MALFUNCTION IN MEDIA: UNINTENDED CONSTRAINT AND THE DURABLE AESTHETIC By REX P. KRUEGER A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Rex Krueger 2 To Angela, for typing, for editing, for everything 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director, Terry Harpold, without whom I never would have attempted this project, and without whose enthusiastic support, I would not have finished. I would also like to thank my committee, Roger Beebe, Amy Ongiri and Alex Reed, all of whom were more than generous with their time and insight. Thanks go to my wife, Angela, to whom this project is dedicated. Many thanks also go to the University of Florida Department of English for building an environment where this kind of work is welcome. I must also thank Kenneth Kidd who was an inspiring teacher and very capable administrator during my time here. I would like to thank Anastasia Ulanowicz for being a consistent role-model, always treating graduate students like colleagues, and for writing me a letter. Additionally, Donald Ault gave excellent feedback on some of my dissertation and welcomed me onto the staff of his journal. I must thank all of my past mentors, but especially to Mike Shea and Candace Barrington, gifted professors who inspired me to go into the profession in the first place, and who still feed me from time to time. I must also thank the staff of the journal ImageTexT, from whom I learned a great deal about academic publishing. I would like to thank the colleagues who gave their time and attention to many difficult questions, especially: Christopher Hazlet, Lyndsay Brown, and Tania Darlington. I would like to thank Laura Dawidziuk for her linguistic insights on the word “hip hop.” I must also thank my dear friends, Matt and Christy Snyder, who have been there through thick and thin since the very beginning. Finally, thanks go to my parents, Paul and Helen, who believed in me, supported my career, and sent money. Without them, I would never have been able to go to grad 4 school, much less finish. I must give special thanks to my mother, who knew what learning disabilities were, apparently before anyone else. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 8 ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 10 2 LOCATING LIMITATION ........................................................................................ 22 Animation and Constrained Technology ................................................................. 24 Popular Music and the Imperfect Agent .................................................................. 27 ASCII art and Multiple Constraints .......................................................................... 36 Hip Hop and the Mythology of Constraint ............................................................... 40 3 TECHNOLOGY AND ART ...................................................................................... 53 Tools and the Problem of Nascence ....................................................................... 55 What is Nascence? (Or, isn’t All Technology Nascent?) .................................. 57 Nascence I: You Don’t Know What it Does. ..................................................... 61 Nascence II: It Doesn’t Do Enough of the Thing You Like. ............................... 63 Nascence III: The New Technology is Inferior (in Some Respect) to the Technology it Replaces. ................................................................................ 69 The Recording Apparatus ....................................................................................... 73 Rise of the Apparatus ....................................................................................... 75 Aesthetic Implications of Tape .......................................................................... 79 The Expanding Vocabulary of Tape ................................................................. 87 The Digital Revolution ...................................................................................... 90 The Animation Apparatus ....................................................................................... 92 Limited Animation and the Birth of Style ........................................................... 96 The Role of Technology ................................................................................. 100 Multiplying the Real ........................................................................................ 104 Another Determinism? .................................................................................... 112 Why Anime? ................................................................................................... 114 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 118 4 THE AESTHETICS OF CONSTRAINT ................................................................. 120 The Clipped; The Missing ..................................................................................... 120 ASCII .............................................................................................................. 120 Hip Hop .......................................................................................................... 122 Distortion ........................................................................................................ 124 6 Recording ....................................................................................................... 127 Anime ............................................................................................................. 131 The Durable Aesthetic .......................................................................................... 132 Technological Reference of the Constraint ........................................................... 143 Noise and Aesthetics ............................................................................................ 146 A Brief History of Noise .................................................................................. 146 Noise and Materiality ...................................................................................... 149 Noise and Crisis ............................................................................................. 152 5 CONSTRAINT AND THE BREAK ......................................................................... 155 Dismantling the “Break” ........................................................................................ 156 The Constraints of Distribution .............................................................................. 169 Ideological Constraints of Distribution ............................................................ 177 Censorship ..................................................................................................... 180 Ideological Consequences of Economic Constraints ...................................... 185 Selling Images ................................................................................................ 190 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 197 6 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................... 200 FIGURES .................................................................................................................... 212 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 218 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 225 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1. Flora Stacey's typewriter butterfly ..................................................................... 212 1-2. “My Friend's Old Barn in Oregon” Paul Smith, 1987. © Paul Smith. .................. 213 1-4. A lesson in ASCII perspective using cows. ....................................................... 213 3-1. Comparison between ASCII curves and points on a grid. A) An ASCII curve. B) The same curve rendered as points on a grid. ............................................. 214 3-2. ASCII art as an analogue for “missing” data. A) A detail of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. B) The same detail with some data deliberately removed. C) The same detail rendered in ASCII. ............................................................. 214 3-3. An undistorted waveform shows smooth and obvious peaks, while that same waveform shows flattened peaks when it distorts. ............................................ 215 3-4. The use of automatic ASCII art generating software. A) A standard JPEG. B) The same JPEG rendered into ASCII art using an automatic online ASCII generator. ......................................................................................................... 215 3-5. A sample of the Lo-Res font by Zuzana Licko. Image Copyright © 1995–2011, Emigre Inc. ......................................................................................................