Reasoneon

I like this term. In my notes for the inventory of notes from Electronic Monuments, I wrote down “How does image reasoning affect our audience?” This isn’t necessarily a definition, but I think it does a fine job of summing up the concept.

To me, reasoneon seem very similar to punctum. How does an image elicit emotion from the viewer, how do we feel or think when we see it? However, I would like to think that reasone0n exists from two different angles: the logic behind the creation of the image, and the actual emotion and response (punctum) that is causes.

Lets take this image, for example.

How does it make you feel? What is your response? When I see this, I see what looks to be a rioter or a revolutionary who is throwing some sort of firework. I do not know the context of the image or where it takes place. Without context, my feelings are different than they would be with context. My interpretation is of any sort of riot or revolution. There is some sort of change that injustice that perhaps occurred, and yet it makes me feel nothing at this point, because I don’t understand the cause. I could be either outraged because of the injustice, or outraged because the rioters are attacking something that I support.

This is a picture of a rioter in Ferguson, Missouri. Ahhh, now I know the context because I am very familiar with the trial, and the protests. So this picture makes me feel something completely different. I am not outraged one way or the other, rather I am saddened at the state of America, both at racial profiling and the violent reactions of the rioters. At the same time I feel sorrow for individuals who are profiled because of the color of their skin, angry that this can occur in the 21st century. I also shake my head at the rioters, not seeing what good can come of it.

Now this post has a purpose. It has reasoneon to it, not just an emotional response elicited, but a reason for this image to be composed. I (the composer) want you (the viewer) to have a reaction to it. Your reaction will vary based on who you are, but now this image is no longer a generic image of a riot. It is a story, and it has a purpose.

Kindertotenlieder

Notice a loss in a community that is not accepted as a sacrifice of some other value.

School shootings: Is the loss of life a sacrifice on behalf of some other value?

Well let’s see. I don’t think that school shootings occur because strict of loose gun laws. To see the value we must look into the reason. Why shoot up a school?

Depression, hatred, self-loathing turned outward. I think when severe depression takes hold for a long time, there is a certain amount of it turned outward onto your peers. That is a simple explantation, so I will attempt to evaluate it a little more. I think that being unhappy is a vicious circle: you are unhappy and don’t want to spend time with people because, what’s the point, fuck it, and then being alone makes you more unhappy, which alienates you more from the other people who are constantly around people, and practice makes perfect so you slowly get worse at being around people and your social skills decline, and those poor social outings make you even unhappier and want to me even more alone, which… That’s one small part for some, but maybe unhappiness stems from completely other places, maybe a failure in a career, or falling out from the family.

In a free American society, we have a tremendous amount of options about how to live our lives. From the filthy rich, to the dirt poor, everyday we wake up and have options about how to live, what to say, how to act. There is no one right way to find happiness. Finding happiness is entering the Matrix; there is no one path or option that creates happiness, rather an infinite amount of options and choices need to combine together in order to create a web of pleasure inducing chemicals that go off in your brain and make you say “Yippee!”

Ask Freud. Real happiness comes from one of three different things: sex, sleep, and eating. Much of everything else is just to make us forget how unhappy we really are (in so many words… look it up if you want more info.)

Sadness, depression, is very easy to obtain. You wake up and don’t move, don’t do anything. You will inevitable become depressed (and hungry, and sex-depraved). The lack of a choice is a choice in itself.

In a society of options, the shooter my lack the ability to find happiness. And this is because we live in a society of options, that is the value, the value of free will. Yes, there are those who deal with emotional, physical abuse, are dealt a bad hand of cards (cards of life) and that certainly contributes. But are these shooters abuse victims, facing adversity? Are they middle class, wealthy, have time on their hands? Both?

Happiness is difficult to come by, and many choose options in the matrix that lead down a much different, much darker path. Thus is the complexity of life, and free will has not made it any easier.

Popcycle

The distribution of ideas and images varies depending on what sphere (personal, media, community).

In a personal popcycle, those ideas are often translated into the media or community. Take Twitter for example (a mix between community and media). Personal anecdotes, values, photos, phrases make it’s way into the public sphere. They may have originated in one specific personal life, but now they can be viewed by countless others.

The breaking this barrier is a huge aspect of electracy. There is a tremendous difference between an ideal that one man has formed, and a ideal that has been formed in order to be viewed and judged by others. It affects the very nature of the idea. Yes, many great thinkers need their ideas and inventions to be tested by the science world (peer review). This is normal, but when a personal value becomes tested on the Twitter world it is much different. Ideas might be initially skewed for agreement, or argumentation. It has been affected long before it has a chance to form. What does this mean?

The internet is mean, cruel. It is easy to poke fun at something from the safety of ones own computer. Ideals tested in the public sphere face a lot of scrutiny, perhaps watering down it’s content in the first place. But are watered down ideals really what drives the great aspects of our world?

Similarly, Twitter offers a huge sample size of responses. It becomes up to the poster to interpret this, and it can be very helpful to hear many others’ responses. This is particularly strong on Reddit, where users ask advice on many personal problems. The personal pop cycle can once again be swayed by the community (for better or for worse). There exists an aspect of community in these instances. But can a community not condemn and judge? That is why ideals tested on the internet is a complex situation, and should always be interpreted with discretion.

Project focus

I will focus on the oil spill, which occurs more often than one might think. There are entire websites devoted to tracking the amount of spill that occurs during shipping every year that receives zero news coverage.

The blindness I intend on uncovering with this MEmorial are the underlying values that allows for such a disaster to occur. There are two such values that I can think of, I might use both for the project’s basis:

• The quality of life that comes with machines and technology that run on fossil fuels (specifically oil, gas). We are used to this quality of life and expect nothing less at this point in time.
• The value that large corporations have a tremendous amount of independence and will often make decisions for the sake of profit, as opposed to the good the environment or collective. We give them this power by being consumers because we like the quality of life that products created by corporations give us. Also the act gathering materials, creating machines, and producing life altering products is a task to large for one person, so we give these tasks to corporations because they have the resources and manpower to create these things. The fact that corporations abuse these powers that we give them is part of the creation of a disaster, and we accept this and stand idly.

The sacrifice: Every oil spills affect our environment, harming wildlife, the composition of our ocean, and other human beings. This is what is sacrificed every year so that we can enjoy a quality of life created by products and other things that use oil as fuel.

The mood: When the BP oil spill broke there was a huge response. People were horrified, angry about how something like this could happen. When I found out that the drilling equipment was old and worn, and that the regulations that go into maintaing BP’s oil rigs were also run by BP, I was disgusted but not surprised. It seems life any large business will do whatever it takes to save money, in this case ignoring old equipment and pretending that it still works fine.

Project 3 blog

BP Oil Spill:

This spill dumped millions of barrels of oil into the gulf, affecting wildlife, the composition of the ocean, as well as the people who live on the coasts.

This problem affects many people because there is such a tremendous fishing industry in that area, as well as tourism that is affected by tainted waters. The fact that the environment is being tarnished is also a problem that affects everyone.

Exxon Valdez oil spill

Oil spills exist, and will persist to exist because of the world’s dependency on oil. The lifestyle that we are used to relies on fossil fuels for nearly every aspect of our lives, therefore oil spills are a result of this lifestyle and the necessity for oil.

In Prep for exercise 3

Genre: Comedic meme. “Bad Luck Brian” is a picture that has become a semi famous meme. It can be modified and altered by anyone.

Occupation/Rhetorical Velocity

In terms of an “occupation” of digital thought regarding activism promoting eco-friendly activities, this space already exists and has existed for a long time. Such activism began in the late 1970’s when CO2 levels started to become regularly measured and discussed. The digital space has been around since the internet took form in the 1990’s, so my website is really about 20 years late to the party. Led by organizations such as Greenpeace, there are thousands of websites that discuss our climate and how humans affect it, and they have the money and intellectual power that me and my five classmates lack.

That is why I would like to jump into this “occupation” that already exists. To link this with rhetorical velocity, I want our posts to be circulated and reposted into this matrix of eco-sustainable occupation. This can be achieved by our use of tags, or genres of posts that will be picked up by other eco-bloggers and websites.

I am not worried about the content of our work being altered. We differ from other sustainability websites because we deal so much in the small scale. Our posts are very personalized; they cover specific examples and moments that aren’t broad enough to be altered and distributed wide scale. They are examples from our lives and the lives of people close to us, therefore if they were altered and changed then they would cease to make sense.

At the same time they fit perfectly into the occupation that already exists. We are similar enough to Greenpeace in that we are looking to change the way people think and act about our environment, but we differ enough based on the fact that we provide everyday examples for changes in actions, not just large scale facts and studies. I would be honored to have my work re-circulated through this network, but at the same time, I am not very worried about the subject matter being changed.

Hip Hop Revolution

SInce the early 1980’s, Hip Hop has exponentially grown in both its composition, and popularity. It covers a series of prerequisites in order to be considered “Hip Hop;” here are a couple of those that I can think of-

Spoken, or chanted rhyme schemes

Slow BTM (Beats per measure)

Besides that, Hip Hop encapsulates every musical genre that it touches.  There are endless possibilities of beats for artists to rap on top of simply depending on what type of music is being sampled, or created.

But Hip Hop is not exclusive to the musical elite born from schools such as Juilliard and Berkeley College of Music. A beat that is made by legendary producer Jay-Z.  Young artists can find their voice without much meddling from outside sources, and this is truly becoming a modern day phenomena of the internet era.  Young artists can simply download beats from sites such as Youtube and mess with them, make them their own.  Once again this process is revolutionizing the music industry, creating tracks and artists with styles yet unknown to the music world.

Representation

We truly live in a society mediated by images. Whether it is on the television, your computer, a billboard, a magazine, everyday we are constantly bombarded with images that represent one thing or another. And there are a couple different ways of interpreting these images, here are some examples:

You see a picture of your friend on Facebook, an image of them looking their best taking a selfie, smiling into the camera. One way to look at them is to say “Oh wow, they sure are happy!”

Another way to look at it as that they represent happiness, but may or may not actually be so. Their face says happiness, but that is only a single snapshot in a single day, it is an image of happiness, a representation.  I’m not saying that all your friends are faking happiness, but the image has replaced the substance, where looking or representing something has become more important that actually living it because you can always share an image on Facebook and no one knows the difference. 

Eco-Group (food, water, farming industry)

Feel free to comment on any specific topic that you would like to cover.  Off the top of my head…

Environmental impact of corporate farms compared to local ones

Organic vs. Pesticides

Use of water (pollution, or just plain using lots of it)

Pros and Cons of people supporting local farming (economy/env. impact)

Let’s try to get a site created by tonight, I’ll keep checking in today to see who is interested in joining the group.

Electronic Monumentality

When the Ferguson protests started becoming more and more talked about on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites, we knew that the issue at hand was important enough to be talked about that much.  Electronic monumentality, as far as I can tell, is that issues become important because they are being focused on through the internet; they are being talked about for a good reason.  In terms of the Ferguson protests, one of the issues discussed is if the police are being ethical in their treatment of the protesters.  It is being talked about so much that it shows peoples collective opinions on the matter, and their own ethical beliefs are being developed on social media sites.  Electronic monumentality is the creation of an ethical issue base on how much traffic it receives through the internet.

First Entry

My name is Luke Paulus and I am a junior and a Communication major.  I have taken two film related writing classes while I was still a film major, as well as  a creative non-fiction course, and a course specifying in written rhetoric.

Since I am considering a professional career public relations, I am curious to develop my skills in the world of social media, as well as network communications.  As of recently I was speaking with a former CEO of a large PR firm and he told me that the number one attribute that his company looks for in potential employees is a firm understanding of social media and online marketing.

One social issue that I am interested in are the racial/class issues that exist both in America, and in the world today.  While the Ferguson case is just one example pertaining to America, the conflict in between Israel and Palestine exists as a much larger issue that has been tremendously influenced by centuries of racial unrest.

While I am unfamiliar with the term “network engagement,” I assume that it has to do with communicating with other people through the use of social media sites.