Week 1
Reading Response
The first thing I looked to do after reading through Carpenter’s piece was to do what I always do: copy and paste the quotes that stuck out to me and try to make sense of why they affected me. Funny, because since I chose to read this article online, I was somehow unable to copy any of the text- let alone select it. My dad was just actually telling me the other day how lucky I am to be writing my thesis in 2021; everything is automatic. You couldn’t paste or link graphs, data tables, figures, etc. onto a Word document in 1987, so he had to leave spaces when he printed his document, manually cut out and glue his figures into those spaces, and then photocopy the entire page. There are so many operations- even as simple as copy and paste- that we take for granted without really thinking about what we’re doing...so what would happen if we took those operations away?
As an anthropology major, perhaps it isn’t too surprising that the anti-assembly line, restoring-humanity-into-creative-labor theme resonated with me the most from this reading. As also an avid cinema lover, I’ve always been really fascinated by the paradoxes that underlie representations of reality (yes, I believe that every single movie- no matter how ‘fictional’ or ‘abstract’- is grounded in human experience) and the social structures that make these representations possible in the first place. Carpenter’s attention to the physical body reminds me of the behind-the-scenes featurettes that used to come with DVDs (I guess they’re now just on YouTube), and the wonder that comes with realizing that the blockbuster you just watched was in fact created by real, tangible people. It’s a silly thing to see written out but I think there is so much emotional value that comes with that realization, and as Carpenter suggests, I don’t think our world is willing to give that up just yet- no matter how automatic it becomes.
http://imhereandthere.com/ (2011) Plays with the concept of surveillance, privacy...what kinds of information is being stored, transmitted, etc. when we “interact” with the web? And to whom?
http://luckysoap.com/butterflies/parasite.html (1995) I love the narrative elements she’s playing with. It’s a story that goes around and around, feeding back into itself. Storytelling transcends really any medium, I guess.
Series Ideas
- Oscar Best Picture winners in the last X years
- Chicken places in CT
- Media giants & production companies