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October 02, 2005
Genre
I've only thought about 'Genre' today. This map is obviously the previous 'Maps of Practice' stuck on the 'John Speed' map that I'd used earlier with me and Anna. I'd actually done this last week but hadn't had time to stick it on here . . . and I didn't really know what to say about it anyway? Had a chat with Jonty about it Auckland last weekend . . . he said he thought the maps were good in that they gave the monster a graphic design context, but that he thought by introducing the maps I was confusing the topic . . . or making it too big, wide again maybe? He also said he thought I was mixing up my metaphors, and then we got talking about that a little ñ 'mixing metaphors'.
I thought about that again today when Tim was playing some jazz record and I could hear hints of Surf Guitar in it!? It wasn't really 'there' necessarily, more me imposing my interests on something I'm unfamiliar with in an attempt to understand it (generative metaphor!) . . . and I suddenly thought perhaps 'Genre' was really important to my topic. I'm really interested in historical moments where genres have mutated into new ones. My interest in surf guitar has come from my listening to rockabilly over the last couple of years, and coming across people like Link Wray, who kind of represent a mutation in the genre. A momentary monstrosity ñ familiar but unfamiliar, right but wrong, difficult to categorise . . .
In this map I'm seeking to put things together that shouldn't go together. I didn't follow any of my manifestoes in particular, but it could be the Frankenstein one. A genre is a pattern . . . by disrupting the pattern by overlaying, or 'drawing in', other (unrelated) patterns, can you introduce a mutation into the genre? Location and dislocation . . . it's hard to pin down. The monster resists dissection table analysis . . . you only 'see' it on the move, maybe you only see it afterwards . . . out of the corner of your eye ñ you're never sure you saw anything anyway?
Obviously the map on the left is my head, and the right my feet. No man is an island they say . . .
Posted by Luke Wood at October 2, 2005 04:13 PM
Comments
luke
i think that you are possibly confusing things... by this i mean i don't think looking at maps is about looking at maps -rather how maps are a tool for use, for navigation, for making sense of where you have been, where you are, where you want to go, where you are not, where others are...
personally i love maps, i use them all the time. i use them because i need them to help me make sense of where i am and how all the things around me relate or don't relate. they help me to see things that text in lines of sentences doesn't.
i don't know if this helps you or not - but if genre is in the mix - then how does it add to or help make sense of where you are, have been, want to be? do you want to be?
laurene
Posted by: laurene at October 3, 2005 03:07 PM
Yeah I'm not sure if 'genre' helps or not? I guess just more of a realisation that it is already in the mix... monsters and genre go hand in hand. Earlier in my research I was interested in taxonomies, systems of classification, and how hybrid 'things' didn't fit nicely into such systems. I guess I'm just wanting to claim, retro-actively, 'genre' another way of looking at the same thing. My interest in monstrosity originally came from its (often) being a metaphorical interpretation of transformation, of the disruption of a pattern, the monster as trans-. I'd been looking at Elvis a lot and was fascinated by what Greil Marcus refers to as the 'Hybrid Moment', when the genre mutates through an evolution within its 'code' (by which I mean the conventions that bind a genre) . . . of course I hadn't used the term 'genre' before though!? I guess all I'm doing here is modifying my terminology a bit . . . which seems really helpful/valuable actually.
Interestingly, in trying to write my talk for next week's GRC, I'm proposing to shift the focus of the monstrous metaphor ñ pulling it out, from the artefact to the practice (which I see as encompasing the artefact and the process [and a bunch of other stuff]). I must admit that I perceive of genre as a primarily formal term, relating to stylistic codes and familiarity with images/aesthetics . . . which is what I've been attempting to move away from ñ the monster as a formal device. I think I'm more interested at the moment in the monster as a tool with which to interpret my current practice, and then, reciprocally, to inform my perception of the discipline (of design).
Posted by: luke at October 6, 2005 07:25 AM