Lev Manovich’s article “Trending: The Promises and Challenges of Big Social Data” discusses the emergence of vast amounts of data that may soon be available to researchers in the humanities field.  In particular, he addresses the problems and complications which could arise with this data, one of which was particularly interesting to me.

Although social media sites will soon prove to be a great resource in terms of data for the humanities, Manovich urges that we must be careful when interpreting this data.  While it does allow for a much larger sample population than many past studies, social media information is largely biased and in many cases does not represent the actual thoughts and emotions of the people posting it.  While some users may be posting their real thoughts and feelings, others may post only things that their friends want to see, or will refrain from posting things that they think do not fit the social norm or which they might be judged for.  I know that I myself would be an example of this case; there are many times when I do not post things on social media sites that I feel like my friends would not want to hear about.

This point of his article made me realize just how different the data used in the humanities is from the data used by sciences.  The large amount of data that can be obtained from social media sites can almost all be biased in one way or another, whether a person is simply posting a status that is different from how they really feel, or taking pictures that only portray a more positive image of themselves.  The data used in science, on the other hand, can be thoroughly researched and proven to be true.  Although this may have been an obvious difference to some, I had never before considered the possibility of researching vast amounts of social data in the humanities field that is taken from people’s personal profiles, rather than from facts collected by the government.  When data from social media is analyzed, it seems to me that it should be read more as trends of what other people want to make their peers think about them.  While it could be used to analyze social trends, I believe these vast amounts of emerging social data should also be analyzed carefully, and taken with a grain of salt.

Rita Raley’s description of tactical media simulates Marie-Laure Ryan’s concept of dysfunctionality in “Between Play and Politics: Dysfunctionality in Digital Art.” Raley offers several definitions or conceptions regarding tactical media. First and foremost, “tactical media signifies the intervention and disruption of a dominant semiotic regime, the temporary creation of a situation in which signs, messages, and narratives are set into play and critical thinking becomes possible” (Raley 6). Works of tactical media are created to disturb, question, and momentarily corrupt an alternate form of media that demonstrates principles with which tactical media creators vehemently disagree; such creations are used as a means of critique and provocation of thought regarding a social change that tactical media attempts to re-examine. Tactical media is meant to “present a challenge to ‘the existing semiotic regime by replicating and redeploying it,’” forcing viewers to react to and engage in such social change (Raley 7). Raley’s explanation that tactical media disrupts other media forms complies with Ryan’s theory that dysfunctionality seeks to interrupt technology by using such technology for disparate purposes other than that which the equipment was created.

Ryan provides an example of a politically dysfunctional technology called the Image Fugurator, which distorts other camera’s pictures by implementing political text into the photos. The Critical Arts Ensemble (CAE) states that their goal in such dysfunctional acts is to “exercise electronic resistance to the governmental and corporate forms of power that rule capitalist society by attacking the database maintained by these institutions” (Ryan 2- put hyperlink). Similarly, the CAE determines the purpose of tactical media as “’offering participants a new way of seeing, understanding and interacting’ with ‘[the invention of] new spheres of reference…to open the way to a reappropriation and a resymbolization of the use of communication and information tools…’” (Raley 8). Tactical media can be viewed as a form of politically dysfunctional technology that aims to disrupt social institutions by which society is constrained and to offer alternate views of thinking about such societal norms.

Raley demonstrates that society has been interpolated—the recognition of being restricted by societal norms—by various societal ideological state apparatuses (ISA) that confine and constrain society. Tactical media thus serves to question and even break such interpolation by making ISAs powerless. For instance, Ubermorgen designed a piece of tactical media that allowed users of Amazon to be able to pirate and disseminate copyrighted books (Raley 19). Amazon, a representation of a governmental ISA that defines the societal norm of capitalism and consumerism, was temporarily incapable of affecting or influencing society as this form of tactical media disrupted the purpose for which Amazon was created. Tactical media is not a form of arbitrary dysfunction, but serves to utilize such dysfunction as a tool to spread a political message and critique. While it is evident that tactical media succeeds in broadcasting a political message that forces viewers to re-examine social norms, the method by which they proliferate such information imposes and infringes upon the abilities and functionality of foundational organizations. Furthermore, does the end product of such infringement counteract the violation of others’ rights or do the means to achieving political activism corrupt the purpose and message?

In one of my favorite articles we’ve seen so far this semester, “Trending: The Promises and the Challenges of Big Social Data,” Lev Manovich proposes a new type of humanities student and scholar: the kind that can both think and analyze like an English major, but also research and construct digital environments in which to host and process their work like a computer scientist. During this whole class, I have wondered about digital media as a study of English and literature, especially when considering what kind of (albeit “stupid, little”) digital object I, and the rest of the class, would create. I’ll assume we all have the capability to dream up digital objects that crunch numbers, move wildly about the screen, or aggregate all instances of certain themes on the world wide web, but…are we capable of actually creating those objects? Manovich says that, “if each data-intensive project done in humanities would have to be supported by a research grant which would allow such collaboration, our progress will be very slow,” indicating that we (as humanities students) may not currently possess the ability to program or write code and algorithms necessary to do the type of “big data” research we would like to, and we’d better start enrolling in IT and computer literacy classes in additional to contemporary lit and cultural studies classes.

I definitely think Manovich is right, that the humanities (and particularly the college major course requirements for humanities) could use an infusion of computer science. That said, I think most courses of study could benefit from this infusion. Not only can computers help us to parse big data useful for humanities research, they and (knowledge of/about them) can help tackle all sorts of hurdles more easily accomplished by an algorithm than “by hand.” I work as an online sales manager for a small business, and I totally understand what Manovich means when saying that you sometimes need to have specific computer knowledge in order to collect the types of data you want. If I want to organize inventory in a specific way or track trends in sales that are not “pre-supported” in the algorithms that the program automatically offers, I have to create myself a new Data Import file or a new Data Export file, that tells the program how I want it to read the information that I will upload into it as en excel or text file. This is not something I was trained to do or previously had knowledge of, and as a result has caused me to seek out a lot of computer skills knowledge that I didn’t already have. Gaining this knowledge and ability to manipulate inventory and sales data through the computer has not just benefit my understanding of the company’s fiscal position, but has allowed me to more thoroughly analyze trends and make adjustments to the way we do business as a result.

Maybe this is because I don’t know too much about how programming works, but the one question I did keeping asking myself throughout reading the article (especially when Manovich is talking about reducing the “data landscape” to a useable size) was: What are the computer algorthims for videos, photos, and non-text datas based on? How would you ask the computer to put constraints on the data set? Are these constraints based mainly on the “formal” aspects of the data, i.e. time, date, length, size, color, original tags or descriptions associated? How would you organize the data by themes, if all you had was length of video and file size? For that matter, how would one organize the data based on any content with physically watching all 1 million videos and tagging them all with relevant terms? For that matter, wouldn’t doing something like that result in a fairly subjective idea of what the themes or content of each video is?

The expansive growth of the narrative can easily make one lost in all of its complexities. Stephen Mamber’s proposal on taking the narrative into a visual form in “Narrative Mapping” follows our studies of “the whale hunt” last week. By alternating the narrative development process from a traditional written form to something more visual and guided, it can transform into a different kind of piece that expands the notion of story, time, and focus.

At first glance I believed the maps to only be used as blueprints for how a narrative should be told, the plot, the timeline, and what the progression of events. This came from a high-school understanding of Gustav Freytag’s plot model traditional literary models (introduction, escalating action, climax, falling action, and resolution). After delving more into the article, seeing how maps worked in other works such as the Baron and The Birds made me realize that a map didn’t nearly dictate how a plot is supposed to be viewed. It acts as a tool to help analyze connections in the literature. The maps can be used to connect character relationships, locales, similarities in sections (chapters, pages, etc), dialogue; the list of things that can be depicted in visual diagrams goes on and on. What immediately came to my head is the mapping of storyline and time. As some texts can get complex, especially any dealing with time travel, plot lines and key events can be easily displayed on a diagram. I know the recent movie release, Looper, and the famous novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, could both benefit from the implementation of a diagram to closely follow what is happening in the narrative. The mapping of a timeline, or multiple timelines, can help make sense of convoluted stories that requires multiple readings.

What I think Mamber pushes in the article in the emphasis on presenting literature and new media in a format that gives us new ways of challenging works. Does the story expand far and wide to present a greater story? What does a story do within the confines of the map? Does the diagram benefit of hamper the story? What isn’t the diagram showing?

I was also thinking about Alex Glass’s blog post and agree that the mapping that gives away too much takes the satisfaction and enjoyment out of finding out what makes the narrative unique. I do think, however, that authors can manipulate diagrams to deceive viewers and present a perspective that would put the audience on a more difficult path towards fully comprehending a piece of work.

I have always loved maps, ever since I was a little girl.  I would get the map out of my dad’s glovebox and sit for hours, “reading” the names of cities out loud that I had never been too, but wanted to visit.  I would even highlight the ones that sounded interesting.

When I started reading “21 steps” I had a similar feeling. Each bit of narrative connected to a place on the map, and at any given time, I had no idea where the next stop was.  I thought this was a very interesting way to tell a story- the idea of visually following the narrator to the specific places detailed in the story was very mysterious and exciting.

The story had a mysterious feel to it– the narrator was forced to go on an unknown mission, and the reader got to literally follow along.  From flying to rowing across unknown waters, I think that the use of the map really made the story even more interesting and mysterious.  Following the plane to Edinburgh was one of my favorite parts, as well as the detail at Heathrow airport.

I have never read a map story that was similar to this, but it reminded me of a story I would make up in my head as a kid when playing with maps (minus the guns and deaths of course)

If the story did not use the map, it would have been much less effective- the reader would have to picture going to each of the places in their head, which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, but would make the experience much different.

Seeing how many blocks the narrator had to go, watching the plane “fly” to Edinburgh, and his boat row away from the police made for a rich experience.  Although this was my first experience with this type of story, it was pretty memorable.

In reading Simanowski and Mamber for this week (and Manovich last week), I can’t help but be repeatedly reminded of Fredric Jameson’s notion of postmodernity as being without historical referent: the capabilities of technology have removed linearity and allowed a simultaneous dispersal  and compression of information. If modernity still relied on the historical imperative of industrialization to connect it (through exploitation) to nature, postmodernity’s database removes that link (OK, fine…practically, we still need to exploit nature for stuff…that’s not what I’m talking about here.) Echoing Manovich, Simanowski notes the “endless and unstructured collection of images, texts, and other records” (qtd 160) that make up the database. And it does follow that our aesthetic would shift as well. We don’t just see in these maps. Work becomes winkingly self-referential, relying on the audience’s internal database of meaning (for example, an episode from The X-Files that pokes fun at David Duchovny’s work on Twin Peaks relies on the audience’s ability to recall both.)

The re-imagining of data as art (real-time, malleable art no less) does seems to follow this aesthetic shift. At the same time, doesn’t this re-structuring of the de-structured affect content? Simanowski seems to say no (even with that head nod to McLuhan that form is content) because the underlying data still exists. The map only represents the data in a different way. I’m not sure I buy that completely, especially since Mamber’s work in mapping The Birds fundamentally alerts the experience of that piece. The same could be said of any data-based narrative map because it flattens the narrative (imagine the same thing being done with a movie like Psycho that relies on the ending’s big reveal.) A similar narrative map of Memento that tells the story forward would drastically change the story and the analysis that could be done of it.

This isn’t by way of simply saying that “this is new and I don’t like it.” But these visualizations and networks seem to reassert the narrative even as Simanowski suggests that they do not. It seems that even in the seemingly structure-less age of the database, narrative reasserts itself in ordered imagery.

I love maps, especially those that are interactive. Often times, I find myself pouring over them and distracting myself from my actual work.However Stephen Mamber’s article, Narrative Mapping, was the perfect excuse to reevaluate some of my favorite online maps. As I began reading the article, I was pigeon holing narrative maps as strictly narratives represented as maps, however who’s to say that maps can’t tell a story?

I’ve been comparing Mamber’s overview of narrative maps and their qualities to one of my favorites: The Map of Metal. The map “visually represents” an “underlying database” (147) by creating as interactive world of 20+ genres of metal, layering audio, visual and historical information on each genre.In Mamber’s article, he states:

Aspects can be teased out, grouped, color coded, abstracted, or otherwise reformulated, for the sake of offering some new perspective or approach. Mapping is clearly an interpretation, so it can be a kind of textual analysis-a reading as much as a mapping. (147)

The Map of Metal is both fictionally geographic and temporal. Each user can create their own interpretation, or their own “textual analysis”, as you scroll through the fictional Middle Earth-esque map. There is a time axis across the top that categorizes the many genres by year, and there is also a legend that categorizes the genres by primary, metal, fusion and related. This allows the user to map the development of metal in a whole new way. As you discover each category, there is a basic history given, and a list of influential bands and accompanying videos of each band. Users can immerse themselves in all things metal, allowing their own narrative to unfold as they explore the map, and the histories of each genre.

Mamber also states that “narrative mapping is a useful tool for dealing with complexity, ambiguity, density, and information overload” (157). This is especially true while dealing with genres and sub genres of music. The Map of Metal is a navigable space, and makes overwhelming information not only palatable, but easy to digest. Narrative maps create an easily explored world so users can thoroughly involve themselves in the information, and full interact with the story being told.

Having read arguably non-traversable texts (at least upon first reading) such as David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, I can relate pretty heavily to Stephen Mamber’s promotion of narrative mapping. Conceptually, this can be (and likely has been already) done in ways like mapping out Leopold Bloom’s walk through Dublin in Joyce’s seminal text Ulysses. Like Mamber says, some texts, like Wallace’s and Joyce’s, are just “ambiguous in some fundamental fashion,” (146). They might have “multiple explanations” with “elaborate temporal constructions,” (147). And what is more appealing than being able to draw back that curtain and visually map what has been intentionally left hidden from us, by the author?

But I think for a moment, and I really have to admit that when such things are done for me, it just does not have the same permanence. Perhaps it is because the Death of the Author is fresh in my mind from last week’s discussion and recent blog posts, but the importance of authorial intent drones on in my mind. I think of Mamber’s assertion of “going global,” using narrative mapping in an analytic fashion that re-creates the way we examine a work as readers, but it truly begs the question: am I, as the reader, OK with that?

I think it was Meredith who mentioned last week that a “betrayal” to the reader within a written narrative is more striking than when done in visually representative media, like video games. In print, we allow our imagination to run rampant, to think what we want to think, visualize it on our own, in the most horrifying ways, rather than watching it unfurl for us as they do in television, film, and games. And I similarly think back to Mamber’s suggestion of re-creating what the author has used to scaffold their narrative, yet have chosen to leave out.

But then I must ask: did they leave that narrative mapping out on purpose? And even if I watched Leopold Bloom’s day unfold similarly in format to this week’s reading of 21 Steps, would it have the same level of permanence with me, watching the story progress on my laptop, than if I tried to traverse the text, visualize it in my mind, and understand it, page by page? If mapped narratives become a new, superlative interface to the work itself – at least for my own understanding – is the actual experience of interacting with the text just as emotive?

To be honest, I am not sure it is. A narrative mapping assists my reading of a text and helps me remember who is related to who in The Count of Monte Cristo, but part of the fun of celebrating such literature is partially because it is difficult to read. I like the challenge of a tough book. And to have it decoded for me, to watch it instead unfold visually, is perhaps similar to buying a jigsaw puzzle already pieced together. In new, digital media, such elements of narrative mapping may be unique, helpful, if not completely novel. But I think something great, the experience of traversing a deep text, is destroyed in the creation of some kind of a graphic overlay.

When I read, while it may be convenient to use a narrative mapping to, as Mamber says, “[deal] with complexity, ambiguity, density, and information overload” (157), I feel something is similarly lost in the removal of that experience. And while it is true my hair may go gray quicker, and I may lose my patience with the method Joyce crafts his novels, I prefer to read certain novels as they are intended to be read: difficult, and sometimes with alcohol. I do not want to “deal with” complex books. I want to read my complicated books. I want to conquer them.