Language is a Virus: The Power of Stories

MEDIA CULTURES 1 :: LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS

LANGUAGE
IS A
VIRUS
and stories are its vector

SHIRALEE SAUL : 2009
Paul Allen Sculpture


INTIMATE TECHNOLOGIES
Speech and sound are the first --
and the most intimate of our
media technologies.

Unlike any other communications
media, the only physical
technology we need to
communicate with spoken
language is our own bodies.

We produce speech with our breath
and our tongues, the
resulting sound waves vibrate tiny
bones deep inside our heads.



Handphone Table (When You We’re Hear),

Laurie Anderson, 1978

pine table with folding top, two built-in cas-

sette recorders, amplifiers

(106.7 x 167.6 x 33 cm)

Physically, sound is acoustic vibration.

Vibration is communication.


SOUND DETOUR
Perhaps because we receive sound so intimately, it
has an enormous, although often unconscious, affect
on our experience and understanding of media
objects such as movies, games, etc.

Most people rate an interactive with 8bit graphics
and 24bit sound as better quality than an interactive
with 24bit graphics and 8bit sound.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOYXomUFyb8


DAW06 Soundscapes For Two Channels -- Cité (4’40) Peter Kutin

http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/docs/daw/mp3/rw/KUTIN_Cite_M.mp3
SOUND &
NARRATIVE
Sound can create a narrative where none is obvious in the
images, emphasis and support aspects of the narrative, or
introduce new interpretational possibilities by contradicting
the narrative.

Sound can have:
• A direct Narrative role (e.g. Naturalistic sound --
knock on the door);
• A subliminal narrative role (e.g spooky music);
• An emotional sound equation (e.g low frequencies
convey threat) ;

• A grammatical role (e.g seque covered by continuing
sound).
More at http://www.a-website.org/hyperessays/05sound.html


SOUND GAMES

http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/art/index.html#pong http://www.sonicbodypong.com/

http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/art/images/pong.mov


SPEECH
Speech was the first great communications revolution -- and possibly happened
not to our species but to the Neanderthal 530,000 years ago.

Speech changed everything and, arguably, made people human.

Speech confers many advantages; but communication doesn’t just assist in the
present.

Whilst ‘RUN! There’s a sabre tooth tiger!’ is
obviously more effective than frantically
pointing and screaming, the real value of
language is that it allows its users to teach
the lessons of the past to their descendents.

Speech meant that people no longer had to
personally experience or witness a situation

to learn from it.


The linguist, Noam Chomsky, rather controversially, believes that language is
hardwired.

• Children have an innate knowledge of the basic grammatical structure common
to all human languages. This innate knowledge is often referred to as universal
grammar;

• With a limited set of grammar rules and a finite set of terms, humans are able
to produce an infinite number of sentences, including sentences no one has
previously said. the pace at which children learn languages is inexplicably
rapid, unless children have an innate ability to learn languages;

• Similar steps followed by children all across the world when learning l
anguages;

• Children make certain characteristic errors as they learn their first language,
whereas other seemingly logical kinds of errors never occur.

The acquisition and development of a language is a result of the unfolding of innate

propensities triggered by the experiential input of the external environment.

The Biology of the Language Faculty: Its Perfection, Past and FutureNoam Chomsky http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/517

Ali G - Language http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zPHAhj_Cio


MEMORY TECHNOLOGIES
For speech to be really useful, it depends on a reliable
memory. Humans probably developed technologies
to make their memories more reliable early in human
evolution.

Before writing, memory was the greatest commodity.

Technologies that assisted memory included:
• Ritual
• Rhythm (and music)
• Rhyme
• Repetition
• Formulaic movement
• Theatre (allegory and personification)
• Aide memoirs (symbolic objects)
• Art of Memory -- places for things, places for

facts;
• Narrative/Storytelling

“The narratives of the world are without
number...the narrative is present at all times,
in all places, in all societies; the history of
narrative begins with the history of mankind;
there does not exist, and never has
existed, a people without narratives.”
(Roland Barthes).

Many of the earliest and greatest pieces of
literature that we know of, eg the Gilgamesh Epic
and the Illiad, were orally passed along
hundreds of generations. Until the invention of
the moveable type press and the rapid

extension of literacy, most people for most of
history have relied on their memories to educate
and entertain their children and each other.


Stories remain one of our most
effective and engaging ways of
communicating.

In fact our world is
permeated with stories -- from
the tiny short form narratives
of ads to the sweeping epics of
multi-book fantasies such as
LotRs, from our relating of the
days events to our friends to
news stories.

Humans seem to make a story
out of everything -- they even
invent stories to explain the

actions of natural phenomena...
and then end up believing them.


NARRATOLOGY
The study of story structure: The structuralist seeks to under-
stand how recurrent elements, themes, and patterns yield a set
of universals that determine the makeup of a story. The ulimate
goal of such analysis is to move from a taxonomy of elements to
an understanding of how these elements are arranged in
actual narratives, fictional and nonfictional.

The intellectual tradition out of which narratology grew began
with the linguistic work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Roman
Jakobson and the Russian Formalists such as Vladmir Propp also
influenced the study of narrative, revealing how literary
language differs from ordinary language. Structuralism was

further shaped by French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss,
who concluded that myths found in various cultures can be
interpreted in terms of their repetitive structures.


Propp’s
Vladimir Propp analysed a series of Russian folk tales in
the 1920s and decided that the same events kept
being repeated in each of the stories. These, he

Analysis
reasoned, were narratemes, or narrative functions,
necessary for the narrative to exist.

of
Not all of these functions appear in every story, but
they always appear within a specific order.

Folk
http://www.changeminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/propp/propp.

htm

Tales
When Vladimir Propp created his theories of structural
analysis in the 1930’s it is unlikely that he foresaw the
advent of the computing and information age, yet his
concern with structure and the modularity of his
construction of narrative anticipate that of computing
models and languages today.

proppian fairy tale generator

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/FR0133/Fairytale_Generator/gen.html


The hero leaves home…
Propp concluded that all the characters could be resolved into only 7
broad character types:

• The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, undertakes the quest,
marries the princess (or is rewarded).
• The villain — struggles against the hero.
• The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
• The (magical) helper — helps the hero in the quest.
• The princess — gives the task to the hero, identifies the false hero, rewards the
hero, is often sought for during the narrative.
• The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
• False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

These roles could sometimes be distributed among various individuals (multiple
villains), or one character could engage in acts as more than one role, as a father could

send his son on the quest & give him a sword, acting as both dispatcher & donor.


Joseph
Campbell
“A hero is someone who has given his or her
life to something bigger than themself”

In 1949 The Hero with a Thousand Faces introduced
Campbell’s idea of the monomyth, which outlined
some of the archetypal patterns he recognized.

Heroes were important to Campbell because, for
him, they conveyed universal truths about one’s
personal self-discovery and self-transcendence,
one’s role in society, and the relationship
between the two.

The monomyth follows a classic three-act structure
--Departure (sometimes called Separation),
Initiation and Return. “Departure” deals with the
hero venturing forth on the quest, “Initiation” deals
with the hero’s various adventures along the way,

and “Return” deals with the hero’s return home with
knowledge and powers acquired on the journey.


the hero’s journey : summary of the steps
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/ref/summary.html


The Short Form of the Hero Story
(From A Practical Guide to The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Chris Vogel)

The hero is introduced in his ordinary world, where he receives the call to adventure. He is reluctant at first but is
encouraged by the wise old man or woman to cross the first threshold, where he encounters tests and helpers. He
reaches the innermost cave, where he endures the supreme ordeal. He seizes the sword or the treasure and is pursued
on the road back to his world. He is resurrected and transformed by his experience. He returns to his ordinary world
with a treasure, boon, or elixir to benefit his world.

The HERO MYTH is a skeleton that should be masked with the details of the individual story, and the structure should
not call attention to itself. The order of the hero’s stages as given here is only one of many variations. The stages can
be deleted, added to, and drastically reshuffled without losing their power.

The myth is easily translated to contemporary dramas, comedies, romances, or action-adventures by substituting
modern equivalents for the symbolic figures and props of the hero story. The Wise Old Man may be a real shaman or
Wizard, but he can also be any kind of mentor or teacher, doctor or therapist, crusty but benign boss, tough but fair
top sergeant, parent, grandfather, etc. Modern heroes may not be going into caves and labyrinths to fight their
mythical beasts, but they do enter an innermost cave by going into space, to the bottom of the sea, into their own
minds, or into the depths of a modern city.

The myth can be used to tell the simplest comic book story or the most sophisticated drama. It grows and matures as
new experiments are tried within its basic framework. Changing the sex and ages of the basic characters only makes it
more interesting, and allows ever more complex webs of understanding to be spun among them. The basic characters
can be combined, or divided into several figures to show different aspects of the same idea. The myth is infinitely
flexible, capable of endless variation without sacrificing any of its magic.

see http://nwcitadel.forgottenrealmsweave.org/showthread.php?t=418


Into the Woods: A Practical Guide to the
Hero’s Journey: Gamasutra
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050617/

bates_01.shtml

The Matrix - Joseph Campbell Monomyth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AG4rlGkCRU

The Hero’s Journey in Film
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.

individual&videoid=3654554


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