blackbox and strange cities

tatiana pentes' projects thesis is BlackBOX : painting a digital picture of documented memory. her blog is strange cities.

"It is inscribed as on Pandora's Box...do not open...passions...escape in all directions from a box that lies open..." from Bruno Latour's "Opening Pandora's Box", in Science in Action: How To Follow Scientists & Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1987, p1-17.
Abstract

This work investigates and records the production of a digital media artwork blackBOX: Painting A Digital Picture of Documented Memory, generated through the media technologies of interactive multimedia, exploiting the creative potentials of digitally produced music, sound, image and text relationships in a disc based & online (Internet) environment. The artwork evolves from an imaginary electronic landscape that can be uniquely explored/ played in a non-sequential manner. The artwork/ game is a search for the protagonists hybrid cultural identity. This is mirrored in the exploration of random, fragmentary and non-linear experiences designed for the player engaged with the artwork. The subjective intervention of the player/ participant in the electronic artwork is metaphoric of the improvisational tendencies that have evolved in the Greek Blues (Rembetika), Jazz, and Hindustani musical and performative dance forms. The protagonist Nina’s discovery of these musical forms reveal her cultural/ spiritual origins. As a musical composer arranges notes, melodies and harmonies, and sections of instruments, so too, the multimedia producer designs a ensemble of audio-visual fragments to be navigated.

Dance also becomes a driving metaphor, analogous to the players movement in and through these passages of image/ sound/ text and as a movement between theories and ideas explored in the content of the program. The central concern is to playfully reverse, obscure, distort the look of the dominating/colonialist gaze, in the production of an interactive game and allow the girl to picture herself.

One of my objectives is to explore the ways in which social research can be undertaken by the creation of an interactive program in the computer environment utilizing interactive digital media technologies. The study reveals that, through the subjective intervention of the player/ participant (user)* with the digital artefact, a unique experience and responsiveness is produced with the open-ended text. The work is comprised of a website http://www.strangecities.net; an interactive CD-ROM; a gallery installation; digital photomedia images: and a written thesis documenting and theorising the production.

making transcendents: ascetics and social memory in early medieval china

making transcendents: ascetics and social memory in early medieval china by robert ford campany

Google Books.

by the middle of the third century b.c.e. in china there were individuals who sought to become transcendents (xian)—deathless, godlike beings endowed with supernormal powers. this quest for transcendence became a major form of religious expression and helped lay the foundation on which the first daoist religion was built. both xian and those who aspired to this exalted status in the centuries leading up to 350 c.e. have traditionally been portrayed as secretive and hermit-like figures. making transcendents: ascetics and social memory in early medieval china, by robert Ford campany, offers a very different view of xian-seekers in late classical and early medieval china. it suggests that transcendence did not involve a withdrawal from society but rather should be seen as a religious role situated among other social roles and conceived in contrast to them. robert campany argues that the much-discussed secrecy surrounding ascetic disciplines was actually one important way in which practitioners presented themselves to others. he contends, moreover, that many adepts were not socially isolated at all but were much sought after for their power to heal the sick, divine the future, and narrate their exotic experiences.

“this pioneering study overturns conventional wisdom about ancient chinese religious traditions by vividly portraying the social processes by which adepts could achieve recognition and legitimacy as transcendents (immortals). campany convincingly demonstrates that some forms of self-cultivation and asceticism were culturally scripted performances that could have a profound impact on the audiences who observed or read about them, and that both adepts and the individuals they encountered were involved in constructing narratives about transcendence. making transcendents succeeds in bringing these seemingly ephemeral beings down from the summits and the clouds by locating them where they have always belonged: in the hearts of their worshippers and acquaintances. this eloquently written book should prove an invaluable resource for both teaching and research.” —paul r. katz, academia sinica

monuments and memory, made and unmade

monuments and memory, made and unmade by robert s. nelson (editor), margaret olin (editor)

Amazon Books.

How do some monuments become so socially powerful that people seek to destroy them? After ignoring monuments for years, why must we now commemorate public trauma, but not triumph, with a monument? To explore these and other questions, Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin assembled essays from leading scholars about how monuments have functioned throughout the world and how globalization has challenged Western notions of the "monument."

Examining how monuments preserve memory, these essays demonstrate how phenomena as diverse as ancient drum towers in China and ritual whale-killings in the Pacific Northwest serve to represent and negotiate time.

retrieving the past, inventing the memorable: huang yi's visit to the song-luo monument by lilian lan-ying tseng

national past-times: narrative, representation, and power in modern china (body, commodity, text)

national past-times: narrative, representation, and power in modern china (body, commodity, text) by ann anagnost.

in national past-times, ann anagnost explores the fashioning and refashioning of modern chinese subjectivity as it relates to the literal and figurative body of the nation. In essays revealing the particular temporality of the modern chinese nation-state, anagnost examines the disparate eras of its recent past and its propensity for continually looking backward in order to face the future. using interviews and participant observation as well as close readings of official documents, propaganda materials, and popular media, anagnost notes the discontinuities in the nation’s narrative—moments where this narrative has been radically reorganized at critical junctures in china’s modern history. covering a broad range of issues relating to representation and power—issues that have presented themselves with particular clarity in the years since the violent crackdown on the student movement of 1989—national past-times critiques the ambiguous possibilities produced by the market, as well as new opportunities for "unfreedom" in the discipline of labor and the commodification of women. anagnost begins with a retrospective reflection on the practice of "speaking bitterness" in socialist revolutionary practice. subsequent essays discuss the culture debates of the 1980s, the discourse of social disorder, the issue of population control, the film the story of qiu ju, and anomalies at the theme park "splendid china."

illuminations from the past: trauma, memory, and history in modern china (cultural memory in the present)

illuminations from the past: trauma, memory, and history in modern china (cultural memory in the present)by ban wang.

this book offers a cultural history of modern china by looking at the tension between memory and history. mainstream books on china tend to focus on the hard aspects of economics, government, politics, or international relations. this book takes a humanistic look at modern changes and examines how chinese intellectuals and artists experienced trauma, social upheavals, and transformations. drawing on a wide array of sources in political and aesthetic writings, literature, film, and public discourse, the author has portrayed the unique ways the chinese imagine and portray their own historical destiny in the midst of trauma, catastrophe, and runaway globalization.

china adoption memory book

“hold on tight to your dream” presents a stunning china adoption lifebook keepsake featuring jinshan peasant paintings from chinesefolkart.com The archival quality, acid free set of lifebook pages is available in both single and two parent editions. The pages are fully customizable and come with a set of heavy weight archival, gold edged, sheet protectors designed for a three ring album or scrapbook binder.

features: china adoption memory pages: to record all facets of your child’s unique adoption story: your decision to adopt from china; people who helped make your dream come true; referral information; choosing your child’s name; preparing for your child’s arrival; complete travel itinerary; first visits together; your child’s birth place, social welfare institute, caregivers and daily routine; chinese adoption proceedings; medical examination; u.s. consulate procedures; festivities upon arriving home; loving messages from siblings, extended family, and friends, re-adoption proceedings; and more! china and neighbors: a detailed 8” by 7” colored map of china and surrounding regions. chinese zodiac: covering the fascinating chinese zodiac and each of the twelve signs. memories and milestones: 12 monthly calendars to record special events as your child grows, develops and begins to discover his or her new world.

religion, poetry, and memory in ancient china

ancient china religion -