Task #4-Potato Printing

I chose this site as my #6 link for my linking project. Frankly, I chose it because Tyler’s conundrums (but not his outcomes) were the same as my own. And his clear shock at his realizations were so stark and raw they made me laugh out loud . . . so did my own. Carving the letters out and realizing what a time-consuming process this was and just how tough it would be to do in school; realizing that you’re using a massive knife for the task (although I’m a bit of a knife snob and did use a 2-man Henckel while noting Tyler’s PC version) and so another reason it’s not going to happen in the classroom; his 4-letter word problem . . . I thought the entire experience was hilarious, and his closing lines had me in hysterics: “I feel that the mechanization of writing has improved the human race so much, thankfully we don’t write by stamping anymore.  I couldn’t imagine the old printing press where they had to create letters and print newspapers.” I could feel the relief in his voice. I also loved how the word he’d created–snowy–was on a strip in wix.com and could be scrolled over his prairie summer backdrop . . . you could smell the sunshine and fresh cut hay, but hints of winter are almost always present in that landscape and his juxtaposition of snowy over that shot reminded me of bitter winters in Winnipeg . . . that began in August and were still hinting in June . . .

My own experience was also challenging, but my conclusion is not the same as Tyler’s. For me, I didn’t care that the job was not very good or that it took a long time. I loved the smell of the raw potato as I cut (mixed with the blood on my fingers as I cut them too) and I loved holding the cloth–it was so white and fresh–and I loved pressing my very badly cut out words on to the surface of the cloth and lifting it off to see . . . an illegible word with the “l” upside down . . . lol . . . which left me in hysterics over the whole thing. For several days I had the stain of food coloring on my fingers. That reminded me of when I was much younger and took my notes by hand. I had ink-stained fingers most of the time, but it reminded me of the labor it can take to produce the written word, and how much more words, books, and written artifacts may have meant at some point, because of the human labor required of the task.

I am a trained artisan viennoisserie baker, although I do not bake any longer. But I charged a lot of money for my products when I did that work. And it was for several reasons–I used local ingredients (right down to the flour) and unsalted butter, I let my doughs rise for 2 days before baking the product, I used all real ingredients including my own vanilla extract–and the labor. One bread I made at Christmas, Panettone, took 30 days to prepare the yeast I used in the bread and 1 week to prepare the grand marnier-soaked lemons and oranges. That bread was sublime, and I could never tire of its tall beauty and complex flavor notes. That kind of skill and perfection is hard to find now, but I found the print-task and my former bread-making along those same lines of what human labor can produce that mass production simply cannot emulate. Perhaps that’s why I decry those television shows where competitors throw foods together as fast as they can . . . food has such beauty and grandeur . . . why rush its pleasure?

“I once got into a dispute with an Englishwoman over the pronunciation of a word and offered to look it up in the dictionary. The Englishwoman said firmly, “What for? I am English. I was born and brought up in England. The way I speak is English.””

So, yet another assignment that assumes I’m a PC-user or Mac Sierra user and mobile owner . . .

I checked out a number of emoji translators. I became interested in emojis briefly about 5 years ago when I learned of a business that had hired an emoji translator. I thought that was interesting; I mean, emojis are pictures. Why the need for translation?

But translation is also something that fascinates me; as Kress, 2005, asks, I’ve also wondered what might have happened had visual communication–photography, television, arguably computer screens–jumped first as mass mediums of production, would text be as dominant as it is today? Would we even need translators? (I guess so . . . ).

Kress and Bolter are both writing in the early 2000s and reading them is like reading ancient history, even though it’s not even one generation ago. Both are pre-cellphone, which has radically altered culture and both just precede massive online ‘communities’ such as Facebook, Nickelodeon, and so on that have so dramatically re-drawn lines of culture, community, and country. So their comments seem wide-eyed and naive. Bolter’s discussion of MUDS and MOOS as well as his translation of the emoticons is, well, pretty cute . . . I wonder how he would view emojis . . . (p. 74).

So here’s the capture I made of several attempts to download emojis, emoji boards and install emoji ‘alphabets’ all of them failures . . .so I put this into an emoji translator, instead. See if you can guess what it is.

I’ve put the original text below.

But back to the issue of translation. I’ve tried my hand at it, and tend to pay a lot of attention to films produced in other languages as they translate the dialogue on the bottom of the screen. Since the eye can capture and interpret the action and intonation, movement and other components allow for substantial understanding of a foreign film, it’s always curious how few words seem to be translated for the viewers. I have wondered if it was because the translators were not paid well? Then, I thought, well, really, it’s because so many other cues and clues fill in that just a few words can anchor the action.

The same is true for emojis, it seems to me. No translation is perfect; The first emoji translator was hired by a business firm in 2016 . . . and now there are emoji translators online . . . but I always find it curious that we think we can translate anything at all, really. Language is so ensconced in cultural signs that just do not translate. The word, Kalsarikannit, in Finnish, roughly translates into sitting at home in my underwear, alone, getting drunk . . . who knew? and look how many words that took to explain in English.

A friend and I argued recently about the growing dominance of emojis. I disagreed. I see them as yesterday’s culture, along with expressions like “peeps.” But emojis are also always comical. It’s hard to take a round yellow head and not think, smiley faces, or even earlier, to “Koolaid, Koolaid, tastes great” commercials, or Walmart’s price breakers.

I translated W. H. Auden’s “Stop The Clocks” poem to see what happened. It loses all its intended weight, of course . . . which makes one wonder about the potato printing assignment. It took so much work and energy and cost; little wonder not much was set down in print, or that, if you were going to spend so many hours creating one page, why not make it worth it, and embellish it?

I had a friend chastise me thoroughly once as I tore pages from a book, marked its margins up, circled, underlined, exclaimed and profaned my way through it. For him, it was sacred copy; for me it was both a tool for me to use and a space and place of exploration. Thus, I had to notate it, orient myself in it and through it, move pages around to get a fuller picture of that character that just appeared on occasional pages or that particular phrasing I could see iterating as I turned the page back and forward and could understand if I put them together . . .

For all Kress’s criticism about the valorization and control of the author on the page, I love the slip and slide of metaphor and metonomy, those “empty entities” he decries; but I love visuals, too, and wept the first time I saw the Mona Lisa.

The reader is forced to accept the author’s direction, read sequentially, in chaptered chunks (Kress, p. 13). So what? The simultaneity of an image can quite physically affect a person, at least, it can this viewer. But almost never on the computer screen, for me, with some exceptions: JR’s works underwhelm on the screen, but you can feel their powerful intent; the BBC series, Flowers, on the other hand, sickens the viewer it is so richly visual . . . it reminds me of the film, The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover where the lush/rottingness of the film made you feel faint throughout. But, I have recently read Forrest Gander’s poem, BECKONED, in his collection, Be With, and lost my breath because of the drop kick his words hit me with; I still can only read his words when I have prepared myself for them, to receive them . . . words and images do that to you.

Kress’s final appeal that we “establish authority . . . even knowledge for ourselves” (p. 21) is a prophetic conclusion to what the next 15 years have brought to us, the ability to see and read in ways unimaginable just a few short years ago . . . Google still astonishes me that I can virtually walk down the street of a destination city and know it without ever being there, and when I do arrive, I can walk around like someone who has lived there for years . . .

W.H. Auden, Stop the clocks

This is the original piece, translated for this assignment. I only did part of the story. I wanted to try to Kalsarikannit . . .

Text translated

Modern Family: Did the chicken cross the road?

This show opens with Cam upset that he’s forgotten the words to a childhood song. He decides to buy a chicken to help him remember his roots.

Alex has applied for a job that requires a family interview. As usual, Phil and Claire are up to their antics and begin arguing. Luke, studying psychology at college, offers his advice on how Alex can put forward her best self.

Alex’s interview continues with Claire and Phil making their usual silly comments and trying to compete with Alex and impress the interviewer. Alex, of course, is embarrassed and tries to end the interview as quickly as possible. Alex is furious about the behaviour of her parents.

Cam’s chicken experiment does not go well, and he wants to return the bird. He is also out of chicken feed, and he asks Mitch to get more feed. We learn that Mitch enjoys the chicken. He returns home to find he has left the chicken coop open and Hennifer has disappeared.

So, you say potato . . .

So, that was hilarious. I simply did not have any of the write (yes, pun intended) tools . . . so my knife was too big and dull, I used water colors not paint (which could work, though, I think) and I needed a template. Drawing freehand just wasn’t a good idea. I also tend to leave things out when I do them without a plan to follow. One course I took in Adult Education had me build a map of Canada and I forgot to put Quebec in . . . hahahahahaha . . . Freud would have loved it . . .

It only took me about one hour to create the stamps–if I leave out having to run to the store for more potatoes. I went to that Thieves Hide-a-way, Save On Foods just off campus–paid more than $1/potato . . . so it was gonna take one potato or nothin’ at that price. I also had to buy some rough cloth. I do have some linen, but I want to get it right first before stamping it.

The thing about doing things by hand is, if you have the time, why not? Now that I don’t go to classes physically, I spend a lot of time walking . . .  I mean, if you don’t have the time, you want the automation, but if you do, well, what better way to spend it?

I loved doing it. If the potatoes had been cheaper, I’d have done a few iterations, but I admit, beyond the price, I hated wasting the food.

I think I am going to try this in a class. I’m not too sure why, except that it does create awareness of words and that they are an act of creation and made of, by and as a result of decisions by people. And nobody said the letters had to be in the same direction . . . 

• Do you normally write by hand or type? Did you find this task difficult or easy? Explain.

Generally, I use a computer, especially for assignments. I simply type much more quickly than I write, although perhaps less so as my computer keys begin to dim and wear and indiscriminately miss a bat (bat) (beat!) (at last) now and then . . . somewhat like me . . . lol

I love to write, though, and when I do, tend to infuse flourishes into my letters . . . sometimes creating print text that is sharp and edgy, now creating print text that swirls and curls . . . I spend rather a great deal of time on my shopping lists, imagining—after I’ve lost them enroute, as I always do—that someone will pick them up and wonder who has done this letter writing . . . and make a found poem of it all . . .

I would find it tedious to write papers by hand; I haven’t done that since high school . . . and a far-sighted undergraduate professor made all his students switch to computers to submit papers so I have been using that mode for 30-odd years. I don’t find it difficult to write, at all, and I use it to take notes for things I find important and want to be able to remember. I have always noticed that when I take physical notes, I recall more, and in more detail.

• What did you do when you made a mistake or wanted to change your writing? How did you edit your work?

It’s also still necessary to take notes by hand in some venues—such as a movie theatre, play or other live production, which I often do, so note-taking is something I enjoy, not dread . . . depending on the error, I may leave it, or draw a line through it. I rarely completely obliterate something I’ve hand written, and I tell my computer-loving students the same thing. Keep your iterations; save a new version. Things about the old version may be needed later and you’ll be glad to have kept them for reference.

I used to edit my handwritten work by cutting it out and placing it where I wanted it with gaps to fill in new material, if I needed it.

• Did your choice of media play a part in how you edited your work?

I almost always use my computer, but have used audio notes, at times, so I suppose the medium has played a role in the editing process.

• What do you feel is the most significant difference between writing by hand and using mechanized forms of writing? Which do you prefer and why?

Speed. Writing by hand slows thinking; it allows significant mental editing—requires it, really—before setting words on the page. It also slows energy; by that, I mean, when you are typing quickly at, say, 100 words/minute, twice or thrice the speed of writing, your thoughts can almost overwhelm you and your emotions can become caught up to the same frenetic pace as your typing.

Hand writing is an evolving process that slows the reification and immobilizing of mechanization, even as it imposes limits, order, priority on what can be written; it’s the nearest thing to presence (to point to Heidegger) when “being” is absent; hand writing to some degree captures the presence of the writer; typeset does not. This objectifies print, eventually gives it more authority and a sense of the ubiquity of any ‘truth’ the immobilized lettering might contain and certitude and credibility over handwritten materials that must always remain associated with one individual and person.

The whole idea of signification and the emptying of the signifier with the increased distance of the being from the production of significance is what an experiment with handwriting and increasingly distant forms of print illustrate. The issue of the eyes (“gaze”) that co-creates the handwriting is also a distinguishing factor from mechanized writing where the only eye that watches the production is, arguably, the eye of the machine.

This experiment reminds me of where ‘writing’ and language originate: outside the signifier. Yet, we often take writing and language as what signifies, which isn’t true. The “being” that philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida, and so many others speak of, is the origin of speech, and what is fully authentic. As we move away from the being—in the manner of metaphor and metonomy—we create a gap or space that causes a loss of the presence of being and so authenticity.

Pimental calls it a “disturbance” and even a “contamination.”

It’s a fantastic thought about beingness, which is pure only in Speech, and so historically, speech was elevated over writing; a man’s word or handshake. Writing’s predominance over word is relatively new, and each removing iteration from speech to handwriting to typesetting to mechanization removes legitimacy from Speech to the written word. Finally, mechanized words have and hold truth, independent of speech . . . the debate between Heidegger and Derrida.

I’ve gone rather far astray, but notions of speech, Being and handwriting (mechanization of speech) tend to enrapture me. Concepts like meaning slipping between/among words, the ‘truth’ that writing can generate (can it?) all keep me wondering about what it means to enter this dance with technology.

Pimentel, Dror. (2019). Heidegger with Derrida: Being Written. Translated. Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007 /978-3-030-05692-6

Keating_Speech to text optional task

So since this is an optional task, I have decided to add a layer of play to it. My computer is getting old; the ‘r,’ ‘s,’ ‘e’ and ‘n’ keys work at whim. That can be anticipated, of course, and caught and corrected. What often slips by, though, is how my cursor randomly jumps. So I can be happily writing along, and suddenly my cursor will decide to jump up and back a line or three. Between these two malfunctions, I can occasionally get some pretty wild results. So I am going to write for a bit, without correcting for either shortcoming as I explain the shortcomings of the speech to text task I just completed. Here goes.

1. How does the text deviate from conventions of written English?

The text has no punctuation, but I can say what punctuation I want; e.g., period, comma, tc., and the application, text dit, will insert it for me.

2. What is “wrong” in the text? What is “right”?

Th txt suffes from significant errors in grammar, splling and syntax, to say th least . . . lol . . . not to point finges . . . hahahahaha.

3. What are the most common “mistakes” in the text and why do you consider them “mistakes”?

I don’t rally conside th anomalies in the text, mistakes. I realiz as I am writing that I have seen text that deviated this far from standard nglish befoe: my students! As I write this material, I am wondering how thy manage to leave out the lettes they do—mine a5e due to an aging machine, but their errors are mistakes of misunderstanding or pehaps just iattention. Still, I cannot help but notice the similiarities in my errors and those of my students who struggle in English.

I suppose one error that I might consider is the homonym . . . mail for male; weather for whether.

One error the speech dito5 kept making was to tu5 h wod, dog, into, dark. Where it occurs, though, made me laugh as I read it; I some crazy way it made sense . . . as this txt may b makig crazy sense to you, as you read it.

4. What if you had “scripted” the story? What difference might that have made?

I don’t think I could’ve scripted a story this creative, but I am sure I would never allow myslf to make this many errors in th mechanics of written speech. It seems quite funny to me and I find myself laughing as I read, my dark Jack Jack . . . I don’t know why the word repeatd, but that dog is a “JackJack” and I may call him that from now on.

Some expressions wer quite beautiful and unxpctdly fitting, such as “hope broken” whe I’d said “heart broken” but it means the sam thig; in fact, I love th xpression “hope broken” . . . ad fid it quite touching . . .

5. In what ways does oral storytelling differ from written storytelling?

Well, the composition was quicker, lacking in detail, and not as articulate, perhaps, errors otwithstandig. The lack of punctuation—an error on my part—helps emphasize the oral natue of the text—running on, as it does, without pause.

This was an intestig exe5cise and one I’ll do with my students.

My new dark Jack Jack

I want to tell you about my new dark Jack Jack is an American people he was in a hoarding situation and hadn’t start he was rescued by the SPCA and I adopted him just before everything will shut down independent panda I had wondered about getting a dog that was still quite hope broken over the last of my 17 year plus companion Molly who died last summer so didn’t didn’t know if I had hoped to take on a new dark but as a pitbull Jack didn’t stand much chance of being adopted is also mail and American peoples mil died aggressive Home dogs to handle the weather went there at the dog that I had to intended to adopt was gone and is that sometime speaking to the staff about this 12 month old pop home with me he has shield to my heart something I had not expected IAM slow to make attachments I always have them so I would not say that I love Jack but I can see that given time given time we will become meets he has so many and during qualities she is extremely affectionate something my Jack Russell Teletech my Jack Russell terrier never was she loves to sleep on top of me she comes over it speaks to me the high pitched bark that The lies the fantastic size strength and speed of this dog and he’s always delighted to play sometimes too much so I am glad that I was typed into getting this dog as much trouble as years and for the number of things he’s tutor he’s helped me to remember why I love animals as much as they do that’s it

Well, damn, and didn’t my cursor not jump even once!

So, here’s my purple bag. It’s manufactured, really, since I don’t carry a bag or even a wallet. As you can see, there are no keys or credit cards. I don’t lock my house or my bike . . . the only thing I really value is my computer . . . and that I usually carry with me. The lipstick is empty . . . Perhaps I should buy some more . . . a brand and color I’ve worn for 30 years . . .

Of course, there’s also Jack:

He’s new.

Since I live on/by my computer, I suppose this generated collection says . . . I have no life? Lol . . . the computer has my life on it in writing for the last 10 years . . . with back ups, of course . . . it holds pretty much all my thoughts, plans, actions, hopes, dreams, dreams gone and lost for that time frame.

Since I worked most of that time as a part-time writer and English language instructor, I think it says that I’m language engaged . . . and now that the keys on my computer are beginning to stick . . . the letter ‘r’ doesn’t actually work (I have a work around) and letters ‘e’, ‘s’ and ‘n’ are following close behind. My cursor also jumps. I’ll be typing along and suddenly my cursor will jump up and back a few lines, inserting letters in unexpected places, like my life, disruptions I cannot avoid or predict. A jumpy jumbled overwritten life. Some day I’ll write a page that way, letting the cursor take me and set me down where it may, disarray, not correcting the missing letters . . . and call the result, poetry.

It’s occurring to me that the image of the bag that I manufactured for purposes of this assignment oddly echoes the image of myself that I outwardly project . . . one of normality, with a few unexpected missing bits (like keys, credit cards, money, photos) . . . but it takes a second to realize those expected items are not part of this particular repertoire. But perhaps it isn’t odd, since the me I present to the world is as manufactured as the materials in the photo . . . except Jack, of course.

Jack is the evidence that I am returning to life after a long hiatus. He is ever-present and demands that I be, too.

Nothing else matters in the bag, really, except the dog poop bags. Jack shits the biggest loads I’ve witnessed in a dog; impressive, really. I never leave home with fewer than 3 bags; he’s real work to clean up after (laugh). I think it embarrasses him a  bit, too; he finds places where I cannot reach for his emissions, deep under evergreens with dense low-hanging branches and prickly needles . . . hiding the shame piles from sight . . .

I have never carried a bag with any regularity, not even a gym bag, really. It reflects my utilitarian nature; I hate being burdened with stuff . . . any archeologist who found my bag would toss it aside in disgust, wondering, who packs designer lipstick but not a mobile or credit card? Perhaps it reflects a conflicted nature, the lipstick wanting in, but the person too bored or weary or cynical to bother . . .

People who know me (there are few) sometimes remark that I am a luddite, but they are wrong; I’m selective and a maverick. I do not carry a mobile since I think they are a joke on the 21st century, and I refuse to become subject to it (the joke or the mobile). My computer has all kinds of applications on it that I use with regularity and ease–data base, spreadsheet, text programs–and few people know the amount that I once wrote, or for whom.

I like to think I’m a bit like my computer, an understated exterior of still-elegant design with signs of wear that opens to a rich and unexpectedly deep and varied interior . . . with a few glitches in some of the hardware . . . so the digital literacies in my bag are equally deceiving and the lack of phone, receipts, credit cards, other tell tale signs of a digital universe are neatly contained there, rich and deep, like me.