(I Don't Usually Title Stuff)

Computer Mediated Communication

Now Playing:

On The Public Screen

According to the DeLuca and Peeples, the public sphere evokes echoes of ancient Greece, a place to be seen and heard, with an amplified solo voice always addressing a captive audience in an arena with a stone microphone. I find the imagery and visual rhetoric of this metaphor useful. Don't really know about ancient Greece though, but if i associate that role with the West African tradition of a griot it makes sense to me. I'll admit I struggle with anxieties with writing online, the thought of writing in stone, if you will, posting a blog publicly, that I can't quickly delete, frightens me. As a spoken word artist I am more familiar with the ephemerality of performance.

Peeples and DeLuca however challenge the notion of the public sphere, saying "Our reservations revolve around the power of terms to shape and confine thinking, and as a supplement we want to introduce the public screen as a metaphor for thinking about the places of politics and the possibilities of citizenship in our present moment" (131). What interests me the most are the possibilities with communicating online and my own negotiation, representation, and other words that end with -ation. I should probably include a citation right about now. . . In the text Postproduction, Nicolas Bourriaud suggests that "objects are already informed by other objects and are blurred in this new cultural landscape marked by the figure of the DJ, who has the task of selecting cultural objects and inserting them into new context"(13).

So with that said, it helps if i think of the blog, which is a relatively new way of communicating for me (no I was not joking when I said my eight year old is my tech support), as an example of a public screen. As someone who views concepts with an analytical, poetic lens I hope to further explore and work through such notions of textuality and orality specifically within the context of online discourse. Of course. . .i

switch

[This is not a caption]

This is not a pipe.

the image is up

[Press play to listen while you read the rest slowly simotaneously ;-)...]

it's over here now i like to think of myself as a metaphorical DJ scratching at theory and practice...patience cause i'm new at this. blending the two seemingly separate surfaces, trying to get over

my technophobia

and all my fears of heights in dreamsialwaysfallallall

the time.interconnected and tangled 
situated in the local

at global

gourmet

where we play

http://Inside the micro and macroprivate/public and don't forget the personal and political. 
i am an advocate who articulates in a modality
auto-ethnographic

fragments

trying to find

my authentic self always

border crossing

and switching codes

role reserve

(RE)

reversal

is all i know.

everyone keeps telling me

you should get a Mac.

that might be more user friendly

but i don't have

Mac$

money

my phone is not "smart"

like all the others

it is dumb

and the only tablet i can afford

is a pad of paper and pencil

a relational capital like letters

I

wonder

if that is the

hi-definition

of being

digitally /divided.

after all

access not granted

but

WE

blogging to bridge gaps

with

qualitative facts

like

why?

is black

synonymous

with bad?

and how can you not feel the energy in your room now

even though the "artist is not present"

the absence is translated

when you say

shit

i smell

feel me

see me

hear me

trying to reach out and touch you

Let the beat ride for a moment. . .

re read it if you have to

In "Understanding Community in the Information Age," Barnes and Ducan claim "The primary act involved in computer mediated communication is that of writing. Like Ong's (1982) description of authorship, that act is intensely local, for, although we may be certain of an audience, we are unable to verify its existence just as we are unable to verify its interpretation of our writing"(12). This feeling of uncertainty is one that resonates with me; however, the idea that the local can be made more accessible being able to address a larger audience via computer mediated technology, making conversations possible with this public dialogue that invites multiple asynchronous meanings is where I see hope within online communication practices.

Work Cited:

all context and content is subvertly cited if you clink on links, that takes you where you want to go.