Researchers' Cardbox: Recent Episodes
James & Jasmine
The Researchers’ Cardbox podcast is a free associational, transdisciplinary repository of seedling ideas. An attempt to partially catalog the missing pieces of scholarship, it includes annotations of other people’s published work, the unpublished underneath of our own, and other random stuff we like. Think Sunday brunch with friends, only on a Wednesday.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we extended trust to strangers, if instead of acting as though our hypothesis were that all strangers are untrustworthy, we extended trust anyway in spite of a lack of reasons to trust. Would the outcome actually be as bad as some might have you believe? What if we trusted everyone until there were evidence not to? Also, I composed a quartet piece when we couldn't go out because of an ice storm. I might've been inspired by our trip to the orchestra last week.
[Closing music: "Ice Storm" by James]
Say what you will about Kenny G—who apparently has a CPA because he didn't think anyone would like his music—but apart from having an endearingly self-deprecating sense of humor, he also has the world record for holding the longest recorded saxophone note. How long was the note? 45 minutes and 47 seconds. Seems impossible, for how can anyone have that much lung capacity? Actually, it isn't lung capacity, but a technique called circular breathing. You typically use the technique when there's a long passage for which you can't take a breath. These days, that probably feels like a good metaphor for something. Also, I said eight basses, but maybe it was seven basses and eight violas, but who's counting? Me. I'm counting.
Further Media:
- Glasslands (World Premiere). Composed by Anna Clyne, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 18 February 2023.
- Romeo & Juliet Fantasy Overture. Composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 18 February 2023.
- Swan Lake. Composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, additional music by 79D, choreographed by Angelin Preljoca, Ballet Preljocaj, Detroit Opera House, 17 February 2023.
- Symphony No. 5. Composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, 18 February 2023.
Is everything derivative? Is anything transformative? The old me, who was younger, used to get stuck on these questions. The new me, who's much older, maybe has answers, but who knows if they're right. I once composed a song for myself, and it seemed really, really familiar... and then I heard it on an oldies station. It turns out that I had remade parts of Barbara Acklin's "Am I the Same Girl?" without realizing it. It was fitting in a way. Dusty Springfield and Swing Out Sister had also remade it, only they knew. Also, the heart has neurons. Think about that. But think from the brain or the heart, who knows? Happy Valentine's Day!
Further Media:
- Acklin, Barbara. “Am I the Same Girl?” [Single]. Brunswick, 1968.
- Alshami, Ali M. “Pain: Is It All in the Brain or in the Heart?” Current Pain and Headache Reports, vol. 23, 2019, pp. 1-4.
- Armour, J. Andrew. “Intrinsic Cardiac Neurons.” Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, vol. 2, no. 4, 1991, pp. 331-341.
- Bunzel, Benjamin, Brigitte Schmidl-Mohl, Alice Grundböck, and Gregor Wollenek. “Does Changing the Heart Mean Changing Personality? A Retrospective Inquiry on 47 Heart Transplant Patients.” Quality of Life Research, 1, 1992, pp. 251-256.
- Cole, Adam. “Does Your Body Really Refresh Itself Every 7 Years?” NPR Shots - Health News. 28 June 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/28/483732115/how-old-is-your-body-really.
- “Et in Arcadia Ego, Part 2.” Star Trek: Picard, season 1, episode 10, Paramount, 26 March 2020.
- Nancy, Jean-Luc. L’Intrus. Translated by S. Hansen, CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 2, no. 3, 2002, pp. 1-14.
- “Samaritan Snare.” Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 2, episode 17, Paramount, 15 May 1989.
- “Tapestry.” Star Trek: The Next Generation, season six, episode 15, Paramount, 15 February 1993.
- Wittstein, Ilan Shor. “Broken Heart Syndrome.” Johns Hopkins Medicine: Health. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/broken-heart-syndrome.
It's seemingly counterintuitive jazz advice, but it's true: In order to play fast, you have to know how to play slow. Why is this so? If you play fast without knowing how to play slow, then what you play fast can be really sloppy, and you burn through your ideas too quickly, and you burn out in general. I don't know, but we seem to be playing awfully fast these days, like really fast. I just don't know...
Further Media:
"Playing Fast with Christian McBride." Open Studio, 26 August 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EevNkIDnW1c.
Sister Martha told an earlier version of me that if we used calculators to do our math homework, we were only cheating ourselves. I had innocently asked which commandment that broke because Moses lived a long time ago, and calculators were new. Apparently, it broke no commandments, but, "What," I was asked to consider, "if calculators suddenly disappeared, then what?" I knew the question wasn't invitational, but unless math textbooks disappeared at the same time, I thought, that's when I'd study math. I'm now an educator myself, and my own OS has been updated several times since. I wonder if they patched this or if the same logic remains.
I never saw them live in concert, but I used to love this surf rock band called Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Never heard of them? If you've watched The Kids In The Hall, you've heard their music. The show's theme song is Shadowy Men's "Having An Average Weekend". I remember staring for hours at the cover art thinking to myself, "But what is an average weekend?" Is averaging weekends even possible? Little did I know that some thirty years later, we'd maybe invent technologies to answer questions of averaging what we'd typically take as non-quantifiable, inventing for ourselves a novel reader, so to speak. In any case, Jasmine and I didn't have an average weekend when we went to the museum to see a very special Van Gogh. It wasn't an average weekend especially because we went on a Thursday... after work, of course.
Further Media:
- Baldas, Tresa. “Art Collector Fears Disputed Van Gogh Painting at DIA May ‘Disappear Again,’ Lawyer Says.” Detroit Free Press, 19 Jan, 2023.
- Beato, Rick. “How Auto-Tune DESTROYED Popular Music.” 3 Jan. 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IV29YNTH3M.
- —. “The Smashing Pumpkins: The Billy Corgan Interview.” 13 Dec. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAfkxHcqWKI.
- Boomy, https://boomy.com/.
- GPTZero, https://gptzero.me/.
- “Requiem for Methuselah.” Star Trek: The Original Series, season 3, episode 19, NBC, 14 Feb. 1969.
- Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. “Having an Average Weekend.” Savvy Show Stoppers [Album.] Glass Records, 1988.
- Van Gogh, Vincent. “The Novel Reader (Une Liseuse de Romans)” [Painting]. Van Gogh in America, 2 Oct. 2022 - 22 Jan. 2023, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit.
- Who The #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? [Film]. New Line Cinema, 2006.
In Jasmine's porch garden, sometimes the birds help. They'll eat the baby seedlings, but whatever seeds they transported from who knows where end up becoming neighbors to what they leave. Also, this could be a fever dream, but I feel like at some point I heard someone say that some trees come to be because squirrels were trying to hide nuts and maybe forgot some. Seems like that could be true. In any case, Martha Nussbaum's new book on animal justice just appeared on my e-reader. I guess I forget about a lot of the books I pre-order and hide in my Kindle. It's good so far... And then somehow we end up talking about this squirrel who ate my sandwich and Husserl. We don't know where that seed came from either, but so it goes.
Further Media:
- Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr, Northwestern University Press, 1954/1970.
- Nussbaum, Martha. Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility. Simon & Schuster, 2022.
- Perri [Film]. Directed by N. Paul Kenworthy and Ralph Wright, Walt Disney Productions, 1957.
Since I've learned to shave without a mirror, sometimes when I accidentally see my own reflection, for just a brief moment, I'm like, "Who's that guy? He looks just like my uncle." Sometimes things change slow; sometimes things change quick. But I imagine, too, that depends upon the scale that one is using as a frame of reference. Still, some things change very quickly by any standard. Isn't that right, Dr. Kuhn? And sometimes you click on a science thumbnail thinking it's new, but that show has been on for about 13 seasons... Wait, Dr. Who? Anyway, who knows how and why things trend when they do. Bust out that popcorn bowl!
Further Media:
- Kozlov, Mat. “‘Disruptive’ Science Has Declined—And No One Knows Why.” Nature, vol. 613, no. 225, 2023. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5
- Park, Michael, Erin Leahey, and Russell J. Funk. “Papers and Patents are Becoming Less Disruptive Over Time.” Nature, vol. 613, no. 225, 2023, pp. 138-144. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x
- R.E.M. “King of Birds.” Document [Album]. 1987.
Sometimes in writing, we might have the urge to put everything up front and wrap everything up nice and clean at the end. While that can make for efficient reading, it can also lead us to forget what's supposed to be inside. Further, sometimes we seek balance, but proportion is important, too. Balance and proportion aren't always the same, for some instances of balance can cancel out what's good. And a third consideration: In film, if there's voice-over narration, it typically doesn't narrate what's happening on screen. Perhaps it's over a montage, let's say, to maximize communicative opportunities. Just like how our waiter, standing over me, said as he watched me take my first spoonful of the budino he just put down, "Dude, no! You gotta dig all the way to the bottom and get all the layers. It's stupid good; you're missing all the [...] deliciousness!" So write like it's budino. That's what I got from that. Happy New Year!
Further Media:
- Bérubé, Michael. “An Audacious Argument for Modesty.” PMLA, vol. 135, no. 5, 2020, pp. 970-975.
- Crookes, Joy. “When You Were Mine.” Skin [Album]. Insanity Records, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BUzRO6J4gE [Music Video].
- Dabashi, Pardis. “Introduction to ‘Cultures of Argument’: The Loose Garments of Argument.” PMLA, vol. 135, no. 5, 2020, pp. 946-955.
- Chene [0:00]
- Gratiot [1:51]
- Dequindre Cut [6:29]
- Joumana [12:33]
- Hug Detroit [16:09]
- Everything Is Going [19:41]
- To Be Alright [25:08]
- The Spirit [28:40]
- At the Aquarium [32:41]
All songs composed and performed by James S. Recorded in 2020.
Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!
- Belle Isle [0:00]
- Riverwalk [3:30]
- Hamtramck [9:22]
- Heidelberg Project [13:47]
- Hug Detroit [17:15]
- Woodward [20:46]
- Eastern Market [22:52]
- Exit 51C (Potholes) [28:34]
- East Jefferson [33:14]
All songs composed and performed by James S. Recorded in 2019.
Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!
This one has a couple of songs for Eric Dolphy. The last tune is for Toots Thielemans who was known mostly for jazz harmonica, but also sometimes whistled in unison with his guitar playing.
- Larkspur [0:00]
- Cascades [4:12]
- Anaphora [10:14]
- Tootsie Pop [15:00]
All songs composed and performed by James S.
Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!
Musical Intermission: Sweet & Sour EP.
- Shy Kitten [0:00]
- Sweet & Sour [4:58]
- St. Andrew [9:35]
- Tiny Steps [15:51]
All songs composed and performed by James S.
Back with Season 2 on 4 January 2023!
It's the Season 1 Finale! If humanity has a diary, perhaps it's the entirety of the Internet and digital and digitized data both collected and produced by us. Are we okay with others reading our diary? And what if some of those others are intelligent machines? We probably shouldn't slow ethical progress, but that's not to say that we shouldn't at least stop to think about what the progress we're making means. Also, if we live in a technological culture, we should be attendant to how the ideologies of technology shape our values. As knowledge producers, we probably shouldn't give up our ability to collaboratively participate in shaping what these values become.
Musical intermissions in the meantime, and we'll be back for Season 2 on 4 January 2023!
First there was reskilling, then there was upskilling, and now, apparently, there's outskilling. It's difficult to see what the near future will be, but if you just put all the components of the present together, that's actually a good technique for being ready for whatever comes further down the line. It's best not to end a franchise on a cliffhanger, but maybe it's especially brilliant to make long-awaited sequels into things that are at the same time prequels. In times of uncertainty, bend time.
In Physics and Philosophy, Werner Heisenberg correctly speculated that the availability of nuclear weapons would not make war obsolete. Instead, "the absurdity of warfare by means of thermonuclear weapons may, in a first approximation, act as an incentive for war on a small scale," and further, that this situation, in turn, could induce some nations to feel that "in the case of small wars inflicted upon them by aggressors, they would actually have recourse to the nuclear weapons" (p. 165). In other words, the then newer technological means of destruction exacerbates danger, especially given how what may seem justified or not is a matter of perspective. Herein lies another illustration of the problem of extremes. And when one thinks about it, even averages are extremes when they're reified into beings in and of themselves, when it's forgotten that averages are merely the result of a mathematical operation performed on what are often arbitrarily assigned values pertaining to actual beings. Stuck? Stuck?! Stuck!!!
Further Media:
- Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 1958/2007.
Perhaps it's an unconventional technique, but I meditate neither with my eyes closed nor in a quiet place. Doing this helps me focus on my target state of seeing and hearing without naming either what I see or hear, and for that matter, without naming anything else that I might be perceiving through any other sense, whether that be through touch, smell, taste, proprioception, etc. When I get in this state, it's easier for me to connect my experience of consciousness to the singular consciousness often described by practitioners of meditation and, perhaps to one's surprise, Erwin Schrödinger. Yup, the Schrödinger of Schrödinger's cat! Many people, I'm certain, have experienced this state inadvertently. For instance, have you ever found yourself staring at a page but not seeing any of the words? It's kind of like that. In any case, it's hard to get to that state if your open book is Schrödinger's My View Of The World. It's pretty fascinating. Highly recommended.
The question of what sorts of beings are ontological beings is an interesting one, especially as we encounter new candidates. However, one could get unproductively stuck on this question because we've long been stuck here philosophically, seeing as James technically doesn't even know if Jasmine, let's say, is an ontological being like he is, and this for the very reason that he only has access to his own lived experience. Still, it can't hurt to be ethical. It's also probably good to think toward methods of peace that can frame our understanding of community and being with each other, whomever that might include.
Further Media:
Evans, Bill. “Peace Piece.” Everybody Digs Bill Evans [Album]. Riverside, 1959.
The best chess advice I ever got was to not look too many moves ahead, "You're not a computer, so play the board!" As humans, we're pretty terrible about predicting the future. We might imagine many possibilities, but we never get it exactly right. For instance, five minutes before I met the person who turned out to be the love of my life, I was considering maybe going back to my hotel room to take a nap. Still, when it comes to making decisions of global significance, we should probably realize that the above chess advice would be inappropriately applied. We're not a computer, but machine intelligence is.
Further Media:
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, edited and translated by Hannah Arendt, Schocken Books, 1955/1968, pp. 253-264.
Fall is here! Autumn leaves float gently in the wind and continue downstream. The ole factory fills the olfactory with warm apple cider cinnamon. The end of a cycle can be beautiful. Also, machine intelligence, can you maybe please check our homework?
Further Media:
- Lau, Chester J., Max Loebel Roson, Keifer M. Klimchuk, Tania Gautam, Boyang Zhao, and Ran Zhao. “Particulate Matter Emitted from Ultrasonic Humidifiers—Chemical Composition and Implication to Indoor Air.” Indoor Air, vol. 31, no. 3, 2021, pp. 769-782.
- Pope III, C. Arden, Richard T. Burnett, Michael J. Thun, Eugenia E. Calle, Daniel Krewski, Kazuhiku Ito, and George D. Thurston. “Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-Term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution.” JAMA, vol. 287, no. 9, 2002, pp. 1132-1141.
- Weiss, Sabrina. “Scientists Are Tinkering With Clouds to Save the Great Barrier Reef.” Wired, 20 Jan. 2022, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coral-reef-cloud-brightnening-australia
An abstract in the style of a Rick and Morty episode summary: Jasmine and James discuss the difference between comedy and carnival and what happens when machines not only do our work, but enjoy for us, too. James gets back to his actor-network theory roots. This one's for Bruno, broh.
Bruno Latour (22 June 1947—9 October 2022)
Further Media:
- Her [Film]. Directed by Spike Jonze, Annapurna Pictures, 2013.
- Jexi [Film]. Directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, CBS Films Entertainment One, 2019.
- “JuRicksic Mort.” Rick and Morty, season 6, episode 6, Adult Swim and HBO Max, 9 Oct. 2022.
- Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Scholarly collaborations can go beyond just having co-authors. Education is perhaps best when it's comprehensive, so maybe educators of all kinds can work together, researchers, too. And if actor-network theory is correct in proposing that technological instruments might also be considered as actors in our network, let's not forget our collaborations with emerging technologies. Just as one wouldn't pretend a co-author didn't exist, why would one do this with the actors that are nonhuman? We seem to be at yet another critical juncture where technologies could reshape not only education, but our lives in general. We shouldn't miss the opportunity to get it right, on our fantastic voyage, to have "faith in the vessel, but know when to keep rowing." R.I.P. MF DOOM. R.I.P. Coolio.
Let's look at all things from all angles because there are more angles than just the one. It's only in this sense that we move from a 2D paradigm to something more holographic. In that case, STEM should probably have at least a few more letters added to it because we are, at the end of the day, all in this together. So let's be good ambassadors, hope that the next shift isn't the one described in The Next Shift, and just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the new name.
The Netflix series The One puts an interesting materialist twist on the idea of finding a soulmate. Typically, romantic dramas that put forth the notion of a soulmate set its cause as something non-material. The One asks the question of, What if the cause for the condition of being soulmates is not only material, but genetic? Taken as a broad allegory of ideologies of fit, might we not see the tensions of fit being a pull between notions of the one and only and a range of good enough? Ideologies of fit have influenced modern consumerist practice, but they can even be found in ancient ideas such as ergon, or that for which something is most suited. At bottom, it's the eternal question of value in general: Is what's best the sole member of the singleton set of the only, or is it simply whatever happens to be at the top of a plural set?
[Soundscape: Belle Isle, Detroit]
Further Media:
- Badiou, Alain, and Truong, Nicolas. In Praise of Love. Translated by Peter Bush, The New Press, 2009/2012.
- Overman, Howard, creator. The One. Netflix, 2021.
The products of machine intelligence are getting to the point where they're becoming indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke might say. Check out Jasper and DALL·E 2, for instance. Still, on some level, there are human sourced artifacts underneath training data, even when training data is machine generated. Are we on the horizon of entering a new phase where human intelligence interacts with an intelligence that's magically distant? Or are we in the process of making yet more versions of the Mechanical Turk?
[Soundscape: Belle Isle, Detroit]
Further Media:
- DALL·E 2 . “Home.” https://openai.com/dall-e-2/
- The Isley Brothers. “For the Love of You.” The Heat Is On [Album]. Kendun Recorders, 1975.
- Jasper. “Meet Jasper, the Future of Writing.” https://www.jasper.ai
- Thunström, Almira Osmanovic. “We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published.” Scientific American, 30 June, 2022. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-asked-gpt-3-to-write-an-academic-paper-about-itself-mdash-then-we-tried-to-get-it-published/
There's a deluge of content. Sometimes things get washed away in it, and sometimes it's the deluge itself that washes away. What ought to be saved and put on the ark, so to speak? Who will decide this? And when the content is saved by whomever will save it, who will be its audience? A lot of content these days is only consumable through the mediation of machines, but more than just mediators, are machines also our audience?
Further Media:
- Gitelman, Lisa. Always already new: Media, history, and the data of culture. MIT press, 2008.
- Manguel, Alberto. Packing My Library. Yale University Press, 2018.
Did you know that for all the different varieties of tea that there are, they all actually come from the same species of plant? It’s true. It’s just that that plant is really context responsive. The different types of tea you get is from the same plant growing in different places, with different weather patterns, in different soil. In this episode, join us for a morning tea from our porch. After tea, we’ll share some music that comes from our (James and Jasmine) musical collaboration, the Someday Brunches. Galina Ustvolskaya and Karole Armitage have been initial inspirations, so too Merce Cunningham and John Cage. But at present, we’ve been exploring the kind of elegant strength that can be found in some choreographer’s work—such as in Alvin Ailey’s or Isadora Duncan’s—combined with Olivier Messiaen’s exploration of bird song. Namely, we’ve been wanting to pay tribute to the landscape we often find ourselves in when sitting on our porch in Detroit, a landscape where birds and traffic just coming off the highway intermingle with surprising ease. Apparently, there are indeed ways wherein nature and the technology of the built environment can be together in peace. We ought to find more.
[Closing Music: "Birds and Traffic 1" by the Someday Brunches. For Reb Shlomo, who loved birds and mathematics.]
Further Media:
- Armitage, Karole. “Biography: Karole Armitage, Artistic Director.” Armitage Gone! Dance. https://www.armitagegonedance.org/karole-armitage/biography
- Merce Cunningham Dance Company. “How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run.” Choreography by Merce Cunningham, music by John Cage, 1965.
- Messiaen, Oliver [Composer]. “Le Merle Noir.” 1952.
- Ustvolskaya, Galina [Composer]. “Trio for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano.” 1949.
Is our reality radically different from what we think it is? If we can’t be sure, how can we be sure about the lived reality of other species? Sure, other species may have starkly different perceptual experiences. For example, some birds might be able to see magnetic fields. Yet it could be that we have similarities that we may not often recognize. For instance, prairie dogs might have language that isn’t hard wired code. And if we aren’t entirely certain about the specifics about how our consciousness and concern arises in the first place, what might this mean with regard to how we conceptualize who counts as fellow ontological beings? Also, apparently there are now interfaces that allow monkeys to play Pong with their minds…. That’s a thing. In just a few decades, how far we've come from Pong, to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, to monkey mind Pong. What could be next?
[Closing Music: "Turtles in the Water" by James]
Further Media:
- Agamben, Giorgio. The Open. Translated by Kevin Attell, Stanford University Press, 2002/2004.
- Čadková, Lucie. “Do They Speak Language?” Biosemiotics, vol. 8, no. 1, 2015, pp. 9-27.
- Daniels, Greg, creator. Upload. Amazon Prime Video, 2020/2022.
- Heyers, Dominik, Martina Manns, Harald Luksch, Onur Güntürkün, Henrik Mouritsen. “A Visual Pathway Links Brain Structures Active During Magnetic Compass Orientation in Migratory Birds.” PLoS One, vol. 2, no. 9, 2007, e937.
- “San Junipero.” Black Mirror, series 3, episode 4, Netflix, 21 Oct. 2016.
- Slobodchikoff, Con N. Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the language of Animals. St. Martin’s Press, 2012.
- Slobodchikoff, Con N., Andrea Paseka, and Jennifer L. Verdolin. “Prairie Dog Alarm Calls Encode Labels about Predator Colors.” Animal Cognition, vol. 12, no. 3, 2009, pp. 435-439.
- “This.” The X-Files, season 11, episode 2, FOX, 10 Jan. 2018.
- Wakefield, Jane. Elon Musk’s Neuralink ‘Shows Monkey Playing Pong with Mind.’ BBC News, 20 Dec. 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56688812
Just as having a list of ingredients isn't equivalent to having a recipe, having a historical account of something isn't the equivalent of the referent of history. What's missing from both is process. But what is process? Is process always something that has a teleological trajectory? Could it not be that some processes are accidental? And what do we do with accounts of history? While big data, let's say, isn't a narrative account—just as annals and chronicles weren't exactly narrative—that's not to say that they aren't useful. In some ways we can make predictions from understanding history narratively, but what sorts of predictions can be made from the historical account that's big data? How shall we use these predictions?
Further Media:
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness [Film]. Marvel Studios, 2022.
- Jameson, Frederic. “Criticism and Categories.” PMLA, vol. 137, no. 3, 2022, pp. 563-567.
- —- The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell University Press, 1981.
- Makalintal, Bettina. “Why TikTok’s Pink Sauce Was Made to Go Viral.” Eater, Aug. 1, 2022.
- White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.
Even in fiction, we often value verisimilitude. It's probably of little surprise, then, that in our digitally mediated lives, we complain about how we're often forced into distorted perspectives of real life. Still, we can be unable to free ourselves from the trap of mediation, and instead of living our lives in the company of those present, we search for yet other digital platforms that are more 'real' than the ones we wish to leave. While this value of seeking the authentic can seem to be a newer concern, it isn't, in fact, new, but perhaps only perpetual. However, can the pursuit of authenticity at times lead us to dangerous places? What can we learn by carefully thinking about the jargon of authenticity?
Further Media:
- Adorno, Theodor W. The Jargon of Authenticity. Translated by Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will, Routledge, 1964/2003.
- Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, translated by Harry Zohn, Schocken Books, 1935/1968, pp. 217-252.
- The Doors. “Riders on the Storm.” L.A. Woman. Elektra, 1971.
- Tiffany, Kaitlin. “No, I Will Not BeReal.” The Atlantic, Aug. 1, 2022.
Simplicity is deceptively simple. Could there be a complex underneath of the simple? Is simplicity in any given medium possible without a profound understanding? Could it be a trick of ideology to convince us that ideology itself is too complex to untangle and resist, when it’s success is as fragile as a magician’s sleight of hand? Perhaps child-like understanding itself is a way to resist what seeks to interpellate us. Also, shout-out to our favorite sushi chef who also happens to be an excellent DJ!
Further Media:
- Copeland, Marc. Marc Copeland And… [Album]. hatOLOGY, 2003.
- Copeland, Marc, and Randy Brecker. Both/And [Album]. nagel heyer records, 2006.
- “Cy Twombly Gallery.” The Menil Collection, https://www.menil.org/visit/campus/cy-twombly-gallery
- Erice, Víctor [Director]. El Espíritu de la Colmena [Film]. 1973.
- Faulkner, William. As I Lay Dying. Vintage Books, 1930/2008.
From the fact that Jasmine’s book was oddly miscategorized on an online retailer’s website, we reflect upon how book reviews are an important component of scholarly communication, how, in fact—if one thinks about it—the field of literary study itself is, in a way, but a discipline consisting of the gathering together of multiform genres of book review. Still, how have algorithms, reader advisories, and our personal consumption habits as scholars shaped the trajectories of whole fields of study? Further, have large, processed data sets become the new tastemakers?
[Soundscape: Eastern Market, Detroit. Closing music: "Jewel Tones," by Someday Brunches.]
Further Media:
- Felski, Rita. Hooked: Art and Attachment. University of Chicago Press, 2021.
- —-. The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
- Gutkin, Len. “The Review: What Are Twitter's Institutional and Psychosocial Consequences?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/the-review/2022-06-21?cid=gen_sign_in.
- “Hawkes Process.” Wolfram Mathworld, https://mathworld.wolfram.com/HawkesProcess.html.
- Kareem, Sarah Tindall. “Sarah Kareem Reviews Hooked” [Book Review]. Critical Inquiry, 3 May 2022, https://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/sarahkareem_reviews_hooked/.
- Sanders, Pharoah. Thembi [Album]. Impulse!, 1971.
While the conventions of genre help us understand novel material, they might also constrain us when we seek to push beyond. And when we write in an academic context, do our disciplines function in the same way as genre? If we pursue the transdisciplinary, then how might we address the challenge of making our work intelligible, while at the same time pushing beyond the knowledge produced by a particular discipline? And being bound by the iterations of discipline, do we become too focused on retconning not only our own work, but that of what we might call the “relevant literature”? We look to Maya Deren for some insight here. Perhaps rather than endless iterations, knowledge production could be thought of as the production of thoughts, containing thoughts, that contain yet other thoughts, like so much epistemological turducken.
Further Media:
- A Study in Choreography for Camera [Short Film]. Directed by Maya Deren, dance performance by Talley Beatty, 1945, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk4okMGiGic.
- Buckland, Warren. “Revisiting Videogame Logic: Impossible Storyworlds in the Contemporary Hollywood Blockbuster.” Panoptikum, vol. 26, no. 33, 2021, pp. 155-167.
- Come Into My World [Music Video]. Directed by Michel Gondry, musical performance by Kylie Minogue, 2002, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63vqob-MljQ.
- Deren, Maya. “Magic is New.” Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film by Maya Deren, edited by Bruce R. McPherson, McPherson & Company, 2005, pp. 197-206..
- El-Mohtar, Amal, and Max Gladstone. This Is How You Lose the Time War. Simon and Schuster, 2019.
- Elsaesser, Thomas, and Warren Buckland. “S/Z, the ‘Readerly’ Film, and Video Game Logic (The Fifth Element).” Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis, authored by Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland, Arnold, 2002, pp. 146-167.
- “Father’s Day.” Doctor Who, season 1, episode 8, BBC One, 14 May 2005.
- Meshes of the Afternoon [Short Film]. Directed by and featuring Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid, music by Teiji Ito [added 1959], 1943, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSY0TA-ttMA.
How might we move from terrestrial logics when thinking about the ecological? Blue ecocriticism can offer an answer by turning our attention to the fluid blue of the planet: the ocean, yes, but also, when you think about it, the air. What sorts of insights can blue ecocriticism offer when thinking through the critique of extractivist colonial logics? And when we consider going beyond our own atmosphere, should we not also be mindful of postcolonial insights when thinking about things such as, let’s say, the proposed colonization of Mars?
Further Media:
- Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Translated by M.-I. B. de Launay, Harcourt, 1976.
- Bowie, David. “Life on Mars.” Hunky Dory [Album]. Trident, 1971.
- Boyd, Philip and Chris Vivian. “Should We Fertilize Oceans or Seed Clouds?: No One Knows.” Nature, vol. 570, 2019, pp. 155-157.
- Dobrin, Sidney I. Blue Ecocriticism and the Oceanic Imperative. Routledge, 2021.
- James, C. L. R. Mariners, Renegades, and Castaways: The Story of Herman Melville and the World We Live In. Dartmouth College Press, 1953.
- Siu, Karen. “‘Out of Sight’: Ecological Precarity and Slow Violence in Diasporic Vietnamese Graphic Narratives.” Emergence/y Conference, ASLE 2021 Virtual Conference, 30 July 2021.
- Tsing, Anna. “Keynote Address.” Unnatural Disasters: Climate Change and the Limits of the Knowable [Symposium/Conference], Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, Illini Union, 13 September 2018, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
- Watership Down [Film]. Directed and produced by Martin Rosen, Studio, Nepenthe Films, 1978.
As Kumar observes: “Style isn’t universal” (120), and neither are influences nor the creative process. In what ways are influences, style, and creativity related? Further, how can arts-based practices inform the way we approach writing scholarship? If we value novelty in scholarship, how do relate to what comes before us, and how do we avoid being vague copies of things we admire? Has the emergence of influencer culture eroded what Walter Benjamin referred to as aura, and have we entered an era wherein what’s valued is to become yet another mechanistic copy of the popular? And when we are able to find our own way, how is it possible to develop a discernible style while being ever attendant to the creative? Perhaps the Borromean knot of influence, style, and creativity make up that which we call curiosity.
Keywords:
Influences, style, creativity, curiosity, jazz
Further Media:
“Games.” New York Times, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/crosswords.
Jobim, Antônio Carlos. Wave [Album]. Van Gelder Studio, 1967.
Kumar, Amitava. Every Day I Write the Book: Notes on Style. Duke University Press, 2020.
Moten, Fred. The Feel Trio. Letter Machine Editions, 2014.
Nichols, Herbie. The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Nichols. Blue Note Records, 2006.
Salvo, James. Bright Dark [Album]. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruDShHb5xt8.
Taylor, Cecil. 3 Phasis [Album]. New World, 1978.
—-. For Olim [Album]. Soul Note, 1986.
—-. Jazz Advance [Album]. Transition, 1956.
The Universal Mind of Bill Evans: The Creative Process and Self-Teaching [Documentary]. Rhapsody Films, 1966, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEHWaGuurUk.
Zurn, Perry, and Arjun Shankar. “Introduction: What Is Curiosity Studies?” Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge. Edited by Perry Zurn and Arjun Shankar, University of Minnesota Press, 2020, pp. xi-xxx.
Credits:
Music, Photography, and Production by Mildflower: mildflower.bandcamp.com
Original improvised music by Mildflower.
James Salvo: Piano.
http://mildflower.bandcamp.com
Perhaps the specter of the Cartesian cogito haunts us even in our loneliness, sometimes even leading us into the trappings of solipsism. But literally speaking, we are never alone when we’re among other ontological beings. Being-with others makes it such that not only can the existence of others be beyond doubt, but it's also the case that our singular being is only what it is in relation to plural being. But going beyond ontology, what can a comportment of being-with teach us about how we all might flourish together?
Further Media:
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Wesleyan UP, 1961.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Translated by Anne O’Byrne and Robert Richardson, Stanford UP, 1996/2000.
What sorts of materials should be included in an archive? In some senses an archive bestows upon archived objects the gravitas of the historical, but should such bestowals be the sole domain of the archivist? In what ways should an ethics of archiving include the author and authorial intention when authors are no longer living? Certain disciplinary conventions consider the author as always already dead and have even relegated considerations of authorial intention to the realm of fallacy. Is it time to rethink such presumptions?
Further Media:
Butler, Octavia E. Parable of the Sower. Grand Central Publishing, 1993.
—-. Parable of the Talents. Grand Central Publishing, 1998.
Coltrane, John. Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album [Album]. Van Gelder Studio, 1963/2018.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is An Author?” The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, Pantheon Books, 1984, pp. 101-120.
Löwy, Michael. Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’. Translated by Chris Turner, Verso, 2001/2012. (p. 19)
The Huntington Library. “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” [Archival Exhibition]. https://www.huntington.org/octavia-butler
Wimsatt, William Kurtz, and Monroe Curtis Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 54, no. 3, 1946, pp. 468-488.
Wu-Tang Clan. Once Upon a Time in Shaolin [Album]. Cilvaringz and RZA, 2015.
Why might we consider podcasts as a genre of scholarly discourse? Offering more than being the platform for supplemental material or an "article on tape", so to speak, the medium of podcasts could be useful for presenting what typically goes missing from other scholarly media. If the voice is that which communicates in excess of the content that it might deliver—often being something that uniquely identifies us—then in a very literal sense, podcasts are presentations of voice. Further, it's often the case that styles transform when moving across media. In this sense, then, perhaps scholarly podcasting is an exercise in style for those of us who primarily engage in written discourse. And inasmuch as there has yet to be a codified style manual for academic podcasts, perhaps now is the time to make sure that no such manual be written, that acceptable styles outnumber 99.
Further Media:
Kurosawa, Akira. Rashomon [Film]. Daiei Film, 1950.
Perec, Georges. A Void. Translated by Gilbert Adair, Verba Mundi, 1969/2005.
Queneau, Raymond. Exercises in Style. Translated by Barbara Wright, New Directions, 1947/2012.
The Deleuze Seminars. Purdue U, https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu.