vinico
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Post by vinico on Jan 29, 2018 17:24:54 GMT
This weekend I watched this video on Why danger symbols can't last, from Vox which is really interesting as Vox' videos tend to be. The first part goes about how they picked up the symbol, which while informative is not really what I want to focus on. They then say that a physicist and sci-fi author was asked by the US Government to calculate the probability that someone or something would intrude on the Waste Isolation Pilot Project site for as long as it lasted, a baffling ten thousand years. "Well, name anything that has persisted for ten thousand years, anything." He mentions that maybe the catholic church or the core Jewish religion, "which tells us a story of what really lasts."  They also thought that erecting menacing spikes off the ground's site would be a good way to warn that it was dangerous, but worried that people might also think that it was interesting. I can see what they mean.Later on the video says that the German Journal of Semiotics, in 1984, published a series of solutions from various scholars and a linguist named Thomas Sebeok mentions religion again, when he proposed the creation of an atomic priesthood, that would use it's own rituals and myth to preserve information about the radioactive danger. Other people, and I'm not joking, we engineer a race of luminescent cat that would warn off strangers. I'm glad they didn't go with that route, as it'd certainly make people interested in owning one. Which leads to the problem I want to talk about, and a away from the video. Semiotic theory says that thinking is, also, kinda of, in a way, dealing with symbols. We deal with them on a whole lot of levels because their meaning doesn't exist in only one, a symbol means different things based on how it's used. But who gets to use symbols? Well, anyone, and in a way most of our technological advances have made the masses have access to more symbols that they can digest to turn, also just in a way, into their own; which, in turn, make symbols less coherent and more prone to mutability. What does this mean? No idea, let's discuss  |
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Post by pfbourassa on Jan 29, 2018 20:31:48 GMT
I think there was a Tom Scott video about this too. It would be interesting to use myths as a tool to accomplish a goal. Not something we usually think of doing. And it begs the question "is this how most myths start?"
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Post by mightyhegemol on Jan 29, 2018 21:10:04 GMT
Oh boy, something related to what I do!
So yeah, Parker, that definitely is something that people are trying to figure out. Is there a use for myths and rituals beyond their status as explanations of phenomena? Terry Gunnell has done some work on that with the Norse corpus, I know, and some stuff by Pernille Hermann could be relevant. That being said, I think the practical side of myths is only a part of why they are created, and any sort of deterministic exercise is doomes to failure.
The idea of intentionally creating mythologies around certain places is super fascinating to me (since that's related to what I'm currently researching...) and deserves more exploration. I don't know if there's anything clever I can add to this yet, but I'm definitely gonna try.
So, one thing that's difficult about religions in particular is that they address many fundamental needs at the same time. It's not just a mythology or a set of rituals, it requires a belief in some other being about whom stories can be told. That being doesn't have to be omnipotent (in fact, I think it's better of it isn't), but it has be significant, and influence a wide set of individual experiences. So I don't know how well an 'atomic priesthood' could actually work.
Regarding the increased spread of semiotics, I'm not sure that's quite how it works. After all, language itself by and large hasn't changed since the dawn of the internet, and certainly not in easily measurable ways. The word 'tree' still refers to a very specific thing, and anyone in the world who speaks English will still come up with something similar.
That being said, larger-scale semiotics is not something I'm terribly familiar with, and it is entirely possible that increased access to abstract symbols would have the effect you describe. I just can't think of any examples off the top of my head.
On a semi-related note, if you want, I can probably ask Terry Gunnell for his thoughts about this idea, since he's basically the leading scholar of Nordic Religion and I am at the school he teaches at.
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Post by Trinity R. Hearts on Feb 5, 2018 2:50:58 GMT
My gut thoughts are [Game Design] or [Graphic Design], or I guess [Design]. I guess what I'm speculating on/wondering about is designers ability to /"program"/, direct the attention/focus, guide people and to extent distant-future persons thoughts have improved sense then where [Gov't] drawing from the knowledge of a physicist & sci-fi author, instead also drawing upon contemporary game design, [etc]; But Wait: Do We Really CONSUME Media?, where people will come to a work with their deciphering techniques/tools/ideas - always allowing the possibility of misunderstanding. Which I mentioned /"program"/ to myths, But Wait: How DOES The Media Tell You What To Think?, and the idea of how do myths interact with thoughts? (lol, I think I don't really have any content to add with this ramble, though) I think this also relates to Have #Brands™ Become Mythological? ::: ::: For critical communication that's successful, in this case informing and providing the context for why this structure is here by design, I'm guessing is more about minimising the possibility of A) misunderstanding with contextual communication and B) communicating that incentives to tread upon that structure(s) are outweighed by the risks/costs ("hey! maybe there's something in there 'we' could use," [etc]) as close to 0% as possible. Than actually achieving 0% possibility: If we humanity had to start designing that structure today, what would be that probability? How would we measure that probability? Gut videos which came to mind initially: ((" The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and The Beginner's Guide" by Innuendo Studios) + (" The Beginner's Guide (Spoilers)" by Errant Signal) + and I think, (adding last minute - so this one was not technically initially thought of) ("Intro to Semiotics Part 1: Donald Trump and the Intentional Fallacy," "Intro to Semiotics Part 2: Sign, Myth and #AllLivesMatter," and "Intro to Semiotics Part 3: Performativity, Multifunctionality and Trolling," ( playlist)) (been awhile since I've listened to this 3 parted, hence the "I think")) *times ((" Jonathan Blow Explains A Puzzle From The Witness" by Kotaku) + (" How Jonathan Blow Designs a Puzzle" by Mark Brown/ Game Maker's Toolkit) + (" Understanding the Witness - Mechanical Transference and You" by Extra Credits) + (" The Unbearable Now: An Interpretation of The Witness" by Electron Dance) + (" THE WITNESS game analysis by Rob Ager pt 1 - The overcrowded canvas theory" & also " THE WITNESS game analysis by Rob Ager pt 2 - Branch structures & neurology" by Collative Learning)) |
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Post by mightyhegemol on Feb 5, 2018 11:06:08 GMT
some further thoughts, based on a conversation I had with Vinicio:
The whole 'atomic priesthood' thing seems to be an attempt at creating 'cultural memory', which a slightly slippery concept, but is roughly defined as the handing down of events beyond the lifespans of people who witnessed said event. This includes a bunch of myths, rituals, other practices, written accounts,etc. etc. The concept was first defined by Jan Assmann, and more recently talked about by Pernille Hermann, among others.
Basically, a lot of this increased accessibility to symbols might interact with that idea. What with memes, etc. having a lifespan of weeks to months, it would be curious to explore whether the entire process of witnessing, passing it on, winding up in other things, and then slowly being forgotten is accelerated entirely, or if something else goes on.
There's a bunch of other things we talked about, but I'll let vinicio summarize those, since he was explaining ideas to me.
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Post by Trinity R. Hearts on Mar 5, 2018 23:03:02 GMT
"The Nuclear Waste Problem" by Wendover Productions which goes over the same ideas as Vox's "Why danger symbols can’t last forever" and walks further: www.youtube.com/watch?v=uU3kLBo_ruo |
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vinico
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Post by vinico on Apr 9, 2018 14:43:40 GMT
I've lost count how many times I've come to this thread trying to condense my thoughts on the subject and decided it wasn't good enough lol I still mean to, but on the mean time let me just thank Torabisu for sharing all those links. I think you're on to something, and I definitely agree that (Game/Graphics/) Design is related! Meanwhile, I'm reading this article about Ready Player One being Spilberg's reflections on Hollywood and... www.indiewire.com/2018/04/ready-player-one-steven-spielberg-death-of-movies-1201948519/This certainly seems like this thread's territory |
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vinico
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Post by vinico on Apr 9, 2018 15:06:06 GMT
Ohh, that reminds me!! I'm reading "No Time to Spare", a collection of blog posts from Ursula Le Guin and in one of the chapters called Papa H she also talks about stuff that reminded me of this thread, and now that I think about it, this RPO stuff. The blog posts were removed after the book was published (which seems kinda shitty but I guess the publishers made her do it), but luckily you can read the whole thing straight from google books, since it's short enough. Specifically I'm talking this:  On this last quote about RPO the author talks about how a supporting character in the movie turns the Iron Giant into a killing machine, and it occurs to me what this whole endeavor is about turning this recognition Le Guin talks about into a fetish, while completely missing the point of the understanding. It's been some time since I read the book and I've learned to mistrust my memory. What do you all think? (Interestingly enough I can't help but feel like this whole thing about being Spielberg doing RPO feels like a Pierre Menard kind of thing, it certainly adds a lot of depth that he is the one saying that. "If “Ready Player One” is a more compelling film than it was a book, it’s because this version of the story is being told by someone who appreciates what it’s like to be in Halliday’s shoes.") |
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vinico
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edit: hello!
Posts: 65
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Post by vinico on May 1, 2018 21:28:36 GMT
I was going to start another thread, then I realized that it fit pretty snugly under this one because of the relationship between technology and symbols. You guys have heard of Heroes of the Storm, blizzard's moba super smash bros, right? Like, SMB was already a weird experiment on 'what if we put all this things together', and blizzard sure as hell is the one in charge of writing that rule-book nowadays. I was looking into this blog post about what they plan to do on their next updates and it seems that they are focusing on developing the Nexus, their multiverse and where HotS takes place. It's really fucking weird to see they describe their office structure in terms of myths, but it's clearly the next logic from everything else they've done. Here's the clip with timestamp: youtu.be/EfZpfF_6114?t=190Companies have always been our version of myths but this is going next level jerk off I transcribed the part that made me open this tab: The nexus is a place, that exists in the universe. It sits at the heart of an incredibly powerful cosmic storm so full of potential and energy that whole realms and universes are ripped into it and out of existence in milliseconds. And the nexus is in a sense a universe of universes, it's a universe full of all kinds of realms. Some of them more stable than others, some of them that have been around for thousands of years, others that have just being born and brought into existence now. Then they talk about when the lords of those realms have access to an item called ‘the singularity’, which gives them immense powers. “The singularity contains access to that higher level of power, that sort of storm power, that is next level”. Those individuals are like a demi-god ( deli-god, what?) or paragons of nexus power. There are various other realms and lords. I am betting that those are some sort of representation of blizzard chief designers or something. Then there are beings from the Dark Nexus. You know what the Dark Nexus sure looks like? Creations that had not seen the light of day. |
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