<nettime-ann> What do you think of when you see the word meme?

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

.


What do you think of when you see the word meme?

From: Michael Casselli <michael.casselli@gmail.com>

- I received this from Michael Casselli; my response is at the end. You
might want to consider participation; there are more details below as
well.

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What do you think of when you see the word meme?
Your response will be used verbatim as a recorded stream for an
exhibition titled "MEME" opening on the 30th of November at
the Herdon Gallery, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

My response is at the end of this post

Dear [ ], Alan Sondheim suggested I write to you regarding a piece I am
preparing for an upcoming exhibition. We have been exchanging emails about
this idea and he has graciously provided me with his take on the subject.
I am taking all of the responses and recording them as an ongoing loop
that will be played in the gallery. I am using a special audiospot light,
a directional speaker that allows me to focus the playback of the
recording within a very narrow field so that the visitors to the gallery
hear the loop as they enter the gallery but if they move out of the field,
they no longer hear the loop.  An interesting aspect of this type of
narrow field sound is that the playback is heard in your head in the same
manner as how headphones work. If you are interested please respond to the
following:

What do you think of when you see the word meme?
Your response will be used verbatim as a recorded stream for an
exhibition titled "MEME" opening on the 30th of November at
the Herdon Gallery, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

http://antiochcollege.org/news/archive/meme-culture-in-transmission.html

thank you for your time,
Michael Casselli

Manic Design Studio
305 North Walnut Street
Suite F
Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387
http://michaelcasselli.com

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My  Response -

When I think of meme, I think of iteration, of the trope of cleverness, of
tropes in general. Clever, because like 'something going viral,' the
metaphor, not meataphor, almost makes it, holds forth; meme of course is a
meme as well, is viral. But this doesn't hold, doesn't hold up; liked
Wired magazine, it's full of incandescence on the order of 'Forget all you
know about [x]' - a form of hyperbole that damages thinking in depth. If
anything meme is surface, and a metaphor of the surface; it carries the
body into the instantaneous, where the body is imminant. The meme slides,
slices, carries the simplified simulacrum of the characteristics of
evolution otherwise, but carries nothing, is empty, emptied. I end up
thinking of the slogan or the hook, or all those transitive aphorisms on
Facebook that dissolve upon closer reading or thinking. We're skittering
from surface to surface and for the first time in my life I'm glad of
longer theory and its care; if we're ever to heal the slaughter, wars and
extinctions on this planet, we have to dig thusly, and that's not a meme,
that's labor.


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