Robo-Critic

Your Aesthetics are Your Ontology...

Introducing Matt Posity talkin' with his Gob

Five of the 10 top selling books on Amazon in Britain are colouring books for adults.

Pretentious, moi?

The Ontology of Puppets

Meskin has gone all blue

Ontology of comics: the bitter end

It is not that I am bored with Meskin's ontology of comics - I keep getting distracted by things that make me angry. Like that Jezebel website. Today, it has an article about this woman who didn't die when she got hit by a car because she was wearing a tight dress. 

Look, I'm not saying that commenting on media representations of women is a waste of time, or that the slightly sarcastic comments of the writer don't suggest a residual, sly feminist humour, but it's all getting a bit too 'First World Problem' for me. I know that the press is full of dumb-asses who don't know what is a story and what is a thinly concealed excuse for printing a picture of a curvy babe... and I keep getting these adverts for Russian women in my area who want to date older men whenever I get click-baited...

Sorry.

Finally, when do we have an authentic instance of a comic?
I argue that comics (even digital comics) are best understood as autographic—they admit of referential forgery and direct transcription will not suffice to produce an authentic instance of a comic.

This is all about whether it is possible to forge a copy of a comic: to make a version of the comic that refers to a source, presents itself as being the source, and can get sold (I presume) for the same price as the source, if you sucker an expert or a thirteen year old who really needs that Fantastic Force #12. 

Apparently, you can. 

Okay, to sum up, here's how a comic exists, according to me via remorseless theft of Mekin's source article.

A comic exists as a multiple - simultaneous copies exist, all of which count as 'the event'. 

There is a source, a manuscript, against which each multiple can be judged.

It is possible to forge a copy of the multiple. 

I've lost the best bit of Meskin, though: his encoding style of replication offers a potential conflict with the possibility of it being forged (if no manuscript exists, how can it be forged et c). 

All sorts of fun stuff here, but I found this thing about countering sexist arguments about the representation of women in comics (and it has that add for Russian women, too)....

Totally distracted

Finally, when do we have an authentic instance of a comic?
I argue that comics (even digital comics) are best understood as autographic—they admit of referential forgery and direct transcription will not suffice to produce an authentic instance of a comic.

I have to admit, I am not sure how Meskin's conclusions fit into general ontology of comics... he says that he is only having a quick peek at the subject (and is pretty adamant that the ontology of comics is not going to help much with broader questions of ontology). 

I have this idea that ontology, the examination of different ways of being, is tangled up with consciousness: the recognition of being itself relies on some high level awareness, and I can't see dogs sitting about barking about how they are in different states when they are licking their balls or farting in the kitchen. 

But I am wrong. Consciousness is a prerequisite of having a chat about the nature of being, not a necessity for actually being. I remember being well into the Zen once, and I'd say things like 'think like a mountain.' Well, that was stupid too, and I ended up with people climbing all over me while I gradually eroded. The point of the exercise was probably to admit that there are other states of being than the human. Or, like Dr Manhattan said in Watchmen, I am 'life insisting on life's viewpoint when alternatives exist.'

I don't think Mekin would claim that his ontology is an attempt to find out what it feels like to be a comic (he's an academic, not a blogger who can't get into his office to do proper work). But he is looking at comics (as objects) and explaining the nature of their existence. It's blowing my head right off. 

I guess a strict biologist would see this as being a big load of post-modern bullshit. There's no evolutionary purpose to this (unless there are people out there who would like to have sex or eat dinner with me (I am open to offers (although the former won't lead to reproduction (but what if we apply evolutionary psychology to comics (do they try to reproduce by being good? (and they have totally evolved from the simple morality tales of the golden age to the metaphysical complexities of Grant Morrison (who always seems to have his characters realising that they are in a comic book (because he ran out of ideas after The Filth (that might be a little unfair)))))))).

Meskin, Twoskin

In part one of this fascinating new part-work (I'll be selling a folder for it in about March), I understood that comics exist in multiples. Then I got distracted and wondered whether this meant that comics had super-powers. 

Tune in for part two and get this statement explained.

The art form of comics is typically a two-stage art in which instances are produced by means of what Stephen Davies calls encoding and decoding. In normal cases, decoding (i.e., printing) is required to produce an authentic instance of a comic. But this is only in normal cases—in some cases no decoding is needed to produce an authentic instance of the comic since the encoding is itself a proper instance of the comic. And in some of these cases comics are produced by means of a one-stage process (i.e., they are finished when the artist’s work is complete). 

Okay, pass the crack pipe. Meskin quotes Davies, who elucidates three different ways in which multiples can be made. It's the process of encoding that Meskin picks as the most applicable to the comic - that is to say, there is no 'instance' of the comic, no source, just the copies.

Right - yes, when I saw the exhibition in the Victoria and Albert of Kirby/Lee Fantastic Fours, they just slapped a few issues in a case, and didn't worry about getting the versions from which they were printed. 

But I disagree with Meskin that this makes comics 'multiples without a source.' The novel is called by Davis 'an exemplar based multiple' - there is a manuscript, and all copies, or multiples, are authenticated by comparison to the exemplar manuscript. Exactly the same thing is the case for a comic. I know I am always trying to distance comics from being literature (they are something other, more complex), but I think that the parallel between the novel's manuscript and the completed art work of the comic is much closer than the magical 'encoding' that Meskin suggests.

Mind you, a copy without an original is a seductive concept. I am thinking of Baudrillard, and how he says that we live in a world of simulcra, in which 'real things' have been replaced by signifiers. 

I'd love to run with Meskin's definition of the comic as an encoding/decoding medium, and shout that comics are, in fact, an expression of a universe that is without a source. But either I have misread his intentions - most likely - or he has put a bet on the wrong multiple horse. 

Meskin and Me thoughts on Me Being (part 1 of 40 000)

Let's see how complicated I can make this. 

I'm interested in ontology, which I think is something to do with states of being. Like just about every other philosophical term that I throw about with gay abandon, I haven't really got to grips with how it is used, or what it really means.

Being a post-modern semiotician, I use the word in any way that I see fit. However, today I intend to try to understand ontology, via Aaron Meskin's Ontology of Comics.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the futility of my life?

We shall begin with Meskin's conclusions...

Must comics be multiples? 

I have argued that they need not be, although the generic statement ‘comics are multiples’ is true. 

How are instances of comics produced? 

I suggest that the art form of comics is typically a two-stage art in which instances are produced by means of what Stephen Davies calls encoding and decoding. In normal cases, decoding (i.e., printing) is required to produce an authentic instance of a comic. But this is only in normal cases—in some cases no decoding is needed to produce an authentic instance of the comic since the encoding is itself a proper instance of the comic. And in some of these cases comics are produced by means of a one-stage process (i.e., they are finished when the artist’s work is complete). 

Finally, when do we have an authentic instance of a comic? 

I argue that comics (even digital comics) are best understood as autographic—they admit of referential forgery and direct transcription will not suffice to produce an authentic instance of a comic.

Holy shit. I have no idea where to start with these conclusions. I probably better read the whole article.

What is a 'multiple'?
Comics and graphic novels are typically multiple works of art rather than singular: they are repeatable, admit of instances or occurrences rather than mere copies, and—in virtue of this—they allow for simultaneous but spatially-distinct and unconnected reception points.

That is clearer: a comic can exist simultaneously in multiple forms - like a complete print run of Fantastic Four Essentials, and be experienced in different places at the same or different times. They are printed and distributed, and no single copy can be seen as the 'original'. I guess they share this quality with scripts. 

A comic is a bit like Multiple Man off the X-Men: it can exist as several identical versions at the same time. Although whereas there is a Multiple Man prime (he's the one who makes the first copy of himself, and has certain rights that his copies don't have), the comics are all 'originals'.

(Note, if Vicky Price out of the University of Glasgow is reading: I know the word 'original' is problematic. But if I talk about a 'source' text here, I am going to get even more confused.)

So a comic exists in a different state of being to a human, who is stuck in one particular time and space. Far out. 

Apart from the suggest that a bit-part player in the X-Men is some kind of meta-commentary on the nature of the medium, here's a reflection. If a comic can exist in an almost mythical state of being (effectively timeless and spaceless, since its existence is not dependent on a particular anchor in the space-time continuum but can exist simultaneously at several points in the same moment), does this make it an ideal medium for expressions of timeless narratives, like myths? The superhero, rather than being some idiosyncrasy of comic book history therefore becomes a logical subject for the medium, being located in a similar boundless ontology. 

Even something like Maus, which always gets mentioned as worthy of study (because it is about a Very Serious Subject, the Holocaust), is lent a mythic dimension by Spiegelman's conjuring of comic book tropes. 

(Note: myth here means a story with meaning, not a false story.)

And isn't Spiegelman a cool name for a comic book creator? It's like a superhero name. His special power is, like, making the low become high. 

Come back for part 2, I dare ya.

M. Lamar and Brandon Masterman