(Music from Final Fantasy X Soundtrack)
Before discussing mystory, it is best to discuss electracy. Electracy, like mystory, is a term coined by Gregory Ulmer. Electracy is often thought of as a combination of electric and literacy. This is understandable given that electracy is often taught in courses concerning digital literacy, or how we read the internet and other digital media. However, electracy is not a combination of electric and literacy. To say that they are, wrongfully suggests that electracy is a subgenre of literacy. (Holmevik, 2012, p.4) Electracy is actually on the same level as literacy and orality, as Figure 1.1 shows.
The Mystory and Electracy (in a nutshell)
For this nutshell, I will perhaps over explain a few terms since I am hoping that this page/site might be used to introduce undergraduates to the medium of mystory.
Electracy
probably wouldn't have found most of these artifacts in the first place. Artifacts in the electrate world aren't moved by truth, they are moved by how we feel--how we are affected. Just because something isn't true does not mean that that it does not have meaning. This relates to an amusing, ancient essay by Gorgias. In his essay, “On the Nonexistent or on Nature,” Gorgias presents a logical argument on how nonexistent things exist and existing things do not exist. Basically, one half of the argument says that if we can identify a nonexistent thing, then that thing exists because it lives in our minds and we are able to identify it. Then he says that, if the nonexistent thus exists, then that which is thought of as existing cannot exist because the two terms are opposites. He then uses theories about the creation of the existent and the infinite existence of the existent to also prove that things do not exist. (As I said, an amusing essay) Despite the fact the problems surrounding these terms were pointed out over 2300 years ago, these terms are still being used, and still hold value. Much in this same way, the inaccurate information being spread accross the internet, while problematic,
Figure 1.1 shows each apparatus, literacy, electracy, and orality as axises. If you remember drawing grids like these in math class, then you will understand that each axis is its own spectrum. On the x axis, the left half of the spectrum had increasingly negative values while the right half had increasingly positive values. Likewise, the y axis had positive values extending upwards and negative
values stretching downwards. The z axis had positive values in the upper right of the grid and negative values in the lower left. In Figure 1.1, each axis has its own set of negative and positive values, but instead of numbers, these values are related to learning values. Orality, or the oral tradition of storytelling, was concerned with what was right and what was wrong. Think about the stories that get told to you as a child. Many of them, like Aesop's Fables and Briar Rabbit, come from the oral tradition of storytelling and are concerned with teaching listeners what is morally right and wrong. Eventually the world learned to write, and then these stories were written down. Then, in the age of literacy, we became concerned with what was true and what was false. Did Aesop really come up with these stories or did someone else? Did these stories really happen, were
they inspired by real events, or are they complete fiction? Is the story about water turning to ice at 32 degrees Fahrenheit really true? These kinds of questions are what spurred literacy to become what it is today. While both traditions continue to impact our way of learning, the image saturated internet has allowed for a new "literacy," which Ulmer called electracy, to emerge. As can be seen in Figure 1.1, electracy is concerned with pleasure and pain. To explain why these are the ends of electracy spectrum, it helps to think about our internet habits.
I have a Facebook account that I usually check at least once a day. When I check it, I'm usually looking at the pictures and videos that get posted. When I find an image, an article that had a catchy image, or a video that I particularly like (or hate), I share it or stow it for future exploration. Some of these items will have information like, "Use banana peels to polish shoes," or "Antiperspirant causes cancer," and sometimes I will share them, even if I haven't verified whether or not they're true. I'm not the only one with this habit. If I were, I
still has some sort of value. While literacy does not easily recognize this value, electracy does.
Something else that electracy recognizes is the importance that the internet has placed on images. To return to the example of my web sharing habits, most of the things I shared (or even viewed) had some sort of image or video attached. Orality's mode of communication was spoken word, literacy's mode of communication is written word, and electracy's mode of communication is (primarily) images. This brings us back to the terms that Ulmer used to create electracy. Instead of electric literacy, electracy is composed of electricity and trace (Arroyo, 2013, p.6). Trace comes from Derrida's understanding of metaphysics and most simply means, "[the] mark of the absence of a presence," (1976). Each image is a trace. It is a symbol that marks the presence of the missing subject. In the Abraham Lincoln meme, the photograph of Lincoln and the words beside him marks the physical absence of Lincoln and his voice during my experience of this quotation that is "supposedly" his. In other words, Lincoln is not standing in my living room telling me this, and as such his absence of presence is marked (and thus traced) by this photo and these words. Let me give you one more example. Say that you have a bunch of friends over and you want to play Monopoly, but come to find out that not all of the $100 bills that are supposed to be included in the game are in the box. Knowing that you don't have the time to look for the money now, you take out some paper, scissors, and pens, and you and your friends use the remaining bills to trace the image of (and construct) the missing ones. Until you find the missing $100 bills and remove the makeshift ones, the missing bills' absence is marked by the makeshift bills.
What makes images, these traces, important is that we recognize the subject that they are meant to represent. In order to make these recognitions we have to deconstruct the image and connect the components to our logic systems to then recreate meaning. When I look at Lincoln, my brain registers that I'm roughly looking at an egg shape resting on a rectangle shape. The rectangle shape is made up of black and white shapes that my logic system says is a black suit, with a white shirt, and a bowtie. This knowledge then tells me that the rectangle area is Lincoln's torso. The egg shape, which has additional shapes that I can identify as eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair, and beard, is logically then a face. I know that it is Abraham's face because of its thinness, the beard, and its similarity to other graphic representations of Lincoln. This deconstruction and reconstruction to produce meaning is similar to playing a game of connect the dots where one has to trace the lines of logic between symbols to identify the larger image as a whole. These connections are what creates meaning and is much of what is behind the mystory.
Mystory
Mystory is, as one might assume, a combination of my and story. This combination is a kind of play on and response to (his)tory, and marks how this "emerging hybrid genre" is supposed to allow its creator(s) to "participate as witnesses in public policy decisions" (Network Literacies; Ulmer, 2011, p.5). Mystory is also a play on the word mystery as each mystory works in the same way as mystery story: a crime/problem occurs, the researcher forms connections between evidence, and then the mystery is solved. Additionally, mystory is commonly pronounced as mī-strē or my-stree, which calls to mind the word, maestro, which is what a mystory creator, in effect, is.
Mystories work under the premise that "Problems Be Us," (Ulmer, 2003, p.2). What is trying to be suggested by this is that what we think of as "problems" are actually deemed so because of our negative responses to said "problems." Mystories help us to better understand our emotional reactions to "problems" and can give us a window into how we might want
to react or treat the "problem" in the future. To accomplish this, the mystory asks the maestro to document the mood of a problematic site, examine the documentation through the terministic screens in the popcycle, identify punctums in the documentation, trace an emblem through the connections of punctums, and then interpret how this emblem affects the problem.
Problem
Choose a site with an aporia. Treat the site like an oracle, and while taking photos of this site that document the mood, be asking the site a burning question you have. Then choose an image that emblemizes the aporia.
Family Discourse
[W]hat is a good image for your manner of making decisions? [...]
[Document] a scene that sticks in your memory from the childhood years of your family life.
- Ulmer, Internet Invention, 76 & 86
Career Discourse
[Document] an important discovery, or a (founding) invention, in your career domain (your university major, or a field of disciplinary knowledge in which you have some interest).
- Ulmer, Internet Invention, 21
Entertainment Discourse
[Document] the details of a movie[, videogame,] or TV narrative some part of which you still remember from you childhood years.
[... Then] view it again (if available) and record what you notice in the fresh viewing. [... Afterwards, form] connect[ions to] your Family [discourse.]
- Ulmer, Internet Invention, 127
History Discourse
[Document] an exemplary story from your community, that is a story about a person or event that your community identifies with and tells about itself in its celebrations, festivals, naming practices (of streets, buildings, parks, memorials).
- Ulmer, Internet Invention, 191
Emblem
Review the images and content of the discourses. Using conductive reasoning and the burning question, find the theme that runs through the discourses. Once the theme is found, find (or create) an image to represent this theme.
For each of these pages, I include an image gallery (some galleries have only one image), a description of my process, an explanation of my punctums, and a haiku. The haiku was required in the last mystory that I composed, so I included it in this one as well. In Internet Invention, Ulmer (2003) said that the mystories use haiku logic. I have not delved into what he meant by this, but based my most basic understanding of the haiku form, I chose to use the haiku as a kind of mood setter, in the same way that I used music from the game's soundtrack.
Should you decide to make a mystory of your own, please do not follow my method piece for piece. The mystory is an evolving genre, which means there is much left to be constructed, and much room for you to influence its structure for future maestros.
Why a Mystory
I chose to do a mystory because mystories require that researchers participate in the making of meaning. Traditional studies want researchers to become objective observers that are outside of the problem. This is problematic for the site of my mystory because my site is a video game and each player of a video game experiences the game differently. This means that my experience of the game is different than the experience of every other player of Final Fantasy X. It is true that each player will view the same story, but some players may not make the effort to get the three optional aeons before they defeat Sin; others, like me, won't bother with collecting all of the fiends for the monster arena; I got stuck in Macalania forest because I thought I had to complete the butterfly quest in order to get out, but I bet over a thousand other players did not have this problem; and each player levels each character differently to play to their personal strengths and weaknesses. These variences make it very difficult to become an objective observer, so instead of trying to become the objective observer, I chose to do a mystory.
References
Alam, Shah Newaz. (2012). Connect the Dots [Image]. Retrieved on Mar. 12, 2014 from http://www.buzzle.com/articles/printable-travel-games.html
Arroyo, Sarah J. (2013). Participatory Composition. Video Culture, Writing, and Electracy. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. Print.
Barthes, Roland. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang. Print.
Burke, Kenneth. (2001). From language as symbolic action. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 1340-1347.
Derrida, Jacques. (1976). Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976. Print.
Gorgias. On the nonexistent or on nature. The Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Ed. Rosamond Kent Sprague. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972. Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Co.: 2001. B3, 42-46.
Holmevik, Jan. (2012). Inter/vention: Free Play in the Age of Electracy. The MIT Press. The MIT Press. Print.
Hoya. Yellow/green filtered beach. [Image]. Hoya 58 Mm Vario-PL Color Yellow/Green Special Effect Glass Filter. B&H. Retrieved on Apr. 5 2014 from http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/94174-REG/Hoya_S58YGPL_58_mm_Vario_PL_Color.html
Voices Newspaper Blog. (Nov. 29, 2013). Abraham Lincoln meme. [Image]. Retrieved on Mar. 12, 2014 from http://voicesnewspaper.blogspot.com/2013/11/more-politifact-propaganda-misleading.html
Network literacies. Mystory. WordPress, Retrieved on Mar. 10 2014 from http://networkliteracies.edublogs.org/mystory/
Ulmer, Gregory L. (2011). Miami Virtue and The Ulmer Tapes. Available at: http://smallcities.tru.ca/index.php/cura/issue/view/5
Ulmer, Gregory L. (2003). Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy. New York: Longman. Print.
Travel Company
The Mystory
There are a few terms in that last sentence that I would like to unpack. The first is terministic screen, which is a term coined by Kenneth Burke (2001). Burke was a literary theorist, which, in a sense, means that he studied how we read the world. After seeing a set of photographs where the same image was captured again and again with different color filters applied to each photo (much like the photos to the left), he had this to say, "Here something so "factual" as a photograph revealed notable distinctions in texture, and even in form, depending upon which color filter was used for documentary description of the event being recorded" (Burke, 2001, p. 1341). Because these filters were able to reveal something new about that which was already considered to be "factual," Burke began looking at how language can be like these color filters. Through his research, he determined that what we might think of as "factual" is actually influenced by the colors of our terminology. For example, using the terminisctic screen of political correctness, someone might describe a patch of brown grass as "metabollically challenged" when someone using a different terministic screen would describe the brown grass as "dead." With the first description, there is an implied hope that the grass can be resuscitated, while the second description makes clear that replacing the grass is the only way to bring green back to that patch of earth. In the mystory, each discourse is a terministic screen through which the maestro examines the problem. The family discourse is a terministic screen of morality and ethics, and is aligned with the oral tradition.
The career discourse screen may contain elements of morality and ethics, but can also contain terms related to truth and fact, much like the literary tradition. The entertainment discourse screens the pleasure and pain related to the problem (electracy). And the history discourse is like the photo taken without a color filter, in that it contains mixtures of the other three. By looking at the problem through these screens, something new can be revealed.
The second term that I would like to unpack is punctum. Punctum and it's sibling, studium, are terms developed by Roland Barthes (1981). Barthes (1981) was also a literary theorist, and in his book Camera Lucida, he theorized about how we read symbols, particularly photographs. According to his study, the culturally and politically interpretted details of an image that draw our interests to the image are considered studium while the "the accident that pricks me" (Barthes, 1981, p. 26-27) is the punctum . Unlike the studium, the punctum is personal which means that the punctum for one person is likely to be different for another. In the Abraham Lincoln meme, the studium is Lincoln and "his" words. Because Lincoln is a prominent and well respected political figure, I'm interested in his words. The punctum, then, for me, comes from the meme creator's choice of historical figure for this image. Lincoln is sometimes referred to as "honest Abe." By using Lincoln, there is an added credibility to the words, but there is also a tarnishing of "honest Abe's" character as this image is less than honest (because Lincoln never said these words). This (potentially) accidental tarnishing of Lincoln's character is what stings me, and thus, is my punctum. In the mystory, the stings that come up in the documentation of the problematic site are signals that there is something important that needs to be explored in the particular document(s). Through the course of the mystory, these punctums will become the dots that the maestro will connect to trace the emblem.
Trace is the final term that may need to be unpacked, if my dear readers skipped the earlier section on electracy. As was said before, trace comes from Derrida's understanding of metaphysics and most simply means, "[the] mark of the absence of a presence," (1976). At the end of the mystory, the maestro traces an emblem, or more specifically the significance that the emblem connotes. This significance then builds a new terministic screen for the maestro to observe the precieved problem through.
So to review, the mystory asks the maestro to document the mood of a problematic site, examine the documentation through the language based filters of the popcycle, identify personal emotional stings in the documentation, connect the stings to form an emblem whose connotations affect the perceived problem.
While accomplishing all of this, the mystory also dramatizes the movement from interpretation to invention. By this, I mean that mystories cause the researcher to move from the literary, hermeneutic tradition of trying to find meaning within a subject ("What might be the meaning of an existing work?", "What can be made of Freud?"-psychoanalytic psychology) to an electrate, heurestic tradition of building upon those subjects ("How might another text be composed?", "What can be made from Freud?"- surrealism). This dramatization, 'helps us anticipate or actually invent a rhetoric or poetics for electronic space, for it leads us to practice the “picto-ideo-phonographic writing” fostered by electronic technology and theorised by Derrida' (Networked Literacies). It also allows us to pursue curiosity, thus internalizing knowledge, instead of memorizing facts. (Networked Literacies)
Making a Mystory
Mystories are generally housed in websites and ebooks. These digital forms make linking easier, which is conducive to a connect-the-dots sort of project. A mystory is generally made up of five parts, although my mystory is made of six. The first part, which may or may not be necessary, is documentation of the perceived problem. The second through fifth parts are considered the popcycle or four discourses. These discourses are family, career, entertainment, and history. The final section of the mystory documents the emblem.
To begin constructing a mystory, one must choose a location that has an aporia or problem that you are incapable of solving on your own. The person creating this mystory must then ask the site a burning question. Then they must document the mood of the site. It is suggested that they take 1000 photos of the site. These photos are not to be posed and need to cover the popcycle. If your site, like mine, is a video game, then screen captures of game footage should be used in lieu of photos. With these items collected, the maestro is ready to begin composing his or her mystory website/ebook.
There are varying ways on how one can compose each portion. I based the problem and emblem section off of how I had completed these sections for previous mystories. Then I based the popcycle on the "assignments" in Ulmer's (2003) Internet Invention. These "prompts" are as follows: