Discordia || Comments || Garcia Marquez vs. Borges

Information InFiltration. Blended mediacultural ingredients that stay crunchy in milk.

[new] still mulling... (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#4)
by paullloydsargent (enolagrey@hotmail.com) on Mon Dec 1st, 2003 at 08:17:47 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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So I know I posted and ran on this, but I have been thinking about it a lot, despite my horrid end of semester schedule. Wired mag just ran a bit on Philip K. Dick and his influence on sci-fi movies some 20 years after his death. It got me thinking about how often Dick and J.G. Ballard show up not only in sci-fi genre discussions but also in rather weighty, academic new media conversations. There is certainly a lot to be learned from visions of the future as a post-Armageddon dystopia, especially when linked to contemporary concerns regarding simulation, memory, surveillance and other signifiers also common to the sci-fi genre. But I`m also interested in what models for image replication, memory and information collection might lie in the more romantic takes on magical realism of Garcia Marquez. A kinder, gentler "Total Recall," or maybe a "Minority Report" as told via prose poetry, or even a series of haiku? I too read "Invisible Cities" in school (in a seminar along with De Certeau, Deleuze, and others. I believe the class had a title like "Time and the Production of Space" or something). Throughout the class, I was reminded of Barthelme's writing, especially " The Glass Mountain" as we discussed memory and the mapping of subjective spaces through experience and language. Later, as I read and heard more and more references to Borges' map in new media projects, I simply became interested in how art and fiction and pop culture and theory collide. How they influence each other, especially as trends develop. I guess that's exactly what prompted me to post originally: what might the current trend of new media work look like if its makers hadn't all read certain specific texts? I am interested also in Aileen's point about translation. Sadly, I am quite American in my language skills, barely able to read French and helpless in any other. But I am fascinated by translation. I recently reread the Odyssey and the Iliad using a text my mother had from her college days. In "plain English" the jacket declares, this text attempts to retell Homer's stories as the translator believes he would have spoken them: "colloquial, never pedantic, high-flown or cliché-ridden. The funniest part about these "nearest contemporary English equivalent" versions is that they were first published in the 30's, thus that present day language sounds so, well, hokey. It would be easier to swallow, as an 18 year-old student, were it written in "high-flown" Victorian English, me thinks. Ahh alas, to quote Trevor Paglen from a Dept Space and Land Reclamation West announcement: All your space are belong to us! _tangentially_paul_
signs, signs, everywhere signs...

Garcia Marquez vs. Borges | 5 comments

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