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GIST
Welcome to "GIST": A Course about Gender, Information, Science and Technology, offered in Spring 2011 @ Bryn Mawr College. This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to. The first thing to keep in mind is that this is not a place for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts." It's a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Imagine that you're not worrying about "writing" but instead that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking, so you can help them think and they can help you think. The idea is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours.
We're glad you're here, and hope you'll come both to enjoy and value our shared imagining of the future evolution of ourselves as individuals and of our gendered, scientific, technological world. Feel free to comment on any post below, or to POST YOUR THOUGHTS HERE....
Frankenstein as a Cautionary Tell About the Dangers of of Binaries
While reading Frankenstein, I noticed that Victor struggled with some of the gender binaries we discussed in class. Victor is a male, yet there is a moment in the text that insinuates an attraction to other men. Although Victor is a man, he has not been told that he should be attracted to only women (by society's conventional standards). This ambiguity in Victor's sexual orientation may be a comment by Mary Shelley as to how much science and society play a part in a how a person relates his gender. Mary Shelley would probably agree with Roughgarden's view on gender and sexuality as a naturally diverse occurrence. Victor is an example of how sexuality is something that is born with a person, and shaped depending on how society interacts with that individual.
what do contemporary composers think about Frankenstein?
From missing class this Monday, for this post I've been thinking about Mary Shelley's novel from the perspective of contemporary composers. This group of people has created a new genre of music, mostly through their use of technology in their compositions. In regard to Frankenstein's monster, I would think that these composers would support his creation and the science/technology that went into it. Frankenstein had created what seems like a new species of human, or at least a new creature. He used modern science and technology (though he keeps the details hidden) to expand how people think of a predefined category. Contemporary composers have made us rethink our definition of what music really is with their new uses of technology in music.
Reading Frankenstein Differently.
Coming out of class on Wednesday really made me think about how Frankenstein, (and really any other novel) could be presented in the future. I remembered this project that Professor Katherine Rowe showed me and it really got me thinking about the presentation of the novel. Frankenstein is presented in codex form where a reader simply picks up the book, reads and finishes it (hopefully) and close reads the text. While every reader can come up with their own interpretations, the gist of the book remains the same. The narrative is the same way, the characters are the same and the reader starts and finishes (given that the reader does finish) at the same points.
stone music
I came across this video of the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. They collected various stones and tested out their resonances and eventually assembled a marimba. The video shows them making up a song on it. I just saw this and was thinking about our class with Tian. It sounds like music as most of us would define it, but it is interesting that they just found these stones and were able to produce pleasing sounds from them. I suppose we learned from Cage's piece that anything is music, so even if they were just throwing rocks on the ground it would be "music", but I still think their nature marimba is impressive.
music, science, and technology
This Sunday I will be performing Stravinsky's "L'histoire du soldat" (A Soldier's Tale) at Haverford. I've been rehearsing this piece for months, and since the beginning, I've known that our concert was shared with another group performing a different piece, called "A Lyric's Tale." I thought nothing of it, assuming from my experience that there's not a lot of music much 'stranger' than Stravinsky's. But at my dress rehearsal tonight, as they were setting up for both groups, I was surprised to see that there was a massive projector set up on stage with a projected video.
Contemporary Composers panel info
Because I missed the panel, here is the information on the group I had planned to represent:
Web Event #3: Youtube Video Biography
For my project I was really interested in the quote by a youtuber Tyler Oakley: “Just because I make videos doesn’t mean that I have to make the same kind of video every time…people that make videos are not just one dimensional who produce one thing for one type of person every single time.” (Tyler Oakley, Save the Drama Fo’ Yo’ Mama). For my project, I wanted to experience representing myself on youtube.
What do we do with this word, 'reality'?
So, I'm not writing a paper this week. Here's my post!
I asked the question in class this week about what we consider reality to be. I posed this to the Arab revolutionaries, the 'nerdfighers', the Female gamers and the Facebookers. The Arab revolutionaries made the distinction of having started this virtual, online place of discussion and then, meeting up in 'real life'. I do not think that this is particularly clear. When asked about this, I was given an answer along the lines of well, it isn't real because they didn't know each other online. But how do we 'know' each other?
Reading Frankenstein--and Experimenting with Conversation
Still experimenting w/ our shared desire to have fewer "stand-alone" posts and "more conversation" in this on-line space--as well as w/ our stated intention to share conversation with Kim Surkan's Gender and Technology class @ MIT this semester. So: below you'll find three postings from the MIT class discussion on Shelley's novel Frankenstein. If possible, chose one of them to respond to this week. (But! if you really need to follow another idea, please feel free to do that instead!)
A post-gender world?
According to Kathryn Vogel in the MIT course on Gender and Technology,
Haraway defines a cyborg as:
"a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity. In a sense, the cyborg has no origin in the Western sense -- a 'final' irony since the cyborg is also the awful apocalyptic telos of the 'West's' escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency,"
Reproductive Technology
Alicia Kaestli, in the MIT course on Gender and Technology,
reads Shelly’s text as a comment on reproductive technology.... This theme is similar to feminist’s opinion on reproductive technology in the 1980s and 1990s... initially uncertain of the effects of reproductive technology.... "patriarchal control of women’s’ bodies achieved through medicine.” Nevertheless, there was enthusiasm in the feminist field about the use of reproductive technologies ....
Juliann Reardon followed the same theme:
The Politics of Being a Cyborg
According to Kameron Klauber, in the MIT course on Gender and Technology,
3/30 Class Notes
Vgaffney: representing psychiatrists in 21st century. It’s a relatively new field that bridges an interesting gap between social and natural sciences. Physics in imaging of mapping brains and medications (chemistry), biology and anatomy, studies and statistics about how many women in the field 20% in 70s to this field is said to be more suited to women
3/30 class notes
Skyping with MIT’s biological engineers
- Intrinsic value of human beings
Paper due at midnight on Friday
- Theorizing the experiences on the panel
- Or a creative piece
Panel discussion
3./30/11 GIST Class Notes
GROUP TWO (LIZ)
spreston: facebook users- using technology to create identity and how it changes social interactions. According to news articles, people are having facebook depression. Information, gender roles & binaries interest
MSA322: music in Arabic revolutions- from experience growing up in Arabic world, music usage has varied in reaching out to western world when communicating. Most singers are male, but when females are included in this revolutionary method, it’s more powerful, decode music to get message out
Art and Science... Great Gallery Exhibit from 2010
I thought others might enjoy images from a 2010 exhibit at Princeton called "Art of Science". They're really quite fascinating and beautiful.
From the "About" page:
"The Art of Science exhibition explores the interplay between science and art. These practices
both involve the pursuit of those moments of discovery when what you perceive suddenly
becomes more than the sum of its parts. Each piece in this exhibition is, in its own way, a
record of such a moment.
Class notes 3/28
First Half of class: Barad and Tian
TiffanyE: Thinking about whether objectivity is possible in the physical world…
Liz: Notion of those who make the classification, how experiments turn out…the agency of people and how they act and what they do plays a critical role
TiffanyE: The standard or measurement in which the world is classified is subjective b/c (like in video) observations and measurements are always subjective based on the person who makes it..so if our classifications are made always by a specific group of people it’s subjective
Asynchronous Dynamic Massively Co-Operative Gameplay
I like zombies.
I like video games.
As such, I always seem to be on the lookout for new zombie games, console and web-based, that go beyond your typical first person shooter à la Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead, Days 2 Die, etc.
And I've found two recently that tickle my fancy.
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities
Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.
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