Almost forgot, here it is: Webs of Desire.
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- April 28, 2010 at 6:57 pm
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Theories of Texts and Tech
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April 30, 2010 at 5:09 am
This was a fun project to view. I loved that, no matter where I clicked, I ended up somewhere equally as interesting as the page before. Once I clicked and found a poem! Lovely. In addition to the entertaining and pleasant navigation, I enjoyed your discussion on the body as it relates to media and belief. This is something I find personally interesting, and I will likely come back to your site several times to get more from it. 🙂
April 30, 2010 at 7:34 am
You present quite an in-depth and perceptive discussion that, like Irene said above, I will likely come back to in the future (one of the virtues of the access provided by the Internet). In fact, this is possible as a result of our being “vanishing mediators,” it seems, a concept I very much like. The theory of embodiment is a dense realm, and I think you’ve investigated it admirably.
April 30, 2010 at 5:18 pm
When I attended Zizek’s presentation at Rollins last fall, I was totally entranced. Thanks so for bringing this to our attention and especially to all the commentary on Wings of Desire. By the way, many of our daughter’s classmates from Winter Park High School were in attendance to hear Zizek; so good to know they are studying him in high school. Overall, yours is a stunning presentation.
April 30, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I’ve added Wings of Desire to my Netflix list. I’m excited that Bruno Ganz is in it, who is the gut who played Hitler in Downfall, a clip from which has become an Internet/YouTube sensation.
May 1, 2010 at 1:23 am
Your project helped me appreciate “How We Became Posthuman” more. There is so much information there to digest I bookmarked it so I can read through it over the summer.
May 2, 2010 at 2:48 am
Nicely done. I won’t disagree with the comments above, although I did often feel like the short fragments sometimes felt like like descriptions on the back of books. There were wonderful lines that captured theoretical insights about writing of intuition, but not the depth of knowledge from Zizek, Augustine, etc that I know you have available and, perhaps demonstrating this lack of depth and scope, the clicks often circled around.
Still, with work, I think this could be publishable.
Make the links off the main four pages more substantive and have them do more work– theoretical work.
May 2, 2010 at 5:41 am
No argument here. I knew Augustine and Zizek were handled inadequately. Some of the links also need to be thought out a bit more … more pages on Zizek especially should begin to address the redundancy/circularity. I also felt that some pages needed more comment on my part.
May 2, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Like Irene above, I found the entrancing entrapment of your site the most compelling of its features. Not only was the material you presented thought-provoking and valuable, but you also managed to take advantage of the curiosity you created in the reader by forming links that enhanced the discussion.
Combining that technique with how visually stunning and professional the site’s design looked, I think you succeeded in creating a “rabbit hole” kind of project here: the visitor quickly gets lost among the viewpoints, and I think you manage it very well.
I’m personally curious to know how the idea formed: did you think first of the connecting thread of desire and embodiment, or did that connection form itself after you chose the elements to combine (Žižek, Augustine, and Wings)?
May 2, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Good question. I’m not sure that looking back I can parse everything out, but this is my best guess at it: The theme of embodiment popped up in McGann (materiality) and Hayles, so that was on my mind from our readings. Desire had been floating around my thoughts on and off for the past year, often in connection with Augustine. I was introduced to Zizek this semester and his Lacanian/psychoanalytic bent also brought desire into play. So when thinking of using a modified popcycle Zizek, embodiment/desire, and Augustine were already on my mind. Augustine comes into play not only on desire, but also on embodiment given his philosophical/theological engagement with Manicheanism and Neo-Platonism. Then I recalled Wings of Desire which I first watched a couple of years ago and it seemed a natural fit as a meditation on the relationship between embodiment and desire. Then rather late in the game I thought of linking all of these together on a web site that would induce a kind of “rabbit whole” effect and thus in a sense mirror the elusive quality of desire which seeks without ever quite finding.
Hope that made some sense!
May 3, 2010 at 8:00 pm
Not too much to add to this discussion other than to concur with all of the statements above. I am reminded of your presentation about this project in class and how entraced we were…That quality deefeinitely transferred over to the site. What I love the most about this project is that it is one that can be revisited and reassessed with every return…It is NOT static, but rather informative with multiple layers….which, of course, might take several visits to unfold or delayer…Great job!!!