[iDC] Re: notes on media remix

[Curt Cloninger]

ryan:
  i also don't think that one can
accurately say that all this motion graphics stuff can be looked at as
insular, formal hybridizing only referencing some concept of
"meta-media". their is some value, i think, to considering the
genealogy of cultural forms that isn't based on some opposition between
form and content.

curt:
I agree.  But I think you've got to make your case on a work by work 
basis.  It's precarious to say that because someone is advertising 
something using after effects that such and such a cultural effect is 
always happening.

ryan:
these "formal" motion graphics in question
should not just be criticized on formal/technical terms.

curt:
I agree.  But it can be a  useful starting point from which to launch.

ryan:
i'm certainly agreeing with the need for a more nuanced critique of
this stuff than what I saw Lev present, but i don't see how you expect
any kind of critique to not be some kind of imposition upon
observations (again, the Heisenberg principle). how does one make a
nuanced, yet neutral, observation of something?

curt:
by looking at what is actually happening and thinking long and hard 
about it before rushing headlong to connect the obligatory dots to 
Baudrillard or Judith Butler or whomever.  I agree that neutral 
observation is impossible, but I don't think it's a myth or a vapor. 
I still think it's something desirable to try and head toward. (In 
this sense, I'm the second umpire: "There's balls and there's 
strikes, and I calls 'em like I sees 'em").  Otherwise it becomes 
nothing more than a kind of culture theory gold rush game.  Who can 
be the first to make a novel argument about such and such a media 
practice from such and such a critical perspective?  Never mind that 
the perspective has been awkwardly imposed on a media practice that 
doesn't really bear it out.  Formalism is no substitute for culture 
theory, but it can still be a valid way to critique the 
misapplication of culture theory to specific media practices.

ryan:
this isn't relativism,
but rather an insistence on the political nature of the discussion. and
i don't expect such impositions to be so easy, or so easily accepted...
same holds for a formalist reading - which is still an interested
imposition and shouldn't be so easily accepted either.

curt:
Agreed, but you've got to start somewhere, and it seems least 
specious to start with a careful formal analysis of how the media are 
functioning (however necessarily un-disinterested that may be).  Such 
a nuanced observational analysis may then suggest whether to best 
proceed to Barthes or McLuhan or Deleuze or a combination of Virilio 
and Borges or whatever.  If every tool is a hammer (your pet critical 
perspective), then every problem looks like a nail.