Fluid Dynamics

More Poe, More Poe

Michale, Sporn's at it again, raising money for is film about Edgar Allen Poe. Here's his write-up and here's the Indiegogo page:

Dueling Watsons

Language Log has a post telling us that, just as IBM has a speech understanding system named Watson (after the first president of the company), so AT&T has a somewhat older system named Watson (after Alexander Graham Bell's assistant). In a comment, Jon Weinberg further informs us:

Each company has filed for U.S. trademarks — IBM for "IBM Watson" and AT&T for "AT&T Watson". The requested trademarks haven't issued. IBM's applications have been kicked back by the examiner, and AT&T's application was opposed by IBM in a proceeding before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board; the two companies are in settlement negotiations

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Richard A. Macksey

Here's a short vides (9+ minutes) about Richard A. Macksey, who recently retied from The Johns Hopkins Universty:

I took I don't know how many courses with him as an undergraduate, and an independent study too, thought in just what, I forget. I did my MA Thesis on "Kubla Khan" under him. Dick gave me the room I needed to complete two degrees and Johns Hopkins and confirmed my love of making connections.

From Fish to Latour, Really

Stanley Fish has made a NYTimes post that brought Latour to mind, specifically, actor-network theory (ANT). Not immediately, but upon thinking about it, I ended up with Latour.

The topic of Fish’s post, Evidence in Science and Religion, Part Two, invites controversy, which, of course, is just fine by Stanley Fish. The post generated 451 comments before comments were closed (I’ve not read any of them). I more or less agree with Fish on this one, as far as it goes. But the argument Fish makes really needs to be extended in a way one can at least begin to imagine by thinking in terms of Latourian networks.

Assumptions, Assumptions, Everywhere

Here’s how Fish sets things up:

In the post previous to this one, I revisited the question of the place of evidence in the discourses and practices of science and religion. I was prompted by a discussion on the show “Up w/ Chris Hayes” (MSNBC, March 25) in which Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins stated with great force and confidence that a key difference between science and religion is that the conclusions of the former are based on evidence that has emerged in the course of rigorous rational inquiry publicly conducted, while the conclusions of the latter are based on dogma, faith, unexamined authority, subjectivity and mere trust.

In response, Hayes observed that as laypersons, with respect to most areas of science we must take on trust what practitioners tell us. I took Hayes’s point further than he might be willing to take it, and suggested that because trust is common to both enterprises, the distinction between them, at least as it is asserted by Pinker and Dawkins, cannot be maintained.

Fish then informs us that his post got him in a heap of trouble with his readers—surprise, surprise! He clarifies, pointing out that he’s not asserting that the standards of science and religion are equivalent, rather:

What I do assert is that with respect to a single demand — the demand that the methodological procedures of an enterprise be tethered to the world of fact in a manner unmediated by assumptions — science and religion are in the same condition of not being able to meet it (as are history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology and all the rest).

This means that all standards are equivalently mediated, not that all standards are equivalent in every respect.

Well . . . that remains to be seen. One might wonder how you establish “equivalence” of mediation, though I suspect Fish may mean nothing more rigorous than “they’re all mediated” rather than asserting some comparison between modes of mediation. But let’s allow Fish to have his way a bit more. 

Method in Cartoonology, It Takes a Village . . .

In the process of posting a link to some of my cartoon commentary [Thanks! Mike] Michael Barrier made some qualifying remarks:

I sometimes feel when I read Bill's pieces that he is taking a long way around when a more direct route is available, but what the hey, he's doing intellectual work that almost no one else writing about animation is doing. I've just read through his What's Opera, Doc? postings, and my reaction could be summed up as impatience, followed by second thoughts along the lines of, wait a minute, there are some ideas here that really deserve a careful look.

I don’t know quite what he has in mind when he refers to “taking the long way around”, but I do know what impatience is and I can certainly see why Mike, or anyone else, would react to my work in that way. For better or worse, “a more direct route” is unavailable to me.

So let me say a thing or two about what I’m up to.

Anyone who reads my stuff sees that I spend a lot of time simply describing what happens. If you know the cartoon I'm working on—and Mike certainly knows these cartoons, very well—that descriptive work is going to seem obvious and so may be a bit irritating—I know, I know, I've watched the cartoon! I’m looking for a pattern, or a detail or two, and these things may not spring into relief until the cartoon has been described in some detail (think, for example, of my discussions of ring form in Fantasia and Heart of Darkness). And, often enough, I don’t even spot the pattern or detail until I’ve sunk knee-deep in description. I start with some vague idea that something’s there, but it takes a bit of work actually to see it.

What’s There, Spring

I suppose this looks almost posed, what with that vine-entangled tree in the middle. Then there’s that slender branch looping up from the lower left.

I wonder how long before those birches disappear behind the curtain of vines, which have not yet grown leaves? Those leaves create so many spaces interior to the forest, invisible from outside.

Comments on Alex Reid on Digital Humanities

I’ve taken a passage from a post by Alex Reid (ancestral data: practicing the digital humanities #dhdebates) and interpolated comments. Reid’s words are in italics, mine are not.

Thus perhaps we are left with pondering what Meillassoux's claim that "what is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible" means for digital humanities. At some point, would one want to claim that digital humanities scholarship produces knowledge that is ontologically different from that offered by conventional criticism, in that, like the ancestral scientific knowledge Meillassoux describes, it describes conditions outside correlation?

Not having read Meillassoux there’s an obvious facet of this I can’t address, but I note the mention of mathematics; Chomsky made a certain use of mathematical argument to precipitate a revolution in the study of language.

But, sure, why not make such an ontological claim about the product of digital humanities scholarship (at least some of it)? It’s clear to me on the face of it that it yields a different KIND of knowledge (see my recent post, Distant Reading in Lévi-Strauss and Moretti). But it hadn’t occurred to me state this difference as one of ontological kind. THAT is a most interesting suggestion. Note, that while we’re talking of knowledge, the suggestion is about the ontology of knowledge, not about epistemology.

I'm not sure what the answer is to that question. Neither is Witmore. However, I think it might turn the complaint about the lack of theory in digital humanities on its head.

I should think so, yes.

Sight and Sound in Long-Haired Hare

Just a quick note on Long-Haired Hare, a 1948 Bugs Bunny cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. No screen shots. Sorry.

The premise, as you may recall, is a simple one. Bugs is hanging out in his hole happily singing a song. Not so far away Giovanni Jones, an operatic tenor, is practicing. He hears Bugs, is annoyed, he clobbers Bugs, Bugs gets revenge. The End.

Now, it’s not merely that he hears Bugs while he’s trying to practice. The music Bugs is playing actually invades his body so that he sings the tune Bugs is singing and he moves to the beat. He can’t help himself. Bugs doesn’t know that Jones exists. He’s singing for his own pleasure.

So, as I said, he clobbers Bugs. Bugs declares war. And shows up at Jones’s concert that evening. After pestering Jones in this and that way, Bugs dresses up as Leopold Stokowski and mounts the podium. He destroys the baton the conductor had handed him, as Stokowski never used a baton. He conducted with his hands.

And so Bugs proceeds to conduct Jones with his hand. He raises his hand; Jones ascends. He lowers his hand; Jones descends. He holds his hand high in the air; Jones holds a high note. Bugs keeps his hand up there, at one point removing his hand from his glove and allowing the glove to stay up all by itself; Jones keeps holding the note until he falls over.

Latour Modern, Not: A Prolegomenon to a Rhetorical Analysis

I am reading Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern. And, yes, it is, as Graham Harman has often said, a remarkable book. But what KIND of a book is it?

An answer from Latour, p. ix: “Having written several empirical books, I am trying here to bring the emerging field of science studies to the attention of the literate public through the philosophy associated with this domain.” So it is philosophy. I guess I expected that, as Harman says Latour is a philosopher, considers himself to be one, and wishes others to think him one. But it is like no philosophy I’ve read, a statement, not an opening for critique. And the level of generality and scope—the relations between humans and things in the world—is of philosophical caliber.

It is for the “literate public”—so this is not, then, a book for specialists. Of philosophical caliber, but not (necessarily) for the professional philosophers. In fact, one has the impression that Latour feels that all too many professional philosophers have covered themselves in such shame that their arguments should not be given the dignity of detailed consideration. Which is perhaps one reason why the book is so short, less than 150 pages.

Philosophy, but not for philosophers. Nor is it a journalistic popularization or a textbook exposition. This is basic stuff, original exposition and argument. New ideas here, never before published in the technical literature of whatever discipline: anthropology, sociology, history, political science, philosophy.

* * *

I can imagine another reason for the short book, an active reason, a rhetorical one. Perhaps Latour thought the ideas would hold together more effectively if you could read through them expeditiously.

Cartoon Shorts Index

I've done posts on a number of cartoon shorts. Here's a quick index to them:

• Beep, Beep
• The Greatest Man in Siam
• Duck Dodgers of the 24½th Century
• Porky in Wackyland
• What's Opera, Doc?

Staging the Audience: Magic Tricks

Continuing on these lines: What’s Up Between Cartoonist and Audience?

Perhaps the most prevalent assumption about filmed stories is that we the audience are looking in on, observing, actions and events taking place in some other world “over there” and that the people in that world have no idea that we exist. Sometimes such stories are provided with voice-over narration. The narrator speaks to us, but need not address us directly, and usually doesn’t.

Then we have “breaking the fourth wall,” where a character in a movie will speak directly to us, the audience. It is relatively rare, but it does happen. This, of course, temporarily destroys the illusion that we’re watching actions made by people off in some other world and who are oblivious to us. That’s why it isn’t done.

And then we have these cartoon shorts that are based on gags and that also seem relatively hospitable to, permeable to, breaking the forth wall. Characters will address us a half dozen or more times in a single seven minute short. As for as I can tell, audience address isn’t required in these shorts, it’s not inevitable, but it’s frequent and doesn’t destroy any illusion. The question is: Why?

As a comparison, consider a magic act. The magician, of course, must address the audience. He’s playing to us; that’s how stage acts work. The magician may even ask people in the audience to participate in the act in some way. Well, in the cartoon, we have gags instead of magic tricks. And we don’t know just when the gags will happen is just what they’ll be.

Now, a magic act may take place on stage, but it’s fundamentally different from a play. It’s playing with our sense of reality in a way that stories ordinarily do not. Something like that’s going on in the gag-based cartoon. They play with our sense of reality and the address to the audience is simply part of that play.