January 26th, 2018
Discussion Post #1
Shklovsky’s essay Art as Technique reminded me of a point brought up in Seminar the other day, which is that if there is no discovery in your writing for yourself, then there is no discovery for the reader. You have to write for yourself as much as, if not more than, for other people. I think that this discovery can be lost in “habitualization”. You have to learn to see the mundane and expected things/actions (such as dusting a divan, as in Shklovsky’s example) in new and surprising ways. We should seek to de-familiarize ourselves with the objects/things that we begin to recognize after seeing or doing it several times. I really enjoyed the anecdote of Leo Tolstoy’s writing style. Shklovsky writes, “Tolstoy makes the familiar seem strange by not naming the familiar object. He describes an object as if he were seeing it for the first time, an event as if it were happening for the first time.”
Benjamin Walter’s essay on technological reproduction was very interesting and useful, and it really made me think about the different ways in which words and images can work together to bring out aspects that the other cannot capture on its own. However, he remarked that the “changed circumstances […] certainly devalue the here and now of the artwork.” I don’t want to lose the authenticity of either my writing or any sort of accompanying art/multimedia work in my projects this semester.
I think it’s interesting that both pieces discuss how art and writing are, and always have been, reproducible. They also talk about perception and how, if you aren’t being mindful and paying attention to your experiences/perceptions, then they may as well not actually exist or have happened. Walter writes, “Just as the entire mode of existence of human collectives changes over long historical periods, so too does their mode of perception.” This makes me think of how our current society is said to not pay much attention or engage anymore. We need immediate and quick actions and have to synthesize everything quickly. In my work, I want the reader to engage and not feel the need to move through it quickly or distractedly.
I would like to develop my writing style to become more surprising and engaging to both myself and the readers. I want to learn to work with words and media in new and unexpected, maybe even unprecedented, ways to offer new perspectives on the world.
-Parallelism: its purpose is to transfer the usual perception of an object into the sphere of new perception - that is, to make a unique semantic modification
-Aura: A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be; presently, the aura is in decay
the desire of the present-day masses to "get closer" to things, and their equally passionate concern for overcoming each thing's uniqueness assimilating it as a reproduction.
Like what we talked about in 312- is viewing a picture of a famous piece of art online the same as seeing it in person? No.
The stripping of the veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a perception whose "sense for all that is the same in the world”
The technological reproducibility of the artwork changes the relation of the masses to art.
- “It has always been one of the primary tasks of art to create a demand whose hour of full satisfaction has not yet come.”
-Quantity has been transformed into quality because of the masses.
The masses are criticized for seeking distraction. – should writing always be a distraction? Is this a harmful idea when working with multimedia essay?
“Distraction and concentration form an antithesis”
“A person who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it; he enters into the work […] By contrast, the distracted masses absorb the work of art into themselves.” -> I wonder if both can happen simultaneously. Can you enter into the world of the work and absorb the work, unselfishly, into yourself? (Saunder’s Advice to Graduates possibly…)