Drama, the Ungrounded Self, and the Social and Technological Determinism of . . . the 90s? Oh yeah, and some ruminations on Sound and Music within Digital Modes of Information.

Week one's readings by Brenda Laurel, Mark Poster, and Nancy Kaplan were a great way to start the semester. All three authors engage in a questioning of the past, present (the early 90s), and future intersections of the then and now propagating (foreboding?) theories, practices, and productions of writing and technology, technologies for writing, the technology of writing, and even a bit on the writing of technology. And don't forget the implicated, implicit, and bureaucratic power relations and ideologies that interpellate the subject at these intersections.

Each of these texts was/is trying to enable the reader with a theory, or at least an awareness, through which to engage various aspects of these larger societal and pedagogical problems. 

Laurel critiques the use of the notion of "interface" to describe the interaction between humans and computers, and then promotes a dramatic theatre lens/metaphor as a more efficient and appropriate option for understanding this relationship. She describes this theory as a "poetics of human-computer activity" (xix, her emphasis), identifying her theory with Aristotle. 

Poster borrows Karl Marx's theory of societal power relations being determined by the mode of (economic and material) production and appropriates it into a theory regarding those same power relations, but with an emphasis on the mode of information rather than production. From Poster: "By mode of information, I . . . suggest that history may be periodized by variations in the structure . . . of symbolic exchange, but also that the current culture gives a certain fetishistic importance to 'information'" (6). Poster is particularly concerned with the notion of subjectivity in writing. In the chapter we focused on, he situates, through Derridean deconstruction, the problematic of writing and the notion of the free-floating, de-centered subject, that has only been more exposed and amplified by the current (then and now) reliance on technocratic ideologies. He critiques what Derrida had said to that date regarding writing through various technological mediums, and tries to expand on understanding our "Western" culture's logo-centric terministic screens, if you will. Poster convincingly argues that "a reconfiguration of the self-constitution process, one with a new set of constraints and possibilities, is in the making" (118). Of course, it is easier for us to see the theory of this process played out now, with the endless amount of "selves"-creation technologies available to us at any instant.

Though each text is "dated" in its own way, perhaps for me the most transparent of its historical time and place was the article, "Ideology, Technology, and the Future of Writing Instruction" by Nancy Kaplan.  While she maps out a still current argument regarding the way one should view the relationship of writing and technology--technological determinism versus social determinism--her leanings on theorists such as Paulo Freire might pigeon-hole her into an "education as liberation" ideology that for some (perhaps Poster would agree), had already begun to lose steam as a convincing meta-narrative shortly after she wrote this article. But perhaps not.

There is enough tension in the juxtaposition of these articles to write a lengthy post. Instead, in the wake of receiving our first 805 assignment, which is to produce a CD jacket design for the Hoodoo Hounds, I would like to riff off of Mark Poster's example of how music production is a prime example of the "constant reconfiguration of the subject’s relation to the world" (11) "The world," of course, includes any type of text--visual, written, and aural. This prime example is even more relavent and problematic today, imho.

Starting at the bottom of page eight and continuing for a couple pages, Poster describes the audiophile's problem of reproducing original music performances in the comfort of his or her own home. Said audiophile's concerns range from selecting the right recording to creating the perfect environment for that particular recording so that under the perfect conditions it may sound like "what a person in the concert hall would have heard when the piece being played on the turntable was originally performed" (9). Of course, even if every factor is taken into consideration--the right cables, the best hi-fi speakers, and a complex stereo system--"most often no original performance exists," and therefore, "the performance that the consumer hears when the recording is played is not a copy of an original but is a simulacrum, a copy that has no original. These rock performances exist only in their reproduction" (9, Poster's emphasis). Poster argues that even with this knowledge, the audiophile will strive for "an auditory Utopia in which subject and object, listener and room, merge in an identity of blissful sound" (10).

While most of us probably know someone like this, someone who has a very expensive entertainment system in their home, audio engineering and music writing/producing must stay attune to the demands of the consumer market and the necessity/invention paradox. Notions of an original concert production have been thrown to the wayside. The living room music reproduction has become a secondary concern. Where do people listen to their music now? Through awful computer sound systems, via minute earbuds, and inside their cars. For the last decade or so, in response to these listening needs (in turn, a response to the proliferation of music accessibility), the production space and time of most importance is that of the studio recording. This has made even more complicated our idea of any original sound and music (though the Platonist in us may yearn to imagine it), any original subject that may have produced this sound, and our own subjectivity in relation to what we are listening to. 

I just realized how much space I was taking, so I will make this short. Contrary to the social determinists cited by Laurel, it is the technology that has shifted the ideology in this case (if one accepts the place of music and art into that realm). With the advent of music such as Cher's "Do You Believe in Life After Love," and the popularity of various Hip-Hop acts employing obvious distortions and auto-tuning onto the vocalist's performance (like Kanye West), it is apparent that listeners know that they are listening to a production that was never in a "natural" or "pure" state, but one that was intentionally manipulated from the very "beginning". In other words, it is not just the audiophile or scholar who interprets music listening experiences as simulacra. This, of course, changes the point of origins, creating questions such as, "who is the artist?" and "is this still art?" No longer is the concern to reproduce a live performance in a living room environment, but the stress is post-productively placed on the live show itself. How can we reproduce the human-(incrementally tuned)machine element in a live, real-time setting? Or to switch subjects, as a listening audience, do we even care anymore? Should we? As researchers and producers of rhetorics and information technologies, how does this knowledge affect our own productions and analyses? Should it? Is authenticity and ownership really as important as we teach our students it is? What power relations are perpetuated by our adherence to older notions of a fixed subject's authentic creation? A notion we know to be a myth. Are we so terrified of abandoning humanist paradigms?