Trash aesthetics and the sublime: Strategies for visualising the unrepresentable within a landscape of refuse

Living in a technology-dependent society, it seems inevitable that our vision of the world is mediated and extended through our interactions with technology. We often realize the extent of technological mediation when our machines cease to function correctly. When a machine fails, we leave the predictably functioning world and enter into another realm. Think of the primitive magic of lighting candles during a power cut, where there is the potential of experiencing something sublime—something beyond the order and structure that technology imposes on us. On the other hand, when technology breaks it is also an opportunity to experience a myriad of emotions such as frustration, rage, loss, or boredom. In the face of technological failure, our ingrained response is to obtain a replacement, an upgrade, that promises greater freedom and a new way of visualizing the world. The old piece of technology turns to trash and falls silently and invisibly from our consciousness, as new technological vistas take command of our attention. The failure of machines can also be an intentional consequence of industry, such as the kind of in-built redundancy that drives the production and sale of new products, as discussed in Vance Packard’s book The Waste Makers or Slavoj Žižek’s commentary in Astra Taylor’s 2008 documentary Examined Life. While, in this sense, trash is intentional, there is also something about trash which has moved beyond function and human purpose: this is the link between trash and the realm of the sublime that I wish to explore in this essay

The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author-function

This thesis is situated within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia, and explores the mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture compared to that of a Read/Only tradition. The hypothesis of this study is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such, represents new functions and attributes, distinct from a more conventional concept of authorship, in which the roles of audience and author are more separate. Read/Write and participatory culture, as defined by this study, is focused on collaboration, and includes the influences of D.I.Y. culture, Open-Source practices and the production of text by multiple authors. Multi-authorship presents a re-thinking of several concepts which support the notion of the individual author, since the focus of multi-authorship is not on attribution and ownership of a finished text, but on the continued malleability of a text. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Alan Smithee and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, whilst concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names form an important context to this study, since primary research involves the construction of an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology and the interaction of thirty nine participants, who are invited to create a body of work under the collective pseudonym Karen Karnak. The data generated by this experiment is analysed using aspects of Michel Foucault's author-function to identify and determine power structures inherent in the WikiMedia context. The interplay of power structures, including concepts such as identity, ownership and the body of work, affect the resulting mode of authorship and contribute to the construction of Karen Karnak, suggesting further areas of research into the emerging multi-author

‘It’s on the tip of my Google’: Intra-active performance and the non-totalising learning environment

Technologies that expand the learning environment to include interactions outside of the physical space of the classroom, such as the use of Google as an aid to memory, represent one aspect of learning that occurs within several seemingly decentralised spaces. On the other hand, it can be argued that such interactive technologies are enclosed in what Bruno Latour calls a ‘Black-box’: a ‘totalising’ enclosure that delimits interaction and channels users towards yet another form of centralised learning space. Used as a starting point, the focus of this article rapidly shifts from the constraints of the ‘Black-box’ towards a type of engagement that embraces material agency: an engagement with materials and fragments of knowledge that emerge from the ‘non-totalising’ assemblage. To assist in this trajectory, Karen Barad’s concept of intra-activity is employed, where agency is seen as distributed between human and non-human actants. The space in which this engagement between human and materials occurs, as a non-totalising learning space, is the concern of this article, which uses an interactive audio/visual performance event called Bingodisiac as a case study to examine various ways in which we can learn to move beyond the constraints of totalising structures. Bingodisiac is a project initiated by the researcher in 2002, as an informal collection of musicians who are assembled for a one-off improvised performance. This article draws upon interviews and journal notes collected at the time of the performances to explore the analogy of ‘noise music’ and how this can be related to ways in which the learning space of the classroom and the types of knowledge produced have become decentralised

From ideology to algorithm: the opaque politics of the internet

The emergence of new technology has a recurring history of being understood in terms of emancipation, as if access to new functions provides the potential for liberating social organisation. Walter Benjamin has argued that new technologies of mechanical reproduction have the potential to liberate and politicise humans. This argument has been applied most recently by Marcus Breen in his book Uprising to the internet’s potential for liberating politicisation. However, questions remain about the emancipatory power of the internet. Is it really a tool of liberation or a space of control? Focusing on the underlying systemic structures of the internet, the stance taken in this paper is to dispute the possibilities of new media functioning as an emancipatory tool. Central to the approach taken in this paper, is a consideration of the role of the algorithm in controlling the flow of internet data. Algorithm is a mathematical term used to define the binary code that enables command operations in computer systems (Judit 157). In recent years the algorithm has been used to describe the technology behind the internet search engine. A search engine such as Google uses algorithmic processing to electronically decide the order and importance of search results. Similar algorithms are used to link search terms with product advertising. Algorithms work at the level of the network and produce difference. They order and control the way internet users gain access to information and knowledge. As such, they are not inherently liberating, but constitute a powerful tool of intellectual oppression which, I argue, replaces the ideological oppression of the older technologies. My hypothesis is that the public sphere – a space of centralising ideologies in which a general consensus can be formed, as proposed by Habermas -- becomes a network of differences when applied to the internet. Differences within the internet are broken down to the level of the individual and at such a micro-level that the macro, i.e. the political, has already disappeared. In the enhanced subjectivity of personal monitor space (Breen 110-111), ideology becomes subjective and individualised. In such a space, the unifying modality of ideology gives way to the differential processing of the algorithm which shapes social space as a controlled experiment, and which may be adapted to create different output results. I will argue that in its capacity to shape the social space of the individualised internet user, the algorithm has now become a more effective method of intellectual oppression than the ideology of the outdated mass media technologies

The DiY ['Do it yourself'] Ethos: A participatory culture of material engagement

Do it Yourself (DiY) is a participatory culture which exemplifies a particular ethos in its approach to technology and materials. Rather than engage with ‘complete’ technologies, such as a technology supplied as ready-to-go item, the DiY practitioners examined in this thesis engage with the raw materials of garbage and recycling, ‘incomplete’, broken and discarded technologies. In this type of DiY practice the emphasis is towards creating individualised and custom-built forms of technology: often made from components and materials which have been re-functioned from their original intention to produce new and unexpected functionalities; practices which disrupt the dominant discourses of technology. This thesis involves a situated application of theory to DiY practices in the field: focusing on three case studies featuring New Zealand-based DiY sound practitioners and their embracing of functional ‘errors’ as a means of increasing the participatory potential of materials. My initial argument is, that the social perspectives and ‘human-biased’ view examined in current literature on DiY culture, depicts an attitude towards power and knowledge which obscures the recognition of material agency. In this thesis, ‘power’ is defined within a social constructivist, or as a ‘human-biased’ view, whereas ‘agency’, as the ability to make something happen, is more expansive and incorporates the capacities of materials to become active participants in the production of cultural artefacts. Through engaging with the work of contemporary theorists relevant to material agency (including Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, Levi R. Bryant, Susan Kelly, Lambros Malafouris and Bruno Latour), the limitations of the ‘human-biased’ view of DiY culture are highlighted and the emphasis is shifted from DiY participatory culture as a social phenomenon towards the idea of ‘extended agency’: agency which includes both human and material actants within the entangled assemblages of DiY practices and the material environment. When extended agency is applied in the three case studies, the initial question asked is: ‘How does the intra-action of human and material environment influence the processes of DiY practices and what specific strategies are used to increase the participatory potential of materials?’. In this sense, DiY culture challenges the way we see ‘power’ and ‘structure’ as being exclusively human traits, influencing our way of relating to the material environment and creating consequences and considerations which extend from the localised DiY practices examined in this thesis. The suggestion is that the extended agency of DiY culture represents a timely re-evaluation of the relationship between the human and the material environment, challenging prevalent discourses which place the human at the centre of power and knowledge

The construction of Karen Karnak: The multi-author function

The context of this article is the changes in authorship that have occurred within the comparatively recent developments of Web 2.0 and the emergence of interactive WikiMedia. The mode of authorship within a Read/Write culture, compared with that of a Read/Only tradition, is that the role of the audience has become merged with the author, and as such represents new functions and attributes. Modes of multi-authorship, demonstrated in the use of the pseudonyms Karen Karnak and Karen Eliot, represent declarative authors whose names signify multiple origins, while concurrently indicating a distinct body of work. The function of these names forms an important tool of deconstruction involving an experimental mode of multi-authorship utilising WikiMedia technology in the creation of a collective multi-author pseudonym, Karen Karnak. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of multi-authorship on the concept of the body of work, ownership and copyright

Feeding habits of fish fauna in Batang Kerang floodplain, Balai Ringin, Sarawak

Diet analysis of fish is important for the studies of competition, predator-prey relationship, trophic level, food webs and potential fish aquaculture. Analysis on feeding habit of fish fauna in Batang Kerang was still less studied. The objectives of the study are to identify the feeding habits and to analyze the food items consumed by fish fauna in Batang Kerang. Fish samples were collected from Batang Kerang floodplain, Balai Ringin in August 6 to 7, 2010 and in March 12, 2011. The total length, standard length and weight were measured to the nearest centimeter (cm) and gram (g), and fish species were identified. Fifty eight specimens were dissected to collect their gut content for the study of feeding habits. The feeding habits were detennined based on Gut Relative Index (ORI), percentage (%) of food composition and percentage (%) of frequency of occurrence. The results showed that the major food item consumed by fish fauna in brown water is detritus (44.6%) followed by plant materials (31.8%) and insects (11.5%). In black water, major food item is detritus (41.5%) followed by plant materials (34.1%) and algae (12.2%). Further study on detail feeding habit of fish should be done

Trash Aesthetics and the Sublime: Strategies for Visualizing the Unrepresentable within a Landscape of Refuse

Trash Aesthetics and the Sublime: Strategies for Visualizing the Unrepresentable within a Landscape of Refuse by Emit Snake-Beings - nanocrit.com - nanocrit.com. Representations of waste are something intangible and difficult to grasp. It is as if garbage is a material which is outside of the structure of our usual interactions with technology. When garbage is expelled from our collections of useful objects it becomes linked to the sublime. Art engaging in a trash aesthetic can be a way of reaching beyond human dominated systems of language, to acknowledge and incorporate nonhuman structures and what Jane Bennett calls vibrant matter. By using trash to visualize the world, rather than technology, we allow these usually excluded vibrant materials the agency to organize the world for us

Air Storage Tank Liquid Dispensing Device.

Patent for an air storage tank liquid dispending device which is convenient and economically better to pull liquid from wells, buried tanks, etc