ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Contending with Collaboration

This post is not likely to be full of orderly and coherent thoughts...

When discussing the subheading for last week's class: "Authority, Ownership, and 'Complex' Authorship," we read a chapter from K.K. Ruthven's Faking Literature. In the chapter, the concept of collaborative authorship was examined and this particular section stuck out to me in relation to how we might approach Martin Amis' Time's Arrow:

"As a professional collaborator in the production of scripts for playhouses, Heywood engaged in what Jeffrey Masten calls `textual intercourse', an activity `predicated on erasing the perception of any differences that might have existed . . . between collaborated parts'. Modern critics, on the other hand, have put their knowledge of such practices to a different end by attributing to their preferred author those parts of the work they admire, and then relegating the rest to an inferior collaborator."

While Amis is the author of the text and there is no collaborator, there is an odd type of collaboration taking place on the page between the the narrator/consciousness and the physical body of Tom/Odilo. The narrator is telling the reader the story by relaying what he is experiencing through the uncontrollable-by-him body of Odilo. And Odilo's story is unfolding without the help or input of the narrator. Without both components of the narrator's insight and explanation to what Odilo's body is doing there would be just utter confusion instead. The narrator is the "preferred author" here because we do not have access to the thoughts of Odilo. The readers are biased towards the narrator over Odilo because of this as well.

Yet, there is a point in the novel where the collaboration to telling the story sort of blends because the narrator feels more at home within Odilo's body and understands more (or at least so he thinks) of what is going on in the physical world he cannot contribute to. As these events unfold to the narrator, the reader contends with the fact that the narrator is an unreliable one, but also that their "preferred" view of him was actually accurate to an extent. This blending of the events and understanding between the narrator to Odilo's actions, to me, makes it more of a traditional alignment with the idea of collaboration we're used to, but then yet again it is not quite the same still.

I have no idea if what I am getting at here makes any sense. Like I said, "unlikely to be orderly or coherent". My brain just cannot stop munching on this aspect of how is or isn't Time's Arrow a collaborative text in terms of not the author, but of the characters and the way they are authoring the experiences of Odilo's life in reverse.

Not sure if I will ever make sense of this line of thought... s... 

ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: What is an "Author" in Film?

I'm ramping up on research for my final paper in this class, and if you don't know me by now, you gotta know that I am finding a way to bring film into it if I can.

Coles Notes: I'm tracing the visualization of digital space through early science fiction films that pre-date the release of Neuromancer in 1984 and how they might have influenced the description of digital space in the novel, and then following that with how the novel has influenced science fiction films since then in further visualizations of digital space. Think Tron through to The Matrix and beyond.

But that is not what this post is focused on—as the title suggests. Our most recent class seminars and discussion were around the idea of 'What is an author?'. There were musing on tracing the rise of the 'author' in history and publishing as well has defining what an author is. And, since I am focusing on film in my final paper, I asked myself: "What or who is the author when it comes to film?"

I doubt I will be able to answer this question myself, and I am sure others would have a very adamant claim to who they would think is the 'author' of a film, but having studied film and film adaptations of books for the last five or so more years, even I do not have a definitive place of assignment for 'author' of a film. There are too many moving parts, people, and contributions to have a sole author, I think.

Claims could be made that it is the script writer who is the author. But then what if the script is adapted from a book or play or other source? Then is it not author that is original author?

What about the actors that bring the characters to like on screen? Are they not a type of author bringing a level of authorship to the depiction of that character?

What about the director? Is it not them who guides the story much like an author does?
What about the cinematographer? Is it not them who is bring the visuals of the story to life, like an author does with elaborate description in a novel?

Am I just grasping at straws here?

But, again, I have to think about all the moving parts that make a film function. And, because The Oscars was on recently, there isn't just ONE category for the awards which would celebrate the 'author' of the film and be done. There are multiple categories for all of the different contributing pieces to a film. 

So, in fact, am I not right, that there isn't really only just one 'author' of a film?

ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Truth and Source Tagging

I am still trying to wrap my head around the cognitive effort that we as readers are putting in when it comes to metarepresentation while we read. As Lisa Zunshine puts it: 

"Our metarepresentational ability allows us to discriminate among the streams of information coming at us via all this mind-reading. It allows us to assign differently weighed truth-values to representations originating from different sources (that is, characters, including the narrator) under specific circumstances. The ability to keep track of who thought, wanted, and felt what, and when they thought it."

Readers are constantly tracking numerous things while reading, and some readers, like me, find that tracking these things in writing is also helpful for the brain workload. Zunshine notes there are certain books like crime or mystery novels where our brain works overtime specifically because of the cognitive effort required to constantly question what may or may not be true of what we are reading in the story all the time.

Another cognitive process that takes a ton of effort, according to Zunshine, is "our metarepresentational ability . . . to store certain information/representations 'under advisement.'" This process is basically a repository for certain "facts" or "truths" that may require us to change the source tagging on who and where it came from and whether it is actually true or false. It is essentially a stop-gap until our minds can determine the truth of the information intake.

Long explanation short, I'm focusing on this because Zunshine briefly touches on how much cognitive effort, energy, and cost goes into "reassessing [the] initial valuation" that was assigned to a source tag or story or 'truth' that then turns out to be false:

"Some readers may be more amenable to this kind of reassessment, which involves revising numerous knowledge databases affected by the initial processing of the story, whereas others may find this call for the extra expenditure of mental energy irksome."

I see this application of reassessment in reading fiction transferable in terms of reality and the real world now as the prominence in AI generated content soars. Society is having to spend more and more cognitive energy on assessing and reassessing if things they see, read, hear, or experience is artificially generated or 'truth' in the their eyes as they used to see it. 

I take this in as being a specifically large issue with the news media (trained journalist at heart here) as we have been historically inclined to believe what we see, hear, or read in the news as truth/'truth'. If there is now an underlying requirement to put everything we experience in media "under advisement", then there is no wonder that certain demographics of the population are just giving up and accepting everything as is, or that some are checking out and not engaging. Then there are the public good/truth warriors out there who are cognitively putting in the work for the masses to go the extra mile to filter out and find the truth in an ever increasing reassessment of the AI slop world we are being fed.

There are other instances that I can point to as well in which the reassessment of the 'truth' is just too daunting for groups of people to deal with, but I am not going to point fingers. (I'm sure you could think of a few easily.)

Interestingly, I latched on to this thread in Zunshine because it connected to an experience I had a few weeks ago. I saw an image on Instagram that I was excited to forward to a friend; "ooo! look at this!". She pointed out that it was AI, and tagged so in the description. I was obviously disappointed because I didn't even look at the description for the AI flag. Upon further reflection, I think my brain didn't question the image because the people in it were participating in a photo shoot that I could plausibly see them doing regardless of the risqué-ness of it. I thought "I could absolutely see them doing this" so I didn't even think to source tag it as anything else than "this is awesome". 

Looking back now, a few weeks later, I am frustrated about not catching the AI tag because of how vehemently I am against AI. But, then again, I have to acknowledge that my assumptions and perception of the people in the image is that of one where I didn't question that the image is something they would potentially participate in. Both sides of the coin... but also concerning that it comes so close to what is possibly participated in in reality for those people.

Food for thought . . . 

ENGL 817AL - Field Notes: Time's Arrow Thoughts

The third and final book for my "Literary Mind & the Artificial" class is Martin Amis' Time's Arrow. And, I would not even know where to begin in trying to explain what this book is about... I tried to explain it a bit to my husband (as I was trying to work my way through it), and he exclaimed: "What on earth are you reading??"—Honestly, babe, same! What a ride this book is.

So, instead, of trying to explain it, here is a list of general themes/topics that are in the book:

• time (in reverse)
• consciousness
• World War II
• doctors
• out of context world
• secrets
• guilt/shame

And, because I'm still trying to wrap my head around it ‒ even more so after discussing it in class ‒ here are a few of my thoughts about the book in no particular order (or possible coherence):

1. My first instinct as I started the book was that it was about another consciousness placed in the main (physical) character's head in an attempt/effort to seek out and determine some sort of specific detail or event. I assumed it was sci-fi because of the previous book we tackled: Neuromancer. Boy howdy, was I wrong; but this theory would have had merit and grounds if that was the way it was supposed to go.
   
   
2. As we discussed the end of the book in class, and how it appears that perhaps the consciousness is still there for the "re"birth of the physical character, I had a really horrible theory: maybe the consciousness, who is also the narrator of the book, is actual a psychopath personality that is later fractured from the character and that is why at first "he" appears so naive and out of context because "he" cannot function without proper access to the character that "he" has been fractured and cordoned off from.
   
   
3. The above theory works well and makes sense especially f you follow along with Dr. Lifton's psychological mechanism of "doubling" which one of the seminar presenters outlined for us. The mechanism allowed perpetrators in the death camps to "function in two distinct, contradictory ways: as 'rational' physicians within the camp system and as mass murderers". The consciousness "narrator" readers follow through the story is one of these "functions".
   
   
4. Time's Arrow is short, but it was like reading two books in one. I take lots of notes in a separate journal while I read to help me retain details and comprehend more difficult texts, and I was basically doing double time with Amis' book. Every time I was writing what I knew was to be the proper context, but then also having to relate it to what the narrator was experiencing out-of-context—and out of time! I can only imagine what I will try to make of my notes when I look back at this novel in three, or five years time.

With the novels for this class all read now, I am looking forward to revisiting them for the rest of the semester based on the topics for each week's seminar presentations and secondary readings! Especially when we get into discussing "What is an Author?"!