COMN 2312 (6 or 9 Credit)

Next to last class? Exam next week Last lecture for this term

Exam next week Today’s lecture for this term will tie up some

loose ends related to exams Housekeeping related to exam

Exam materials: bring extra paper Exam protocol: once exam handed out, no talking Academic Integrity Make sure you id exam properly Exam grades after winter break Consider being early Bring watch 110 min:

1 Essay (30-40 min), 3 short answer (24-30), 16 mc/fib/matching (32-40 min)

Sumerian (26 letter alphabet) translated sound into abstract symbols and worked because it was abstract enough to be used efficiently

This allowed sound to be converted into a “thing” an object

Prior to this sound was one of the dominant media upon which cultural memory rested

Cultural memory = transmission of what is valued

Sound was cued through certain shapes

Sound is connected to ancient concepts of time: past/present/future connected to idea of

speaking presence Sound can be activated in its relationship with

memory through certain cues, smells, shapes and patterns

Cultural memory is dependent on these shapes and images – mythology can be called

the story shape of cultural memory, it is entangled with ritual (as pattern of cultural memory involving gestures, objects, use of space and performance in connection with music and stories told in patterns: musical

shapes, story-scapes)

Sound is connected to ancient concepts of time: past/present/future connected to idea of

speaking presence Sound can be activated in its relationship with

memory through certain cues, smells, shapes and patterns

Cultural memory is dependent on breath: it is dependent on a speaker and listener;

It is dependent on community

AS Sound is connected to writing: the concept of a word as a thing (that you look at) slowly comes into

play This takes a while because though writing is now a

technology with some cultural currency – most are illiterate

Writers (Scribes) can conduct writing in sealed environments

Texts are sounded. Reading is reading aloud

The reading of a book – is activity few in a culture can engage

The writing of a book even less so. Books are written in the main to satisfy the

interpretation text Cultural memory is dependent on this “read” text

AS Sound is able to uniformly be connected to writing: the concept of a word as a thing (that you look at)

READing as a visual activity starts to influence culture Books allow texts to travel outside of scribal communities

Texts are encountered individually Texts enable the rise of a rational discourse which travels

alongside a culture that up till now has been organized by mythologic

Instead of the patterns of the gods and their stories the book enables the cultural influence of the idea and “lines of

thought” This was previously the realm of the few; now cultures

become readers Cultural projects center on literacy

Cultural memory starts to gather around storage based in the book as a culturally transferable object

In early phases of the book reading is still reading aloud: It takes time and schooling for literacy to take root and for

reading to become a silent and individual activity rather than a communal and spoken one

As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence

Word becomes disconnected from presence

Word becomes something you think rather than hear

Word becomes connected to past to printing that solidifies the past

Word becomes disconnected from present

Word is no longer “event” an exchange between persons

As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence

Word becomes frozen Authors are gone (dead)

Thinking as dependent on word- becomes “sentenced to the sentence”

Thinking becomes a technology driven by the sentence and its subject object

grammars Or by the mathematical sentence and its

penchant for formulas Meaning is the only remaining myth,

author’s intended meaning is buried with them

As sound becomes word becomes a thing/an object that has permanence

Word becomes frozen Authors are gone (dead)

Thinking as dependent on word- becomes “sentenced to the sentence”

Thinking becomes a technology driven by the sentence and its subject object

grammars Or by the mathematical sentence and its

penchant for formulas Thinking dependent on technology is

electrified when the technology of reading becomes electrified

Thinking dependent on word dependent on reading word is dependent on technology

When the technology of reading is electrified Reading becomes electrified

This electrification is temperate It can blow fuses

Dependent on currents The fluidity of meaning: oceans, lavas, land-

flows, erosions This electrification is able to restore the wave

like quality of words and meaning to public space

Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by weather and geological events

Cultural memory dependent on this electrified reading

Returns to architecture to cope If

Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by weather and geological

events Then the house becomes important – to

survive cultural meaning Economics are also adrift on this electrified

cultural memory –fluid and thus resort to a mythological “house” to cope

Technology is adrift on a cultural memory that is melted and can capitalize on the

memory of capital” Word is replaced by capital as site of refuge:

Cultural memory dependent on this electrified reading Returns to architecture to cope

If Meaning is fluid, thermal, like topographies – ever affected by

weather and geological events Then the house becomes important – to survive cultural

meaning Economics are also adrift on this electrified cultural memory –

fluid and thus resort to a mythological “house” to cope Technology is adrift on a cultural memory that is melted and

can capitalize on the memory of capital” Word is replaced by capital as site of refuge:

Evidential world established by the book

Technology is evidence of survival: accumulated as a kind of library

Old books/old technologies store cultural memories no longer valued

Cultural memory depends on bringing back this storages (stories) and bringing them alive in a fluid world

As word was unpacked in a “community” and unable to be imaged without a community of listeners

So also the other senses were configured as a model of community, and imaged as such

Thus though the idea of individual senses existed – there was a way in which they were until recently – consider as a kind of community – a “governing” body to consult – the sensorium is a reference to this internal community

Digits are the alphabet of number

Connected to the body through the activity of counting

Like word is connected to a body memory through sound

So numbers are connected to a body memory (as if it is a ghost) through fingers and toes which establish the activity of counting and numerical value

Digits are the alphabet of number Count equal taking in towards

body, choosing Count also meant bringing into this

sensorial community (internally and externally)

Value as establish by number takes many years as a concept to develop, value is established in relationship to a conversation – democracy of the senses

Value as established by “capital” is a abstract system that becomes culturally dominant in concert with the rise of print and its affect on “word”

Next term: Sensorium + Value

Advertising learns that senses are important to selling (while at the same time official learning becomes focused on learning as disconnected from the sensual)

Advertising learns that the connections between numbers and senses are important

Official learning is reading and thinking and the sensorium is not considered the site of official learning for technology unless it is mediated through the world of numerical value

Thus in a strange turn of events: advertising becomes a means of marking time – of finding historical periods in cultural memory

More next term Reading on sensorium for today will be

moved to first reading next term