Revised Hands and Writing

Here is a revised version of the Hands video. This project explores the relationship between hands, technologies, and writing and asks viewers to consider the social implications of this relationship. It is especially interested in the different conceptions of community arising from this relationship.

"Thumb writing" challenges traditional and oppressive writing models, since it is impossible to write with thumbs like we write with index fingers and thumbs or with both hands moving together. Moving the thumb to the forefront takes the emphasis off of correct spacing and keeping things stable: traditional roles for the thumb. It takes the emphasis off of the index finger, long aligned with phallogocentrism and a stable identity ("I AM"). It takes the emphasis off of striving for consensus by way of common sense ("We Are"), and moves toward the "singular plural" ("i r"). This description of community ("i r") places people alongside one another in order to intervene in the world without the illusion of consensus.

Henry Jenkins, in Convergence Culture, describes what I am calling "i r" communities as "hive networks" or "knowledge communities." "i r" communities are a collective intelligence not organized around common qualities but defined through "voluntary, temporary, and tactical affiliations, reaffirmed through common intellectual enterprises and emotional investments [and] held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge" (27; my emphasis). The process of acquiring knowledge, then, holds these communities together and keeps them "dynamic and participatory" (54). My video stresses the centrality of thumb writing for creating and sustaining these communities.

The first sections of the video focus on traditional roles for hands and writing and the values associated with these roles. They attempt to articulate the symbiotic relationship between technologies and the writing and thinking produced with those technologies. Following these assumptions, the last section highlights knowledge communities and puns on the associations linking text -- txt -- felt: materially speaking, from text(ile) [woven] to txt to felt. I try to show that felt (as a rolled, mashed, and pressed anti-fabric, anti-textile) ironically and more accurately represents thumb writing. The "thumbstrokes" common to texting and writing on PDAs elicit more emotional response among participants, since "thumbing" happens so quickly. This type of response is difficult to accomplish through writing with all of the fingers. I turn to Leisa Reichelt's term "ambient intimacy" to further describe "felt responses." Reichelt defines ambient intimacy as: "a term to describe that sense of connectedness that you get from participating in social tools online." Ambient intimacy extends Jenkins's notion of "emotional investments" and, coupled with "i r" knowledge communities, more accurately represents the experiences thumb writing evokes.

Works Cited
Beastie Boys, The. "Now Get Busy." The Wired CD: rip, sample, mash, share, 2004.
Colli, Giorgio and Mazzino Montinari, Eds. Friedrich Nietzsche Briefwechsel: Kritische
Gesamtausgabe. Berlin and New York: Walter deGruyter Inc., 1975 -- 84.
Dan the Automater. "Relaxation Spa Treatment." The Wired CD: rip, sample, mash, share,
2004.
Heidegger, Martin. Parmenides. Trans. Andre Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana UP, 1992.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU P,
2006.
Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and
Michael Wutz. Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1999.
My Morning Jacket. "One Big Holiday." The Wired CD: rip, sample, mash, share, 2004.
Reichelt, Leisa. "Ambient Intimacy." Disambiguity Professional Weblog. 17 October 2007.
http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/

Category:

Education

Tags:

• hands
• writing
• heidegger
• texting
• thumbs
• community
• digital
• communities