Yet precisely because the media so very closely mimic reality, we apprehend them much more easily than we comprehend them. Film and electronic media have drastically changed the way we perceive the world -- and ourselves -- during the last eighty years, yet we all too naturally accept the vast amounts of information they convey to us in massive doses without questioning how they tell us what they tell. ~ Even the simplest visual images are interpreted differently in different cultures. So we know that images must be 'read'. There is a process of intellection occurring, not necessarily consciously, when we observe an image. ~ An image is an optical pattern; it is also a mental experience (imagination). ~ The reader of a page invents the image, the reader of a film does not, yet both readers must work to interpret the signs they perceive in order to complete the process of intellection. ~ Different media require different voices and different voices require different communicative strategies. ~ Communicative practice must always be radically contextualized. ~ Images must be inhabited not simply interpreted. ~ Images change the world and change us in ways that are beyond literal and linear styles of conceptualizing. To teach creatively, we must teach imaginatively. ~ The idea of a coherent text with a clear structure of beginning, middle and end reflects print technology. The electronic text is not coherent and has no obvious narrative structure. In telewriting, there is only middle, between, inter. ~ To move beyond Derrida, it is necessary to write differently by pushing available technology to its limits. This will not spell the end of deconstruction but will issue in a deconstructive practice that is socially and culturally transformative. ~ Writing and design are no longer separate activities but become different moments in a single creative process. Grapheme and icon enter an entirely new relationship. In textual play, writing becomes drawing and painting, and drawing and painting become scripture. ~ Insofar as the real is figural, the figural is, in some sense, real. ~ History ends and the book disappears when narrative continuity collapses in the instant. Speed is the agent of this collapse. ~ Virtual reality is the technological realization of Freud's 'omnipotence of thought'. ~ Perhaps it is less misleading to speak of the mediaization of the subject than of its disappearance. ~ The effectiveness of collage is that, like metaphor, the piece, displaced into a new context, retains associations with its former context. ~ The operator is working with virtuality: only apparently is the aim to obtain information or communicate; the real purpose is to explore all the possibilities of the program, rather as a gambler seeks to exhaust the permutations in a game of chance. ~ When depth gives way to surface, understanding becomes interstanding. To comprehend is no longer to grasp what lies beneath but to glimpse what lies between. Interstanding is relational but not dialectical, connective but not synthetic, associative but not intuitive. The between of the 'inter' neither fragments nor totalizes. ~ What does it mean to write with sound or even with smell? ~ The whole paradigm of the sensory has changed. The tactility here is not the organic sense of touch: it implies merely an epidermal contiguity of eye and image, the collapse of the aesthetic distance involved in looking. ~ In a mirror, it is the subject who gives free rein to the realm of the imaginary. In the camera lens, and on-screen in general, it is the object, potentially, that unburdens itself. ~ It is time to move beyond the institutional practices of triviledge, toward networks and surfaces, toward the play of superficiality, toward interstanding. ~ The challenge is not to make statements but to ask questions. ~ A laughable project: not to analyze but to explode language in an effort to create tentative syntheses of that-which-cannot-be-synthesized. ~ Electrotecture surpasses the techniques of computer-aided design by actually taking responsibility for fashioning cyberspace. ~ Writing can no longer be understood as the material translation of an immaterial concept but is always already figural. ~ A paradox of the imaginary register: the proliferation of images is iconoclastic. ~ In the society of spectacle, the idea becomes the real and the real is imaginary. ~ Disillusion is impossible when the real is imaginary. ~ When every foundation is imaginary, alienation becomes impossible. ~ The register of the imaginary is anarchic. ~ You become relevant through your image only if you become an artist and exploiter of the imaginary register. ~ The imagination must be undisciplined. ~ In virtual worlds, thought becomes reality and reality becomes imaginary. ~ Intervention in the imaginary register presupposes a certain 'exteriority' to networks 'within' which are nonetheless inscribed. Responsible action within the structures that constitute our worlds must always be taken from the outside that is inside. ~ And once freed from reality, we can produce the 'realer than real' -- hyperrealism. ~ Artiface is the power of illusion. ~ That is should be possible for certain processes -- economic, political, linguistic, cultural, sexual, even theoretical and scientific -- to set aside the limitations of meaning and proceed by immediate contagion, according to the laws of pure reciprocal immanencies of things among themselves rather than the laws of their transcendence or their referentaility -- that this is possible poses an enigma to reason while offering a marvellous alternative to the imagination.
from (collectively) Baudrillard; Monaco; Taylor/Saarinen; Ulmer. See Mediagraphy.
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| I |
I happened upon it quite by accident, for the plunging weight of force spared no mercy; however, as it was to be had, there it was: a ridged layer in the distance -- certain to lead to escape. I managed to climb up, positioning my left side over the ridge, somewhat straddling it, my right side still forged against the lapping pool. From there, I was invited to witness the most truly magnificent creature -- the female who could not be woman. She swam there, just before me. Her long black hair was familiarly safe, but her emerald eyes and the gaze they cast spoke of sights beyond the safety of convention, the familiarity of tradition -- the knowledge of human perception. Slender, and wearing layered robes of white, she propelled herself to swim, not with limbs, but with rainbow-wings: transparent, iridescent pastels, treading water lightly, gracefully. She welcomed me with a kind and loving non-speech. I could not ascertain if I was, in fact, dreaming or awake.
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| II |
Here, the issue of balance recurs once again. This is an exploration of imparting a sense of balance in feeling -- which is not the same as emotion: the latter being a mode of situational reaction, the former, an active, intelligent, faculty of choice. That is, Scripting can affect medialogy by supporting learning not only within traditional methods and logistical reasoning, but via an innovative edge: encouraging the intelligent application of self-directed choice. Surely we must recognize balance, not as symmetrical alignment -- for that merely dis-plays order -- but in contextual synergy -- a momentary glimpse at being-in-flux.
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| III |
In ever-evolving rhythmic motion there may be a striving for perfection; the distant future knows, but will always elude the answer. So instead scribes circumscribe scripts. Scripting is neither conscription nor prescription, but only encrypted postscription. The hexad necessarily implies choice.
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| IV |
The process of developing a mediated learning environment via online technology requires competency in considering what it is and is not, what it must be and must not become; the medialogist generates the betweenness of pedagogy.
First, I will address the issue of 'what' the mediated learning environment 'is'. Unlike other works in this area, I am not going to supply detailed accounts of current technological capabilities, popular design and development tools, nor market-leading products. Such an account would not only be futile, since the technology and related tools evolve so rapidly, but would also be detrimental, because it would encourage the incorrect assumption that there is one best method or approach in development, as opposed to a surplus of excellent and equally viable possibilities. However, the question at issue here, in asking 'what' the mediated learning environment 'is' implies that a definition is in order. Not a definition, but rather a description is offered: as it indeed answers the question; a definition provides a (M)eaning, while a description provides meaning(S). Description is a representational mode of discourse, employing words, images and figures to trace the outline of pedagogical associative meaning(S).
The mediated learning environment is /de-SCRIPT-ion/.
Then there is the issue of what the mediated learning environment 'is not' -- prescribed. This is largely a matter of choosing a pedagogical strategy for information delivery that complements the technological potential of the medium. And in this case, it must not be simply a set of rules and directions handed down to be unquestionably absorbed and later regurgitated. That approach is severely limited, while online mediated learning is not.
The online mediated learning environment is not /pre-SCRIPT-ion/.
Next, I will discuss what the mediated learning environment 'must be' -- that is, what designers and developers must strive to achieve: subscription. Here, I am not referring to 'subscription' in terms of a 'writing-below' (as with subscript and superscript letterforms). I am, however, using the term to refer to its meaning as follows:
(1) Signature - The developer must necessarily impart his or her own signature upon the piece.
(2) 'To sign' - The developer must not only recognize but also serve the inter-play of sign-ing.
(3) 'To pledge or attest to' - The developer must accept and acknowledge responsibility for the generation of this communication and re-action accordingly.
The online mediated learning environment must be /sub-SCRIPT-ion/.
The time has come to speak of prevention -- that is, the online mediated learning environment and 'what it must not become' -- or what talented designers and developers must not allow: transcription. Here, in the literal sense of a 'writing across' I am referring not to a translation but to blindly copying or mimicking the design techniques and development strategies from one medium to another. Digital/beings -- like the pseudo-print media of web 'pages' -- are transitional -- much like hieroglyphics or silent film. The media used for online learning will necessarily be virtual: it is artificial life.
The online mediated learning environment must not become /tran-SCRIPT-ion/.
Scripting involves a certain type of communication -- what is meant by saying that something or someone is scripted -- a preparedness in tone, or a sense of rehearsal in style -- perhaps even obvious falsity. This is a significant ingredient for a successful mediated learning environment; it is not rote learning, however, and should not be confused with such. Although developers should seek transparency in terms of technological facilitation, it is equally true that they should seek it in terms of both content and context. Online education undoubtedly increases interactive participation on an international scale and in exponential proportions as well. Scripting ensures that the mediated learning environment is sound, has been generated with professional care and quality and will bring innovation to the very many and varied personalities of users within it.
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| V |
Modification of experience -- temperance -- in fact, is called upon for
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Intervention, interaction; where poured between and held within
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Cups of gold and silver, is the seen, returned again, amid the unseen.
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Heat of fire and sun -- a crown of mastery and attainment -- rising,
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Archangel, waiting; feeling with balance of heart allows unequal and
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Equal to coexist and coinside, together; t(w)o betweenness travelers,
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Lost is nothing, yet nothing is found -- only bridged there between.
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Imagination harmonized, but never to be harnessed, challenges the
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Rainbow to be separated from its [mother] goddess, when only
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In spirit it appears in matter, as concord and conflict interweave.
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Sense -- perpetually fluid -- renewed; only moments gained and lost.
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