On Apr 23, 2009, at 2:14 AM, Jurgen Faust wrote:
> Thanks to all of you,... I have a lot to think again,... also about
> ants and billard balls...
>
> I already started to read more about actor network theory, whether
> it is useful or not. It
> will be anyway useful to expand my writing about design discourse,
> also about discourse
> on object level!
>
> Now my question expanded again:
>
> ...what terms could I use to differenciate the various discourse
> levels,... discourse
> media...the media the discourse is conveyed in?
the latter is.... media. the former is discourse, but remember if we
follow mcluhan... the medium is part of the discourse.
>
> as I stated in the beginning, I am researching the discourse at the
> level of objects which
> get produced to varify other productions...
>
> but we can also see other discourse... in drawings,... images,...
> photography
> therefore I am also looking for an adeqaut term, I also proposed
>
> (discourse) conveyance matter...
is media.
sculptures are media, clay is media, books are media. they are media
because they interpose or mediate.
>
> because textual matter which was the original term
> or object matter...
> seems all to be too fuzzy?
>
> Jurgen
>
>
> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:11:54 -0400, jeremy hunsinger <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> Usually sequence is part of the narrative of the description of
>> events, which is part of the write up. it is usually handled by the
>> methods of analysis you use, such as ethnography, which keeps track
>> of its own time. however, you can see how that becomes a problem
>> when
>> you start talking about atemporal methods like semiotics, there you
>> probably wouldn't use time, because it isn't really part of the
>> method's normal analysis. but in discourse analysis time is also
>> present as one tracks the changes (actions) in the discourse over
>> time. now here's a trick that i've proposed and i blame terry
>> pratchett for the idea, but time... can also be accounted for as an
>> actor in actor-network if you plan on doing that. i could see how
>> time could become an actor if you were analyzing say an emergency
>> room
>> where time acts in all kinds of relations to all kinds of things.
>> however, for the most part, people don't seem to use time as an
>> actor,
>> and they just use the temporal relations common to the method they
>> are
>> using.
>>
>> the problem might be with your construction below (and my prior loose
>> speaking)... which represents an actor/action divide. some actor-
>> network take the term actant from semiotics, Griemas i think, but
>> maybe propp before. they use actant to resolve the issue where
>> people
>> assume there is an actor without action. There is no necessary
>> divide
>> between actor/action; the 'actor' does not become apparent until the
>> 'action'. That is to say, that there are actions which are
>> relations,
>> and actants acting, but without the action, we have no relations, and
>> thus no actor. Actants are things acting, there is no actor,
>> without
>> the action, and thus no temporal divide.
>>
>> In my prior example below, i posited the existence of an actor
>> without
>> acting, the way we would do that would be to have actions ongoing
>> (which almost always happens) from that actant. usually any given
>> actant is doing many things in the system and the problem is sorting
>> it out.
>>
>> On Apr 22, 2009, at 9:52 AM, Terence Love wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jeremy,
>>>
>>> Thank you. That is really helpful and clarifies a lot.
>>>
>>> Wondering how in ant you handle information about sequence and time
>>> when an
>>> action happens?
>>>
>>> I can see how you correlate an action to an actor and identify
>>> classes of
>>> relationship between actors but identifying the sequence of actions
>>> and how
>>> they relate to identified actors, actor relationships and actions
>>> I'm
>>> unclear on.
>>>
>>> Best wishes and thanks,
>>>
>>> Terry
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: jeremy hunsinger [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, 22 April 2009 8:52 PM
>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>> Cc: [log in to unmask]
>>> Subject: Re: actor-networks Re: Discourse on object level
>>>
>>> reasons and causes are described after the analysis is finished.
>>> you look
>>> at the system of relations and you can then describe what happened
>>> and can
>>> infer whatever cause fits the described data. let's keep in mind
>>> that
>>> actor-network theory is not a method, it is a standpoint about how
>>> to treat
>>> research and how to gather that data
>>> using methods, such as semiotics, discourse analysis, or
>>> ethnography.
>>> it's primary use is to mould the data collection and to provide
>>> insights into data analysis.. it doesn't assign reasons so much as
>>> track actions and relations in networks. reasons and causes are
>>> things to
>>> be very skeptical about because frequently we have less than a cause
>>> and
>>> more of a conjunction or constant conjunction according to hume,
>>> so... actor
>>> network would note that x did y, but when y then immediately did
>>> things it
>>> would not note that x caused y, because as you can imagine y may
>>> merely have
>>> been waiting until time z to act, and action y was incidental. one
>>> can only
>>> find out these relationships through time.
>>>
>>> now after the analysis is over and you have your data and you see
>>> that every
>>> time x is in proximity of y, y acts somehow, you may be inclined to
>>> hypothesize a causal relation, and others over time may support that
>>> or deny
>>> that.
>>>
>>> one thing to note here is that mental models, 'reasons' can be
>>> 'actors' in
>>> actor-network. a good idea can 'act', recruiting people
>>> through people, etc. latter theories might call this unification
>>> of
>>> actors a mess or an assemblage. but it is very useful to be able to
>>> track
>>> an idea as an actor.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 22, 2009, at 8:23 AM, Terence Love wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Jeremy,
>>>>
>>>> How do you deal with the reasons and causes for actions in ant?
>>>>
>>>> Best wishes,
>>>>
>>>> Terry
>>>>
>>>
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