Ulmer Glossary
Ulmer “Glossary”
(it is important that this glossary be organized chronologically rather than alphabetically as it follows not the definition of terms but “a thread rather than a story or argument”; as ficelle, the thread of a plot)
chora a sacred space, a space of mediation (where order emerges from chaos); it is definable only through metaphor, not appearing but that which makes appearance possible
? a space where rhetoric/invention is figured by chora (evocation of the sacred)
stimmung a tuning of the lute that, at the same time, mediates as does chora; it’s a tuning toward harmony, a statement of “where we are ‘at’” (atmosphere, mood, etc.)
digesis like Xanadu, it refers to a hybrid whole; it is thus an attunement of multiple places into a composite; likewise it is a metaphor along the lines of chora, an exotic space that collects the sacredness of multiple exotic spaces
? does the internet present circumstances in which the exotic is interactive
uncanny the encounter of the familiar in the unfamiliar (that Gainesville is among those spaces collected and reformed as Xanadu)
home page “a composite digesis of four distinct places ‘sacred’ to the individual user”; a principle of internet authoring; also, the intersection of Paris-Moscow-Naples-Berlin for Benjamin as, through digesis, they “formatted his imagination,” were tuned to his mood of invention (his founding mood)
? “the application of Xanadu to the problematic of the home page as an interface metaphor for screen design has shown me how to use the mystory as a guide for disciplinary research.”
allegory the repetition that appears by “chance interferences of [an individual’s] historical circumstances” in the mystory; choragraphically, the allegory is the cognitive style of the individual, the founding mood that is generated “by locating [a] material position within each of the [pop cycle’s] discourses”; a personal signature
figure the center ego/subject position of the author as discovered only through following “the many entrances leading into the interior.”
? achieved, alternately, when, from disorder, emerge the evocative repetitions of the mystory (the thread followed across boundaries of experience); the digesis of Home as achieved through the historical persons transformed into concepts that, together, solve for the author “problem of the narrative world”
Home what is evoked at the intersection of metonyms/material axes; as house-trailer, KATL-KOMA all assume different significances, there can exist a digesis (Home) that considers each significance together and apart; a sacred scene; an essence
syncretic invention a crossing of country with samba; the identifying of familiar elements of an old culture with elements of a new culture
research to work with all meanings of a term; a following of ficelles
? to compose electronically, all the meanings must be addressed and, moreover, must be tuned to a stimmung/harmony
middle voice if the active voice makes clear the authority and identity of the author and the passive voice cedes this authority, the middle voice allows the boundaries of identity to dissolve (become fundamentally permeable); it addresses the way in which, because of the access to information that is incumbent to electronic writing, selfhood can include more donors, more historical figures/ideas that become informing concepts of the self
steel guitar the essence of Home for Ulmer; the opportunity to complicate this essence through research that creates encounters, that finds the familiar in the unfamiliar
open tuning DBGDGD; the multiple voices that are created when “the steel rod is pressed on the strings with the left hand to produce a harmonious sliding sound”; the movement from the fifth to the seventh that occurs with research
? an instruction for how to write in choragraphy; the sliding between chords (harmonies) being theinvocation of the middle voice
? it is a question not only of the tuning but the dissemination of the tuning
packet switching the breaking up of messages into parts; the distribution of these parts through all available channels; the resolution into a whole (see also: the dream work by which “the impulse of signification is routed and reassembled in the understanding by means of dis-placement and symbolism) (see also: the Black Atlantic, a reassembling of old cultures from the at-hand materials of the new) (see also: syncretism) (see also: apparatus catastrophe)
choral device “The computer connected to the internet is a choral device, mediating, supplying a place to sort the different materials of the chaos of world cultures into a signifying order (Hank Williams : Hawaii: King Sunny Ade : the steel guitar soaring over the persistent beat of world music); the pattern emerging from the pop cycle requires a tool that allows one to trace paths through “the destroyed, ruined quality of the [mind’s] network”
interface metaphor the movie or the home page or world music; where we act out the syncretic; in electronic design, it is the place in which “trade routes” can be traced; where an essence can be tuned to its researched correlatives; “a postcolonialized version of pidgin language”
byteracy composing in tuned parts, simultaneous voices creating essence on the home page
pidgin language two languages converging so that communication between unfamiliars might take place; antecedent of Creole; pidgins arise in special spaces of confluence, thereby making them akin to the home page as it interacts and gathers information from (exchanges with) the community of online composers
? an internet pidgin language must celebrate hybrids rather than exist as an apparatus that denigrates creolization, that colonizes toward purity
ideal society structured around exchange and also the “intense, vibrant, loud, buzzing and fluid” feel of such an exchange
October 28th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Your presentation was great, really helpful.