|
"Memetica as a phenomenon or set of phenomena is not only an idea (or set of ideas) but also is a practice and an organization (or set of practices and organizations).
It may be observed on a natural level or the level of nature but also on a social level on the level of human interaction. All the usual labels for people, their ideas, structures, and actions still have value and usefulness but at least momentarily need to be ‘forgotten’ to get a fresh look, a new understanding of what’s going on on the world scene, including the large world stage and also the individual, particular worlds of a person’s daily life. Hit the re-set button of conception and begin with something like a ‘meme,’ not simply the viral silly photo of social media sort of meme but, much more expansively, the ‘unit of information’ sort of meme – what some academics and intellectuals (and a few scientists) have discussed in terms of a ‘sign.’" -Fragments of Memetica, No. 8 [20201004] "‘Memetica,’ or ‘memetica ecologica’, is my way of describing where we live now. By where, I don’t mean America or China or any particular place, although it includes places. By ‘where we live’ I mean a composite of the material and social worlds along with the ‘world’ of our minds, individually and collectively."
-Fragments of Memetica, No. 7 [20200926] "Let them eat pancakes. We shall have pancakes. Pancakes are the order of the day."
"Let Them Eat", Kitchen Table Quarterly out now: https://www.kitchentablequarterly.org/ "On Memes: A Very Brief Introduction to Memetica, Or a Contemporary Rhetoric of Information"
Coming soon for the annual meeting of the Michigan Academy (MASAL, forthcoming March 2023). Abstract As is widely known, memes are commonly understood as catchy items on social media – often an image with text – that “goes viral” and gets shared/spread among many people online. However, this presentation discusses the older, original, and more expansive sense of “meme”, introduced and elaborated upon by Dawkins, Blackmore, and Dennett, among others, that initially means something like a “unit of cultural information.” One way rhetorically and philosophically these days to conceive of “it all” is as a massive ecology of memes. What I call “memetica” is another way of exploring a rhetoric and conception of a totalizing ecology of information. The term “information” may cover a massive amount of multi- and cross-disciplinary conceptual territory involving “bits” in physics, “genes” in biology, and “signs” in arts/humanities. This presentation very briefly introduces the origins, rhetoric, and concept of memes as an initial way in to the topic of information – arguably one of the most powerful, dynamic concepts in contemporary existence. -Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter "We live in Memetica now.
Memetica is the Big Drama we’re all acting within, against, or alongside." -Fragments of Memetica, No. 6 [20200926] "So go rumblings in the bellies of the fast."
in Superpresent Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 2023), p. 100 https://superpresentmag.com (Current issue downloadable for free.) 'I report and observe what I see going on. What I experience and what I see others experiencing. It’s a strange place, it’s a wonderful place, it’s a normal place, it’s a terrible place, and it’s not a place. It’s a state.
I’m ‘reporting the universe’ You can do it, too. I mean, someone has to do it. “The writer…believes all that can be thought can be written…. In their eyes a human being is the faculty of reporting, and the universe is the possibility of being reported.” -Emerson, cited in Doctorow, Reporting the Universe (Harvard, 2003, p. 1, edited)' -Fragments of Memetica, No. 5. [20200925] "Talk about memetica is a rhetorical historiography of the present – a historiography that is contemporaneous, a form of journalism or field research reporting.
We have investigative reporting on the ground but also in the sky – helicoptering over the scene, except that the view from the sky goes much further than that – to a space station or satellite. And the view goes the other way too: we’re on a fantastic voyage through our veins, digging into atoms, etc. But this historiography is rhetorical. It’s both descriptive and constructive. It instructs and informs. It also seeks to stimulate and provoke. I’m ultimately seeking here to get you to see things partly how I see them, if only for the time you’re reading this. These are notes and observations from memetica – los estados unidos de memetica." -Fragments of Memetica, No. 4. [20200925] "Dystopias are just as seductive as utopias. These -topias are totalizing, fantastic places in our heads and may reflect our reality or become our reality – heads which are connected to our bodies (which in fact are our bodies). Topias that don’t adequately map the territory of our experiences of human experience, let alone observation and experimentation."
-Fragments of Memetica, No. 3. [20200925] "I observe that the language of ‘information’ runs across all domains and often is the core or grounding language or concept no matter what domain, field, or discipline.
‘Memes’ are simply one of the latest and most popular versions of this. But annoying internet memes are like an annoying pimple – it gets all the attention but there’s still a whole body, a whole organism, a whole person that goes with it. Maybe we have to pop a social media meme in order to get relieved of it and get back to the larger dynamics, the larger realities of the construction, flows, and interactions of information." -Fragments of Memetica, no. 1 [20200925] Current issue of Meridian: Newsletter of the Global Studies Center (Gulf University for Science and Technology):
Ben Bennett-Carpenter, "The Global as Trope-ical." Years ago the literary and cultural theorist Kenneth Burke (1945/1969) outlined what he called the “Four Master Tropes”: metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony/dialectic. If we put these four tropes up as lenses in front of what we call the “global” we get some interesting perspectives. https://gsc.gust.edu.kw/newsletter?fbclid=IwAR0PJ-Q8kNKjmBfN-Nr6nwVs-XawzM6kPix_Qu9hS6KskG9ITkrjOhOBIwQ COMING SOON:
"Sound Experience, Feeling Sound: Alan Nakagawa and the Point of Turn Project" by Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter "Point of Turn emerged from an invitation by Prospect Art to the sound artist Alan Nakagawa. The project is conceived to invite individuals to share their stories of themselves or someone they know leaving organized religion, shaping the results into a sound composition. Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter was invited to consult, converse, and write about the project as it developed and was completed. As the Point of Turn project synopsis describes, 'The framework of the work is an analog stretching (inspired by data stretching) of the verse and chorus of 1970s pop hit ‘I’m Not In Love’ by 10CC. Working with vocalists Evelyn Davis and Steven Speciale, Nakagawa recorded them singing the chromatic scale. Then he used those recordings to form the chords used in the 10CC song and constructed an elongated choral work using those recordings. The various anonymous stories Prospect Art collected through an open call have been folded into the choral tracks. Also added into the work are frequency clusters from Royal Rife’s scientific experiments of the 1930s. This drone-like sound recording was then mixed to be experienced as a vibratory sound experience.' https://prospectart.org/alan-nakagawa.html You or someone you know left organized religion?
Artist Alan Nakagawa invites submissions of 3-sentence stories of this 'turn' in life -- see: https://prospectart.org/participate.html "Prospect Art is pleased to present "Point of Turn," a participatory project by Alan Nakagawa.
Alan Nakagawa is an interdisciplinary artist with archiving tendencies, primarily working with sound, often incorporating various media and working with existing communities. Nakagawa is the recipient of two Art Matters grants, the City of Los Angeles Artist Fellowship, the California Community Foundation Mid-Career Artist Fellowship, and a Monbusho Scholar. "Point of Turn" is a community-based project about the final moment or experience that led to an individual's decision to leave organized religion. Organized religion's role in our lives can be deep and complex. As the current Pasadena Buddhist Temple artist-in-resident, Nakagawa has learned about the dynamics between faith and religion as a cultural center in individuals' lives, dogma versus community. The project initiates with the data collection of short sound bites that name the moment that led individuals to break with religion. Not the complex history that led to it or the subsequent journey, but the story, the straw that broke the camel's back. Ideally, he would like to collect dozens of narrated moments and compose them into a sound piece. The project will launch with a free and open forum through a public zoom meeting. In the zoom meeting Alan, will be in conversation with Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter and will introduce the project and invite audiences to share their point of turn. Bennett-Carpenter is the author of Death in Documentaries: The Memento Mori Experience (Brill, 2018) and Explaining Jesus: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of a Phenomenon (Lexington / Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). The event will be Friday, March 3rd at 5pm PST. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83171171003?pwd=dXFRWDIrNCtmdnpQV2NYSlJvK3E1Zz09 Meeting ID: 831 7117 1003 Passcode: 972331" https://prospectart.org/alan-nakagawa.html Some work ends up being ‘an experience of encounter with an ethical challenge of creating one’s life for one’s self within its defined existential limits and engaging the work one has inherited.'
-DD, p. 25 Some 'makers' in creative practice 'are strong personalities, and to experience them through their work is to come away differently, to have one's "form of life" altered.'
-DD, p. 24 "What’s the first thing that comes to mind for you when you hear the word “global”? Beyond the global as system or sphere, I have in mind the ways it may work as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, or dialectic. This short essay reflects briefly on some initial associations that may arise in the context of exploring global studies."
https://gsc.gust.edu.kw/2021-carpenter PDF at: https://gsc.gust.edu.kw/sites/default/files/files/GSC%20Newsletter%202%20-%202021.pdf |
AuthorBenjamin Bennett-Carpenter teaches at a public university in North America and consults/coaches at Sollars & Associates and independently. Archives
January 2023
Categories |
RSS Feed