howcouldiknow » Uncategorized

words. now.

Jessica Pierotti — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:03:23 +0000

I have been writing an essay this week on the topic of language change and technology. Most of my research has come from the books of David Crystal: Language and the Internet (2001) and Txtng (2008). For the record I am not thrilled to have one author as my main resource but have not found as much thorough analysis of this topic as I was hoping for. The rise of the internet , along with the following wave of electronic devices and text messaging, has created a new register of communication that has become commonplace. More recently the Iphone and Blackberry, which have the full keyboard and increased speed, have made text messaging even more prevalent. The response to this kind of communication has been mostly apocalyptic predictions for the end to all intelligent life on earth. Things are changing, change is scary, but some of the presumptions made I find offensive. Claims are made that the shortening of words, use of acronyms, symbols, and phonetic spellings are destroying English speakers ability to use the language correctly. I do not agree. Any failure on the part of the youth in this country to formally communicate is a failure of the public school system and is not associated with the rise of internet and text communication. What is impressive about humans and language is that we are capable to communicate within English in multiple different registers. Casual speech and slang can be spoken by the same person that is writing a formal dissertation, and so, casual texting can also co-exist with other linguistic registers. Then, stepping back, it is interesting to consider this controversy objectively as well as all the other tendrils of this new medium and how they affect communication, behavior, comprehension, attention span and more. Reading and thinking about this essay recently has gotten me ‘all riled up’ and also extremely self-aware as I speak, text, and type. What I have become most aware of is how text messaging and the internet have changed my communication fundamentally rather than my specific word choice or usage. Though I argue that the stereotypical text messaging style ( e.g. C U l8er. B hme @ 5.) is not detrimental to the English language I do not personally partake in it. See Evelyn Beatrice Hall – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. (Wikipedia says this quote is incorrectly attributed to Voltaire.) The language adaptations that were sparked by text communication are only a portion of the styles of language used on new devices and the full keyboard becoming more and more common these usages may die out completely. We may want to focus more on how the rise of new technology has and will echo through all mediums of communication, and fundamentally alter the manner in which we speak to one another.

P.S. Thanks David. I found Language and the Internet fascinating. At first I put this book down after realizing it was written in 2001, then I returned for lack of other resources. Obviously things have changed drastically in this area since 2001 but I think many of the ideas discussed in this book can be applied currently.

Childhood work

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 14:12:19 +0000

My Mother recently scanned this and sent it to me. I have no idea when this is from or what I am saying but it’s pretty weird.

Translation:

Chicken

Once upon a time their lived a chicken

it’s feathers looked green.

it was the biggest chicken i’ve seen. Isn’t it.

This one is weird as it skips along the grass it stops to rub it’s foot ache.

It says I’m going to make a plan I’ll grab the walking stick and I’ll hug the dog.

and drag it away. I’ll have it as a pet.

Who cares if it doesn’t like me

Who cares if I have to clean up it’s mess

Who cares if I have to scrub it

Who cares if I have to go swimming with it

Who cares at all

I’ll call it runner i’ll make a building for it we’ll be living happily

we’ll be famous, all sorts of special people will visit us.

Beautiful ladies will come.

“Mind the step” I’ll be saying all the time.

I’ll beg them to marry me.

I’ll drip on their dress.

I’ll slip on the step.

I’ll buy a horse so I can trot.

I’ll rob other people.

but remember I only come out on September, October and November.

Recognizing my worth?

Jessica Pierotti — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:51:27 +0000

I have been submitting my work all over the place. Who knows. But it feels good to be trying. It is kind of like admitting to myself that my work is worth being viewed by someone else if I send it out intentionally. I have to convince myself before I can convince others.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti pre-earthquake

Jessica Pierotti — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:27:12 +0000

via Google earth

Edit: 2/5 The last image of the airport may be post earthquake. I made these screenshots a day before I saw that Google updated the satellite imagery on Google Earth of Haiti. Maybe at the point I viewed it some of the images were updated and some were not yet. Unsure.

Family

Jessica Pierotti — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:05:37 +0000

This is where my Mom lives:

This is where my Dad lives:

This is where my brother lives:

This is where I live:

Carl Weese

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:22:21 +0000

These are my two favorite images by Carl Weese in his series of photographs of drive-in theaters. I was reading a New York Times blurb that went along with a slideshow of his images and a quote by Carl really stood out to me.

“I’m not going to get a turned head to think that I made the most wonderful photograph in the world,” Mr. Weese said. “It had to be resonance with the subject matter.”

I am unsure about this statement. If you are hauling around an 8 x 10 camera aren’t you trying to create a wonderful, stunning photograph. I believe a few of these images are stunning but then others fall flat. It is a mistake to consider this a purely documentary endeavor when you are clearly interested in aesthetics.

p.s. If you go to his website his images have art sauce borders (art sauce = decorative crap that is superfluous to a good photograph) but the NYT slides have cropped them out.

Edit 2/5 See Comments!

Writing Archives

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 05:16:20 +0000

Date: March 18th 2004

Age: 17

Location: University of Cincinnati

Condition: Depression?

I haven’t been comfortable this last week

I haven’t fit inside my skin quite right

my sleeves rub me the wrong way and the strings around my wrists

suddenly appear to be too constricting

my hair will not settle in one place

the strands seem as impatient as my submerged brain

pull up my hair strong and tight, rearrange my sleeping limbs

try to figure out why

nothing feels quite right

Writing is way too personal

Jessica Pierotti — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 06:53:42 +0000

I have always written, privately. I have notebook after notebook squirreled away in my room starting from eight or nine. I was never really one for drawing but I liked words. I still like words, hell I like books and libraries and authors and still words. And yes, I am writing right now, but writing a conversational blog post does not count in my mind as a creative work. So I continue writing and I continue showing no one, even those closest to me. I have no idea how to disconnect myself and become an audience to my own work. With photography I have a gut instinct that tells me, “this is crap” or “hell yes, you have a winner”. I want to fix this, maybe I can not think critically about my own writing because I do not try hard enough and have not figured out how to disconnect my emotions from it. I am going to start delving into my archive of writing and trying to post it here. Maybe no one cares and that is ok. It is kind of more a therapeutic action than anything else. Maybe I can dig up some of my poetry by nine year old Jessica (I was REALLY into rhyming, haha). Here goes.

November of last year, things were not going that well apparently.

November 11, 2008

The plants my mother gave me are dead.

I stopped watering them.

It’s unfair that they had to get caught in the middle.

There is a watermelon rotting in my kitchen cabinet.

I bought it to take to a party.

I put it in with my dishes.

I had my windows open all summer.

The wind would whip through and tear the blinds down.

Eventually I gave up and stopped hanging

them back up again.

My pillow looks like it belongs to a child. It does.

It belongs to me seven years ago.

I guess I don’t know how to let go.

When I first moved here I went through a phase.

There was a time that I always slept fully clothed.

Recently my toaster began burning everything, I swear I didn’t turn the knob.

I started giving up on the little things. That make life more pleasant.

Always exhausting

Jessica Pierotti — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:05:02 +0000

I know a small amount of html mostly based on trial and error and the help of w3schools. This makes updating and tweaking my website layout very time consuming and usually frustrating. But the exciting part is I FINALLY made the images from my new series a click-thru gallery instead of a side-scroll. This gives you (the hypothetical reader/viewer) more of a chance to focus on individual images and for the images to be a little bit larger. I am continuing this series this winter quarter and will be adding and subtracting images so it is very much a work in progress based around the libraries of Monroe County in Rochester, NY. Go. Look. cheers to me on the shocking amount of time it takes me to do something so simple.

The squid

Jessica Pierotti — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:03:23 +0000

and the whale.

I watched it again tonight. I can’t really explain why it is important to me, but it is. Besides being an amazing narrative it is also beautifully shot which is what inspired me to pause it and take some well timed screenshots.

These images are not square but Wordpress crops them in this gallery format. Click to enlarge.