Memos on the Matter of Elit

Exactly Created.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:11:24 +0000

Reworking and arranging the images so that the composition had meaning was a luxury afforded by technology. The ability to have the images exist on layers in my photo-editing program allowed me to work with the images freely and manipulate them to my will. This power of image manipulation seems commonplace in our society with the advanced photo- and video-editing programs that are available for home use, but it is not something that Cornell would have had. This gives us a great deal of power over our images and allows us to create a very specific composition that is meaningful.

Lightly Created.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:09:02 +0000

‘GC 44′ was one of Cornell’s largest and most involved dossiers. His collection of items and photographs and notes is similar to the great amount of detail that the novel can contain. The encyclopaedic knowledge that is contained in many great novels can exist in other forms as well. This inspired me to create my bloxes using the least amount of images that I could, to keep from creating a non-comprehensible mess, while retaining the maximum amount of detail. Collecting and sorting all of the images that I was going to use was an important part of this. Perhaps more important was the choice of how to represent the detail that is contained in the book through my images.

Blox.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:02:22 +0000

Created in Multiples.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:02:01 +0000

The voyage that the narrator takes the reader on mirrors the voyage that I undertook to complete this project. The process of moving through the various materials that were available to me was a daunting task, considering the size and scope of the Internet. Collecting things in real life would be an equally daunting task for the lone wanderer. There are an infinite number of things around us every day and picking and choosing those things that strike us and make us experience life is key to the blox voyage.

Apapted in Multiples.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:01:27 +0000

Somehow the narrator manages to find the connections between the exorbitant and varied knowledge that exists in his head. He has a knack for finding exactly what is useful, or exactly not useful at times, and sharing it with the reader for the sake of the reader’s being informed. Adapting this work to a visual medium, without the narrator present to make the connections for the viewer, Although an interior understanding of the narrator is present in the book, it remains absent from my visual representation. The visuals themselves and the arrangement of the various cropped images is what makes the connections instead of the narrator.

Multiple.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:00:34 +0000

The narrator is the protagonist himself. He is unnamed throughout the novel, an anonymous tour guide to the world that he lives in. The reader gets all of their information through him and their knowledge is restricted to his knowledge. Harkaway uses this to give the reader an experience that mirrors that of the narrator. Background and details are given by the narrator, knowledge that already existed in his head prior to recall to share it with the reader.

Blox.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:59:58 +0000

Visibly Created.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:59:37 +0000

The voyage was not the only part of the blox project that was difficult. Possibly even more difficult was going through my collected materials and cutting out what was unneeded, unimportant, or boring. I collected a great deal of random images and meaningful images that I came across in the last few weeks and gave them their own special folder on my desktop. This folder grew and grew until the amount of images was almost staggering, and I had to go through before I even began the project to throw some of them out and keep the others. Having this large collection of images to go to for inspiration was important to the creation of my bloxes.

Visibly Adapted.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:59:11 +0000

Real-life photos of some of the largest institutions in the world make up the backgrounds to my bloxes. This idea was the most natural for me to adapt. The idea of using the buildings as symbols of the institutions that exist in the real world came to me without much difficulty. The backgrounds create a sense of cohesion in the series of images. Considering that Harkaway uses references to the situation of modern man, it seemed only appropriate that I use these images to create the background to these images.

Visible.

josephmeehan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 06:58:09 +0000

The world of The Gone-Away War is far different from ours, but it possesses some similarities to it as well. The use of certain signifiers that are easily translatable to our world lets the novel draw upon the knowledge of the reader to create a believable reality. The familiar topics of war, institutions, morality are found throughout. There is a war-torn region in the world of the novel that is politically and militarily entagled similar to the present-day Middle East. One large, overarching institution pervades the diagetic world. It stands in for the institutions that pervade every day modern life. Practices such as bee-keeping, karate, and the process of finding one’s identity are all part of what makes the characters sympathetic. Gonzo’s father raises bees to the constant annoyance of his wife. Practicing karate is part of what aids the narrator in learning how to spend time away from Gonzo in their adolescent years. Both characters also complete university and join the military as part of the process of becoming men. These details are what makes the world of the novel believable.