#semeiotic

[anaxerneas]

I read Michael Shapiro's paper "Is an Icon Iconic?" a while back, discussing the everyday use of "icon" and its relation to Perice's semeiotic (like when we describe a person as being an icon), it's fairly short and figured I might as well post it here. I remember finding it insightful in places but apparently I didn't absorb too much and need to give it another reading.

Hopefully it’s readable like this

[ellebi-studies]

Hello everyone,

Here I am again with a new post on my study methods. During this last study session, I had to face semeiotics. It was one of my favourite subjects so far, but I had to change a few things in my study method since the exam involved a written part followed by a practical examination.

I know that the structure of the course of semeiotics is different among universities, so I'll briefly explain what it consists of in my med school.

There were 14 lectures, each of them dealing with a specific topic, explained by a different professor (for i.g., there was a lesson for the semeiotics of the heart, one for neurological semeiotics, etc.)

Also, there was a period of internship in the hospital. There we could learn how to do a physical examination on the patient.

Last, there was a lesson in a simulation lab in which the professor could control a dummy to allow us to exercise in recognising heart and pulmonary sounds.

The exam consisted of a written test on all the topics. Students who had passed the test could access the second part of the exam. It was a practical questioning in the simulation lab, during which the professor could ask further questions.

I decided to organise so that I had studied everything before the internship. Indeed, I wanted to make the most of my first experience in the hospital and knowing the basis was a fundamental prerequisite.

The material to learn was not that much, so I spread it a lot during the days. I had other subjects to study, which were much more demanding, so I decided to do semiotics in the evening. I managed to read all the material a couple of times, and I recalled everything before my access at the hospital.

I was at internal medicine, which is fabulous as a first experience. Indeed, it allowed me to do many physical examinations. All patients were distinct, and I had to check different organs and functions. Residents in my hospital ward were willing to answer all my questions and explain manoeuvres.

At the end of the day, I wrote in a copybook what I had learnt. It became a journal of my internship, and it was helpful afterwards. Explanations of residents sometimes were better than the professor. Furthermore, remembering what I did on a patient made remembering semeiotics easier.

During the week of the internship, I compared myself with a friend who was in nephrology. We recalled all the topics, sharing what we had learnt in the hospital.

After that, I recalled all the material again, with more awareness. This time I also focused on the practical aspects. I used many different links to auscultate hearts and pulmonary. There is a suitable app from Littmann, but videos on YouTube are good too.

Behind all these months of studying, I did not do anything the day before the exam. This exam was particularly a satisfaction since many of my classmates undervalued it. I am proud of how I faced a test different from all the others I did so far!

What do you think? How did you cope with your first internship? Let me know your thoughts and good luck to all of you with your studies.

[freakscircus]

god i was talking with a friend yesterday about this concept i read in an anthropology book. the author was comparing memory to radiation half life... his argument was about the peruvian khipu system, a system of knotted cords used by the inca empire to take stock of resources. the inca were able to know exactly how much the spanish had taken from them during conquest because these knotted cords were so accurate at keeping track of the empire’s resources. but when the spanish deemed that khipus and things like them were heretical, they weren’t used as often and eventually with technology and modernity they fell out of favor completely. but it wasn’t just overnight... their use and the type of people who used them began to shift to where the function wasn’t exactly how it was used originally during the time of the incas. the author argues that this shifted usage is almost like the half life of the khipu, sort of between the time its semeiotical “language” was well understood vs. today where no one alive can really decipher the exact nature of the way the khipu worked.

this may be an abstract jump that doesn’t really translate exactly the way salomon uses this argument, but it sort of reminded me of half life in the sense of abandoned places. once they were a place that was full of life and lived in, used in the way we understand space to typically be used. one day, the structure will collapse or be torn down or burned down and completely cease to exist. i think when something is abandoned, it lives in that half life space that is so interesting yet still difficult to comprehend because the explorer know almost nothing about its original life history. i love that concept because i feel like it can apply to so many things. i don’t really believe in ghosts or haunting per se, but i definitely believe that the nature of a place’s half life can dictate a lot about the feeling and the new nature of the space itself

[perkwunos]

If selfhood is achieved through self-control and if self-control at its higher levels consists in diagramming possible actions, formulating principles, reasoning, and forming signs of oneself, then selves have no existence apart from semeiotic processes of certain kinds. That is also how Colapietro understands Peirce’s theory. He proceeds to argue that the self thus understood is nevertheless an agent and a subject of thought and experience (1989, chs. 4 and 5). How is that possible? The air of paradox is removed, I think, by recognizing that the flesh and blood body remains at the bottom of it all. Selfhood or personality is an aspect of the organization of that body’s behavior. The organization in which selfhood consists is irreducible to the laws governing the operations of the body’s parts. But it is still the body that acts and suffers. Colapietro (p. 95) brings together a number of passages supporting this gloss, for example, ones from 1868 that refer to ‘a real effective force behind consciousness’ or ‘the physiological force behind consciousness’ (W2:226, 226n3).

The selfhood of selves, that makes animate bodies into persons, is abstract. It resides in signs that can be shared among individuals, and most of all in legisigns. A legisign can be replicated repeatedly and by different individuals. Feeling, too, is inherently sharable; though it is not abstract, it has another form of generality … Peirce appears to have thought of this doctrine as one whose truth is pervasively evident in everyday experience but distorted or obscured by philosophers’ theories. Thus he delighted in outr´e expressions of it, as if challenging the reader to ‘Deny this if you can!’: ‘the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference’; ‘What distinguishes a man from a word? There is a distinction, doubtless. The material qualities . . .’; ‘consciousness, being a mere sensation, is only part of the material quality of the man-sign’; ‘the word or sign that a man uses is the man himself’ (1868: W2:240–1). But even one’s ‘material quality’ is not absolutely individuating: ‘My metaphysical friend who asks whether we can enter into one another’s feelings . . . might just as well ask me whether I am sure that red looked to me yesterday as it does today’ (1903: 1.314). ‘Esprit de corps, national sentiment, sym-pathy [sic] are no mere metaphors’ (1892: 6.271). Peirce likened the individual self to a society and, conversely, a society to a person: ‘a person is not absolutely an individual. His thoughts are what he is “saying to himself,” that is, is saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time’; but, by the same token, ‘the man’s circle of society. . . is a sort of loosely compacted person’ (1905: 5.421). He called the philosophical theory of egoism, ‘the metaphysics of wickedness’: ‘your neighbors are, in a measure, yourself. . . . the selfhood you like to attribute to yourself is, for the most part, the vulgarist delusion of vanity’ (c. 1892: 7.571).

… The importance of Colapietro’s 1989 book, which is about Peirce’s semeiotic theory of the self, is to have shown how anti-egoism may be reconciled to ideas of personal autonomy and of the ‘inwardness’ of experience. The key is Peirce’s account of self-control as depending, in its higher grades, on feeling and, especially, on experiments carried out in the imagination. The feelings are those in which images and fancies and unspoken discourse consists; they are signs. Colapietro writes, ‘This capacity to withdraw from the public world is, at bottom, the capacity to refrain from outward action. . . . [I]nward reflection is the indispensable instrument of human rationality . . . voluntary inhibition is the chief characteristic of human beings’ (p. 115). He quotes Peirce’s 1907 remark (from the MS318 of which we have made so much) that ‘Every sane person lives in a double world, the outer and the inner world, the world of percepts and the world of fancies’ (5.487). Later in that passage, Peirce wrote that ‘fancied iterations’ in the inner world ‘produce habits’. Inwardness is a semeiotic phenomenon.

T.L. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs

[vodkastinger]

Girl squad

[golden-x-mage]

“semeiotic ghost of American culture” is a really heavy phrase

[stupendoustrashmagazine]

Four Poems

Four Poems pre { display: block; font-family: monospace; white-space: pre; margin: 1em 0; }

Ether Call Failure Bulldozers alert the camps it’s a cleaning day. The army on foot ran along disappearing rails For paths; the mud run down in steep collapse. They use machetes: light, agile, easy to Use; it’s plays often an important social role. Government personnel shake hands, exchanges Lilies; it was said that a whole shelf sank & there weren’t, as far as was known, survivors. There remains a brightness in the flags cause To catch wind, trust its semeiotics & a sheet’s Just fine. Boats are the only way out. People stack people on their backs. Unmarked bodies, many after many after many, go on, pulse In ways unavailable to the living. Satellite verifies, a purpled Amoeba which represents the destruction of 288 villages. Watching watching so the “what” is cradled &, often, turned against Another. Archaeopteryx in the bum glum de- flared subjectivity. Extinction sounds like zinc & sun—zinc oxide effectively prevents UV burn. The surveillance data is encrypted in a locket. It’s for a special someone but leaves dying A whole history dying in bodies & wouldn’t That it may later be written, wouldn’t that have— These flourishes sweet-tongued during tragedy.

Double Sonnet The loan depot’s a long trailer fit With brick & a yellow tin aluminum roof. Inordinate trust in newly formed banks Gave way to banners, bowls of bitter rinds, Noise ordinance turned to housing gas- Light promise of pair inside pentagon, Taxes levied in multiples, oak wagons Sidgel’s with rubber, tobacco, sassafras, Pig faces, drawndried deer strips, hide. The man was forced to use oxygen tanks To make his escalator pitch, the rubric Was a ruse, anyway, he shan't be forgiven. At the trading depot the chorus splinters. Namesakes, objects, quiet markets, gore, An electric car battery, superenlarged By a 3-D printing machine, speeds beneath Interstices of highway overpass heard By bats taking in the heat of the scene. The fires dealt with, eventually, a tonic To easy fractures of sleep, stitch’d with worry About furniture, security systems, Systems with formidable letter & weather. Weapon in kitchen, weapon pillow bed, Fred Astaire calls the arboretum An Omaha Classic, prairie & pillory Glitches between tomato plants, phonics On elliptical drive, a pressure to foliage, The battery a fire of boys lost whole.

Desire the Desert Hip cords | sockets got calcium in em | baby I’m injured. Stretch the shoulder | remark continuum’s numb sum. Prism tangy!| hair loss repertoire | paid photo shoot. Quit the State Department gig in Mauritania | O Elena, what?— There’re magic markers in music | stereophonics in spirits Kindred | cupids more blue than red | more seven than six. Professional astrologists on a SoHo block | diamonds ceiling- Stuck | glue guns pressed to the gums of Indonesian children It’s a bargain bin | it’s a rigmarole | it’s a mutant molar come To take children away | buildings | laws of averages | trailing— Soft | goose | liver sandwich | empty oceanic trawl | festoon. The art cart’s for sale | the brand band configures its tracks. If in | these infirmary days | there lies | some serpent | new Then let | blockades | disintegrate | this multiplying crew.

Walking Room “e” [perpetuity icon in rainbow refrain apple neuron] Wool robe; off-white; wrap’d over a body. Dust, cloak’d figures, shops, Stands. Sign—NO GNATS, PLZ—back & forth incomplete audio disturbs— as stone does water’s surface tension— medium required for it being it. The wharf work far from done; the war in a state of income. Pliés data, perm manhunt aunt?— Ferry’d Enkidu, open courseware data: ”apocalyptic cyprus” in a jar. Glas refracts, trans- mutes & replies with a specter; specter is on special, comes with no .location data-boost package. Car sin car son No ma, nomae, no men... Memorialization Way©☠ Disappearances celebré sates senses’ Sorry needs. It’s a generative startup whose value increases with each amnesia. Social units form groups, the plastic parameters of which burst. [broken link] The museum tactile, crumbs, kids, glass, Things on screens things incased with glow; with aura. Insecurities abound. [Curator: Brutality in the collection… [Museum Outreach Rep: Gotta get smiles on the faces of our patrons after the “Slavery, Genocide, & the America’s Hope” exhibit.) You ain’t shit Siyanda used to say to me. Good thing we’re not friends anymore. So few in the prairie; miss the south south loves. The moon drops a scythe onto fallen canopy network, utility lines mix’d with Gary oak & Doug firs, splitting off Looking a corridor of heads- Up pennies to paddle through— in a valley then. Loss fabricated for marketplace— NOW WITH FREE INSULIN PUMP + DIABETES ZIP.DRIVE! Passing playpen Little Tik_s Pathogens, pandemic COMING TO YOU SOON, old roman. Figueora to pull a chain from uvula untrain’d singer this user “laryngeal something or other” tries to sing sliver of silver, algal XY galaxy, deletes. The warp’d reflection in stainless foldable legs of kitchen tables. ‘Fata. Oblit- eration fetches origin—oubliette. —Weeping in evening. P-trap repair, cradle the toilet-seat, polarities Kissing near a fountain in Philadelphia Dive to reef’s bottom, see lemon sharks. Park car. Hardwood floors – maple? – I own seventy properties in – kitchen floor sags, the hill – it’ll go quick - lucky to’ve passed on a rental. Yoga studios, old fun in the Oldsmobile, in Sherlock’s Ford A DdoS attack. Drifting toward death is death of a subject. The unbearable present is birth. From then on, recovery is a cybernetic venture, a necrophilic urge to simulate the birth of loss. Returning to anything estranges user from the familiar. The lives of others offer a chance to strike; to ask if the state should face execution. If dying should contain a direction; if weapons are necessary.

[malachitelibrary]

Have you read about semiotics or semiotic anthropology specifically? I’m in a class about it right now and it’s been really helping me understand the connection between the material and metaphysical (especially in context of things like spell jars) An article called “Material habits, identity, semeiotic” by Veerendra P. Lele was super interesting and covers everything I’ve learned in class so far, if you’re interested! (Your FAQ didn’t say anything about recommendations, so I hope this okay!)

I have not unfortunately :(

Thank you for the recs! They are appreciated. 

[garadinervi]

electric 2-color flip-poem by dsh (kinetic-semeiotic-rhythmic), one of 28 poem-projects composed for the Cambridge kinkon, 1964, Tlaloc archive at University College London Special Collections

[gdbot]

electric 2-color flip-poem by dsh (kinetic-semeiotic-rhythmic),... https://ift.tt/2PjJOaK

[jasm1ne505]

Week 6

Lecture Notes

This weeks lecture we went over visual language and images. 

Images like words are encoded with meanings

Communication Structure

Meaning (semantics)

Word Order (syntax)

Interpretation based on context (pragmatics)

��

SEMIOTICS

Investigation into how meaning is created and how its communicated

Visual Semiotics, “study of symbolic process in which a visual image is combined with meaning or is the carrier of a meaning”

Semeiotic Analysis - study of signs and symbols, how and what

Ferdinand de Saussure’s ‘semiology’

Signifier - A sound or image

Signified - the concept for which it stands

Charles Sanders Perice

Model of Knowledge

icon - the signifier is perceived as resembling/imitating the signified 

index - the signifier is directly connected in some way to the signififed

symbol  - Signifier doesn’t resemble signified but is ‘Fundamental arbitrary or purely conventional - the relationship must be learnt’

Connotation + denotation

Connotation is the feeling a word invokes

A denotation is what the word literally says 

Tutorial 

Like last week we were put into groups, unlike last time this time we were analysing an image. We had to identify the signified/signifiers. The three types of sign in the image. The connotation and denotation. Build a brief Sytagmatic analysis and write an overall conclusion on what the image means. We then presented the ppt to the class. 

Our SDL this week was to start working on our formative - we were tasked to apply the ppt we used in class to the images we have found. For the formative we will need to apply this method of analysis to two images. 

This is a useful guide on how to analyse an image

[katokardio]

My under construction youtube channel.

[perkwunos]

As for Peirce’s declared objective idealism, Short’s article waffles the issue of “matter is extinct mind” of the 1889-91 Century Dictionary entry. Peirce more precisely rendered it as “specialised and partially deadened mind” in ‘The Law of Mind’ of 1892, which Short’s article glosses as “decayed mind”. The precedent for Peirce’s “partially deadened mind”, “matter as effete mind”, and “mind hide-bound by habits” can be traced to numerous pronouncements of Schelling, not only in his Naturphilosophie of 1797-99 but even in his System of Transcendental Idealism of 1800. For example, the ‘Introduction’ to the latter work (which Peirce read back in 1879) contains the following sentences:

Matter is indeed nothing else but mind viewed in an equilibrium of its activities. There is no need to demonstrate at length how, by means of this elimination of all dualism, or all real opposition between mind and matter, whereby the latter is regarded merely as mind in a condition of dullness, or the former, conversely, as matter merely in becoming, a term is set to a host of bewildering enquiries concerning the relationship of the two.

These words of Schelling are obviously an exact forerunner of Peirce’s doctrine: his “effete mind” is simply Schelling’s “mind in a condition of dullness”. As the aforecited paper by Nicholas Guardiano points out, that “matter” is “partially deadened mind” can also be found in Emerson, as for example in his very late Harvard lecture, ‘The Natural History of Intellect.’ The reverse side of the same doctrine is the mediating activity of mind in the universe…

Here and in what follows, Short’s article does not provide Peirce’s full doctrine in which nature’s “inveterate habit becoming physical laws” is the reverse side of “growth as increasing complexity” in an evolutionary kosmos-noetos. These two sides of “enfolding and unfolding” (Leibniz), “systolic and diastolic” (Goethe, Schelling), or “arrested and progressive” (Emerson) aspects of living nature, become the two complementary aspects of mechanistic and teleological – alternatively, of efficient and final – causation in Peirce’s stochastic sense of evolutionary nature comprised of both “effete” or “partially deadened” and “living”, or “accommodating” habit-formations. Peirce’s considered judgment as to these “outside” and “inside” dimensions of “matter” was that this is “the one intelligible theory of the universe” (CP 2.228). These metaphysical resolutions informed his later-phase pragmaticistic and semeiotic formulations as well.

David A. Dilworth, Peirce’s Objective Idealism: A Reply to T.L. Short’s ‘What was Peirce’s Objective Idealism?’

[charliebroger-blog]

Charles S. Peirce, Selected Writings

Charles S. Peirce

Charles S. Peirce in the opinion of many authorities was the most profound and original philosopher that America has produced. A master of exact science, our foremost logician, the founder of pragmatism, Peirce was one of the most remarkable and versatile minds of the 19th century, whose scattered writings made important contributions to such varied fields of logic, mathematics, geodesy, religion, astronomy, chemistry, physics, psychology, history of science, metaphysics, education, semeiotics, and more. Considered by William James the most original thinker of their generation, he exerted a tremendous influence on James, Josiah Royce, John Dewey, C. I. Lewis, Ernst Schröder, among many others.Professor Wiener's well-balanced selections introduce the reader to the many sides of Peirce's thought. He presents such famous essays as "The Fixation of Belief," "How to Make Our Ideas Clear," "The Architecture of Theories," and others, along with several pieces that are not available elsewhere. Of particular interest today, when the problem of humanizing the sciences is the acute problem of our age, there are certain selections, previously neglected by students and editors of Peirce's work, which deal with the cultural or humanistic aspects of science and philosophy.The 24 selections in this book are organized into five categories: science, materialism, and idealism; pragmatism (or as Peirce preferred, pragmaticism); the history of scientific thought; science and education; and science and religion. Included are articles originally published in North American Review, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, The Monist, Popular Science Monthly, and Educational Review; extracts or transcriptions of speeches; book reviews; letters; and previously unpublished manuscripts from the Smithsonian Institution, the Lowell Institute, and the Widener Library Archives in Harvard University, Professor Wiener's excellent introduction and prefaces to the selections supply the reader with important historical and analytical background material.

[arealpeopleperson]

Research Log: Case Study 1

Music Videos -  Past, Present & Future

An analysis & comparison of Music Videos from the past, with the present & my depiction of the what’s to come in the future…

Past (1994): Biggie Smalls - Juicy 

Present (2019): Ghetts - Listen

Case Study 1 - 'Ghetts - Listen [Music Video] GRM Daily':

In this case study comparisons are made between the visuals displayed in music videos against in a Netflix series. The chosen body of work the music video of a song which serves as one of the soundtracks in its accompanying Netflix series. The music falls under the ‘Grime’ genre and the series is about gangster culture in London. Points are made about why specific aesthetic decisions were made by the director of the music video to make it different to the series whilst their core message remains very much the same. Contextual information is also provided to ensure a deeper understanding for the chosen topic has been thought about.

“Listen” (Ghetts - Listen [Music Video] GRM Daily, 2019) serves as one of the tune’s from the popular Netflix series ‘Top Boy’ (Bennet, 2019). The video was directed by Saudi Khalaf and his aims were to reflect the eerie tone that’s carried throughout as Ghetts rides calmly with honest lyrics over the haunting Sir Spyro production. Problems Khalaf would’ve aimed to solve are: how to match the raw and grimy atmosphere of the series, whilst providing visuals that are as equally calm and collected as the song. He did this by repeating several shots of Ghetts delivering his lyrics in a laid back manner in his neighbourhood/roads he grew up on (Wynter, 2019). This have conforming connotations to it giving the audience ‘peace of mind’ whilst the eery tone of the beat contrasts this so the Director has the balance just right. Ghetts informs the audience about how when he first started making grime, he never expected it to to finance himself. This is inspiring, motivating and humbling to anyone who may be interested in pursuing a dream of any kind and feel as if they’re hard done by due to others being more financially fortunate. The Director has represented Grime in a way that’s not ‘throwing it in your face’ unlike the ‘Afro-beat’ material that you here a lot in clubs nowadays. He’s kept it to its ‘roots’ whilst depicting a visually-striking and interesting watch.

Involving artists of the likes of Ghetts in worldwide multi-million pound funded series such as ‘Top Boy’, they’re finally gaining the exposure which leads to salaries that they deserve and have worked hard for. They should be doing this with the younger up and coming artists as well as the older more established ones. A big concern in the Grime genre it’s it reputation for low professionalism. One tweet from Grime Producer/DJ ‘@FilthyGears’ says ‘Seems like grime don’t grow it’s just used as a spring board. Don’t know any big artist who makes predominantly grime and don’t stray. In hip hop a rapper might make a mainstream tune but it’s stopped hip hop’ (Twitter.com, 2019). This tells me that there isn’t a strong enough platform in place for the genre, not enough companies are willing to represent the controversial genre and take some responsibility on board. This saddens a huge number of people because even with all this negative energy being thrown around it’s still the grime tracks/instrumentals that get the UK crowds at events going and this energy I feel can’t be matched by any other genre.

Whilst the messages between the series and the music video remain similar, they’re actually very very opposing in the sense that the series has a huge focus on the violence and demonstrates this aesthetically with several gruesome scenes across the episodes. The Music video for listening the other hand is more laid back with the violence with subtle glimpses every so of ten but nothing heavy of visually disturbing. It’s done like this to stop people from seeing the material full-stop. If you don’t see it you won’t do it, which is the same science behind it as with why you wouldn’t let you children play a first person shooter game.

Furthermore especially because the context its a music video not a series therefore the mood doesn’t want to be disrupted by a horrible dark graphic, thesis why so many music videos are so packed full of positive show-off things such as cars, jewellery and attractive girls. It’s trying to glamourise the culture which is not toxic for people and is also bending the truth. However for an even higher level of violence, there’s new series called ‘Drillin’ directed by Romano Caesar Smith and broadcasted on media platform ‘SBTV’s YouTube channel (Drillin, 2019). The series helps visual learners to gain a better understanding of what happens in a gang-culture environment. This is a positive step forward in lowering knife and gang related crime in the UK because it’ll put people off being tempted to involve him selves in it. It’s said that 60% of people are in fact visual learners, this means music alone (Danesi, 2019) (which can only be absorbed my our sense of sound), doesn’t effectively deliver al the messages it’s designed to do and actually demands the need of a visual representation to accompany it in the body of work. This is the purpose of the music video and EP cover, however developments in new technology produced by company ‘Dimension’ have products such as ‘Volumetric Music Video’ which film a way that captures a mesh-like skeleton. It’s not CGI, but it’s similar in how it captures textures and a 3D mesh of the subject/object. To be able to actually be in the the music video and smell, taste and feel the body of work would be a huge step forward and could create an endless about of creative possibilities to help learners that suffer from forms of dyslexia, dyspraxia, or even anyone who struggles to and register words in their brain by solely listening.

To conclude, the music video for “Listen” was a well depicted visual representation and has met all the requirements of demands of a music video whilst still not steering away from the fact that it is for a Netflix Series focussed around a dark and touchy subject. The Director has thrown in subtle semeiotics such as making Ghetts wear a pink coloured hoodie and a bright yellow jacket - something that a gangster or artist of a genre related to that culture would never normally be seen in. This draw the audience away from wanting to be a in a gang by making them want to look as good as he does in his bright coloured garments.

Bibliography:

Bennet, R. (2019). Top Boy. [video] Available at: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80185306?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2C78ab7307552711a805064e09f3cf4db4f70eeba5%3Ae1b9b7e7150a5220b2b0a2c4e9837ffc1b9c57d1%2C%2C [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Danesi, M. (2019). Visual Rhetoric and Semiotic. [online] Oxfordre.com. Available at: https://oxfordre.com/communication/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228613-e-43 [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Drillin. (2019). [film] Directed by R. Smith. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_NYy_veWnI : London: SBTV. [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Ghetts - Listen [Music Video] GRM Daily. (2019). [online video] Directed by S. Khalaf. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJ London: GRM Daily. [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Twitter.com. (2019). (@FilthyGears) on Twitter. [online] Available at: https://twitter.com/FilthyGears/status/1175715920414728193 [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Wynter, C. (2019). PREMIERE: GHETTS GIVES VISUAL TREATMENT TO COLD SINGLE "LISTEN". [online] GRM Daily - Grime, Rap music and Culture. Available at: http://grmdaily.com/video/ghetts-listen [Accessed 14 Oct. 2019].

Future (2044):

My depiction of what music video’s will be like in 2044 (25 years from now) are very imaginative and sense indulging. Not only do I believe that we will be able to watch visuals alongside the music, but much like a 4D cinema, I believe we’ll be able to smell, taste, and physically feel what’s happening it the scene as we watch the visuals. It may be that we don’t actually hear or absorb the music/artwork conventionally but instead it goes straight into our brains via wires or even wireless transmitters.

This idea was my most ‘far fetched’, however that’s not to say it won’t be possible the way technology is advancing today. A more foreseeable depiction of a music video from 2038, might be that we see 3D augmented reality scenes popping out of tablets and screens. This technology his already in development and being pushed my companies such as Microsoft who have developed a device called the ‘HoloLen 2 AR Headset’. Apple have also responded with their version the device called ‘[AR]T’. Volumetric Music Video by a company callled ‘Dimension’ - Films in a a way that captures a mesh, it’s not CGI but similar how it captures textures and a 3D mesh of the subject/object.

My last idea, more on a musical note… (pardon the pun) discusses the idea that a track/song will be made up of 2 or a few tracks all in one and mixed together to build and create energy, the same way a DJ mixes tracks to do this. Drake has already experimented with these types of concepts for example this song ‘SICKO MODE’ is. Made up of three completely different beats and tones of voice. In a similar way I imagine this so be done with UK rap genres of the likes of  Grime/Drill music, very much engineered for live events and to be mixed by a DJ with performing MCs/rappers providing the vocals. For example, a track could have three instrumentals all mixed into each other with three different MCs featuring on it. The next MCs begins rapping when the as the next beat/instrumental is mixed/dropped. This will create an energy in tracks that at the moment you can only experience at live events. It’s only being tested on a small scale if at all at the moment but once done correctly, which I’m yet to come across, I think this could be the start of something very big.

[nmcconnellportfolio]

To Love is to be Ethical: Moonlight, Beloved and the Denial of Embodied Experiences as Denial of Humanity

With thirty years that separates the two from each other’s premieres, with 142 years that creates the space between 1874 and 2016 from where their texts are set, the texts of Beloved and Moonlight are renown for illuminating African-American life to mainstream society. Beloved, published in 1987, is a ghost story that explores the intergenerational trauma of slavery in America and the possibility of recovery and life after such trauma. Moonlight, screened in 2016, is a realist coming-of-age film for a young man coming to terms with his sense of identity under the pressure of toxic masculinity and homophobia in modern-day Miami. With the space of time and the difference of protagonists with Sethe and Chiron, there is two connections between the two texts. The exploration of African-American experiences in America – from the aftermath of the Civil War and the 13thamendment to the poverty-stricken neighbourhoods of Miami (with such poverty an intergenerational result of slavery). The exploration of the embodied experiences of suffering and love – how both U.S slavery and modern-day toxic masculinity end up denying these embodied experiences, and in doing so, end up denying the humanity of characters such as Sethe, Chiron and Paul D. The last subject – the denial of embodied experiences as denial of human rights

To understand the mechanisms of denial of embodied experiences in Beloved and Moonlight, we need to define embodied experiences and their relationship with human rights. Within the praxis of human rights, the prevention of suffering is considered to be an important factor to the construction of international human rights law. More particularly, one of the most renown human rights instruments – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – was drafted and created in 1948, in response to the atrocities committed in World War Two i.e. the Holocaust, the Hiroshima bombing, Nanjing Massacre and so on (all, which you may notice, was institutionally and governmentally sanctioned). And perhaps, arguably, the creation of international humans’ rights laws and instruments could be a response to the concept of ‘a bare life’. The philosophy of a ‘bare life’ came from the philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, which focused on biopolitics (i.e. the politics of the body), where a bare life is defined as the life of an individual that is restricted to the sheer biological fact of living (eating, drinking, surviving) to where the quality of the life – the act of living, beyond just surviving, of existing politically and socially -  is not considered (Buchanan, 2010, pp. 41).

The denial that the characters of Beloved and Moonlight are capable of suffering, is shown to be a denial of human rights. In the historical context of American slavery before the 13th amendment in 1868, slavery denies the subjects underneath this institution their own personhood, only allowing a paradox to occur; for slaves to be considered people to face legal consequences but considered property and, therefore, without protection from the law that demands that they be held to be consequence. This is shown in Belovedin multiple instances when Sethe and Baby Suggs recount their experiences before they escaped their owners; when Sethe and her lover are not able to legally marry, when Baby Suggs has multiple of her children taken away from her, when Paul D is put into a chain-gang. Slavery reduces them from people capable of loving and suffering to merely bodies that act in servitude to white men; Allain writing how slave-owners theorised that slavery was the natural condition of African-Americans on the basis of their skin colour, in order to justify slavery (Allain, 2012, pp. 131).  Crossing over generations and centuries later, one could make the argument that the legacy of slavery also lives on within the neighbourhoods of Miami, which is the setting of the 2016 film Moonlight. Centralizing around the protagonist of Chiron (who is addressed across different stages of his life; Little as a child, Black as an adult and Chiron only as a teenager), the audience is witness to Chiron’s life in Miami. More particularly, the situation of trying to survive where his mother neglects him (on the basis of her drug addiction), living him to fend for himself in poverty and also being the subject of intense bullying (mostly due to homophobia).

A massive aspect that links the denial of suffering is how their suffering is ignored or delegitimized – both of which are aspects to the trauma of slavery and of toxic masculinity. In the book Narrating Violence, Chandra talks about how the taking of Sethe’s milk by the schoolteachers men, after Sethe attempted to run away, is unique in degrading her from her humanity: “this act is, therefore, set apart from the more familiar physical or sexual violence of whipping and rape, both of which are forms of subjugation which recognise the humanity of the slave in the very attempt to suppress the rebellion. The taking of milk, however, is a qualitatively different form of othering whereby the polarisation is not one of master–slave but the far more radical one of human– animal.” (Chandra, pp. 50-51). This discourse of associating black bodies with animalism is also associated with black bodies, more particularly black male bodies, a discourse that Chiron is forced under the weight of. In the book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, the acclaimed intersectional theorist bell hooks wrote how the presentation of black masculinity in a society predominantly ruled by white patriarchal societies is the legacy born from the plantations of Antebellum America: “black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black male identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it.” (hooks, 2002, pp. xxi)

The entirety of Moonlight is about Chiron being caught between embracing what society wants him to become – a hardened, stoic and strong man – and what he actually is, which goes against it – a gay man who is ridiculed in his childhood and teenage years for his emotionality, shyness and sensitivity. Chiron is forced to deny his feelings of suffering and rejection – from his peers and most predominantly, from his mother – as a major aspect of toxic masculinity, whereas mentioned in another text of bell hooks, “to indoctrinate boys into the rules of patriarchy, we force them to feel pain and to deny their feelings” (hooks, 2004, pp. 22). However, as many philosophers note, the body can remember experiences – hence the term embodied experiences– where the mind refuses to, Bergthaller noting how until Sethe and her community can found the linguistic means to tell their stories, their emotional/psychological pain that is denied and repressed is transformed into bodily realities that cannot be ignored or denied: Sethe becomes colour-blind after she murders her daughter Beloved, Denver becomes deaf and mute after discovering the revelation of how far her mother was willing to go to prevent Denver from being returned to Sweet Home and Paul D. loses control of his hands after he is sold from the plantation (Bergthaller, 2007, pp. 120).

However, while the denial of suffering is a form of denial of humanity prominent in Beloved and Moonlight, there is also another major embodied experience that is linked to humanity and consciousness: love. As expressed by my lecturer Joanne Jones, the famous philosopher Julia Kristeva wrote about the psychological aspects of love within culture and semeiotics in the 1987 book Tales of Love. Paraphrasing from both Joanne Jones and from Tales of Love, the central idea of Julia’s Kristeva’s theories on love sees that in loving the Other, we able are able to recognize ourselves in the Other and by recognizing ourselves, we recognize the dignity of all and we are able to become ethical beings (Kristeva, 1987). If anything, the biggest denial of embodied experiences is the denial of that one can love and be loved in return and belong to a community towards the characters of Beloved and Moonlight. In a passage from Beloved, Paul D. notes how he can only pick the smallest stars in the sky to love, because any love greater – and the heartbreak that results from death or separation that was constant for slaves – could end breaking him; “to get to a place where you could love anything you chose - not to need permission for desire - well now, THAT was freedom” (Morrison, 1987).

This denial of love (and by extension, the denial of embodied experiences) also is prominently found within Moonlight, most particularly between Chiron and Kevin and between Chiron and his mother, Paula. Paul D. and Chiron share the greatest similarities out of all the characters; both are young men who have being denied the possibility of community and love and have closed themselves off from love, only for the text to show the character’s journey of relearning how to love and be loved. Another particular connection between Beloved and Moonlight is the recovery of family. As drug abuse and poverty create a chasm between Paula and Chiron, the intergenerational trauma of slavery (which Beloved becomes the flesh-and-blood embodiment) creates a divide between Denver and Sethe. The situations between the families of Beloved and Moonlight, may call back to Julia Kristeva’s connections with love and the Other; that only in being able to love can we become ethical. It’s important to note that within slavery, the family unit was impossible to protect with family members frequently being sold to other slave owners, causing the separation of child from parent, wife from husband, sibling from sibling. And while the situation is not so dire in modern-day Miami, poverty in black-majority communities can be considered a legacy of slavery and because of the forced inability to form a family, the difficulty of creating loving relationships – where slavery did not allow African-Americans to occupy the position of being someone’s child or mother or lover – still lingers generations onwards. Because these families have being relegated to their most biological dimensions, relegated to ‘bare lives’, they can only struggle in truly living a life that goes beyond the biological (Buchanan, 2010, pp. 41).

Which is why one of the significant aspects of both Beloved and Moonlight is the relearning of how to love when one has been forced to deny the possibility of love. Paul D. and Chiron, through living in poverty or living in slavery, are presented as individuals with fragmented identities and both of whom are closed off from love – most shown through the presentation of the narrative of Moonlight, where the three chapters of the film are titled with the different epithets that Chiron takes on (‘Little’ as a child, ‘Chiron’ as a teenager and ‘Black’ as an adult). Paul D., as explained above, is someone who has closed himself away from feeling, who feels that his red heart has now became a ‘rusted tobacco tin’, one which he feels ashamed of sharing with others – and where only with a sexual interaction with Beloved, does he gain his heart back (Chandra, 2008, pp. 52-53. And yet, by giving themselves permission to the embodied experience that is love, Chiron and Paul D. are able to finally gain a whole sense of themselves. Only when Chiron reunites with Kevin and tells him that he loves him, that no other man has touched Chiron (physically and emotionally) the way Kevin has touched Chiron, years after he has embraced violence, does he finally gain a complete sense of self, to make the identities of ‘Little’ and ‘Black’ and ‘Chiron’ together as one person. As Bergthaller writes, only in remembering their bodies and their families and their histories  – when Chiron is able to look back at his life, when Paul D. is able to make sense of his past – can they recollect the experience of being embodied (Bergthaller, 2007, pp. 126).

In conclusion, Beloved and Moonlight where the narratives of people being brought down to the physical parts of themselves and are denied any other embodied experiences of suffering and love that validates their sense of humanity. Through toxic masculinity and slavery, many characters are left fragmented and alienated and confined to their bodies – by a system that has reduced them merely to bodies. Yet, as seen in both Beloved andMoonlight, the possibility of reclaiming their bodies (and in doing so, reclaiming their ability to suffer and love and be recognized as human) is possible in both texts. Moonlight and Belovedpresents the possibility of rising above the bare lives that the characters are given, in being able to find a future – but only through embracing the truths and experiences of our bodies.

References

Allain, J. (2014). The Legal Understanding of Slavery (pp. 105-134). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Bergthaller, H. (2007). Dis(re)membering History's revenants: Trauma, Writing, and Simulated Orality in Toni Morrison's Beloved. Connotations: A Journal For Critical Debate, 16(1-3), 116-136. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-com.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/docview/196677714?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

Buchanan, I. (2010). A Dictionary of Critical Theory (2nd ed., p. 41). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chandra, G. (2008). Narrating Violence, Constructing Collective Identities: 'To Witness these Wrongs Unspeakable' (pp. 50-72). New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

hooks, b. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New York: Washington Square Press.

Hooks, B. (2004). We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. London: Routledge.

Kristeva, J. (1987). Tales of Love. New York: Columbia University Press.

Morrison, T. (1987). Beloved. London: Vintage Classics.