing. Kittler discusses two instances where man is set back by the evolution of media. He states that the enhancement of storage media will be the end of the minds ability and desire to retain knowledge. Speaking for myself, I find it easier to retain and expand upon a larger vocabulary then continually look up words on an online dictionary. The other instance is the typewriter's unavoidable ability to ruin the artistic value of a piece of writing. Haven’t all of us been moved by a piece that was written after the typewriters creation?
The finial section of Kettler’s introduction that I find amusing is the quote from Nietzsche. Nietzsche states, “Are these (typewriters) humans or perhaps only thinking, writing, and speaking machines?” To answer this question we must first figure out what a machine is? Merriam-Webster defines a machine as, “an assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner.” Humans fit that description. From a very base standpoint, a typewriter can be mistaken for a human. We are both machines that respond to input and subsequently create an output. However, that alone does not mean we are equal to a typewriter. Kittler makes a point at the end of the introduction that a computer, the offspring of a typewriter, will never be able to do what a human can do.
Elan Jurado

*
Question about Walter Benjamin
What is the influence of the "Mechanical Reproduction" on the art?
JooYoung Bae

*
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin is a dated essay. He is writing this essay from a much earlier point of view and comparing everything to everything. The man cannot stop spewing out analogies in this essay, he’s writing this as if it were really important and he really needs to drive some arguments home, but at the same time because he goes into such detail with his arguments, I can’t get the big picture. The essay is about more than what the title alludes.

Art in the age of reproduction means more people are exposed to art; more people are familiar with art. Art is more accessible and more people have the ability to study art and for art to inspire them or for art to allow them to escape their daily lives. The reproduction of art also means there is no longer an art capitol of the world. You don’t need to be in a certain locale to learn a specific type of art because everything is more convenient and more easily transmittable.
I think even though Benjamin put in every possible argument and its reasoning and its other possibilities and a lot of analogies, there might have been a few contradicting possibilities he didn’t come up with and granted this may be because of his time period and the conception of one man.
One man who believed in balance and happy little trees whose work and lifestyle contradicted Benjamin’s arguments, that man’s name was Bob Ross.

Bob Ross is a painter in front of a live audience being filmed. Ross’s works contradict because they would be authentic and have authority and have a place in time and history, yet at the same time because the image of his painting is being viewed by the masses it has the potential to become exploitable. His painting would also have aura, yet be detached, so maybe the aura is balanced? Ross as an actor is both a stage actor presenting his artistic performance directly to a live audience and a film actor represented to the camera in a certain way and lacking aura. He is an illusion and an escape from reality, yet has a real life pace his audience can see everything. He’s almost perfectly balanced and a good contradiction for Benjamin’s arguments because he is a traditional happy little tree painter that has little impact.
Brenda Bramel

*
What is substructure?
A.

*

p o s t - e u l o g i e s - a s - co m m e n t s - h e r e

* * *
The Eulogy For Elan Jurado's Funeral
"If Elan could have his say at this time, we would not be having this service. He would not want us to sit around and talk about his life. Elan would consider this service a waste of the little time we have in our own lives. He would rather have us move forward than focus on the past.
But, this service is not for Elan! It is for those of us who know him and care about him. A funeral is for family and friends. It is a way to remember the strengths, virtues and art of those we loved and admired. Hopefully by remembering these qualities, we can better our own lives and the lives of others.
Because this service is for all of us, I am not going to give a eulogy that would attempt to sum up all my feeling and yours in one thought. That would be unfair to all of you. I would like to invite anyone up to the podium who would like to share their remembrances of Elan's life, art and humanity. all I ask is that you speak from the heart."
(At this point in the funeral, family and friends that wished to speak would say whatever came to their minds. Hopefully they could not hold back and the experience would be therapeutic.)
-Elan Jurado

*
Thank you all for coming today. I have enjoyed being part of your lives, you made me feel loved and I appreciate that and I cherish our memories together. Before I go further I just want to remind you to plan to remember me every January 23rd, and you know it’s January 23rd because it’s blistering cold outside, and plan to remember me every Thursday because everything important happens on a Thursday, it’s like kittens, it just works out that way. I still want to be engaged with everyone. I want to encourage you, watch movies with you, solve mosaic mysteries with you, go ballooning with you, make music with you, go to burnt down Disney Land with you, enjoy holidays with you and be a part of your life. There will be brochures handed out at the end of the ceremony with instructions on how to actively remember me and create new memories of you and me together and portraits of me, not to display, but to talk to in order to create new and active memories. However, I am not opposed to the idea of surrogates. Please feel free to rename an item in your home as Brenda and address it as if it were me and carry it around and talk to it as if it were me. It’s important that you all actively remember me because I no longer have the ability to actively remember our lives together. Instead I have a limited amount of beautiful memories. All of you here today will have the ability to create an infinite number of new memories to share with each other at my next ceremony same time, same place, same day, next year.
At this time, in an orderly fashion, please feel free to step up to the casket and say good bye to my old body and remember to pick up your Creating Active Memories with Me brochure. Once again thank you all for coming today. I appreciate all the love, forgiveness, acceptance, and affectionate tolerance you have all given me and will give me in the future.
One other note: whatever you choose to actively remember me with needs to be hugged about once a week.
Brenda Bramel

*
April Noga
Eulogy
It is sad she is gone, though all her life April was a dying breed. She was a girl who held on to what she believed in, no matter where the modern world headed for the future. She valued the things most insisted obsolete and a waste of time. All the things that were dearest in her heart had nothing to do with making money. And she found a way to really embrace those things in life; the prospect of a thick envelope stuffed with mail art, rolling green hills that held no factories or houses, the old forests, the beauty of the darkroom, the clicking of a sturdy typewriter.
April valued those small moments in life where all of time seems to slow just a little and if you play close attention the details seem like a lovely, vivid dream. Some things might include the tale end of a morning breeze where the chill seems to sink into your bones, the patterns and rhymes in which shadows dance along bumpy cement, the short seconds of dead air between songs on the radio, and a held glance with a stranger. She derived inspiration for her art though those things. Somehow she never forgot to embrace the little and random joys of life all throughout her own.

*