Writing
Media, Art & Text coursework
“The Route of One, Among the Paths of Many” (August 2010)
A theoretical introduction for my MATX e-portfolio. For multimedia versions, click here.
“i.Mirror: A Second Life Documentary Film” (MATX 601: Texts & Textuality, December 2009)
Cao Fei’s three-part documentary exposes the artificial attempt of Second Life to mourn the loss of the real.
“Ethics Case Study: Richard Prince’s Spiritual America” (MATX 602: History of MATX, November 2009)
The essay explores the return of controversy regarding Richard Prince’s 1983 appropriation of an image of a nude ten-year old Brooke Shields.
“Prince of Thieves” (MATX 602: History of MATX, December 2009)
Issues of authorship and intellectual property are examined in Prince’s work, including his involvement in a recent copyright lawsuit.
“2009: Year of the Cougar” (MATX 690: Celebrity and Visual Culture, December 2009)
The essay historically outlines the evolving portrayal of older women’s sexuality on television, and whether the roles available to older women support or repudiate dominant hegemonies regarding race, class, sexual preference, and age (here, white, middle class, heterosexual, and under forty). I look specifically at the 2009 series, Cougar Town, how the media shapes and promotes the cougar, and how the audience accepts or rejects Courteney Cox’s portrayal of a cougar. With a sampling of audience responses from the ABC network’s Cougar Town website, I examine how the television show influences female viewers’ identity construction.
“Practicing a Media, Art & Text Critique 1.0” (MATX 604: Production Workshop, March 2010)
The statement is a snapshot of an ever-evolving process regarding critical assessment and interpretation of interdisciplinary work.
“In Response to Mary Ann Doane’s ‘The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity’” (MATX 603: Interdisciplinarity and Multimedia, May 2010)
Doane’s argument consistently promotes the immateriality of digital media. By drawing attention to her claims that digital media should resist ‘the dream of dematerialization’ and that there is a need to revive the idea of a medium, I insert digital works alongside her film examples to complicate her argument of immateriality and a “post-medium condition.”
“Betwixt and Between: Is it Electronic Literature or Digital Art? Examining the Interdisciplinary Works of Mark Amerika” (MATX 603: Interdisciplinarity and Multimedia, May 2010)
The essay maps out how leading scholars N. Katherine Hayles and Christiane Paul are defining electronic literature and digital art while attempting to expand their disciplines’ boundaries in order to ‘place’ interdisciplinary works. By focusing on a trio of works by Mark Amerika, I explore how his works navigate and complicate current definitions of electronic literature and digital art.
"A Case for Multi-faceted Descriptions for New Media Works. Part One: Flash" (ENGL 661: Methods for MATX, March 2010)
I argue the need for a multi-disciplinary discussion on documenting and preserving variable digital experiences, across art history, library science, media studies, and textual studies. While this is a considerable undertaking, for this essay I will focus on digital works that incorporate Flash animation as a case study.
"Misunderstood Mediations: Benjamin and Adorno" (ENGL 661:Theory and Context of Frankfurt School, August 2010)
John Guillory concluded his article, “Genesis of the Media Concept,” analyzing Adorno’s struggle with Benjamin’s perspective on the media concept, and quoted: “Misunderstandings are the medium in which the noncommunicable is communicated." The focus of this essay is an analysis of the thirteen-year correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin on the Arcades project that led to this rejection of the Baudelaire essay for publication, and to explore the trajectory of the major points of contention regarding mediation between Adorno and Benjamin.
Conference Presentations
“Cao Fei: From Tourist to Urban Developer in Second Life.” (presented October 22, 2010 at the Southeastern College Art Conference, Richmond, Virginia. Session: Finding a Place in Contemporary Art; chairs: Howard Risatti and Margaret Richardson.)
Abstract: Cao Fei’s i.mirror is a documentary of her initial experiences as her avatar China Tracy in Second Life. While superficially exciting and expansive, Fei’s life within of Second Life is simultaneously desolate, lonely, and filled with the excesses of capitalism. In RMB City, Fei moves from tourist to urban planner of a destination city. RMB’s manifesto envisions a freedom from the conflict between virtual and real, for the possibility to discover the “complex, layered, and fuzzy strangeness of existence.” While it embraces China’s urban and cultural explosion with whimsy, it is also critical of the corporatization and self-awareness of destination places, such as Colonial Williamsburg, Disney World and Las Vegas. Fei describes Second Life as a “new world, but it is surrounded by an old world system.” This essay explores Fei’s “touristic experience,” as well as her evolution to urban developer exploring various cultural practices of place making. Tourism is often theorized as a journey to and in places, identities, and experiences. Through advertised events of galas, opera, and sex parlors, I explore whether Fei offers MacCannell’s definition of “staged authenticity,” or participates in the global economy by offering Urry’s “post-tourist” experience as delighting in “inauthenticity.”