Culminating Project

The Black Box is an ongoing project using the quotidian form of zines to discuss different topics in technology and media theory, primarily focusing on photography. Using quotes pulled from critical theory texts, hand drawn illustrations, and images, this project aims to attract and engage a reader who may not have any knowledge of media theory and introduce thoughts, questions, and ideas that would lead them to further investigation motivated by their own curiosity. 

Topics covered in the current zines range from a discussion of what light is and how a camera records light, to the use of technology to create incredible images of scientific phenomena[maybe point to zine]. One zine discusses the concept of the ‘black box’ used in engineering as well as in theory. This concept is helpful to understand that which we don’t understand, to apply a term to something indescribable. Another zine introduces a few groundbreaking theorists discussing photography; Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, and Rosalind Krauss. The last zine uses quotes from Susan Sontag and Vilém Flusser to discuss magical thinking and the enormous impact the technology of photography has made on understanding ourselves and our society. These topics are chosen to engage a range of readers, not only those interested in theory but also readers who may be more invested in science and technics or exploring an existential frontier.

writing samples

It is the year 2990, this epoch is marked by the instability that instinctively comes before great change. With the collaboration of more advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, Earth is on the verge of a new millennium and era in which humans are able to travel at faster-than-light speeds, opening up the universe to exploration and the human consciousness to a greater understanding of ourselves and the cosmos. There is a commission of scientists and intellectuals who created artificial consciousnesses (ACs) of the great thinkers of the late 20th and early 21st century. Like the current day, that time was marked by periods of insecurity with international power struggles, adversarial and accelerationist technological development, the threat of nuclear war, and disregard for the sanctity of life by those with the most power. As we are today, at that time the greatest thinkers were trying to make sense of the world as they developed theories to understand what happened in their past to lead to such a fraught present.

A project of autobiographical historicity typically follows a chronological order and establishes some sense of knowing, of likelihoods and probabilities that leave the viewer assured that if the author is biased, at least we would know how. The works Tarnation by Jonathan Caouette and Immemory by Chris Marker subvert these conventions, leaving gaps or voids in knowing of a personal and familial narrative. This method of storytelling is arguably more realistic to our lived experience of memory; we chart courses along a chronological path, have episodic stories to share, and may transverse between realms of memories. Memory and our personal histories are reconstructed, leaving gaps of knowing that can be difficult to accept. This paper aims to use Immemory and Tarnation as examples of two different approaches toward the process of outlining the unknowable, the void, of personal narrative, and truths within familial mythology. In Immemory, the relation to the self is established in a transversal approach that Marker describes as geographical. In Tarnation, Caouette grasps toward the unknown of himself in relation to familial history and mythology that is marked by mental illness, abuse, and the camera as prosthesis. This paper attempts to outline the unknown by describing the aesthetic qualities and disjunctive narrative that accompany the experience of sharing a personal narrative that is traceable while acknowledging the unknown.

“We are submerged to our neck, to our eyes, to our hair, in a furiously raging ocean. We are the voice of this hurricane, this thermal howl, and we do not even know it. It exists but it goes unperceived. The attempt to understand this blindness, this deafness, or, as is often said, this unconsciousness thus seems of value to me” (Siegert 32). Siegert is quoting Serres, yet the haptic and phenomenological experience applies to the sensory transition into modernity and now the transition into digitation and cybernetics. Those who adapt may do so by shifting their scale in perception and remaining somewhat attached to human experience, if mediated by a technological frame. Others still may lean on a crutch of a new habit, such as reading, or shifting their habitus to distract from the sensorial cacophony, others still are able to maintain tradition and human networks despite technological mediation. If the historical cycle of fragmented adaptation to lurches in tech advancement can be a cautionary tale for our contemporary challenges in networked and algorithmically mediated communication, perhaps shifting our approach from programming ‘patches’ (to use a coding term) to address sensorial mediation toward focusing on preserving the integrity and universality of genuine communication, including improvised adaptations to express with integrity within technological frameworks, would be a way to learn from our past and advance bravely, and humanely, into the future.