2/23/11 Group 4 Discussion on Conceiving Ada

CONCEIVING ADA GROUP 4 DISCUSSION

1.   What was your response to the film?

Exchange of Knowledge for sex

It wasn’t a fantasy watching Ada and being pregnant

Ada was humanizing machines

Software having knowledge of real life in terms of Emmy having 1st cyber born human

2. What questions does the film raise for you?

How possible is this?

While watching movie it seemed like it was filmed in current day – during the era in which it was filmed

Analogy of death- and Ada being timeless through virtuality

Emmy’s daughter embodied Ada, or did she rebirth Ada?

Question of genetics- is it realistic for Emmy’s daughter to be caught up with knowledge of Emmy’s research

3. How can you place it within the frame of this course? How does it illustrate-or-challenge some of the ideas we have been exploring?

Gender relationships- Ada exchanging sex for knowledge

Gender roles- oppression- Reframing gender roles

Manner in which knowledge is acquired- physical notes vs, aural and computer based

Importance for Emmy in letting go of the pattern of the bird flying in/ out of Ada’s hands in order for it to time travel virtually.

4. How would you teach it, using the tools that Hayles describes?
Hayles is trying to get at a film studies analysis, technology when film was being made influence on film maker. What economics questions does the film raise in terms of the actual movie set?

In her terms, what would a "posthuman" mode of scholarship look like, when applied to this visual object?
how info is consumed, and digital promotion

Does film encourage us to hyper or close or distance read?

Distance reading- so we don’t get caught up on analysis of potholes. b/c although we have the capacity to hyper read whereas a close reader won’t see patterns as much b/c they would be too focused on conventional close reading focused on all narratives.

* How would you use the film (for example) to demonstrate "the cartographic imagination"?
Film as an example of cartographic information not to follow narrative but data streams such as script, words spoken, story boards, black & white scenes, storyline/plot, structure (cameras, elements) WITHIN STORY ITSELF: characters

* What would it mean, in discussing this film, to "forget meaning" and "follow the data streams"?
The meaning we get out of it depends on how we watch the film because human expectations are limited. Since this is presented in an English class, some of us look at narrative more vs. film composition. Don’t go to a film with expectations of what it should be rather of what the data tells us. To follow the data streams is to decode, versus to analyze the author or directors intentional meaning. Hayles says we need to beware of our inherent meanings.

We are meaning (labeling) making creatures.

* How could you use it to avoid "replicating existing paradigms," to "critique the mantra of critique"?

Theme of creation and reinvention and how to look at that information

How we would teach the film as digital humanities scholars?