For this weeks blog post, I chose to write about Ana María Ochoa Gautier’s “Aurality: Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia”. The main reason I chose to write about this writing in particular is because the author is from Colombia just like myself. Ochoa talks about many artists in Colombia. Ochoa herself is an artist specifically a musician and she is the chair of the music department at Columbia University. She talks about things like the botanical aspects of Colombia. Colombia is not very known for this but we have many different types flowers throughout the country. People mainly associate drugs and great coffee with Colombia but the truth we are so much more. We have a coastline with great beaches and places for tourists to stay. Pablo Escobar is not the only famous person from Colombia but he is always the person we are asked about. If your thing is music you ask me about Shakira, if it’s soccer ask about James Rodríguez, and if it’s reading ask about Gabriel García Márquez. We are past narcos era so people should stop asking us about it.
Blog Post #9- Abby Potashnik
For this week’s blog post, I chose to write about Marshall McLuhan’s Medium is the Massage. I absolutely loved reading this work because I believe it is extremely valuable, and imperative for the young generation of today to hear. McLuhan states that all the technologies that were ever created are the messages themselves, not exclusively the messenger, delivering the message. Technology is something that was originally created to help mankind, to benefit us. Today, it has become something that, while yes, it is super beneficial, and is so helpful and quick in everything, has crippled us and made us addicted to, on top of what Marshal calls the “Age of Anxiety”. Anxiety is definiltey one of the top words I would put hand in hand with technology. I can say from personal experience how any times my outlook and stress level would’ve been better had I not been attached to a device or connected to a technological relation of some sort. I won’t sit here and write how we would’ve been so much better off before smartphones, or advanced robotic equipment, because everyone is born in their right time. Not as second to early or late, and how they navigate this world is intended for this time period. But it is so crucial to check in with ourselves, to make sure we aren’t falling to prey as much as we unfortunately do nowadays.
Jessica Colasacco Week 9 Blog Post
This week, Johanna Drucker’s article “From A to Screen” stuck out to me the most. In this article, she states “We take the virtual letters as things, mistaking their appearance for substance, and we also overlook the agency of alphanumeric code, taking it for granted.” This is extremely true. When we see a letter on our screen, we can tell if it is from a different font but do we ever really question where that font is coming from? Before class today, I had no idea that there was an entire folder on a computer that held all the fonts that are freely available for everyone to use. These letters have significant meaning to us but how do we distinguish between them? Does an A in Times New Roman differ from an A in Ariel? Is the difference importance to us as humans that use this letters everyday? In Spanish, the letter A is pronounced as “ah” where as in English we say “aye”. But, the pronunciation of the letter A can change depending on where it is located in a word. In the word “apple” it is pronounced as “ahh”. It is importance to recognize how the letter A gained its meaning, from writing and then further, to the screen.
StClair Weekly blog post
For this week’s blog, I will talk about Johanna Drucker’s “Comparative Textual Media”. Specifically, I will focus on one of her chapters called “From A Screen”. In this chapter, Drucker talks about letters and the alphabet. She brings up “who created the alphabet?”. That is a good question. Most people believe it was the Greeks. Others do not believe it was the Greeks. Everyone has a different idea of how the alphabet was created. Drucker did debunk this concept by saying “The Semitic language speakers forged an alphabet to serve a tongue whose consonantal morphemes communicated adequately without vowels, and the technical specifications for their writing were different than for the Greeks, who later modified the writing for their own use”(Drucker, 2013). However, who is to say that the Greeks didn’t invent letters? They simply just changed what they learned. Other cultures also do this with letters and make it their own to fit into their society. Letters and the alphabet change throughout cultures, however, they all consist of the alphabet that is conditioned into our minds when we were young. The ABC song is the same, but in every culture it’s different. It isn’t about who came up with it first, it’s about who can modify it into their own.
References: HAYLES, N. KATHERINE, and JESSICA PRESSMAN, editors. Comparative Textual Media: Transforming the Humanities in the Postprint Era. University of Minnesota Press, 2013
Isaac Espinoza 10/22 Post
“Documents are important not because they are ubiquitous, I should be clear, but rather because they are so evidently integral to the ways people think and live”
Documents as said by Gitelman are forever entangled to power. Once an idea is “put on paper” its as if it gains value. People are more likely to believe something that is written in a book or an article online than their best friend who is talking freely from thought. Even though the idea that is now on paper was once a thought and probably expressed orally before it was documented. I don’t agree with the first part of the quote that mentions the ubiquitous property of documents and how this doesn’t make them important. There is nothing more powerful than a convincing idea that is spread to the masses. If documents were not ubiquitous they would not have nearly the same impact on people and their lives.
Gitelman, Lisa. “Paper Knowledge.” May 2014,
Oct. 23
The visual representation of numbers and quantitative data, with things such as graphs and tables, surfaced in the 2nd century. However, the 17th century brought the modern concept into fruition. However, the question related to these visuals always centered around how to make it comprehensible and relevant to the topic. These graphs and tables such as,
condense a group of data into something recognizable and easy for the reader to digest. Furthermore, what these visual representations really add to an article or study is the ability to reveal huge conclusions with a visually pleasing picture representation. Such as:
The easy to understand graph represents an entire years amount of sales both domestically and internationally. Proving just how important visuals are to fully understanding a vast topic involving massive amounts of quantitative data.
Few, Stephen. “Data Visualization for Human Perception.” The Interaction Design Foundation, www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/data-visualization-for-human-perception.
Anthony Dyce Blog Post 10/23
For this week’s blog post, I am choosing to respond to Johanna Drucker’s “From A to Screen.” In the reading Drucker ask questions about the transfer of letters from print to screen, noting that the status of letters cannot be resolved through technology alone but necessarily involves reflective and even perceptual questions. Drucker states that “So let’s return to the letters, the inventory of their conception, and ways such notions shift in the transubstantiation the alphabet undergoes in the course of historical change and technological variation.” (Drucker, 74) This quote stands out because were moving to the new age where letters are installed on the screen. We are fortunate to have a screen on our devices. The screen provides us with text and graphic images. For instance, the Touchscreen is becoming the new normal for devices. We often must be touching or swiping the screen to used it. For devices like the iPhone or car dashboards which are mostly touchscreen now. I found it to be very beneficial to have touchscreen because it’s much easier to work. Nobody never questions how letters appear on our screen we just like the fact it follows our command.
Work Citied
Drucker, Johanna. “From A to Screen.” Comparative Textual Media, University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pp. 71–96.
Carolyn Pena Blog Post Week #8
In “What is Visualization” Lev Manovich writes “The meanings of the word “visualize” include “make visible” and “make a mental image.” This implies that until we “visualize” something, this “something” does not have a visual form. It becomes an image through a process of visualization.” (Manovich 11) I find this quote very interesting because visualization has its own process when it comes to age as well. When we are babies, we don’t create a mental image because at this age we are learning to associate certain words with certain subjects. As we get older we already have word associations and that is when we start creating mental images to help us in our everyday lives. Visualization in my opinion is another important factor in Communication. Without visualization it would become harder to describe things to people and get a point across to the audience. We are talking about the importance of an email and how often brands think about what they are going to do to catch the audiences eye and these are usually well thought out depending on what audience they want to capture. They have to visualize different ideas and multiple ideas to create the best one.
Manovich, Lev. “What Is Visualization?” Paj:The Journal of the Initiative for Digital Humanities, Media, and Culture, vol. 2, no. 1, Dec. 2010. journals.tdl.org, https://journals.tdl.org/paj/index.php/paj/article/view/19.
Alassane D. What is Visualization Week 9
Museums to me are wonderful place to be and spend some time in.I give myself an excuse to go whether it is for class or even I just got some free time on my hands. Museums are buildings that contain information within various subject. They are literally libraries of history and information lined up against the walls. They could contain information in topics such as history of a lost civilization or even to less important stuff like pizza. The Metropolitan museum in New York is one of the most famous sites in world. It contains physical history from different parts of the world and time periods as well as art. Museums hold paintings, statues as usual ways to show history. But they can even go the creative route with Visualizations. In “What is Visualization?’ by Lev Manovich hr speaks of the definition of a visualization. According to him it is hard to pinpoint an exact definition but it is along the lines of using computers to create a visual of information which can either be static(still) or dynamic (moving).
One of my favorite examples of visuals in a museum is in the Whitney. There was an exhibit that used lights and live movies in different rooms to create fantasy like environments. Some rooms just contain lights to create physical patterns you can reach and touch other rooms are just movies you can watch with surround sound systems in the room to make it feel like your in a different environment.
Marisa Brincat’s Blog Post for 10/22
”Documents are integral to the way people think as well as to the social order that they inhabit” (page 5, Gitelman)
I agree with this statement because documents are truly an important asset. They could be used for information, a depiction of time, and can also influence the way in which people make decisions and form theories. I believe without documents, human life would not be as advanced as it is today. All thanks to documents, we are able to advance in life and learn all kinds of new things. We are able to take a piece of time and freeze it just by writing words onto paper. This quote definitely shows that documents are truly an important part of today’s world even when we live in a digital world.
Sources: Gitelman, Lisa. “Paper Knowledge.” May 2014,
