module 11
rock n roll
Module11.docxModule 11
Part A: Write a 500 words response
· finish reading The Number and the Siren.
· In your response posts this week, please don't review the book. Don't write about whether you liked it. Instead, think about what I wrote above, and think about how it might relate to digital media and the internet. And then return to the Mallarmé poem. Read it again, from start to finish, once you've finished Number. How does it read differently for you? What is it like this time? What exactly has happened between your first reading of it and your second, and how are you changed as a reader? Are you more or less open to what it might mean? Has the coin actually landed?
· To pick up: I've assigned this book for a (ahem) number of reasons. One is because it deals with hiddenness, substrates of code in literary work, and relationships between numeric structures and poetic meaning. Another is because I think reading a book-length critique of a single poem is a useful just as a demonstration of how closely and thoughtfully it's possible to look at one small thing. (Try to imagine how much time Meillassoux must have spent thinking about this and editing that book... not to mention the mystery of how he even figured it out in the first place! Note that he deliberately keeps that from you, a secret of his own.) Another reason is because, as I mentioned last week, Mallarmé's hypothetical conceptual moves, as Meillassoux outlines them, are truly radical and bring up a whole set of questions around understanding, not understanding, accessibility, and what a poem is and can be. Like, did the poem even fully exist before its secret was discovered? Tree falling in the woods and all that. Was the discovery and publication of its secret code layer a kind of collaboration, or joint authorship? Was the code itself a kind of software that would eventually generate, through another human author, the Number book? Also, in our era of daily (or sub-daily) news cycles and rapid consumption of content, I think it's interesting to think about a project, a coin flip, that took more than a century to land -- and where the originating author had absolutely no idea whether or not it would.
Part B: Write 2 peer response (250words EACH X 2=500words)
A:
Before getting into my post for this week, I wanted to preface it with a bit of wisdom from author John Green. In a video he did in the past (I tried to find it but I can't remember the name and there are far too many to sort through) he had described writing a book, and how once that book is released to the public, it no longer belongs to the author. It is the property of the audience upon its release and they can interpret it however they want because it is theirs. At this point, the author has no say in whether or not the audience is or is not correct because no longer does the work belong to them. I prefaced my post with this because it validates the very existence of The Number and the Siren. The Number and the Siren aims to find a hidden code or meaning in Coup De Des, a poem by Stephane Mallarme. Many works of literature have significance of numbers. For example, In Harry Potter, the number 7 is the number the whole series relates to (7 books, 7 horcruxes, 7 years studying at Hogwarts, etc). This poem, perhaps was coded for a certain number, thus allowing for the author to give some sort of meaning to this work. However, it was left to chance whether anybody would find it. I don't quite understand what significance the number itself would add in terms of the poem's story. Perhaps, allowing for a paradox. The sailor throwing dice and them subsequently landing on a certain number is pure chance. The code behind the poem is not chance, but intentionally put. It shows how something so heavily structured with numbers could still be left to chance. This chance being the dice themselves landing on numbers. The poem is a massive mystery, and any coding behind it would not change the story, but rather show a greater truth about life. The poem existed fully before the code was found. Once it was out of the author's hands, it became how each individual reader interpreted it that gave it some sort of meaning. The coding is another dimension, however the poem can still be read and interpreted without it. The Number and the Siren is what makes the poem less of a blackbox. Previously, when reading the poem, I knew nothing about the numbers and code behind it. I suppose that is representative about how humanity is with the internet now. We use it and enjoy it and can understand it on a surface level, but know very little of the programs or codes that make our screens light up of load a cat video on youtube. If we were to take a class on coding and programming for those things, that would be the metaphorical equivalent of reading this book. It is about getting an internal understanding of the functions of the poem/internet.
B:
Before you ask, yes, the title is an Iron Maiden reference. Meillassoux's analysis of the poem is definitely thorough, but I like my interpretation better (then again I'm biased). Relating this to digital media, it seems that Meillassoux literally cracked the code. That is to say, it's like he opened up the "inspect element" option on Chrome or Firefox that allows him to see the various settings and why the page looks like the way it is. Alternatively, the motif of 707 reminds me of the golden ratio found in snail shells and bee hives. The number just pops up, though I'm curious as to how he knew to boil down these words into variations of 7 and 0. He is essentially staring into the black box and estimating about what he sees. I often go under the assumption that anything as complex and cohesive as this fact from the poem is ultimately a coincidence purely because I'd like to think that it's more humorous that this information is gleamed from someone who didn't intend it. Regardless of the intention, the fact that Meillassoux was able to gleam this much information makes this seem that this poem is part of a The DaVinci Code-esque mystery and some locked box has a three digit code on it. I don't know the nitty gritty details of code, nor do I particularly know how this relates to coding in a computer science sense. But it's clear that there is a code otherwise, Meillassoux wouldn't have had anything to understand. Aside from the number within the piece, the ability to find any religious/secular symbolism in a poem so open ended, is astonishing, however that's the kind of infinite possibility that one can have in such an abstract piece. To answer a few questions posed in the prompt: do I think the poem existed before someone cracked it open? Yes, or rather a version of the poem existed. Obviously the poem existed, otherwise how could we read it, but now that Meillassoux explained why he believes things to be true, a new version of the poem arrives. The more I ruminate on literature and poetry, the more I see them as possibilities of infinity: interpretation causes these mediums to act like a shards of glass in a broken mirror, they all reflect upon a the same source yet there are different versions of the subject. Is this a collaboration or joint-partnership? Yes, but at some level all literature is a collaboration. The author conveys ideas to the reader and expects the reader to experience the text and turn it into something befitting their view. Basically, the author gives reader milk and wants the reader to turn it into cheese, but never specifies what kind until prodded. Sure, we can have a vague idea of what kind of cheese the author wants based on how the author gives the milk. Furthermore, a reader could still make the cheese they think they want even despite the instructions left by the author. I don't know if this analogy makes sense.
