Academic literature on the topic 'Freddy (fictitious character)'

Background. Numerous research conferences and scholarly papers show increased interest in the creativity of German composer, pianist and singer of the 19th century Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn. What is particularly noticeable is that her life and creativity are subject of non-scholarly discussion. Writers of biographical works are profoundly interested in the personality of this talented artist, as it gives them material for the discussion of a whole range of issues, in particular those pertaining to the phenomena of female creativity, new concepts of music and history of music with emphasis on its communicative character, correlation between music and gender, establishment of autobiographical character of musical creativity, expression and realization of female creativity under conditions of burgher society. Additional attention is paid to family constellations: Robert and Clara Schumann, brother and sister Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn. A very close relationship between Felix Mendelssohn and Fanny HenselMendelssohn opens a new perspective on the dialogical history of music, i. e. the reconstruction of music pieces based on close personal and critical contact in the Mendelssohn family. All these ideas, which researchers started articulating and discussing only recently, found their artistic expression in the biographical novel “Dear Fenchel! The Life of Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn in Etudes and Intermezzi” («Liebste Fenchel! Das Leben der Fanny Hensel-Mendelssohn in Etüden und Intermezzi», 2011) by the German writer Peter Härtling (1933–2017). Peter Härtling was attracted to the image of Fanny Hensel primarily because she was working in the Romantic aesthetics, which the writer considered the backbone of his own creativity. While working on the novel about Fanny Hensel, Peter Härtling was constantly reading her diaries and listening to her music as well as the music by her brother Felix Mendelssohn. He discovered “a fascinating composer” who was creating music “bravely” through improvisation, even more so, who improvised her own life in a similar fashion. Her “courageous steps” into “female reality” struck the biography writer. Objectives. The research aims at studying the literary image of Fanny Hensel using the ideas of contemporary music scholars regarding creativity of this still little researched artist. Literary reflection of the life and creativity of musician based on combination of fiction and real life is a productive addition to her creative image. Methods. Since the research is centered on the image of a female composer, in many respects it is following the theoretical premises of music gender studies. The complexity of literary recreation to the personality and creativity of composer in the novel was required the sophisticated narrative situation and structure, that justifies the use of narratology as a method of literary criticism’ analysis. Results. Peter Härtling is a well-known master of biographical novel, who has his own creative concept of re-construction the life story of famous artists. When creating a biographical novel, the writer walks on the verge of reality and fiction, rediscovering and creating. The artistic element serves the purpose of amplification and image-creation; it helps to reveal distinctive properties, characteristics and elements of personality of the biographic novel hero. Gaps in documented materials help the narrator behave freely, give a chance for open associations and subjective vision. When outlining the personality lineaments, the narrator follows chronology of the most important events. Yet, plot development in an autobiographical novel is based on separate motifs. Certain life stages and events of a person’s life are depicted in detail in specific chapters and are shown more accurately within the general plot. By running ahead and looking back, the narrator makes it clear that he is above the narrative situation and arranges the depicted events according to the principle of their development. The narrator plays the role of an accompanying of a person portrayed, helping the writer approach to latter in order to understand him. Peter Härtling defines the key narrative principle in the following way: the narration is centered on the relationship of the talented brother and sister, as well as the motives of a mothering care and self-assertion, which are creating the backdrop for the biography of Fanny Mendelssohn. As such, we can see the ways that helped a talented young woman stand against her competitor-brother and get out of his shadow. The author claims that since childhood, the brother and the sister got along with the help of music and it was music that created a tie between them. The novel pays close attention to their discussions of music and the Sunday concerts, which took place at their house. As it is known from letters, it was very important for Felix Mendelssohn to include music into private communication forms. Researchers emphasizes that it made hard for him to be involved in social processes, in which such form of communication was impossible. Based on what Felix Mendelssohn himself said, it is possible to conclude that he was making an opposition between private musical communication as “the world of music” and social music life “as the world of musicians”. Fanny Hensel was not the embodiment of “detached musical practice” of autonomous art for him; on contrary, her creativity was directly linked to real life. Inside the bourgeois home and amid “private circulation of texts”, Fanny Hensel’s music was directly connected to communication, holidays and family rituals, in which the roles of music performer and music listener were “not cemented”, presupposing active inclusion of “amateurs” into music. Private musical practice meant the successful musical communication, the direct communication in music, which was not possible in anonymous publicness. Composer individuality had a chance of growing without being stripped of meaning and understanding. Inside the burgher house and within her immediate circle, Fanny Hensel was the symbol of “illusion of non-detached music”. Peter Härtling attests to autobiographical character of Fanny Hensel’s musical writing. Conclusions. Peter Härtling’s novel shows a cultural change, which stipulated an extended understanding of music as a dynamic process of human activity in a specific, historically varied cultural field. In this respect, Fanny Hensel’s literary portrait touches upon important aspects of female music creativity, actualizing its achievements in contemporary cultural space. Approaching the talented artist in literature is a special combination of art and life, fictitious and real, past and present.

Background information Sandscript was programmed with the web application « Tchat-scene », created by Carol-Ann Braun and the computer services company Timsoft (). It organizes a data-base of raw material into compositions and sequences allowing to build larger episodes. Multimedia resources are thus attributed to frames surrounding the chat space or to the chat space itself, thus “augmented” to include pre-written texts and graphics. Sandscript works best on a PC, with Internet Explorer. On Mac, use 0S9 and Internet Explorer. You will have to download a chat application for the site to function. Coded conversation General opinion would have it that chat space is a conversational space, facilitating rather than complicating communication. Writing in a chat space is very much influenced by the current ideological stance which sees collaborative spaces as places to make friends, speak freely, flip from one “channel” to another, link with a simple click into related themes, etc. Moreover, chat users tend to think of the chat screen in terms of a white page, an essentially neutral environment. A quick analysis of chat practices reveals a different scenario: chat spaces are highly coded typographical writing spaces, quick to exclude those who don’t abide by the technical and procedural constraints associated with computer reading/writing tools (Despret-Lonné, Gentès). Chatters seek to belong to a “community;” conversely, every chat has “codes” which restrict its membership to the like-minded. The patterns of exchange characteristic of chats are phatic (Jakobson), and their primary purpose is to get and maintain a social link. It is no surprise then that chatters should emphasize two skills: one related to rhetorical ingenuity, the other to dexterity and speed of writing. To belong, one first has to grasp the banter, then manage very quickly the rules and rituals of the group, then answer by mastering the intricacies of the keyboard and its shortcuts. Speed is compulsory if your answers are to follow the communal chat; as a result, sentences tend to be very short, truncated bits, dispatched in a continuous flow. Sandscript attempts to play with the limits of this often hermetic writing process (and the underlying questions of affinity, participation and reciprocity). It opens up a social space to an artistic and fictional space, each with rules of its own. Hyper-linked dialogue Sandscript is not just about people chatting, it is also about influencing the course of these exchanges. The site weaves pre-scripted poetic content into the spontaneous, real-time dialogue of chatters. Smileys and the plethora of abbreviations, punctuations and icons characteristic of chat rooms are mixed in with typographical games that develop the idea of text as image and text as sound — using Morse Code to make text resonate, CB code to evoke its spoken use, and graphic elements within the chat space itself to oppose keyboard text and handwritten graffiti. The web site encourages chatters to broaden the scope of their “net-speak,” and take a playfully conscious stance towards their own familiar practices. Actually, most of the writing in this web-site is buried in the database. Two hundred or so “key words” — expressions typical of phatic exchanges, in addition to other words linked to the idea of sandstorms and archeology — lie dormant, inactive and unseen until a chatter inadvertently types one in. These keywords bridge the gap between spontaneous exchange and multimedia content: if someone types in “hi,” an image of a face, half buried in sand, pops up in a floating window and welcomes you, silently; if someone types in the word “wind,” a typewritten “wind” floats out into the graphic environment and oscillates between the left and right edges of the frames; typing the word “no” “magically” triggers the intervention of an anarchist who says something provocative*. *Sandscript works like a game of ping-pong among chatters who are intermittently surprised by a comment “out of nowhere.” The chat space, augmented by a database, forms an ever-evolving, fluid “back-bone” around which artistic content is articulated. Present in the form of programs who participate in their stead, artists share the spot light, adding another level of mediation to a collective writing process. Individual and collective identities Not only does Sandscript accentuate the multimedia aspects of typed chat dialogues, it also seeks to give a “ shape” to the community of assembled chatters. This shape is musical: along with typing in a nickname of her choice, each chatter is attributed a sound. Like crickets in a field, each sound adds to the next to create a collective presence, modified with every new arrival and departure. For example, if your nick is “yoyo-mama,” your presence will be associated with a low, electronic purr. When “pillX” shows up, his nick will be associated with a sharp violin chord. When “mojo” pitches in, she adds her sound profile to the lot, and the overall environment changes again. Chatters can’t hear the clatter of each other’s keyboards, but they hear the different rhythms of their musical identities. The repeated pings of people present in the same “scape” reinforce the idea of community in a world where everything typed is swept away by the next bit of text, soon to be pushed off-screen in turn. The nature of this orchestrated collective presence is determined by the artists and their programs, not by the chatters themselves, whose freedom is limited to switching from one nick to another to test the various sounds associated with each. Here, identity is both given and built, both individual and collective, both a matter of choice and pre-defined rules. (Goffman) Real or fictitious characters The authors introduce simulated bits of dialogue within the flow of written conversation. Some of these fake dialogues simply echo whatever keywords chatters might type. Others, however, point else where, suggesting a hyper-link to a more elaborate fictionalized drama among “characters.” Sandscript also hides a plot. Once chatters realize that there are strange goings on in their midst, they become caught in the shifting sands of this web site’s inherent duality. They can completely lose their footing: not only do they have to position themselves in relation to other, real people (however disguised…) but they also have to find their bearings in the midst of a database of fake interlocutors. Not only are they expected to “write” in order to belong, they are also expected to unearth content in order to be “in the know.” A hybridized writing is required to maintain this ambivalence in place. Sandscript’s fake dialogue straddles two worlds: it melds in with the real-time small talk of chatters all while pointing to elements in a fictional narrative. For example, “mojo” will say: “silting up here ”, and “zano” will answer “10-4, what now? ” These two characters could be banal chatters, inviting others to join in their sarcastic banter… But they are also specifically referring to incidents in their fictional world. The “chat code” not only addresses its audience, it implies that something else is going on that merits a “click” or a question. “Clicking” at this juncture means more than just quickly responding to what another chatter might have typed. It implies stopping the banter and delving into the details of a character developed at greater length elsewhere. Indeed, in Sandscript, each fictional dialogue is linked to a blog that reinforces each character’s personality traits and provides insights into the web-site’s wind-swept, self-erasing world. Interestingly enough, Sandscript then reverses this movement towards a closed fictional space by having each character not only write about himself, but relate her immediate preoccupations to the larger world. Each blog entry mentions a character’s favorite URL at that particular moment. One character might evoke a web site about romantic poetry, another one on anarchist political theory, a third a web-site on Morse code, etc… Chatters click on the URL and open up an entirely new web-site, directly related to the questions being discussed in Sandscript. Thus, each character represents himself as well as a point of view on the larger world of the web. Fiction opens onto a “real” slice of cyber-space and the work of other authors and programmers. Sandscript mixes up different types of on-line identities, emphasizing that representations of people on the web are neither “true” nor “false.” They are simply artificial and staged, simple facets of identities which shift in style and rhetoric depending on the platform available to them. Again, identity is both closed by our social integration and opened to singular “play.” Conclusion: looking at and looking through One could argue that since the futurists staged their “electrical theater” in the streets of Turin close to a hundred years ago, artists have worked on the blurry edge between recognizable formal structures and their dissolution into life itself. And after a century of avant-gardes, self-referential appropriations of mass media are also second nature. Juxtaposing one “use” along another reveals how different frames of reference include or exclude each other in unexpected ways. For the past twenty years much artwork has which fallen in between genres, and most recently in the realm of what Nicolas Bourriaud calls “relational aesthetics.” Such work is designed not only to draw attention to itself but also to the spectator’s relation to it and the broader artistic context which infuses the work with additional meaning. By having dialogue serve as a hyper-link to multimedia content, Sandscript, however, does more. Even though some changes in the web site are pre-programmed to occur automatically, not much happens without the chatters, who occupy center-stage and trigger the appearance of a latent content. Chatters are the driving force, they are the ones who make text appear and flow off-screen, who explore links, who exchange information, and who decide what pops up and doesn’t. Here, the art “object” reveals its different facets around a multi-layered, on-going conversation, subjected to the “flux” of an un-formulated present. Secondly, Sandscript demands that we constantly vary our posture towards the work: getting involved in conversation to look through the device, all while taking some distance to consider the object and look at its content and artistic “mediations.” (Bolster and Grusin, Manovitch). This tension is at the heart of Sandscript, which insists on being both a communication device “transparent” to its user, and an artistic device that imposes an opaque and reflexive quality. The former is supposed to disappear behind its task; the latter attracts the viewer’s attention over and over again, ever open to new interpretations. This approach is not without pitfalls. One Sandscript chatter wondered if as the authors of the web-site were not disappointed when conversation took the upper hand, and chatters ignored the graphics. On the other hand, the web site’s explicit status as a chat space was quickly compromised when users stopped being interested in each other and turned to explore the different layers hidden within the interface. In the end, Sandscript chatters are not bound to any single one of these modes. They can experience one and then other, and —why not —both simultaneously. This hybrid posture brings to mind Herman’s metaphor of a door that cannot be closed entirely: “la porte joue” —the door “gives.” It is not perfectly fitted and closed — there is room for “play.” Such openness requires that the artistic device provide two seemingly contradictory ways of relating to it: a desire to communicate seamlessly all while being fascinated by every seam in the representational space projected on-screen. Sandscript is supposed to “run” and “not run” at the same time; it exemplifies the technico-semiotic logic of speed and resists it full stop. Here, openness is not ontological; it is experiential, shifting. About the Authors Carol-Ann Braun is multimedia artist, at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecomunications, Paris, France. EmaiL: carol-ann.braun@wanadoo.fr Annie Gentes is media theorist and professor at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecomunications, Paris, France. Email: Annie.Gentes@enst.fr Works Cited Adamowicz, Elza. Surrealist Collage in Text and Image, Dissecting the Exquisite Corpse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Augé, Marc. Non-lieux, Introduction à une Anthropologie de la Surmodernité. Paris: Seuil, 1992. Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation, Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Bourriaud, Nicholas. Esthétique Relationnelle. Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 1998. Despret-Lonnet, Marie and Annie Gentes, Lire, Ecrire, Réécrire. Paris: Bibliothèque Centre Pompidou, 2003. Goffman, Irving. Interaction Ritual. New York: Pantheon, 1967. Habermas, Jürgen. Théorie de l’Agir Communicationnel, Vol.1. Paris: Fayard, 1987. Herman, Jacques. “Jeux et Rationalité.” Encyclopedia Universalis, 1997. Jakobson, Roman.“Linguistics and Poetics: Closing statements,” in Thomas Sebeok. Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960. Latzko-Toth, Guillaume. “L’Internet Relay Chat, Un Cas Exemplaire de Dispositif Socio-technique,” in Composite. Montreal: Université du Québec à Montréal, 2001. Lyotard, Jean-François. La Condition Post-Moderne. Paris: les Editions de Minuit, 1979. Manovitch, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001. Michaud, Yves. L’Art à l’Etat Gazeux. Essai sur le Triomphe de l’Esthétique, Les essais. Paris: Stock, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Braun, Carol-Ann & Gentes, Annie. "Dialogue: a hyper-link to multimedia content." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/05_Braun-Gentes.php>. APA Style Braun, C. & Gentes, A. (2004, Jul1). Dialogue: a hyper-link to multimedia content.. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0406/05_Braun-Gentes.php>