globerlin

[globerlin]

Hi!

Here’s the audio file of my final project.

-Milo

[globerlin]

Data Representations

So most of our data was pretty banal. Here is a picture of it.

What this is showing you is that most words fall within a reasonably normal range of frequency. However, there was one piece of data in this experiment we found particularly interesting. When we ran one Breitbart article through the frequency analysis, it showed that the word ‘working’ was used at afrequency of 10.2, which means that it was used a lost between both that one article and it’s comments. It’s interesting that this word in particular has stood out, but more research would need to be done to speculate as to why this may be.

Finally, here is the link to our github:

https://github.com/mmaron/globalizationfinal

which contains the programs we used to gather this data, along with the links we used.

[globerlin]

LabLitArch Final Project.

Globalization and Diaspora, Fall 2017.

[globerlin]

Followed by: https://danieldaviswood.com/2014/05/30/writing-seeing-open-city-2/

[globerlin]

Mapping Tropic of Orange

My conception of a map of Tropic of Orange is influenced now by the structural design that my lablitarch group has thought of. So for this post, I will expand or think about an aspect of that design (since that is what is productive at the point). My group is ‘mapping’ the character’s relation to time and space in individual ‘slices’ of the structure. We are focusing on the ‘compression’ and ‘convergence’ theme in the novel by making an accordion shaped structure.

In addition to having each layer show a character’s experience, I was thinking that it might be helpful to have an outer structure, like series of rings around the orange-accordion, so as to better show how the characters are also interacting with the greater world around them. The different levels (picture a stack of donuts with gaps in between them) would be decorated with different images that represent other themes and ideas that are important throughout the novel.  

Levels could show borders, highways, products or consumer goods, television or the virtual. I think these themes tied the characters together. Highways, roads, or driving are present for each. Television, or the internet also seems to play a key role in many of their stories. The viewer would be able to raise up the orange (main structure) so that it rests at different point in the outer structure – therefore connecting each character to each theme.

Specifically for Arcangels section, I think that it could be helpful to have a historical map of North and South America, and to map modern images like corporate logos and goods onto it (because of his focus on NAFTA). Arcangel seems to speak to the place of time in the scale of history, and the present as interconnected with the past (as he seems to bring the past to the present by living through it) and he also conjures to mind a sense of time that is eternal, with his magical, angelic qualities. Often, it feels like Yamashita is speaking through him (especially through his poetry) to convey some of her more explicitly political ideas about the continuing effects of the traumatic past on the present and the need to acknowledge its place in current politics.

[globerlin]

Reflection Three

I am in the final project group that is doing the literary architecture project. We are focusing on “Tropic of Orange”. I am excited to be working on a final that is both a paper and a project, and excited to be working in a group. I think the accountability will be helpful for making steady progress and the teamwork for coming up with ideas.

So far, we have talked about making a model with different rooms or spaces for different characters. We thought about including maps that we label with more of the symbols and characters associations. Including maps could also be a good way to bring up how the idea of borders works within this novel. I like the idea of decorating the model so that is not just cardboard, and this would be another way to express the novel’s structure.

I was also excited by thinking about the idea of making a virtual structure that would be interactive. This is a bit beyond the scope of what we could make, but I think this would allow for us to include more elements of the novel’s structure. It would be cool  to have a space that could include music, that could have certain sounds play when you click on them in one way, and different sounds under other circumstances. We could then include the different ways that people read this novel — some read all the characters all the way through first, and some read page by page. Maybe there would be some way to include this dual method of reading, such as having some kind of grid in which you can move through the story forward, or through each character upwards. There are different potentials for how separated it has to be – maybe we could make a very interconnected space with just sounds and images and motifs from each character. Maybe we could shape the space just through memorable scenes, passages, or descriptions. Do we have to structure this like an architectural structure – or can we have a virtual painting that has some ‘structure’ to it? I don’t know if that would actually be helpful, just questioning the assignment.

This is kind of how I envision trying to represent a structure for this novel. (The Persistence of Memory – Salvador Dali.) 

[globerlin]

Reflection Two

In the beginning of this class, I set out with full optimism to “rethink how my identity relies on any binary or us/them system, so that I am able to become less fictitious and more myself, and allow others to be as well.” Wow! What a broad goal.

I think that I have done this in part, of course, by doing the readings and trying to think through them. This is part of any process of learning, at least in the romantic-liberal perception: rethinking your identity and becoming gradually more open minded. I think I have encountered some of the challenges to this process, and it has been less sun and roses than my initial goals made it seem like.

The most difficult readings were the theory – the Fukuyama or Huntington. My response to Fukuyama is still something like ‘what of course history hasn’t ended / of course we are not at some final stage yet’. But that is a large simplification.

I hope in the next part of the semester to be able to connect the theory better to the novels we read, and maybe (ultimately) to myself – though that actually might be a less important goal. Since I am doing this partially retroactively, I am now thinking about my initial goals through the lens of “How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia,” and the self-centeredness of those goals of self-improvement. I didn’t mention needing this knowledge to later do something for anyone else, I thought about this class as a kind of self-help. While this might seem like a somewhat natural thing to do, I think there is some questionable aspect of this.  

Am I viewing globalization as a rich resource that I want to get rich (mentally? Personal development wise?) quickly from?

Are there similarities between how I approach learning in general, or specifically, learning about globalization, and how western capitalists act as forces of globalization, looking towards other countries to reap or exploit for economic gain in our age of interconnectedness?

This image is supposed to show ‘narcissism’, but I feel like there are some sexist strings attached to that. Is it so unreasonable to check your phone for second instead of constantly paying attention to that dude?

[globerlin]

In this drawing, I wanted to try to represent the layers of maps that Manzanar sees, as well as the chaos that his orchestra is described as. I tried to incorporate “the very geology of the land, the artesian rivers running beneath the surface… the man-made grid of civil utilities… sidewalks, bicycle paths, roads, freeways, systems of transit both ground and air…” (Yamashita 57). Manzanar sees the world in a very unique way. Here, I attempted to combine Manzanar’s vision of the world with a realistic interpretation of it.

[globerlin]

Tumblr4 Map Exercise

My visual representation is sloppy and amateur, but gets to the point.

I chose to map LA with an arial view of the busiest freeway intersection but to copy on top of it images to evoke that the entire map is a projection of the interior of one car from the POV of the driver. I like this idea that I saw in a lot of the novel during the several scenes in traffic, that the large amount of time one spends in one’s car navigating the city creates a very isolated and enclosed experience. I really feel this when driving through LA.

[globerlin]

TUMBLR 4

I made my map based on Bobby’s narrative’s interpretation of Los Angeles, or “The Big Los.” This description happens while Bobby is traveling on foot through a long list of places in Los Angeles to go to look for his son. He runs through different types of terrain: forest, beach, etc., and then his conscious goes into even more detail about the barrios. We are told that the curves of the roads connecting these sparkling cities in “The Big Los” resembled the sequins on a quinceañera dress (233). So the map I drew is one that has interconnected dots of light, which represent the cities, and are the sequins on the dress, and the pink lines are the roads that connect the cities, and fill in the color of the dress.

I think that this reveals that there are many different ways the characters in the novel can view the world. Bobby, who is obsessed with working, views the streets he runs down as a means to an end, a network that is almost rendered lifelike by the people that all rush down them. This contrasts with Los Angeles’s musicality, which is established in other character’s chapters.

Bobby’s map is also shaped by culture. He sees the web of connected cities not only as a dress, but also as a quinceañera dress. Bobby visualizes an image from Mexican culture when he thinks of the place that he considers his home. This, in turn, is telling of how Bobby places himself in this map.  

[globerlin]

Yamashita’s LA

In a past reflection, I discussed the concept of “coverage” and how uneven distribution of discourse marks shifts the perceptions of political, cultural, and social landscapes. My sketch of Yamashita’s Los Angeles attempts to capture a notion of truth framed by underpinning tones of centrality in the novel. I think a lot of how technology operates today and entices its subjects is through persuading an audience that what the technology offers represents something paramount and ongoing. By immersing an audience in a frequent eye of happenings, they are coerced into staying, to keep watching. The way to navigate our landscape, therefore, is through operating on these concepts of “centrality.” This came through to me in the novel with the single representative image of the orange, the concentration of immobile transportation mechanisms on a deadlocked highway, the coverage provided by actors like the NewsNow van (in addition to other journaling represented in the novel), and so on… I tried to represent these tokens in my map, with the geography adding saliency to ideas like headlines, the orange, the process of broadcasting coverage, and the musical references through the novel.

[globerlin]

Mapping meaning

Of all the books we have read, I find Tropic of Orange to be the most similar structurally to a road map, and like the story’s structure itself the book’s structure reminds me of a highway.  Similar to the effect of cities on road systems, there is a relatively clear point of convergence in both time and space in the map of the novel. To incorporate the aspects of time and space-time, I have decided to represent the 4 dimensional structure of the novel in a 3 dimensional space. The map, in my mind, is in a clear plastic ball and each path is made of wire. The location inside the sphere is arbitrary, as long as it remains relative to the other paths, made from wire inside the ball. I think this map represents well the ways which paths draw near each other but do not actually cross. On a 2-D map, it is impossible for the map I drew to exist without collisions. However, in 3 dimensions not all of the lines have to ever touch. This is important, because 2 dimensional maps represent 3 dimensional space. This means that in the real-life representation of my map occupies time. I think this is an accurate depiction of time-space in Yamashita’s novel, because of the way that things can happen without regard to the function of time. 

[globerlin]

Network Model

Tropic of Orange is in sorts the type of “meeting place” that Massey describes. With its seven characters — Rafaela, Bobby, Emi, Gabriel, Buzzwork, Arcangel, Manzanar — Tropic of Orange is, like Massey writes, “holding all those networks of social relations and movements and communication” within its pages. Each character comes with their unique experiences, needs, wants, etc, and represent a far larger story and background beyond the moments of these meetings and intersections themselves. Yet when they overlap, their stories intertwining, they are weaving together a network that holds together the book. Perhaps their intersections make the connections and coherence of the book stronger (just as a higher thread-count would make a sheet sturdier), and they are each necessary to making the book make sense (like how each cog in a circuit is necessary no matter how small). Without one character, the story would change. And at the same time, this doesn’t mean that the characters all have to be the same; they do not and do not have to all agree, or be doing the same thing and the same time to make this book whole. They do not have to be in the same place, on the same side of the “border,” etc. In fact, perhaps their differences give magic to the book and show up as superpowers. For instance, Rafaela has intuition, Arcangel has strength and wisdom drawn from an infinite memory and past, Emi wields technology and has a knack for living outloud, Manzanar can conduct the freeways of LA, Bobby perseveres and seems to be able to fly at the end of the book, Buzzworm is able to see/get to the core of people, and Gabriel can piece things together and is perhaps a sort of network weaver in this instance.