Unsuccessful use of paratext

Facing the overwhelming criticism of people on his new poem The Body of Michael Brown, Kenneth Goldsmith wrote a lengthy explanation of his practice on Facebook. “This, in fact, could have been the eighth American death and disaster.” Kenneth Goldsmith, drawing a  connection between Seven American Deaths and Disasters and his new poem, made effort to persuade his audience that they should pay more attention to his concepts beneath the appropriation of the autopsy report of Michael Brown. However, due to the contrast between Michael Brown’s image and Kenneth Goldsmith, people discussed more about the the political gesture rather than the conceptual meaning behind his poem.

Undoubtedly, the reading of Michael Brown’s autopsy report was powerful, but the fact that Goldsmith displayed a huge the graduation image of Michael Brown on the projector made people question whether his true intention was to better present the meaning of the text. “…pairing graphic description of wounds with graduation photo of Michael Brown made it also an empathetic and political gesture,” wrote Alison Flood on The Guardian. As the presenter of his new poem, Goldsmith was responsible for designing the environment so that all the elements surrounding the reading of poem would contribute to the assertion of his conceptual idea. However, instead of considering that Goldsmith used the image to express his respect and sorrow for the death of the young man, some people would rather believe that what Goldsmith did was to support the idea of white dominancy in a white dominated space of the conference hall. Looking at the image of Michael Brown, an African-American who had lost his life due to police violence, and Kenneth Goldsmith, a white person still in his good shape reading Michael Brown’s autopsy report, people would not only be emotionally distracted by the loss of a young life but also be logically uncertain about the conceptual meaning in the poem.

Unlike Seven American Deaths and Disasters

While Ferguson Shooting is still frequently brought up by people in their conversations, contemporary poet Kenneth Goldsmith recently gave a controversial reading of his new poem at Brown University and drew fervent criticism from all disciplines. As the same tradition in his previous work Seven American Deaths and Disasters, he took the publicly available documents, rearranged the order of the content and simply read it to other people. By slightly altering the content of the official autopsy report of Michael Brown, Goldsmith created his new poem named The Body of Michael Brown. “Like Seven American Deaths and Disasters, the document speaks for itself in ways that an interpretation cannot,” noted Goldsmith on his Facebook to defend his belief that the autopsy of Michael Brown is able to deliver its own meaning. However, due to the improper choice of material and his failure to truly present the qualities of autopsy, Goldsmith received criticisms both for his racist political gesture and for his ineffectual attempt to let the text speak for itself.

Familiar with Seven American Deaths and Disasters, I can see why his traditional practice has greatly influenced the way people look at the consequential tragedies in the American history. By going through the archival TV broadcasts and radios of disturbing events in the last century, Goldsmith transcribed the unmediated truth into words and replayed the painful moments including the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and John Lennon; the explosion aboard the space shuttle Challenger; the shootings at Columbine High School; the attacks at the World Trade Center; and the death of Michael Jackson. Because readers have the access to how eyewitnesses or newsmen struggled to describe the situations to their audience, they would feel the fear and anxiety of who were almost paralyzed by the suddenness of the disaster. Even though readers were not present at those historical events, the text gives a powerful portrayal of those tragedies through the people’s real time reaction. Instead of repeating the typical evaluation offered by the historical reviews available in a bookstore, Seven American Deaths and Disasters truly speaks for itself and provides a different angle for readers.

Provided that those tragic moments happened at least one or more decades ago, people had sufficient time to recover from the pain and objectively extract the widely accepted significance in American history. For example, the explosion of space shuttle Challenger in 1986, the model that served NASA for the early twentieth century, is not a mark of defeat but a symbol for unyielding pursue for science and technology. Since the other six tragedies all have their own symbolic meanings on how Americans have overcome calamities and eventually become the most powerful nation in the world, people would more likely focus on the ideas behind Goldsmith’s work. On the other hand, surrounded by the dispute about white dominance and police violence, The Body of Michael Brown drew people’s attention more to the surrounding controversies, than the conceptual significance in Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing”. Because of the fact that the general public hasn’t developed a mature understanding about Michael Brown’s death, the balance of people’s opinions inevitably falls towards the discussion of racism instead of the concept behind the poem. “The Murdered Body of Mike Brown’s Medical Report is not our poetry, it’s the building blocks of white supremacy…” responded an anonymous group called Mongrel Coalition on their website. Even though Goldsmith intended to accentuate the power within the text itself, people imminently considered his practice as racist and condescending. “For Kenneth Goldsmith to stand on stage, and not be aware that his body – his white male body, a body that is a symbol loaded with a history of oppression” wrote PE Garcia on the online arts magazine Queen’s Mob. Had it not been Kenneth Goldsmith, but instead an African-American speaker who read the report in the exact manner, people would stay more emotionally calm and alternatively concern more about conceptual meaning of the poem.

Besides the entanglement of racism in The Body of Michael Brown, people’s censure also fell on the fact that Goldsmith did not preserve the clinical and visceral nature of autopsy. “My reading of it was powerful. How could it be otherwise? Such is my long-standing practice of conceptual writing: like Seven American Deaths and Disasters, the document speaks for itself in ways that an interpretation cannot,” wrote Kenneth Goldsmith on his Facebook to defend his intentionally reading of the poem. However, what Goldsmith didn’t realize was that he actually hindered the delivery of the true message, because he did not enough experience about autopsy. To adequately reflect the silent awe in the autopsy report, it takes more than keeping a steady tone and familiarity with the text, because Ferguson Shooting happened too recent compared to the events discussed in Seven American Deaths and Disasters. “He assumes that he can take the language of the autopsy report into his own body. That is to say, he can somehow speak it truthfully, not as an error-filled translation, ” wrote Illya Szilak, a writer and a physician, in an editorial on Huffpost Arts and Culture. With a more mature understanding of autopsy, she is able to discern what was fundamentally wrong with Goldsmith’s reading. “[True autopsy] invokes a visceral sensation of an absent presence or a present absence: the being that this body contained,” wrote Szilak recalling her memory of attending autopsies. As much as he had an exceptional command of the stage, he was still unable to deliver the true message of his poem without sufficient knowledge about autopsies.

“Goldsmith is the vessel of the data of the autopsy report… nothing that was read by Goldsmith was authored by Goldsmith. He is a computer capturing a state in time,” written by Jacqueline Valencia, whose work was significantly influenced by Kenneth Goldsmith’s “uncreative writing”. Although I admire Kenneth Goldsmith’s philosophical approach to conceptual writing, The Body of Michael Brown, unlike Seven American Deaths and Disasters, fell flat because it was unavoidably overflowed with the complication of racism and influenced by his deficient knowledge about autopsies.

Readers’ perspective

Writing and literary creation are the process through which authors express their ideas and thought process. Either to add in artistic elements or to embed more profound meaning into their work, authors often incorporate paratext, such as the flow of reading, typography, visual design and etc. However, as mentioned in the previous post that readers would draw an conclusion that is not intended by the author based on different social environment. Sometimes the difference in readers’ understanding and author’s intention can even cause a great controversy.

Continuing with his practice on “uncreative writing”, Kenneth Goldsmith created his new poem The Body of Michael Brown by taking the original autopsy report of Michael Brown and editing it to create a better flow of the obscure and clinical language. By appropriating and repurposing the preexisting text, Goldsmith claimed he was simply acting in accordance to his belief that “a writer need not write any new texts but rather reframe those that already exist in the world to greater effect than any subjective interpretation could lend.”  However, there was a wave of criticisms on the internet towards the practice of Goldsmith after his reading. Readers are good at discovering the underlying meanings, no matter whether they go against the original intention of the author. Presumably, people should come up with distinctive responses to a piece of work, but the majority of their responses were all oriented against Goldsmith, whose ideology rendered insignificant under furor from all disciplines. “The conversation surrounding Goldsmith’s performance ties into a larger one about the racial and ethical realities of conceptual poetry.”  With the ongoing controversy about racial discrimination and police violence, people would most likely take their attentions away from Goldsmith’s ideology and consider the more consequential social problems despite his intention to generate more conversations about current event.

Inforgraphic – Refraction

the paratext that we cannot see

As we keep exploring the deeper meaning and greater influence of paratext, we have come to the conclusion that paratext can exist in any form as long as it contributes to the overall rhetorical effect of the work. As shown in my last blog post, Phil Hansen imposed constraint on the way he “painted” Refraction so that he could explore more possibilities of painting the others would normally overlook. Containing the stories about struggles and limitations, the striking and peaceful visual representation of Refraction implicitly links to the underlying message, that there is beauty emerging out of the turmoil in our lives. However, I didn’t touch on the preparation process Phil went through to collect stories from people.

The stories collection process is an important part of the paratext in Refraction. Within the painting, there are more than one thousand pieces of stories gathered by Phil Hansen about people’s struggles, constraints and limitations. In order to gather such a huge number of stories, he had to send emails, make phone calls, send text messages or skyp with different people with different backgrounds. In this video, Phil talked about how he was mentally overwhelmed by listening to people’s hardship. He started to question the true meaning of struggle and the purpose of the project. Because Phil was able to sense the emotions of people who shared the stories, he reached a higher level of understanding about the message he’s trying to deliver.

“I’m leaving this project with more questions than I started with…,” concluded by Phil Hansen at the end of the video. In the painting, there are three doves which represent peace and beauty. However, the fact that the doves are not facing the audiences symbolize the questions and wonders we cannot answer about the complexity of humanity and our lives. The story collecting process was also a learn and growing process for Phil Hansen on the subject of Refraction. Without actually communicating with the people who either suffered or was suffering from hardship, Phil Hansen wouldn’t have cultivated a profound understanding about human nature and successfully delivered that idea to audience.

Painting or Writing ?

As we have discussed, paratext takes as an important part in delivering abstract ideas in modern art and literature. In the contemporary literature especially, the exemplary figures such as Kenneth Goldsmith and M. Nourbe Philips wielded many different aspects of paratext to help deliver their ideas, as mentioned in A Twist on the Presentation of Literature. The combination of colors, arrangement in space and various typographies can all contribute to the ultimate goal of a piece of work. As art and literature becomes more interconnected, paratext adopts a new definition and can be the same or even more influential than the text itself.

Paratext, with its general and redefined meaning, can be anything that’s not the body of text, such as the constraint imposed by and the procedure followed by an artist. Refraction, made by writing people’s stories about struggles and limitations with measured two-dimensional arrangement, is a piece of painting made by Phil Hansen, whose creativity stems from constraint and procedure. Facing limitation is a fundamental human experience. To fully represent this in his art, Phil chose to translate the stories from people onto the canvas through the original words instead of the conventional drawing. Because of the limitation, the process to produce the art becomes even more difficult. However, this constraint on the creation process implicitly emphasizes the underlying meaning of Refraction, that limitation is inevitable and fundamental.

Because of the constraint imposed by himself, Phil created the new procedure that contributed to the unique texture in Refraction. While writing people’s stories on campus horizontally from the very top of the canvas, he intentionally created various spacings among letters. After repeating the same procedure on thousands of lines, Phil created the striking visual image that’s recognizable from distance.

Refraction is a piece of writing as well as a piece of painting. The meaning of the painting is embedded in the writing itself, while at the same time the spacial arrangement of the letters lead to the meaningful visual image. Constraint and procedure, the paratext of Refraction, recontextualized the stories written on the canvas, and further accentuate the values hidden in the art work itself.

Letters and Symbols

Either on the digital platform or on the non-digital one, readers’ understanding of the text can be inevitably influenced by the paratext surrounding the main content. Other than the use of colors, images, sounds and structure, readers have to read the sentences in order to actually know what information is contained in the text. Therefore, Typography, the way words are designed, can play a crucial part in the delivery of the underlying message.

The application of typography is everywhere in our life. Publishers and web-designers who work on a digital platform pay great attention to the fonts they use. With a great choice of fonts, readers will not notice the fonts but the message itself. For example, Serif is a font that’s prevalent in the printed format. Serifs are the small horizontal lines tailing from the edges of letters and symbols, making the words more distinctive and readable in a book. However, due to the lack of high-resolution like printed works (with 1000 dots per inch), Serif will seem a little bit clumsy and will not survive from the smearing effect caused by the lower resolution on computer screen (generally 100-300 dots per inch). As a result Sans Serif was invented to make online reading much easier and smoother. Without the tailing lines from edges, Sans Serif looks less complicated and becomes more recognizable in small size with lower requirement for resolution.

Moreover, just like how we can tell the personalities and social standings of people by justing observing the way they dress, people can interpret the brand images just by observing the fonts they use. Some companies choose different fonts to deliver a sense of profession and business. Taking a step further, Apple creates a brand image of simplicity, modern and innovation through constantly implemented Myriad as a major typeface. Because Apple includes typography into their marketing strategies, it receives wide recognition and popularity among customers.

ephemerality of words and thoughts

We might assume that the web version of Soliloquy, with the exact same text from the book version, was just produced by Kenneth Goldsmith to create an interesting association between Internet, a form of modern media, and books, a form of traditional media. However, the web version of Soliloquy serves more than just as a connection. It is an effective illustration of how paratext can significantly influence the delivery of conceptual messages. During class, we’ve encountered the book version of Kenneth Goldsmith’s Soliloquy. It is a monumental record of every word spoken by Kenneth Goldsmith over a week in 1996. Kenneth Goldsmith revealed the contrasting natures between printed books, the form of information that’s generally perceived as permanent, and the spoken words, which are perceived as transitory and ephemeral. However, through making purposeful choices in formatting the web version of Soliloquy, Kenneth Goldsmith created an entirely new reading experience for readers and visualized the ephemerality of speaking language.

Figure 1

In conceptual writing, the essence lies in the idea behind the body of text. Kenneth Goldsmith believes that writing is not just a process for people to make an argument, but a process through which the body of text will reveal its own meaning with a certain form of re-contextualization. First published in the fall of 2001, Soliloquy received both criticisms and genuine appreciation for Goldsmith’s practice of “uncreative writing”. Reading the book struck me in a way similar to how 4’33’’ brought me into deep reconsideration of the nature of music. Rather than removing all the elements that people consider to be essential like John Cage did, Kenneth Goldsmith included all the words he spoke throughout the week, even though people viewed most of them as fragmented and trivial. Originally spoken out loud and then copied down into a book, the words uttered by Goldsmith have revealed how immense the amount of information we process everyday can be [Figure 1]. Moreover, by holding and reading the book, readers are able to have a sense of permanence pertinent to the printed text that they cannot perceive only by listening.

Figure 2

Figure 3

As opposed to the physical copy of Soliloquy, the web version stresses the ephemeral nature of words and thoughts. When reader enter the website, they will not see the body of text directly but an entirely white background [Figure 2]. The body of text was purposefully hidden in order to dramatize the visual effect when text reappears and disappears. Only through hovering the mouse over the giant body of blankness would readers be able to see the intentionally hidden text. Those hidden sentences will reappear along the trajectory of the mouse and disappear as the mouse moves away. Furthermore, Goldsmith also used the words such as “ok”, “yeah”, “well” and “you know” to enhance the transitory nature of spoken language, because they rarely last long in our memory [Figure 3]. Appearing frequently in the Soliloquy, these words are used by people when they have a hard time clearly conveying our ideas or going for a conclusion. The recurrent presence of those words uncovers how spoken language helps our brain produce a complete string of thoughts by connecting pieces of ideas. Everyday, different ideas flash up over people’s mind and fade away just like those hidden texts. Some of the fragments are just some transient reactions from our five senses to the constant stimulation from the outside world. Some, however, are like the wakes of a boat directed by the navigation light that helps us steer out of the heavy fog of confusion.

Figure 4

Instead of separating the compilation of his words with the term “Act” as in the printed version, Kenneth Goldsmith divided the entire piece of work into 7 parts, each named after each day in a week. “Who”, “what”, “where”, “when” and “why” are the five questions humans ask either consciously or unconsciously when they receive a piece of information. Attaching a sense of time, Kenneth Goldsmith improved the readability and the comprehensibility of Soliloquy [Figure 4]. People who consistently write journal will recognize the resemblance between the structure of journal and that of the web version of Soliloquy. Keeping journals helps people secure the vulnerable memory from the hostile and cruel test of time. Browsing through the website and reading the transitory text appearing on the screen, readers would have the same pleasant feeling of retrieving the long-lost memory.

Reading the book version of Soliloquy is like reading a piece of story. However, as opposed to convention, readers are encouraged to read random sections and pieces on the web version of Soliloquy. At the beginning of the book version, readers can easily understand the background of the conversations by following the logical flow of the story. For example, through reading the sentences such as “I thought you said have a good weekend”, “No, don’t worry… your life will change” and “… It’s really nice that all the artists came over”, readers can easily figure out that Kenneth Goldsmith was talking to person who had been through a rough weekend and they started to talk about artists. Because those sentences were spoken one after another, it is easier for reader to understand what the narrative is about. However, intentionally making it harder for readers to read the text line by line, Kenneth Goldsmith encouraged the readers to read different fragments of the conversation. The words people speak are all chosen from the sea of information in their mind. Even though those fragments from Soliloquy do not link to form a complete story, they trigger a sense of familiarity of how people connect separate pieces of information to form a complete string of ideas. It casts insight into the way people process and produce information that neither the book version nor the pure spoken language can achieve.

Soliloquy is a powerful and effective illustration of how immense the amount of information we tend to ignore and how humans process and produce information on a daily basis. Incorporating the digital platform, Kenneth Goldsmith established a new ground between written text and spoken words. The web version not only demonstrates the ephemerality of spoken words but also creates an entirely new reading experience for the readers.

Details

After reading the previous posts, I started to realize that paratext is a broad and general concept. It is interesting to see how the proper use of positive and negative space will have a significant influence over the visual pleasingness of a body of text. Nowadays, because of the booming of information technology and the online market, people are paying more and more attention to the online platform. For convenience, we tend to read about news and interesting articles on our phones instead of reading newspaper in a crowded subway while struggling to maintain your balance and avoid hitting people with your elbows. Because of the huge potential of the online market, sometimes getting people’s attention can be more crucial than the value of the information itself for many web developer.

Reading on your phone or a laptop is not that different from reading from a book or a magazine. For many companies, getting readers’ attention determines the amount of profits they may generate. Based on whether the website is visually appealing, people decide whether to stay on the website or not within the first one or two seconds after they open the webpage. Comparing the webpage above and our blog, we will all be inclined to read on our blog because the words are more legible and our eyes can flow more easily between the lines. People put their thought into details, no matter how small and unnoticeable it might be. While reading this post, you might not notice that the height of the blank space in between two lines of text is the same or even greater than the height of the line of text itself. Because of the extra space in between the lines, mentally and subconsciously it creates a room for us to breathe and think. When people are not that stressed to read and receive information from the text, the delivery of the information from the text will then be smoother and more successful.