Week Thirteen (Wed, 4/20): GIST: The Legacy

thanks to merlin and An Active Mind's Seeing Stigma: I found the image empowering.  The handlebars of the bike almost look like wings that can give Gaga a chance to fly--to escape the societal restrictions and conventions that bind her.  She renders herself a cyborg--a mixture of both human and machine.  Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto" is all about resisting essentialism and reclaiming feminist ability in once purely, male-dominated, science discourse .... "Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other" (34).  She purposefully embraces the motorcycle as a prosthesis to highlight her own "ability" in a "disabled" world.

I. coursekeeping

college evals, plus (on a separate sheet):
"what did you bring, that you are leaving behind?"
"what have you picked up, that you will be taking with you?"

notetakers: riki & rubikscube

sign up now for next week's group presentations
(warning re: how well the technology works...!)

Friday evening, your last 4-pp. web "event" is due (or, if you
have already posted three, then another posting in the course forum)

for Monday (?): Orson Scott Card's classic 1977 short story,
"Ender's Game," plus Cory Doctorow's 2007 adaptation, “Anda’s Game”
(remind us to get back to this @ the end of class today...)

review end-of-semester requirements:
writing conferences, final web event, portfolios

II. first intrepid MIT student showed up on our
forum, adding to our discussion of Teknolust:

In response to Riki and Cara and Merlin,
Robert said, I immediately saw the colors as a link to the digital world where colors are often represented in RGB. I was kind of disappointed when Sandy's world wasn't CMYK, it would have been a great effect.

To Sadie, Susanna and Kate's 3 points, he replied,
1. One thing that I also saw in the colors was the imprinting of the digital to the SRAs, as the additive colors are used digitally while the pigment colors are used in the printing world. As I mentioned before I was disappointed that the CMYK color scheme wasn't more a part of Sandy's world.

3. I would like to add onto this that I see the strength of the SRAs as dominating sexual creatures is lessened by fetishization by the men, specifically the ones that Ruby has intercourse with on the night that Olive is sick.

hopefully there will be more coming !

III. continued fascinating ruminations on Frankenstein, Chorost:
m.aghazarian's Mary Shelley--OBEY!
and merlin's cool idea of programming nano-bots to
aide in the brain's large-scale construction project

IV. reflecting back on "Bloodchild"?
conversation unfinished...
happy to hear more....

V. and/but now: Tron: Legacy!

How do...
* users, programs, and "isomorphic algorithms" 
* a "codified likeness utility" (CLU, a digital copy of Flynn)
* Rinzler, aka Tron, whose original identity resurfaces when
he makes eye contact w/ Flynn: "I fight for the Users"
* perfection--> genocide
* the "eye party" that is this film
* the mixed orchestral and electronic music
...contribute to our exploration of gender, information, science and technology?

Form working groups of 3 to create a "visual"
interpretation of this film to share with the class.

class notes: riki & rubikscube