Identity and reading "The War on Culture"

In Carole S. Vance’s “The War on Culture”, the author uses Andres Serrano’s artwork “Piss Christ” and Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Perfect Moment” as examples to show how the art from the minority groups struggling with the public taste.  When we read the article, we need to have some background information. The article was written at early 1990’s, which was far different from the time we are living right now.  During the 80’s, as the beginning of the “Culture Wars’, was a throw back to the 1950’s when the McCarthyism reigned.  As the nation faced an economic recession, a health pandemic with the emergence of AIDS, and the increasing social problems as homelessness and homosexual issues, the Conservatives fought to regulate and moralize the culture. That is why Alfonse D’Amato and other senators were outraged by Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ”.  For the same reasons, Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Perfect Moment” has to be cancelled under the congress’s depression.  The article brings up the issue of how marginalized groups within the capitalist society of the United States of America are treated. The article also brings a related topic, which is about the artist’s identity.  At that time, if you are an artist from a “different group”, you have to be careful to march the main stream’s value and taste.  Time has changed. As an artist living in the current time, I think the artist identity is fading and keep changing.  Philosophically, I'm more interested in becoming than being.  Much more interesting, to me, is not the identity of who we are, but the question of how we become.  For we become not by staying the same, but by relating to something different.  If identity is a valid concept, then to me it is still a process.  We think of identity as the identity of a person.  But people are far from one thing only, just as identity is far from always the same.  Identity is not a static thing.  In this essay, I use my Internet identity, my social identity, and my identity that appears on my works to support my statement.

Firstly, my Internet identity is not a static thing.  It's been said, I don't recall by whom, that we experience ourselves as complex and differentiated, but that we see others as a whole.  I think this is very good to explain the online identity.  I use myself as an example.  I spent at least five hours on line every day, which means I spend much more time on line than on anywhere else.  But somehow, the online identity is not important at all.  I always invite my friends to my website to see my works. The identity of my website is the domain name, but that is not a fixed property. When I create my website, I only purchase that domain name for 5 years, which means, if I didn’t continue pay for it, the name would be somebody else’s.  I have different identities on different web 2.0.  I create a cartoon character’s name to write online journal, I use my dog’s name to chat on Skype.  On Twitter my ID is a series of numbers.  I use these different Ids following people’s post, make comments, share videos, photos with other people and chat with them.  These “other people” I mentioned earlier, yet I do not know them face-to-face.  I know them by their IDs that they registered on line.  I don’t pay attention to their ID.  I have interest on them because of their postings or comments, or, they and me share some same interest.  I don’t care “they” are female or male, white or black, married or unmarried. On some level, I only see myself is different but all others are the “same”.  On Internet, I see myself as a “one” but all others as a “whole”.  So, who cares about the online identity?  To me, it is not necessary to pay attention to somebody’s online identity.  The online identity only reflects that someone’s interest or taste, and it can be changed as time goes by.

Secondly, a person’s social identity is not static either.  One can be involved into different groups, and be tagged on with different identity.  Identity might also be how a person presents himself or herself to others, may be clear in how they talk, and will most certainly be involved in who and how they relate to.  But as this person is always changing, the identity would not be the same along his changing.  If someone asked me “what is your identity”, I wouldn’t have so much to say.  Sometimes I am not sure what is “Identity” in our reality life means, although it seems it is a very important issue for everyone.  I was born in China, which means I was born as a “Chinese”.  But it is not very true.  I only can say that before I immigrated to the United States, I was a Chinese.  After immigrated to America, I was a Chinese the first two years, and then I become a Chinese American.  People in school think I am a Chinese because of my Chinese background, the culture I inherited and the way I look.  The U.S government considered me as an American and I even got a letter for recruiting for U.S Navy.  I plan to go back to china to teach after I got my MFA.  If I were really to do so, I would be a Chinese who has U.S citizenship.  That will cause me some inconveniences when I live in China.  . The Chinese government wouldn’t think I am a Chinese, I need to get the residential permission to stay first.  So, what is Identity?  I use my nationality as an example. What I want to point out is that the identity is not a static thing. Identity is always changing, it is not something about “being”, and it is always about “becoming”.

             Thirdly, the identity that appears on my works is not static. When I got in the MFA program two years ago, I was trying hard to find my form, as everybody else did. Many questions bothered me. If technology brings us to a communicational age, are we all connected?  If we were all connected, can we understand each other earlier than before? If communication brings us understanding, why we still have to face war and even more conflicts than before? These questions didn’t related with my personal identity, because I was thinking I was “globalized”.  On my first year of MFA, I had a show called “"Globalization". In my show, I use three different languages (Chinese, English, and Russian) to present the variation of "globalization" definition from Wikipedia. The underlying concept of the exhibition is to show the "Globalization" present in something that is known and being used worldwide: Wikipedia.  For each language, I use 57x57 inch frame. The texts are electronic printed on canvas. Right below each canvas frame, I put the English translation of that language so the audience can see and compare the different meaning of the word "globalization" in each language used, and the audience can easily find out different language speaking people have different explanation of a same thing. Though "Globalization", we can see “localization”. (See image #1 & #2)  Also at the first year (2007-2008) of my graduate study, two things attracted my attention. One was the U.S government band Chinese toxic toy.  Later, some American store announced that they refuse to sell the products “made in China”.  Of cause, “made in China” is not just a simple label. What is behind?  First, it represents a miracle of China's economy. But to many western consumers, “made in China” is not only representing an inexpensive, but also low quality products from China. As a result, it poses a threat to the merchandises at home. Based on my research, I had another show “Made in China” on early 2009. I made a life-size shipping container in a small gallery. The shinny orange golden color shipping cargo occupied most of the space in gallery.  Along with the shipping box, I presented the database that shows the merchandise list imported from China (to U.S) in year 2008. (See image #3 & #4)  When I create this work, I didn’t really think of my “identity”. Not because of I have Chinese background, I got more sensitive with “made in China”. I was interested on the identity of “made in China”, the social perception of a brand. This was nothing to do with my personal identity.  My latest work was “Tea Time”. The inspiration was form my trip to Israel. My brother was stays in Israel for about 10 years. Culturally, I became a Chinese American and my brother became a half Chinese half Israelee.  I was still thinking I was “globalized”, and same as my brother.  What "globalization" happened to us was not only our own identity changing, but also effect the whole family.  I invite people to the galley for a family teatime, but some of my family members were physically absent.  Visitors were able to talk to them on Skype.  In this work, although “identity” was not my theme, but people can realized that “identity” is a stage of changing, and it is not static. Currently I am doing some researches on how Internet changes people’s behave and I hope to develop that concept and incorporate it into my works.  Again, when Identity meet internet, the concept of identity become a gray zone. When I look at all my work, my personal identity didn’t play any significant role.

We need to consider the issue of identity is like flux, a stage of changing and ongoing.  As an ancient philosopher said, a person cannot cross the same river twice.  The technology allows the world changing faster than ever before. The lower cost of transportation allows people travel around the globe more frequently and to places that were not accessible before.  We are facing more opportunities.  If we pay too much attention on our identities, we limited ourselves to merge into many more interesting aspects of life. 

"western art"? or "Others"?

Talking about "western art" or "Other Arts", I think there's nothing to make one better than the other, to make one smarter than the other. It depends on where do you stand and what position do you take because the two worlds don't share a common language. In Chinese the word "China" means "the Central Kingdom", by that point they see all other culture all "others", as well as in Western culture a non_western artist has to deal with "impurity". we can connect many discussion in our class in the past to this topic. A artist's work not just belongs to the artist, but also belongs to the culture. The art reflect the artists themselves, and it is how we mediate our perspectives.

We cannot talk about art seperately. The reality is, if the economy is not equal, if the political power is not even in the world, the art is not in the same value. 

what culture?

Does an artist need to speak his "own culture"? He might speak his "own language", but what is his "own culture"? When we define a person's identity, we should think about "becoming" rather than "being" (if the person is still alive), because we are far from one thing(one culture) only. Or we can forget the term of "idnetity" at all, because we only think ourselves are different but see all others as a "whole". In the essay Fisher made comments on  the internationalism and multiculturalism. I agree the cultural symbol is "pure", but is there still any "pure" culture exist in this world? 

The essay also mentioned about the "cultural sign" and some artists who deal with "cultural sign"s. I believe a cultural symbol or "sign" is presenting "truth", with original meaning, and it is "pure". Ai Weiwei is one of these who successfully uses cultural symbols. This is his "Coca-Cola Vase". The vase is from Tang Dynasty (618-907) and paint.

Wendy March and her research on "ordinary people"

Wendy March is an interaction designer, and she is doing a interesting research on teen girls and communications technology. (http://www.intel.com/research/researchers/w_march.htm)
The angle she focuses on is not the "special", but the ordinary people. It is a remarkable angle, and made for a compelling argument that the design has impact the ordinary, boring activities that usually escape the notice of researchers and product developers.
One example is: Interviewing a Japanese housewife about how she spends money, it turns out she takes a wad of cash with her every week and physically deposits it in three bank accounts in three different banks. Asked about online banking, she explained that it was too expensive, and too easy -- the walking and depositing was integral to the way she managed her money. "We keep trying to make things seamless and easy," observed March about this discovery, "but maybe people don't want it to be seamless and easy."

how do we think about technology? Reading "Natural Born Cyborgs"

how do we think about technology?

To a infant, every thing is new, she is totally a learner. As an older person, we learn "who am I" by exprience the life. the information day by day is always changealbe, we absorb and selet the information in different ways depending our personalities, relationships, realities and cultural backgrounds. What is real, what is not real? People pay attention on the environment. when we look around, we see many things involve technologies. The technologies are invoving to our life style and it seems become part of our life. I notice when I am communicating online that my face usually mirrors whatever emotion I am feeling and/or trying to express - I have caught myself smiling at my monitor when sharing a joke with a friend in IM. I don't have to think about my face as much when I am just looking at a computer, so I think maybe I work less at controlling it, not more, than when I am face-to-face with someone. Interesting.

Reading: Natural Born Cyborgs (Andy ClarkMake)

Chapter 4
Question1: First, Please try the first 2 experiments on this chapter on Pages 59-60.
question2: given this adaptability with our external world and our ability to accommodate seemingly artificial things to be part of this speculate on what could be done with this ability?

They are interesting questions. Since our bio-body is a whole, combining and balancing all the actions and functions, and the brain control and balance all of these information and functions by sending signals and receiving signals. We don't notice that because we don't need to, our "mind" have other things to do. But all of these body systems are able to make things out. Something has become our instinct, the exprience and skills that we learn. But sometimes the "instinct" could be wrong. seems we only believer our instinct, and all the instinct all from our exprience. Those exprience become(creater) our soft sense, and these "soft sense" can fool our judgement, mess up the balance between the body and mind, that is what the experiments in the book about.

Reading Lev Manovich

"Database As A Symbolic Form"

1. The Database Logic
From the historic view, the logic of a novel is narrative, expressive and subsequently arranged. Narrative could be considered as a traditional dominated human culture. Later, cinema brought us a similar form of expression of the modern age. In computer age, the new media objects do not tell stories, instead, they are collections of individual items, and organized in treelike structure.
Ervin Panofsky analyze linear perspective as a "symbolic form".

CD_ROM --- a storage media, as a "virtual museum", has narrative nature nature like museum.
HTML --- sequential, storage of separate elements, open nature (always can be edited), never be completed, less narrative.

2. Data and Algorithm
computer games: "While computer games do not follow database logic, they appear to be ruled by another logic - that of an algorithm. They demand that a player executes an algorithm in order to win."
"Algorithms and data structures have a symbiotic relationship. The more complex the data structure of a computer program, the simpler the algorithm needs to be, and vice versa. Together, data structures and algorithms are two halves of the ontology of the world according to a computer."

A program reads in data, executes an algorithm, and writes out new data.
Once it is digitized, the data has to be cleaned up, organized indexed. The computer age brought with it a new cultural algorithm: reality -> media -> data -> database.

3. Database and Narrative

In general, creating a work in new media can be understood as the construction of an interface to a database... Database becomes the center of the creative process in the computer age. Database narrative is interactive. (user >< database) An interactive narrative can then be understood as the sum of multiple trajectories through a database. Traditional linear narrative can be seen as a particular case of a hyper-narrative.

Conditions to be narrative: it should contain both an actor and a narrator; it also should contain three distinct levels consisting of the text, the story, and the fabula; and its "contents" should be "a series of connected events caused or experienced by actors."

In summary, database and narrative do not have the same status in computer culture. Database is an unmarked term. Database supports narrative, but not narrative.

4. The Semiotics of Database

keeping each element as separate layer -> allow to change anytime -> montage look -> impossibility in reality

semiological theory of syntagm and paradigm: the elements of a system can be related on two dimensions: syntagmatic and paradigmatic. As defined by Barthes, "the syntagm is a combination of signs, which has space as a support." (* this is the syntagmatic dimension, exist in the physical world.)
linear sequence
(In paradigm dimension:) each new element is chosen from a set of other related elements. This dimension is related in absentia.

For instance, in the case of a written sentence, the words which comprise it materially exist on a piece of paper, while the paradigmatic sets to which these words belong only exist in writer's and reader's minds.
In the case of fashion outfit, the elements which make it, such as a skirt, a jacket, are present in reality, while pieces of clothing which could have been present instead - different skirt, different blouse, different jacket - only exist in the viewer's imagination. Thus, syntagm is explicit and paradigm is implicit; one is real and the other is imagined.
Literary and cinematic narratives work in the same way.

New media reverses this relationship. Database(the paradigm) is given material existence, while narrative (the syntagm) is de-materialised. Pis privileged, S is downplayed. P is real, S is virtual.

a saying that I like