Hello Clark,
One area in movies that definitely excites me; understanding
phenomenological interaction between people using movies.

CG:  I could have done a Heidegger-like speak. Acting in its actingness is
both an acting, an action, and an acted. Further texts to be texts must act
on us. They must transform us. However texts to act must be given life by an
actor. We give text the form to act. We become part of the action of the
text s the text also acts through us. However this view of text as actor in
which it both acts and is acted applies to actingness in general in its
roles as action and acting. <grin> (I can sense a slam by Jon coming) <grin>

DS:  My biggest complaint against Heidegger in a philosophical sense is the
jargony technical language developed around phenomenology.  One may
recognize phenomenology, but expressing how to "be" tends to be confusing to
read and conceptually hard to implement.

In my view embodiment is where phenomenology becomes very important.  We
'wear' the interface and use the interface all the time in the life world.
Then the whole range of issues brought up by phenomenology smacks one in the
face.  See this article in Scientific American about the business direction
in the technology.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006378C-CDE1-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EE
DF=1=2
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006378C-CDE1-1CC6-B4A8809EC588E
EDF&pageNumber=1&catID=2>

However my interest is not promoting the above technology, but in
understanding the human subjectivity, and the social context through
studying the range of related social forces that make up this part of our
global culture.   "Global" culture is a matter of dispute also.

CG:  Yes - but my point is that any interpretation of a text is a kind of
interrogation. It is basically a dialog with the text. Thus reading is a
very interactive project. Put an other way to make a reading is to engage in
a kind of abduction (if you're familiar with Peirce's term) You make a guess
about what something means and then take that meaning and compare it to the
rest of the text. The text then critiques that proto-reading. It is then
either kept or rejected and the process continues. In this manner you build
up a meta-narrative about the text.

Obviously there are different levels of rigor in this. However in the kind
of criticism we are discussing, I think we are viewing texts in a very
interactive way. So I agree with your comments about film, but think that
texts are essentially the same.

As I said, both are two ways of "being-in-the-world."

DS:  Here you bring up how you see text as interactive (the person reading
the text).  And you say they are essentially the same, movies and text.
Your view seems mushy to me.

I'll propose a simple phenomenological movie.  One is getting streaming
video over the web to which one is connected across town to someone.  That
someone is in a room with a wireless web cam.  You can ask them to move
around at will.  There might be a task you want to do.  Let's say you are
looking for your kitty in the room.  You don't know the kitty is there, but
you are guessing the kitty is there.  That is a typical phenomenological
uncertainty.  You ask the person operating the video camera to look under
the couch.  First inspection nothing, but after a minute you think well
let's try again and maybe lift the edge of the couch to see if the cat is up
in the springs hiding.  And so forth.  To me that is an interrogation of the
video camera in an interactive sense.  One can choose any path through the
room to find the cat.  Much of what happens in the room is outside the
camera range, but one can situate the camera to see those places.

I can't have a dialog with a text about the room that might have a cat in
it.   To interact on some level means that the media physically responds to
my thoughts.  Whatever goes on in my head will happen in any case.  So I
want to be able to distinguish what matters best for understanding things.

CG:  But by the same token I could bring up the character from _Johnny Get
Your Gun_. He is nearly deaf, blind, mute, and nearly paralyzed in a
hospital room. In what way can we discuss interacting with him? Surely we
are limited. But I don't think we wish to suggest that implies something
about the ontology of communicating.

DS:  Personally this sort of speculative direction is of high interest to
me.  This area of embodied communications tends to be first explored via
people who are disabled because of the obvious body based issues in
communicating.

From my end I have a lot to read.  I think I'll be silent for awhile while I
recharge my batteries with some meditations upon filmosophy.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor