Realism & Recording www.craigcarey.net/f14rr

!@ccareylit #eng471 08.20.2014

what is… !

real reality realism

realism in popular culture

Reality TV

The Problem of LanguageIf language ≠ reality, how can literature represent “reality”?

realism vs. antirealism in philosophy

why recording?

Winslow Homer, Eight Bells (1886)

–Richard Gilder

“It is getting to be a serious question as to how far the world shall go in the way of self-record.”

“the smiling aspects of life”

Augmented Reality

realism !

recording !

writing !

watching !

attention !

notation

Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic (1875)

inscription

“All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies. In healthy times, we cut multiple roads, allowing for the possibility of a Jean Genet as surely as a Graham Greene. !These aren’t particularly healthy times. A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked.” !Zadie Smith, “Two Paths for the Novel”

Where do we locate the real?

on the ground?

in voices?

in emotions?

in reporting?

in data?

on surfaces?

in storage?

in people and places?

in remix?

in bodies and machines?

in the soul?

in art?

–Immanuel Kant

“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”

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What did you see in the previous eight slides? !

Were they photographs? !

Think again. !

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“Look closely.” !

reality effects

what are effects?

Mark Twain’s Boyhood Selfie

“Look! I created my own reality effect!”

“ Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects— that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me— I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron. !

Vladimir Nabokov

style

• realism is fraught with contradictions

• realism cuts across media

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• realism is not boring

• realism is about mediation

• realism produces reality effects

Slide 29: 3D painting of sea creature by Keng Lye !Slide 30: Photo-realistic pencil drawing by Diego Fazio !Slide 31; Hyper-realistic oil painting by Robin Eley !Slide 32: Hyperrealistic painting by Jason de Graaf !Slide 33: Pencil illustration by Franco Clun !Slide 34: Hyper-realist oil painting by Pedro Campos !Slide 35: Acrylic painting by Jason de Graaf !Slide 36: Oil painting by Gregory Thielker

image credits

Marcin Ryczek

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