Constructivism and the world of art: Beyond the noise

Investigations on the major milestones of Russian formalism took me to the foundations of constructivism. I found the following books informative on the historic role of constructivism in shaping a social aesthetics of art and literature in the modern times. However my pursuit to find the critical role of constructivism in shaping up a materialist consciousness in the emerging literary groups of Soviet Union needs further references.

In the book: Constructionism in Practice: Designing, Thinking, and Learning in A Digital World, I came across an interesting article by Mayakovsky here: How are Verses Made?. Quite thoughtful indeed. This book mentions that environment design and artifact design need to be worked upon separately.

The same book says about another conjecture that the markets are inherently reflexive when the author is speaking about the ‘open textured’ nature of designs. The rationale is that whenever the interpretations of human action can change the course of subsequent action and interpretation, it is said to be reflexive. While searching online, I could see that constructivism is almost used synonymous with the category ‘social constructionism’ and many authors perceive Marxism itself as a philosophy centered on social constructionism.

Going through one such book, Building Knowledge Cultures, we can see that there is a recent attempt to create mystery around the concept of constructivism. This book presents an argument that constructionism and constructivism are entirely different schools of thought. I will need to examine the authenticity of this laughable proposition.

On going further, the book Unfolding Social Constructionism speaks about a critical approach to cognitive psychology and its representational paradigms. It says that memories, perceptions, motives etc are not psychological entities, rather constructed in conversation.

The book, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922 says that constructivism achieved its most complete realization in the early films of Sergei Eisenstein. Another book, Realist Constructivism says that a constructivist will take a clearer position on the ontological role between individual and society than on the questions surrounding the power.

Constructivism in Film: The Man with the Movie Camera : a Cinematic Analysis has finally landed me on the history of the movement in Russia at least. According to this book, constructivism was famously defined in the ‘Realist Manifesto’ issued by the brothers Naum Gabo and Antonin Pevsner. They wrote that ‘art is the realization of our spatial perception of the world’. The rhythms of the working men and the machines play an important role in the constructivist theater. Constructivist photo-montage is based on the principle of self reference and it precedes the emergence of the self referential cinema.

Like other constructivists, Alexander Rodchenko emphasized the self referential aspect of the photograph achieved through the dualistic relationship between the images content and the means by which the image is constructed. He suggested that the photographer should find the most expressive view point that would alert the viewer of the potential use of the medium. Implicit in this approach is the formalist’s method of ‘defamilarization’. This is an interesting development that constructivism becomes a tool to break the false consciousness.

Digital consciousness: Emergence of new state of mind

Consciousness is an expression of experience, an expression of your higher grasping and control over life and reality. We say that someone is unconscious in their actions or thoughts, when we cannot find a rational or unreal reference to some of their expressions or natural responses. It can be termed as a complex result derived from the history of experiences, neural behaviors of memory and deep rooted social symbols from racial memory. 

Without a real reason or material connection, new forms of consciousness or unconscious will emerge in the society or individuals. Hence the collection of imprints of digital technology and modes of commodity production are very much reasons for this new forms of consciousness. Consciousness is never complete in a single human being. It is in between people and their social reflections. I am conscious about what people think about myself equally as what I think of myself. Thus our thought processes meet inside each one of us. Will this happen in digital experience as well?

Creative Commons: Fotopedia -  Making of Harry Porter

Digital consciousness is a nice term for this age of digital devices and digitization of experiences. Before you are digitally consciousness, you are naturally digitally unconscious. You will be exhibiting certain unique unconscious responses to digital surroundings and ecosystem. Like any ecosystem, digital realm also will have layers of experiences. digital art, digital signs, digital science, digital philosophy, digital religions, digital fetishism, digital ideology, digital pathology all will be part of this way of life that reflects in this new way of thinking. How is digitization coming to our life in such a big way? It is part of our professional and personal life alike. Workplace intimacy and expertise with digital technologies follow at home. The more we use them in our economic transactions and money making moments, it becomes closer to us. This is quite natural.

Digitization introduces a lot of layers and hierarchies of experiences. We bank on technology to pierce through these layers to reach out to more people virtually. Then these layers will become natural parts of our digital persona and virtual life. These virtual networks offer huge amount of 'life casting' to attract our interests. Digitization has huge capability to create a virtual layer that imitates you and amplify your like and dislikes. This reflexive capacity of digital medium can induces a hyper level of narcissism in our ego. It can override your balanced state of mind in great scales. 

CreativeCommons: Fotopedia: MessagePad

When we deal with digital experience, their is a certain amount of abstraction and condensation in this mode as opposed to analog expediences. It is always in beta. Data is never in final form. It continuously evolves with the digital interfaces. Thus human mind fails to a certain extent to generate a final reasoning or conclusion about digital moments. When we experience anything our mind works on both reality principle and pleasure principle. Digital experiences provides a digital layer that directly interact with human to create a satisfaction in both real terms and pleasure. Thus human mind continues to explore digital experience. 

When we take mind and body together and weigh the influence of digitization, it may seem that the mind is the most affected by it. Though mind may be the larger part of this engagement, our senses and active body organs also are part of this experience. When digitization enriches mobile technology, it becomes part of every moment of our conscious life as well. 

When you become digitally conscious, you affinity to devices and miniature details of life continues to increase and your mind will struggle with meta-narratives in every kinds of experience, be it politics or poetic, be it love or distastes. We are getting more details than we can comprehend in the capacity of human cognition for a moment of experience. It also alters the scales of space and time in the digital information communication and experiences. Thus building a perspective in digital experience becomes increasingly difficult. The moment our mind realizes this, it may either go into addiction or aggression. 

If we can treat digital experience as normal as real experience, this layer of hyper reaction and ideological affinity can be controlled. As we know, a mirror is always a mirror, irrespective of how much you like your reflections !

Can cinema be an art of deception?

Film Review: Malayalam movie 'Drishyam'

Not getting into the controversies about the originality of the cinematic theme, let me express some of my thoughts about a movie I watched recently. It is Drishyam directed by Jithu Joseph. Mohan Lal, Asha Sharath, Meena and Siddhik are part of the main cast. It has become a block buster and getting popular review comments and word of mouth publicity. 

The movie begins with the tag line 'Visuals can be deceiving'. At the end of the 150 minutes, one may wonder what is the visual that deceived us. It was the narrative and the entire movie screenplay that deceived us. Moreover it raised a few questions on my mind. 

Can cinema / literature be the art form of deception? The movie goes at length to showcase the efforts of the commonsensical hero to hide a secret. The hero is on a war of survival against the brilliant but morally drained and personally shattered police officer who has lost all sense of humanity to prove a crime.

So on onside we have a villager trying to hide a grave secret and on the other side we have a police officer who goes brutal to unravel the mysteries surrounding her son. Where is a social conflict here? 

There are sexual abuses happening at various parts of our country. Then where should we begin the story? Should we keep the camera on the life a person who commits a crime to protest the abuse and then praise his efforts and brilliance in hiding the secret for eternity? Of course not. 

Despite a decent behavioural acting by Mohan Lal and the other crew, the movie is a pack of spades and strained imagination. Like every other commercial film that boasts about the marvels of editing, this film tries to create a perspective that is just dependent on an actor. The story is dead somewhere in the middle. 

Not only visuals but every art form can be used as a device for deception. It is artist who applies creativity to expose anti social elements and express truth in its highest form of existence, whether it is dream or reality. 

When humans dream of Algebra, nature crafts our Geometry!

A Collection of thoughts on Mathematical Languages:

Natural Reflections on Algebra & Geometry

This post is inspired by an intriguing thought that disturbs me often when I try to relate the beauty of algebraic notions and their syntactical complexities with the physical dimensions and measures of geometric nature. Geometrical shapes of vivid complexity is all over us. Algebraic knowledge becomes richer and deeper day by day. 

At the outset, algebra appears to me as the attempts of human mind to find an order within the physical and its own humane cognitive nature. Hence at times algebra becomes associative and at times abstract. Geometry is mostly occupied with unique physical operators for measuring nature and natural objects. As human mind and its boundless imagination works in both the streams of knowledge, they always explore anew territories and often produce complex functions and abstractions. Humankind crafts nature in their own reflection. 

As we know, our innate tendency to imitate nature has been one of the fundamental driving force in all our scientific, artistic and engineering initiatives. This tendency gets transformed into further advanced forms of knowledge as we apply our reflections of nature into our labor process. This tendency can be seen in the mathematical languages as well. Our mathematical observations about geometry has helped our investigations to find patterns in the field of numbers and algebraic symbols. Is there a difference in the nature of measurement in Algebra and Geometry? Though the approach remains the same the challenges differ widely.

Some metric level contradictions in the nature of Algebra and Geometry

I was always perplexed about the physical differences between various elementary mathematical operators like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When I add entities of different properties, the sum never accumulates in nature. It occupies a physical space less than or equal to the nature of individual entities. 

Taking an example, if we add one mango and an orange in a physical box they take space as equal to their physical dimensions. In the representational mathematical space also they occupy distinct locations. When we take two mangoes here they occupy same space in the physical box whereas they add on to the same quantity in the representational space. 

The question is whether the mathematical symbolic space is as accurate as the physical geometrical space. For convenience we may denote this representational space as algebraic. The algebraic space is often limited by the limits of our abstractions and the capacity to associate them whereas the geometric space is challenged by the scope of observation and the limits on the minutest quantum that we can reach. 

Numbers are the base constructs of the symbolic space. They become complex when the physical world in the scope becomes wider and deeper. We think of complex numbers and complex plane when we reach a limit to measuring the diagonal of a triangle made of single unit edges. Then the new symbol enters our mathematical vocabulary. This is just an example. Similarly when we think of trigonometric measurements, we find new sinusoidal and cosine patterns emerging in symbolic space. It is a new synthesis of physical and symbolic space.

Next question is can symbolic space travel ahead of the physical space. In other words, can we dream a physical entity before experiencing its real physical nature. I must say that at times yes. It is not magic or miracle. It is because of the intellectual capacities of human cognition and the power of knowledge to expand the horizons of our recognition. Each strides in the cognitive skills of human mind and our social experiences enrich our mathematical languages, whether they reflect our knowledge about symbolic space or physical space. 

Nature of Evolution : A Note on the boundaries of Darwinism

Self Similarity of Cognition

Self Similarity of Cognition

Do we perceive the grand nature as a reflection of our innate self? This question may sound philosophical at large. To make it clear, let me frame the question as: how do I conclude that the society is evolving? Are we comparing the history of life with our present achievements? When we examine the organs, bones, muscles, movement patterns, anatomy, cell structures in context of evolution, we tend to compare them with human specific configurations. Is this model quite subjective? May be it is true that this reflexive element is an inevitable aspect of experiments. My point of view is not towards attributing subjectivity to the methodology of observation-ism in scientific experiments. 

Rather, I see an aspect and a drive for self-similarity in many of the human cognitive activities. Going further, this self-similarity seems to be driven from an innate instinct of nature itself. Our cognitive mind is essentially seeking self-similarity in all the material objects of life. Even its cognitive processes are affected / influenced by this instinct. Our art works, aesthetics, and our artistic creations are many at times influenced by nature. We see mimicking nature a prelude to many original creations. Even highly original engineering and aesthetic works are inspired and driven by nature. This all suggest an inclination towards self similarity in our cognitive mind. This self similarity at times makes measurement of our experiences highly subjective. Thus a metric for self similarity is worth a mathematical pursuit.

+Gokul Alex 

De-Cognition: Social Media and the Information Architecture

Demystifying the Internet Pragmatism: A Cognitive Approach

Any media ecosystem evolves around the currents of communication. How different is Social Media from the mainstream media and the traditional formats of a communicative medium? The levels and depth of commoditization has liquidated the reach of communicative rationality in the media formats such as Television, Film, etc. Social Media has evolved around the concept of social networking and the inherent non-linear and decentralized nature of Internet. Social Networking as a concept has roots in Sociology and demands a wider narrative. To analyze Internet as a Public Sphere, we need to demystify various abstractions to reach the political economy of the worlds largest producer and consumer of information.

Can Social Media, with its base in Social Networking topology has always offered a potential for becoming the next generation cognitive network. It has even been visualized as the axis for a semantic web where information becomes a self organizing network. Is this technological pragmatism anywhere near real life possibilities? If not, why so? This is the vantage point of this critique. Why do we need this much of information in Social Media. What is the driving force behind the information architecture and the accumulation of information in the social media space. Big Data and the information overloading has becomes the prime movers for the Social Business. Social Business has been predicted as the game changer in the information technology landscape. Thus it is a big business now. 

The question is has the cost of business sacrificed the potentials for developing cognitive networks around Social Media. When it comes to the information architecture, we need to know the basics. Who is the producer of information. It is each of us. How is the Search Engine giants generating wealth of information and the uniform resource locators (URL). The URLs act as the nodes in the information graphs. It is each of us, consumers, who creates various paths around these nodes and make them alive. This is largely forgotten. Thus the real value of information is generated by the end users like us. Information machines are thriving on the cognitive networks created by our information production, consumption, circulation and re-production. Search Engines are only one side of the coin. The present generation content aggregators are also only dynamic nodes of information. 

Cognitive networks created by us becomes commodity in the split of each second. This commodity again circulates among the networks of us. In each turn and twist of this information nodes and network, it generates money, the real money ! Thus we are working for a global system of finance capital virtually not knowing the sweet sweat that we shed in front of the the dumb terminals of computers. It is indeed a great state of hibernation or a glorified state of social pathology. 

+Gokul Alex 

Some Pathological Trends in the Social Media

On the Ideological Apparatus behind the Social Media Measurements

Social Self? This supposed to be 'oxymoron' has been with us for quite some time now. Now we believe that the more we are social in social media, the more we become identity conscious and identity empowered. May be a small leap of faith for the humanity and a giant step for the technology. What is happening in this flurry of affairs? 

Now we have conceded that the Social Media spread across the nation states has generated a huge volume of data about the humanity. May be this is the data store about the people with the access to internet and the world market forces believe that they are going to the the drivers of growth for the decades to come. Hope their predictions and reasons stand the test of time. 

Looking at the state of Social Media, now we can see that every other social media preaches to measure our online presence and to rationalize it. In other words, formalize our social self. But a moment please, what is that we are doing? Are we becoming more social and empathetic towards each other? Are we becoming more conversant in real life. If not, we need to look beyond the social media metrics that projects our presence in scores and dashboards. 

The Social Media is making us more and more eloquent about our thoughts, our connections, the number of friends in our network, the number of different profiles we have, so on and so forth. In other words, this semiotic framework is centered around each of us. Thus each of us becomes the target for different market segments. It is a really intricate mathematics where an end node is being referred by different graphs and each graph generates a different visualization out of the same node based on its diverse semantic potentials. Hence each of us becomes the perpetual sources of information for various networks and they generate insight out of our primary, secondary, tertiary and virtually an infinite set of semantic connections. As my interest is least on this mathematical modelling let me go beyond this abstraction.

I have just stated a problem provoked by my endless nights wandering in different social media systems to create an inflated ego. Now I am working on resolving this illusion and beyond the semiotics of this media ecosystem. Rather than being inflated about the semiotics of this ecosystem  we need to make it as conversant and communicative as possible. Here comes relevant the study of communicative rationality devised by Habermas. Rationality and reason can only decipher the signs and lead us to the real world of affairs. This post by no means is a call to boycott social media instead to understand the ways not to get paranormal by its illusory apparatus.