While Deleuze's and Guarttari's language was difficult to follow the main idea I grasped was the connectivity between all objects and subjects, and the breaking down of barriers. Every piece of information or every object leads you to something else.
Similarly to Picasso's "Guitar Player"(pictured to the left), visually illustrated the idea of how glorified shapes of well known images become these arrows pointing to eachoether, leading our mind along this invisiable plane in a multiplicity of directions.
Manovich talks about "a massive branching structure as a better way to organize data and to represent human experience," rather than a typical outline or equation where one thought and another one thought will give you a certain specific answer. At this point in time I can google search the word "thought" and in .12 seconds have 51 million links to choose from. Each link saying something slightly or starkly different then the last.
These two readings were very interesting because it seemed as though they were considering this type of thought (expansive information) as a new thing. When really this connective information idea has been going on way before new media ever existed. From a Freshman Studies class we know Borges' Library of Babel originally published in 1941, way before the wave of new media, and yes while Borges is extremely creative and brilliant...he did not think of this concept on his own.
There has always been the idea of Akashic records, which are in a sense the complete archives of human experience, and can only be accessed through an intense psychic experience. The idea is all the same, an everlasting imprint of information that is interconnected in every way despite same and time.
I really liked the idea of the rhizome being New Media. It sort gives this sense of constant evolution and deep interconnectivity of all the elements. I do agree that the jargon was a little hard to battle through at first, but the general idea was easy enough to grasp in the end. Also, I think you'd like this xkcd comic: http://xkcd.com/181/
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, I can see the parallels between cubism and the message of the Deleuze and Guarttari article. I couldn't help but read the article with a condescending mindset though. I mean who writes like that and isn't completely full of shit? Your comparison helps me see how maybe the article wasn't PURELY "mumbo jumbo".
ReplyDeleteEvan I would have to agree with you. Emily you do bring up great points and comparisons between cubism and Deleuze and Guarttari's article, but it was rather difficult to follow. So, like I mentioned in my blog, I just briefly described rhizome but for the most part I thought it was filled with "mumbo jumbo" as well. It is good to see I was not the only one.
ReplyDeleteDoes the Net make the cosmos mappable through interconnected data?
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