notes from "meta/data" by Mark Amerika

"The body is an image-making machine.
It filters information.
It creates dreams, memories, and spontaneous situations made out of images.
The images are created in the body as they respond to images outside the body.
The images change as the body moves.
These movement-images resonate with dreams, memories, and spontaneous situations made out of images.
This means that spontaneous situations made out of images can be dreams or active memories and vice-versa.
For the VJ-Hacktivist who inmixes the real with the unreal, a live performance can be experienced as the memory of a dream composed of spontaneous situations made out of images.
Writing out the intuitive phrasing of an image écriture that always drifts in its revolutionary aimlessness, the philosophical scribe becomes a VJ Artist
The VJ Artist is a metafictionally charged philosophical scribe that uses subject plug-ins to manipulate image-information and in doing so doing begins the process of a myth-making oftentimes in a narrative context even when the so-called narrative itself is an antinarrative that works against conventional storytelling and standard rhetorical spin-control. P.13

Research Paper - Final Submitted December 1, 2010

For this research paper, we were asked to address a theoretical concern central to our practice. Below is the first part that includes my research question, the abstract, as well as the keywords. The end result paper is available on the following link: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0Bz-6Qx7Ge00zYzY4NGYxOGYtNDllNC00M2ZmLTkzMTYtNWE4OGY0YjE0MWEz&hl=en

Research Question:

Transitional digital objects: Fluidity in compositing an autobiography or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper explores the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott (1971) coined the term ‘transitional objects’; it travels around the theme of object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, ‘a new media object’ could be ‘variable, mutable, liquid’ as per Manovich’s (2001) definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper questions whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual compositing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part is dedicated to looking at the fluidity of digital objects through observing and relating theories and artworks of practitioners who have investigated the theme object. Mark Leckey (2008) exemplifies the dissolved physical into a digital object at the beginning of the century and by its end; Hollis Frampton (1969) doubts the object’s third dimensionality on the screen; Sherry Turkle (2007) emphasizes the emotional in objects; whereas Donna Haraway (1991) rejects the concept of objects being sacred in themselves; the Cult of Less (2009) upload their material lives on external hard drives and online services platforms; and Michael Craig-Martin (1973) challenges belief through a glass of water, a shelf and a printed text in his sculpture An Oak Tree.

The second part is focused on autobiography compositing. Different autobiographical manifestations come together to reach the final conclusion later. Christiane Paul (2008) defines the new nomadic nature; Mark Amerika (2007) speaks of the ‘hyperimprovisational narrative artist’ in Meta/Data; William Burroughs (1970) discusses the viral in the language; and Marcel Proust (1913) gives a lesson in generative autobiographical storytelling and involuntary memory in his book Remembrance of Things Past, specifically the episode of the Madeleine; Lev Manovich (2005) concludes this section with his compositing in the digital realm theory that leads to ‘deep remixability’.

The conclusion is preceded by notes on ‘recollection’ according to Mark Freeman (1995) and the ‘wholistic fictionalization of the past’ by Michel Foucault (1973) as well as Nietzsche’s (1889) statement of ‘the whole’ that ‘no longer lives at all: it is composed, reckoned up, artificial, a fictitious thing’.

The findings of the paper affirm the fluidity of autobiographical compositing through transitional digital objects as well as the failure of creating the portrait of the whole but do not judge the latter conclusion as necessarily inconvenient.

Keywords:

New Media Object – Autobiographical Compositing – Transitional – Fluidity – Wholeness

Revisiting the research paper - Version 4

Transitional digital objects: Fluidity in compositing an autobiography or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper explores the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott coined the term ‘transitional objects’; it travels around the theme object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, “a new media object” could be “variable, mutable, liquid” as per Manovich’s definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper questions whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual writing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part is dedicated to look at the fluidity of digital objects through observing and relating theories and artworks of practitioners who have investigated the theme object (1970s onward); Hollis Frampton doubts the object’s third dimensionality on the screen, Sherry Tuckle emphasizes the emotional in objects, the Cult of Less upload their material lives on external hard drives and online services platforms, and Michael Craig-Martin challenges belief through a glass of water, a shelf and a printed text in his sculpture “An Oak Tree”.

The second part is focused on autobiography in the digital realm. Different autobiographical manifestations come together to reach the final conclusion later; Mark Amerika speaks of the “technomadic” and the “hyperimprovisational narrative artist” in Meta/Data, and Marcel Proust gives a lesson in generative autobiographical storytelling and involuntary memory in his book “In Search of Lost Time”, specifically the episode of the Madeleine.

The conclusion is preceded by notes on ‘recollection’ (Mark Freeman) and the ‘wholistic fictionalization of the past’ (Michel Foucault) as well as Nietsche’s statement of ‘the whole’ that ‘no longer lives at all: it is composed, calculated, artificial, a fictitious thing’.

The findings of the paper affirm the fluidity of autobiographical visual writing through transitional digital objects as well as the failure of creating the portrait of the whole but do not judge the latter conclusion as necessarily inconvenient.

Revisiting the research paper - Version 3

Revisiting the research paper:

The research question:

Transitional digital objects:

Fluidity in compositing an autobiography

or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper should explore the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott coined the term ‘transitional objects’, it travels around the theme object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, “a new media object” could be “variable, mutable, liquid” as per Manovich’s definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper will question whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual writing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part will be dedicated to look at the fluidity of the digital objects through the work of theoreticians and practitioners who have worked on the object theme; doubting the third dimensionality on screen by Hollis Frampton, “emotional objects” of Sherry Tuckle, the Cult of Less’s initiative to upload their lives on external hard drives and online services platforms, and challenging belief in Michael Craig-Martin’s “An Oak Tree”.

The second part will be focused on autobiography in the digital realm. Exploring the “technomadic” and the “hyperimprovisational narrative artist” of Mark Amerika, Nietsche’s concept of “the whole no longer lives at all: it is composed, calculated, artificial, a fictitious thing”, Marcel Proust’s autobiography triggered by the “Madeleine”…

Mark Freeman in “Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, and Narrative” suggests linking autobiography to recollection and development:

“'re' makes reference to the past, 'collection' makes reference to a present act, an act, as we put it earlier, of gathering together what might have been dispersed or lost. Framed another way, the word recollection holds within it reference to the two distinct ways we often speak about history: as the trail of past events or 'past presents' that have culminated in now and as the act of writing, the act of gathering them together, selectively and imaginatively, into a followable story…”

Whereas Foucault considers “a great deal more that is accidental in both history in general and in our own life histories in particular than we might wish to avow. Perhaps we have reverted too often to a kind of wholistic fictionalization of the past, imposing unity and continuity on that which doesn't deserve it.”

MPR feedback

Here are my colleagues feedback on my MPR.

I will be reflecting on the below information and post my comments soon.

Maya Chami: My research question ‚ 'foot kicking a ball: Narrative falling apart in the V.J.ing playground'‚ portrays the project I am developing: V.J.ing as an eye candy challenged into a narrative form.

I am interested in using the old habit of intermittent communication or my inability to tell a story in a shortcut way as a form in the narrative.

I am working now on narratives' 'leftovers' or the stories that come out and revolve around a theme, but not specifically portray it.

done

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): several comments here about how this is a similar project to Jean's, good idea to creae a dialogue between you 2

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): Jean asks, how is sound incorporated into this?

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): or is the plan to include sound at al

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): VJing is also repsonsive, reponding to the sound - like a DJ responds to the crowd....

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): so is VJing actually the right word to use at all

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): is there another term that can be used

Satbinder Kooner (skooner): can anyone explain VJing - sorry not familar with the term

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): what about looking at the history of hip hop to give a context

David Tatnell (davidtatnell): I like the autobiographical sense of a vj set - not entirely documentary but hinting more to memory flash backs

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): hip hop is also responsive, often to local issues, verbalizing what is going on

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): Jean - VJing is manipulating video in real time

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): but Jean also points out that VJing (VJ = video jockey) can be different in clubbing type setting rather than a cinema type setting

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): there is a feel of improvisation - influenced by what is going on around the VJ

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): the concept of 'input/output' is important to VJing, along with manipulation the footage you are working with

David Tatnell (davidtatnell): by taking it out of the clubs and into the gallery, how/will its context change?

Melanie Menard (m_menard): Do VJs normally work with D?J/musician (they agree beforehand on type of visual that match music) or usually completely separate ? If so, would you work with specific musician Maya ?

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): also Jean points out the differences between simply 'live editing' footage just creating a sequence, and manipulating for example by adding effects

Melanie Menard (m_menard): I thought Maya wanted to perform in clubs, but maybe I misunderstood

Satbinder Kooner (skooner): What will the content of the video be - what is it's focus?

Andrew Stiff (astiff): if thisnk this is an interesting dialogue that we are having here - the response mechanism within vjing - input and output and feedback

Andrew Stiff (astiff): how does this work within a narrative

Melanie Menard (m_menard): I think it's childhood memories but sort of abstracted + external images she relates to them for some reason ?

Satbinder Kooner (skooner): ok that sounds good

Melanie Menard (m_menard): (was answer to sat)

Satbinder Kooner (skooner): thanks Melanie

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): do you want this to be a performance in a club or a gallery or both - does this raise stylistic issues, what are people expecting in the different settings?

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): Chan, suggests the visuals in a club setting might not be the best setting if you wnat people to focus and give atention to your images

Jonathan Kearney (jkearney): but maybe it is possible to make a club setting the right space, by thinking differently about how a visual narrative is constructed

Andrew Stiff (astiff): ok time .....

Andrew Stiff (astiff): thanks Maya - again many more questions

Andrew Stiff (astiff): definitely strike up a conversation with Jean

Maya Chami: thank you, i will!

Melanie Menard (m_menard): personal experience only, why not experimental music concerts? there's nothing much going on on stage (guy fiddling with machines) so they always look for VJs. SO you keep the not-art-world/festive setting, but people usually pay attention to the visuals and appreciate more, and are not so, hum, drunk or other :)

on another note, Matt emailed me his feedback, here it is:

Hey Maya these were my thoughts on your project...

- What is it that makes this medium eyecandy? This seems to be an easy trap
to fall into - how can this be avoided?
- Can there be certain sections of the narrative that are ‘corner stones' or
repetitions through which the non-linear parts happen?

- Maybe look more into the idea of memories and how these can be visualized.
How memories distort/ mix/ fade/ abstract/ fragment over time.
- Maybe look more into the concept of time in relation to memory and also
film theory.
- Play with time and pace - Run shorter clips alongside/ over the top of
longer clips? Check out...
- Vertov – Man with a movie camera (sequences layered on top of each other)
Able Gance - Napoleon (running narratives Simultaneously alongside each
other/ triptic)

MPR Presentation

My research question ‘A foot kicking a ball: Narrative falling apart in the V.J.ing playground’ portrays the project I am developing: V.J.ing as an eye candy challenged into a narrative form.

Up to this point, I was concerned with realizing what made me decide using V.J.ing as the medium of my project. I was questioning V.J.ing as a form of digital moving image and the restrictions that are natural extensions of this technique, having the scenes extracted to one minute each so that the software does not fail on the performer during practice.

I found out that my past habit of intermittent communication or my inability to tell a story in a shortcut way, played a main role in the decision-making, leading to a higher interest and deeper research in narrative styles in digital moving image, and later on to an appreciation of the idea of narratives’ ‘leftovers’, or the stories that come out and revolve around a theme, but not specifically portray it, this point liberated the way I am looking at my project.

Across the many theoreticians/practitioners I have visited so far, I have came across 4 main influential and inspiring ones:

- Lev Manovich’s ‘Soft Cinema’ project > database as a main essence

- Lev Manovich’s ‘Deep Remixability’ theory > software like species within the common ecology, once released, the start interacting, mutating, and making hybrids

- DJ Spooky in his album ‘The Secret Song’ > sampling as a collage, an art practice based on centuries taking out text out of context...

- Mark Amerika in his ‘Cyberfictions’ > working on expanding the concept of writing to include multimedia formats; starting with a written then trying to locate different kinds of audiences whether through the Internet, in nightclubs, museums, galleries…

- Laura Marks in her ‘Haptic Visuality’ theory > intercultural films and video allow the viewer to experience cinema as a physical and multi-sensory embodiment of culture, not just a visual representation of experience.

At this point of the course I became convinced that theory leads practice, and that ideas come out of theory. With the technical background I have, any software would become accessible.

I wish to explore the concept of fragments further. Being able to construct scenarios from any picture or scene is giving your audience the liberty to imagine instead of spoon-feeding. I should be expanding further the research on performer / audience in relation to participation.

What I will be doing next:

- Continuing the research on the breakdown of narrative in digital moving image.

- Looking more at narrative techniques, and have written narrative sequences as a start that will be the support to build up from.

- Start filming, editing, animating and going back to archives of memorial places.

- Developing loops and get myself a training with a practicing VJ before the middle point of Unit 2.

Raising questions about how will the leftover idea be clarified, what kind of footage will I be taking into consideration, the length of the V.J.ing show, is it too obnoxious for a performer to project herself on the screen, why will I go into a domain that does not fit in the mainstream?

To check the beginnings of written narrative along with a mood board experiment please check the below presentation:

1W9 Project Proposal - final version

1- Working Title:

A foot kicking a ball: Narrative falling apart in the VJing playground

2- Aims and Objectives:

It all started when I realized that I am intrigued by storytelling and how it can be used in the visual field, being a practitioner in graphic design. I recollect stories and link them with concepts that I am recently becoming aware of, despite the fact that I don’t have great communication skills, which makes my storytelling experiences a bit complicated. And being from Beirut, in the Middle East, my character has been molded in a way that politics and economy is a vital interest.

Based on an incident of a football hitting my face when I was four years old, to my nosebleed ruining the removable collar of my mother’s dress, to the boutique where my mother purchased this dress and the boutique’s high stature, to the deterioration of the middle class’s economical situation in Beirut the nineties, I will be looking at football practice and its implications on the sociopolitical, discussing the ‘bread and circus’ phenomenon, driven by personal narrative and subjective judgments.

Far from being a novelist and intrigued by little stories, the accident of the football strike is the start of a narrative leading to a VJing project. VJing (in my case) comes from living in Beirut, a city renowned for its nightlife despite the destructive civil war. So I figured that the best way of campaigning an idea (bread and circus) is through this hub. I want to explore the logic of digital moving image in general and VJing in particular in relation to narratives, therefore I will be writing short stories related to my theme, filming, editing, animating and juggling between the audio and the visual. The lack of communication skills from which I suffered during my teenage years, its repercussions and the nature of the VJing medium directed me to wanting the narrative to fall apart in the VJing playground. If a narrative is deciphered, does it become a set of databases? I will be looking at Lev Manovich’s ‘The Language of New Media’ to discuss this concern. In my previous experience in graphic design, I have found a comfort zone to initiate the projects, that is the mood boards I create at the beginning; how can a mood board be translated in digital moving image and will it help in randomizing the course of events? An arbitrary decision of a football player is random, and randomness is a valid concept in the digital arts world. In Christiane Paul’s words digital art did not develop in an art-historical vacuum, but has strong connections to previous art movements among them Dada, Fluxus and Conceptual Art. As for interactivity, a football game is naturally interactive. How could one embed meaning in VJing? Would that be altering the role of this means? Devising a system that allows freeing my personal narratives from the traditional form and throwing them in the VJing arena will be developed through loops of filmed and animated material.

3- Context:

Process

From a historical point of view, a wide range of thinkers has studied the issue of mass-supported sports and its consequences. I will be looking at Theodore Adorno, Marc Augé, Roland Barthes and Herbert Marcuse in this part of the research.

To start, defining ‘bread and circus’ seems essential. According to the American Heritage Dictionary, ‘bread and circus’ is a ‘terminology used to explain the offerings, such as benefits or entertainments, intended to placate discontent or distract attention from a policy or situation.’

Theodore Adorno speaks about how the removal or reduction of the ‘bread and circus’ or what others term as ‘useful lies’ from mass culture will threaten the continued operation of the market and society as well as higher philosophical truth.

Elena Bertozzi, in her paper ‘At Stake: Play, Pleasure and Power in Cyberspace’, describes playing football as a ‘socially permitted aggression’. In a football game, the player reads and anticipates the action of the other, never quite sure what will really happen. Mastering football is a matter of time and skill. In the aftermath of a match, the idea of restoration of dialogue between the two teams, two enemies or two competitors is omnipresent: so much so that one can see the relation of football to politics, to rulers or governors using ‘bread and circus’ policies to fulfill and distract the governed in their basic needs, diverting their attention away from politics and interfering in the political scene.

Jean-Marie Brohm and Marc Perelman, in ‘Football: From Ecstasy to Nightmare’, discuss the illusion big football games provide society’s masses. It is presented as a ‘social elevator’ for poor people. The ideology behind these big football games is that of war, an apology for physical force. Fanatic supporters encouraged and promoted by the shadow of multiculturalism – or a form of belonging in the sectarian, national, regional or ideological sense.

Marc Augé, in ‘An Ethnologist in the World Cup’, speaks about how, during big football games, the masses reclaim symbols of the republic, the flag and the national anthem which otherwise are confiscated as the property of right wing nationalists. Augé studied the football language through television screens. On small screen televisions and monitors, audiences watching a football match plunge into a so-called ‘voluntarism of imagination’, that is, the tendency of the spectator to go beyond the game by screaming and trying to visually force the relatively small-scale football players to get closer to the ball and score. This phenomenon arises from the fact that the screen is small; therefore the simulacrum of the field is a field in reduction or a micro-field. This implies football players and the ball appear in miniature, making the viewer imagine that the process of getting a goal is actually quite simple. Later, Augé speaks about ultra big screens displayed in public spaces; here, the player appears larger than usual and thus, the ability to imagine is reduced to zero. In this case, the spectator’s perception with regard to the scale of the football match becomes more complicated: The screen enlarges players, giving back to the audience, as in their early days of movie theaters, their childhood perceptions… a period where all adults appeared as giants. For Augé, the relation between the public and the television screen is revealed at the end of the match. Suddenly the event is no longer inside the screen but totally outside it. The screen is, in this case, reduced to its modest role as witness or substitute with the mere task of giving older and sick people a reflection of what is happening elsewhere. The remarkable fact, at game end, becomes the urge instantly felt by each viewer to meet the crowd. There’s something to share, something that doesn’t exist outside the sharing process; and that is the object that the screen cannot contain. It is at the same time the victory and the limits of the media… the moment when television screens become abandoned by all those who rush to the streets to congratulate each other.

Roland Barthes in ‘Mythologies’ continues the case study of mass-supported sports using the boxing scene in Paris in the 1960s. In trying to understand the football scene, one needs to question the core subject of popular games where the central event happens outside the playing field in the football sense or the arena in boxing: The delirious crowd, the intellectuals glued to their television screens and the public literally colonized by magical passes or punches.

According to author Michael G. Horowitz, philosopher Herbert Marcuse ‘sees history as an endless confrontation between reason and imposed ignorance’… The ruling class, Marcuse insists, will resort to anything to preserve its privileged position, from the artificial creation of pointless wars and weapons to the maintenance of a sterile morality to a massive ‘bread and circus’ campaign designed to numb you into bliss with new cars, football and moon landings.

I will also be looking at the repercussions of capitalism on society and humankind in general, as well as looking at the concept of ‘Normalization’ and the ‘potential’ and ‘achieved’ society by Marcuse to further support my mission.

In trying to argument the medium (VJing) in relation to the content, I will be reading about new forms of representation. I will be looking at the ‘instantaneous’ according to Paul Virilio who would argue, “Where the last century's revolution in transportation gave rise to an era of generalized mobility, our own tools of instantaneous transmission are reversing the tendency. With the dissolution of the scale of our human environment (prefigured by the telescope and radicalized by the satellite), the very reality of the world is reduced to nil (or next to nothing), leading inevitably to a catastrophic sense of incarceration now that humanity is literally deprived of horizon. Having lost our sense of the journey in the commutation of space during the industrial age, we now lose departure in the age of electromagnetics and the speed of light.” I will also look at the connotation of museums and the choice of wanting to interact live with a crowd in a nightclub.

In placing ‘bread and circus’ at the center of my narrative, I will try to argue that it is not mere coincidence that the economy in Beirut in the nineties deteriorated, leading to my mother’s inability to buy her wardrobe from this fancy boutique. Inflation was a post war fact in Beirut; nevertheless Beirut had become a potential ‘winning’ project, or at least that is what the leaders wanted people to have faith in… the mere existence of the country on the map was a victory; debt was not an issue. Politicians in Lebanon were thus investing in the economy of football, consuming football practice and football teams rather than empowering diverse institutions.

Practice

Having researched the historical background of the football theme, I do not wish to portray football as a main issue. Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon in their film ‘Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait’ managed to immerse the viewer in an awkward situation, not to film the actual ball but the star player during a football match, without showing the actual game. They were playing on the ‘ordinary’ mentioned in the beginning of the film when the sentence appears on the screen, “Who could have imagined that in the future, an ordinary day like this, might be forgotten or remembered as anything more or less significant than a walk in the park.”

Storytelling becomes the main issue behind the foot kicking the ball. It is in Marc Amerika’s words that I find the pathway to follow; in a Tate Intermedia Art interview, he describes the novel in the digital field as what print cannot contain. Amerika remixes personal narrative, philosophical inquiry, spontaneous theories and cyberpunk fictions that investigate the emergence of digitally constructed identities, fictional personas, narrative mythologies and collaborative networks. He has been working on expanding the concept of writing to include multimedia formats... He starts with a written and then tries to locate different kinds of audiences through the Internet, in nightclubs, museums, galleries, etc… For him net art is trying to blur the boundaries so the difference between cinema, digital video, digital narrative, net art and so on… is to be revisited.

At this stage, I will investigate Lev Manovich’s ‘Soft Cinema’ project that relates to the above concerns.

Watching Amerika’s films and his technique of expanding the concept of writing, I want to come out with a personal narrative about the football story and see how I can make it fall apart in a VJing environment.

Challenging a medium was the main subject to ‘Five Obstructions’, a documentary by Jørgen Leth and Lars Von Trier about ‘The Perfect Human’, a film created by Jørgen Leth in 1967. In ‘Five Obstructions’, director and mentor of Lars Von Trier, Jørgen Leth, is invited to recreate his film in five different ways or experimenting with the narrative in five different ways, each time, carrying a set of obstructions placed by Von Trier. The outcome is heart breaking, and in a way, made me wonder about the flexibility of the digital moving image field, how endless the possibilities of the outcome are. Thus the idea of VJing becomes a means to an end, where the video loops that I will create are the main content I will be working on, while their order is to be decided later.

Another contemporary practitioner in the digital arts field whose work serves as a support to my research is Jill Magid, an MIT graduate whose work revolves around the theme of recognition and identity. In her exhibition ‘Authority to Remove’ at Tate Modern, she challenges technology into sensuality, using spy cameras, videos, texts, emails on intranets, narratives, performances… to engage the systems in romantic journeys, juggling between the profile of artist, surveillance subject and surveyor. Fairly political, she questions issues of identity, power, protection and trust… It is the playfulness and challenging the system once again that comes to mind whenever I mention her work.

At this point I should try to treat the sharpness of the narrative tone in a subtle way, this will be defined once I proceed with the project’s experimentations. For instance, when I speak about the narrative style (or maybe is it too early to discuss this issue) the fighting ignorance with ignorance and corruption with an even more corrupt mentality, I think of Rose Jackson’s comment on Rebecca Horn’s artwork ‘Concert for Anarchy’ (1990) when she says, “My first visit to Tate Modern was memorable due to this piece (among others). I love grand, surreal spectacle and it doesn’t come much grander or more surreal than a piano hanging from the ceiling. It seems slightly ridiculous and makes you wonder – what’s the point of it, but then again… why not? Where else in life would this fit?”

Narrative falling apart is a challenge, narrator in Wim Wender’s ‘Wings of Desire’ states: “With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, but apart and one doesn’t know anything about the other… What is wrong with peace and its inspiration doesn’t endure and that its story is hardly told? Must I give up now? Then mankind will lose its storyteller. And once mankind loses its storyteller it will also lose its childhood.” What Wim Wender is discussing sounds like narrative in a problematic environment – in his film it is the divided Berlin, in my research project it is football as entertainment in the sociopolitical economical scene.

4- Methodology:

I will be reading novels, theories related to the theme and visually translating them into mood boards, watching films and shorts and experimenting with VJing gigs in nightclubs. This is crucial for the theory usually helps me come up with ideas. I will keep track of this material on my blogspot, using it as an archive and interactive space.

I might produce a digital application form to be filled by Lebanese citizens, to help restore bits of my memory by telling me what happened with them in 1985, the year the football struck my nose.

Coming up with narrative bits based on my research process seems to be the first step in the execution of the project then working on deciphering it into small units. Then I will start filming and editing to create small loops inspired by a part of the narrative. Working on my technical skills in pure date (VJing being a means to an end) will enable me to start experimenting with randomizing the course of events.

5- Outcomes:

How to diffuse my narrative and make it fall apart?
The idea of using the screen’s full potential, experimenting with its dimensions, emphasizing details and scrutinizing wide thoughts, creating a sort of a visual dictionary / library sounds like the best possibility at this stage.

I will go into VJing as an end, clubbing is the dramatic end to this project when everyone’s there; the people with a drink in their hands are my target audience. It sounds appealing to me to expose my childhood memories and come up with statements full of extreme brouhahas to a bunch of nice people chilling in a club environment.

6- Work Plan:

Unit 1: Week 1 – 60 Research, development and practice
To read, watch, research, report on the blogspot, write the narrative, come up with visuals, figure out ways and styles of filming, edit and create loops to experiment, learn pure data and contact Ed Kelly.

Unit 2:Week 30 – 60 Reflection and presentation
Finalize the narrative and the visuals and apply in the VJing environment.

7- Bibliography:

Essays:
• Elena Bertozzi, “At Stake: Play, Pleasure and Power in Cyberspace”
• Marc Augé, “An Ethnologist in the World Cup”; http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/1998/08/AUGE/10819
• Jean-Marie Brohm and Marc Perelman, “Football: From Ecstasy to Nightmare”

Catalogs:
• Jill Magid, “Authority to remove”; Tate Modern, September 2009
• Tate Members; 1958-2008

Films:
• Wim Wender, “Wings of Desire”
• Jorgen Leth and Lars Von Trier, “The Five Obstructions”
• Philippe Parreno and Douglas Gordon, “Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait”

Books:
• Theodore Adorno, “Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life”; Verso, 2006
• Paul Virilio, “Open Sky”; Verso, 2008
• Roland Barthes, “Mythologies”; Seuil, 1970
• Herbert Marcuse, “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”; Routledge Classics, 2002
• Lev Manovich, “The Language of New Media”; The MIT Press, 2001
• Mark Hansen, “New Philosophy for New Media”; The MIT Press, 2004
• Peter Lunenfeld, “The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media”; The MIT Press, 2000
• Pramod K. Nayar, “Virtual Worlds: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cybertechnology”; Sage Publications India Pvt Ltd, 2004
• Christiane Paul, “Digital Art”; Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2003
• Michael Faulkner and D-Fuse Editors, “VJ: Audio-Visual Art + VJ Culture”; Laurence King, 2006
• Onedotzero, “Motion Blur”; Laurence King, 2004
• Paul Auster, “Oracle Night”; Henry Holt and Co., 2003

Websites:
• onedotzero.com
• Mark Amerika: Interview with Tate Intermedia Art:
tate.org.uk/intermediaart
markamerika.com
• Lev Manovich's Soft Cinema: softcinema.net/?reload
• Beirut on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut
• jillmagid.net
• rhizome.org
• Yasmin - moderated list for art-science-technology interactions around the Mediterranean Rim: media.uoa.gr/yasmin
• beonlineb.com
• arcadefire.com

1W5 A FOOT KICKING A BALL: ROMANCE OF FOOTBALL NARRATIVE IN THE DIGITAL FIELD

I was four years old when we left Sanayeh in Beirut and moved back to our village in South Lebanon to escape the next battle zone. These were years of war, so school was dismissed early, and summer vacation that year started way ahead of time… in the middle of February.

We were two kids, my older sister and I, living with our parents and grandparents with our main entertainment being watching the plants grow and the flowers blossom. My mother’s efforts in providing us amusement included, one day, an outing to watch a football game at the only playing field in the village. Upon our arrival, one of the players kicks the ball and the ball hits me squarely in the face. As my nose starts bleeding, my mom quickly takes me into her lap and places my head on her shoulder. She runs back with me towards our house to nurse my injury.

That day, my nose bled so much it ruined the removable collar of my mom’s brown checkered dress she had bought from Carel. It was a sparkling day, that’s what I remember. The crisp colors of the green grass and the red blood still shine in my mind whenever I reconstruct the accident in my memory. After the incident, my mom’s dress lost its sublime quality as the blood stains on the collar couldn’t be removed; and the dress without its collar no longer held any of its original appeal. It was its raison d’être, the only indicator of its Bauhaus connotation. I kept seeing the dress left lying around somewhere in her bedroom. Every effort had been made to remove the stains; but unfortunately, nothing could solve this glitch.

Years later, when I was to turn 17, my mother finally declared that she was no longer able to buy any more items for her wardrobe from Carel. It was then that I realized the economic situation of my family was no longer as it was during wartime.

Fourteen years later, the accident of the football hitting my face, the nose bleed, its consequences and my mom’s subsequent declaration would become like a wake-up call for me. I would question its implications. It was so connected, like threads woven with threads, like links in a contour of an amorphous form, a timeline and a grid, a population and a country.

I began deciphering the elements of my story. I thought about the strike of the football, the blood as a form of art, the reconstruction of the scene in my memory with the crispness of its colors, football practice, the implications of identity and nationalism in a game, my mother’s brown checkered dress and our financial situation pre and post war. I revisited the Bauhaus sensibility, the bread and circuses phenomena, sports in general, and the case study of Lebanon, in specific, with its public and the excitement, slogans and chants of Lebanese sports teams, the inherent sectarian and regional distribution of these teams, the representation and the aftermath of football…

Elena Bertozzi, in her paper ‘At Stake: Play, Pleasure and Power in Cyberspace’, describes playing football as a “socially permitted aggression”. In a football game, the player reads and anticipates the action of the other, never quite sure what will really happen. Mastering football is a matter of time and skill. In the aftermath of a match, the idea of restoration of dialogue between the two teams, two enemies, or two competitors is omnipresent: so much so that one can see the relation of football to politics, to rulers or governors using ‘bread and circuses’ policies to fulfill and distract the governed in their basic needs, diverting their attention away from politics and interfering in the political scene.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, ‘bread and circuses’ is a terminology used to explain the offerings, such as benefits or entertainments, intended to placate discontent or distract attention from a policy or situation.

Philosophers such as Theodore Adorno speak about how the removal or reduction of the ‘bread and circuses’, or what others term as ‘useful lies’ from mass culture will threaten the continued operation of the market and society, as well as higher philosophical truth.

It was therefore no accident or mere coincidence that my mother’s inability to buy her wardrobe from Carel was declared at the same period some leaders in Lebanon were buying football teams and encouraging youth to focus their attention to sports in the country. In post war Beirut, we can actually discuss the economy of football, neo-liberalism, and investments in similar institutions rather than in cultural projects.

The new economy of Beirut of the 90s, based on a credit system, was cutting its way into the shadow of football practice consumption and the consumption of football teams. Inflation was the post war fact; nevertheless Beirut had become a potential ‘winning’ project, or at least this is what the leaders wanted people to have faith in… the mere existence of the country on the map was a victory; debt was not an issue; and we should keep the game going.

Jean-Marie Brohm and Marc Perelman, in an article entitled ‘Football: From Ecstasy to Nightmare’, discuss the illusion big football games provide to society’s masses. It is presented as a “social elevator” for poor people. The ideology behind these big football games is the ideology of war, an apology for physical force – or a socially permitted aggression in Bertozzi’s words. Fanatic supporters encouraged and promoted by the shadow of multiculturalism – or a form of belonging in the sectarian, national, regional or ideological sense.

Marc Augé, in an article entitled ‘An Ethnologist in the World Cup’, speaks about how, during big football games, citizens (or the masses) reclaim symbols of the republic, the flag and the national anthem which otherwise are usually confiscated as the property of right wing nationalists.

Roland Barthes, in his book ‘Mythologies’ continues the case study of mass-supported sports using the boxing scene in Paris in the 1960s. In trying to understand the football scene in Beirut of 2006, one needs to question the core subject of popular games where the central event happens outside the playing field in the football sense, or the arena in boxing: The delirious crowd, the intellectuals glued to their television screens, and the public literally colonized by magical passes or punches.

In Lebanon, a major redistribution of local football teams would take place after the war ended according to the surviving sectarian and ideological alignments. I will not tackle this issue in my final outcome but researching it and putting it out there is essential to assimilate the situation.

A series of rules in the Lebanese Football League is obligatory, among which is the fact that in the Lebanese Football League, league seats are distributed according to the sects, similar to the method used in the Lebanese parliament’s distribution of seats; that is, the head of the league must be Shiite, the league secretary must be Druze, one of the head’s deputies must be a Sunnite and the other a Christian; the rest are represented by one Armenian, six Christians and six Muslims.

According to sectarian, national and ideological associations, the chants of a team’s public represent or adapt to changes or events in the domestic political scene.

As for Lebanon’s regional distribution, all the areas are represented except for the Bekaa valley.

As long as Lebanese society remains in the shadow of such delineations (such as sectarian ideology) and the neo-liberal tenets which highlight rivalry and competition, football as a metaphor for ‘friendship, solidarity, and fraternity’ will never come to pass. It will remain a paradigm of war, battle and combat and the illusion of unity will remain hanging in temporal stage, or virtual unity.

Martin Heidegger in ‘Murder of the Body: A Jury Verdict Pending’ discusses the video game culture, saying that “our culture is fascinated with the immaterial body which knows no aging process and may overcome even death.”

In this spirit, I want to create a video (or series of loops, depending whether I want to publish the final narrative as an interactive project), based on stories – both narrative and informative – to discuss my society and culture as seen through a football match.

Marc Augé studied the football language through television screens. According to him, on small screen televisions and monitors, audiences watching a football match plunge into a so-called “voluntarism of imagination”, that is, the tendency of the spectator to go beyond the game by screaming and trying to visually force the relatively small-scale football players to get closer to the ball and score.

This phenomenon arises to the fact that the screen is small; therefore the simulacrum of the field is a field in reduction, or a micro-field. This implies that the football players and the ball appear in miniature, making the viewer imagine that the process of getting a goal is actually quite simple. At a later stage, Augé speaks about ultra big screens displayed in public spaces; here, the player appears larger than usual, and thus, the ability to imagine is reduced to zero. In this case, the spectator’s perception with regard to the scale of the football match becomes more complicated: The screen enlarges players, giving back to the audience, as in their early days of movie theaters, their childhood perceptions… a period where all adults appeared as giants.

The relation between the public and the television screen is revealed at the end of the match; suddenly the event is no longer inside the screen, but totally outside it. The screen is, in this case, reduced to its modest role as witness, or substitute with the mere task of giving older and sick people a reflection of what is happening elsewhere.

The remarkable fact, at game end, becomes the urge instantly felt by each viewer to meet the crowd. There’s something to share, something that doesn’t exist outside the sharing process; and that is the object that the screen cannot contain. It is at the same time the victory and the limits of the media… the moment when television screens become abandoned by all those who rush to the streets to congratulate each other.

I will be researching throughout my project the football language and technical terms, with elements or techniques such as ‘replay’ and ‘slow motion’ that allow for a more clinical decipherment of an arbitrary decision, or the exploration of a detail that otherwise could not be seen. In a way, these visual techniques used to present a football match to TV screen viewers, teach us how to see. It urges the viewer to encourage, to be inside the event. After all, a football game is half-carnival, half manifestation; it is a feast to re-conquer something that resembles reality.

At this point, I have a vague idea of the type of imagery, but I was thinking of the video game type as a possibility to include icons representing players and football teams, the ambassadors of this intense sport’s event; an event which becomes, for mere mortals, an occasion to measure one’s history to the larger history, or to history simply.

More than any other sport, football remains one etched into our memory: It possesses, to a high degree, the force of souvenir, incomparable mixes, a rare aroma provoking drunkenness that blends the past with the present, myth and ritual.

It is not by accident that, twenty years later, I still recall the football hitting my face that day in my parent’s village. It has become the alarm that wakes me up every morning.

I am intending to proceed by interviewing a leftist economist ‘Kamal Hamdan’ regarding the issue of the economical situation in 90s Beirut, since I think I have some kind of a lack in this area. Then I will continue doing my readings on the narrative in the cyberspace, for that I have to start from earlier theoreticians who wrote about structuralism and narration, to include Roland Barthes’ ‘Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives’ and contemporary practitioners to include Mark Amerika’s way of describing the novel in the digital realm. For the style, I will be going through a whole range of narrative approaches from animation series (for instance Beavis and Butt-head) to comic artists (David Shrigley per se), television shows (the MTV Jackass world) and other forms of art that included narration. Then, I will start writing a script, using both personal stories, and trying to link them to the economical, social, and national aspects of the Football and political practice and aftermath. I will have to research potential visual elements, potential style (deconstruction style so far) and location hunting for the filming spots. Once I decide on the final outcome, I will have access to a tutorial to the relative software needed to start the actual realization of the project.