In fact, I have thought very little about these two things in reading this book, and a lot about issues.  Social ones.  Abject ones.

I am mainly moved to think about my issues, and then our issues, collectively, particularly as a country, and generally as a world.  I have been thinking about the loss of our children’s play as a result of our (meaning adults’) demand for education, efficiency, production, and capital.

I am learning to see these things not as binary oppositions, but as two sides of the same whole, which includes many more sides.

I am also learning the responsibility of commemoration, of memorialization, of the humanities to consult the world.  This practical application of humanistic subjects is encouraging.

What we write, in the end, has its effects, and it has no effect at all, but it does exist for the tourist and the thinker.

According to Ulmer, “EmerAgency consultations map the circuit connecting obscurity and clarity of reason.  Electrate humanities is about wisdom” (255).  This new wisdom-making through sign-posting is an ambitious endeavor that I’m glad we’re all participating in.  To “learn” our culture of its own sacrifices is the task of a jerk, but also a savior.

We have to see what we’re sacrificing in this insane economy, and I think MEmorials show us that.  If we don’t see our sacrifices, we might be compelled to continue making them without limit.

Caravaggio's Sacrifice of Issac

 In this way, we emphasize the ATH.  As Ulmer suggests, “This mood is the Stimmung (attunement) that Heidegger says is the condition that makes knowledge (bestimmen) matter” (255).  We make knowledge matter by making these things, these digital things with images and text and sounds…

(Here is a good example of sounds that are meant for waking people)

by making rhetorical sounding boards for the culture.

With all of this inspiration, I feel thankful for this text.  And so, I end here.  Not with a whimper, but a BANG!

In thier closing postscript, they admit to the shortcomings of writing a book on semiotics that cannot cover every aspect of signmaking that our culture is making.  One of these dark areas in their research is the movement past the third dimension…

The first dimension is a point in space.

The second dimension makes a line, a two dimensional drawing.

The third dimension adds depth into physical space as we experience it.

The fourth dimension is time.

In physics, the fifth dimension represents an alternate times, and alternate realities (here is where fictions and narratives come into play for my thinking).

…it keeps going as you can see here…

In any case, in narrative, the first person is from the perspective of one person.

“It is the angle used in contemporary computers war games, to make players identify with the ‘special-ops’ soldier characters they play” (KvL 261).

Second person means “you.”

Third person becomes omniscient.

Games have this all wrong, actually…

In any case, I’m interested in sculpture when it is physically immersive and games when they break into physical space as well.  I’m interested in narratives moving into physical space at the same time.  These three interests, for me, converge in these games that govern the space of other kinds of realities. 

So when books or games limit play by only being usable instead of being platforms for experimentation, I find myself, like the children Barthes discusses, frustrated with limiting forms of play. 

Barthes writes, “the child can only identify himself as owner, as user, never as creator; he does not invent the world, he uses it: there are, prepared for him, action without adventure, withou wonder, without joy” (qtd in KvL 254).

But I am interested in immersion, in alternate realities created in physical spaces.

Physical space becomes much more interesting for me concerning signmaking because of its connection to realities, and alterate realities.  Yet, virtual realities encompass an oscillation with reality as well, as we were discussing with Facebook in Christina’s class.

This all brings me down to my favorite sculptor, who I mentioned before: James Turrell. 

Catso, Red (1967)

…or kanata by Yumi Kori.

These immersive works present a strange alternate reality, a fiction, but in real space.  This is where things get really interesting for me.  This is the stuff that gets my mind racing, and racing , and racing…

It helped me to understand the way that chora creates a meaning is the way that a group of singers create meaning by harmonizing together, or the way a bunch of sketchy lines create an implied line by working together:

Ulmer talks about choragraphy a bit more here: http://ensemble.va.com.au/enslogic/text/ulm_lct.htm

To my mind, choragraphy is the synthesis of the network, or the rhizome, working together to create meaning. 

So, with Ulmer’s description of justice, where the judge previously assigned meaning through judicial rhetorics, now we allow the chora of the electrate community to assign meaning by their working together.   In the sketch above, there is no single hard definite line.  When I draw, oftentimes, I am trying to find the edge by scribbling back and forth.  Likewise, the current understanding of what is right is being found by a choral public, chanting and attempting to harmonize to create a synthesized, unified meaning.

We’ve begun to crowdsource meaning or theoria.

In terms of the dancing metaphor, “it takes two to tango,” or it takes more than one person, more than one image, more than one voice to create some electrate meaning.

As a result, I think that our Electronic Monuments should have an aspect of community that allows them to function.  Hence, my game is going to have to move past being a single-player, single-play kind of experience.

_______________________________________

Also, in “Soft Wishing Y,” I was struck by how this exemplary monument existed partially in physical space with the little blue pom poms:

I feel like I need part of my monument on play to enter the physical world, to enter “reality” in a sense.  So, this is reassuring for my own project.

I noticed too that play shows up on Ulmer’s Apparatus 2, linked to on Lauren’s blog.  Perfect.

You might be perusing a business magazine or the first page of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, which begins:

‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’

(You can see the obvious connections)

With the flip of a page, out drops a little black business card printed with “thegradgrindsociety.com”…

• Then, you go to the url and… get something like this…

(I’d like to add a dark kind of video to this webpage reminiscent of old black and white propaganda films.)

• You call my Google Voice phone number I’ve set up

A recorded voicemail says to e-mail Aletheya Imir (imir is Irish for “play” and you, of course, remember good old Aletheya) at Imir@gmail.com.

• You e-mail her and there is an auto response generated which states:

Hello dear friend.

No doubt, you’ve found me by a reference from The Gradgrind Society, my old employer.  Don’t trust these people to educate your children.  They’re evil!  They work children for 16 hours a day until they can barely stay awake.  They are obsessed with education and never let their children play or go outside.  Go to my blog at gradgrindisevil.blogspot.com to find out more.

• This blog also has a twitter page…

the Twitter page has two posts:

Ali says: gradgrind society is evil

Ali says: bit.ly/blahblahblah

• You go to the bit.y website and there a page that is all black…  Highlight it and it says:

Go outside and play

click on the link and it takes you to a Google maps page of the Botanical Gardens here at Clemson…

That’s it.

I’m open to thoughts and responses.  This is a model based on definitions like this: http://www.giantmice.com/features/arg-quickstart/.

Some links for myself:

http://www.incunabula.org/PDFS/TINAGQUA.pdf

http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2484/2199

http://arg.paisley.ac.uk/

http://www.christydena.com/online-essays/arg-stats/

http://www.personalizemedia.com/articles/args-in-virtual-worlds/

http://www.argology.org/_what-is-an-arg/

http://www.deusexmachinatio.com/2009/01/wtf-is-an-arg-2009-edition.html

The upsilon represents the excluded middle.  There are not two options for stasis, but three arms pulling at the central subject.

Speaking of arms being yanked…

So, “Here is what the egent must write in a deconsultation: a memory, a disaster, a morality” (139).  I will tell you all something.  A punctum.  The real MYstory behind my MEmorial…

I once had my arm pulled out of socket for sucking my thumb.

I had to go to the doctor.

(note the passive voice to obscure the subject)

Another story.

I once was told to reclean the garage three times over.  I wanted to play and was pushed toward perfection instead. 

I remember finishing my sweeping while crying.

A final pain in my side.

I began struggling with depression during my senior year in high school while I was wrestling, playing in band, taking two AP classes, going to church, and trying to apply to college.  My mom found me with a knife.

Pills were prescribed.

A few years later I had to check into a psychiatric ward during a similar stressful time–where obligation prevented me from being able to play.  I had started hanging out on the tops of tall structures with minimal barricades.  I was looking for freedom of the variety that Brutus gave himself.

So, there you go.  My secrets.

These are my reasoneons for reacting against straightening up.  I knew that I’d have to get to these stories eventually–to give the reasoneons concerning my need for play. 

These are my own testimonials, the sickening stories that have forced me to obsess over play for children, and have motivated this monument.

When Ulmer tells the stories of children being kicked, punched, smacked, hit, beat, and hurled for doing what came natural–well, let’s just say that I had some discomfort.

Hence, “The MEmorial is a way to map and participate in mood construction, tracing the series of pain” (154) and a better “focus on the ‘me’ in MEmorial” (117).

Even though this week’s post got less into the theory of the chapters, I feel that the chapters’ troublesome content led me instead to a deeper insight into my own troublesome motives for this monument to play.

So, I’ll speak for the infans, those who cannot speak for themselves…  and meanwhile, speak to my own past and relieve myself of so much “crap.”

Done.

Halloween Costumes at Clemson Universty

This video is lame, but at least I succeeded in making a video…

(don’t forget to watch for the abject subject)

Yep.  There was a summit held here over the summer that discussed the very issues I want to deal with in my Electronic Monument.  They also had Stuart Brown come and speak who I know from the American Journal of Play.

Here are some links to what has gone on here so far:

Feature Article: http://www.clemson.edu/features/article.php?article_id=2119#

The Summit: http://www.hehd.clemson.edu/PRTM/Play/Index.htm

Resources: http://www.hehd.clemson.edu/PRTM/Play/resources.html

Maybe I could contact someone to let them know about what I’d like to do?