All entries for Tuesday 07 September 2004

September 07, 2004

Capitalism, schizophrenia, the artist

Anti-Oedipus Page 245–255 Capitalism as the relative limit of society, schizophrenia as the absolute limit. The artist stands between them, scrambling the codes.

The 'diagram' introduced by Van Gogh is deliberately a return to the body, rediverts representation through the body, to slow and deflect it away from the blinding imediacy of the camera. Decelerated representation.


Robert O'Toole : 07 Sep 2004 08:36 |  Tags:            |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem

Paul Klee on abstraction

In his Bauhaus period, Klee defined abstraction in his pedagogical writings as follows: Abstract? Being abstract as a painter is not the same as abstracting natural objective ways of comparison but, independent of these possible forms of comparison, is based on the extraction of pictorially pure relations…Pictorially pure relations: light to dark, colour to light and dark, colour to colour, long to short, broad to narrow, sharp to blunt, left right – up down – behind before, circle to square to triangle.

Susanna Partsch, Klee, Taschen 2003, p.27

Link this to Deleuze on analogy in Leibniz, The Fold.


Robert O'Toole : 07 Sep 2004 08:19 |  Tags:    |  Comments (4) |  Report a problem

Plagiarism, and i'm suddenly worried about my chaotic study skills

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/elearning/showcase/plagiarism/

I'm currently working on an interactive learning object that aims to teach students and staff about plagiarism, both blatant and unintentional, and the study skills that can be used to avoid it. The text for this was written by Piotr Kuhiwczak of the Centre for Translation Studies.

At the same time i'm working on writing a PhD proposal. This writing process has almost imediately converted a small room in our house into a chaotic array of books opened out at key points, along with scraps of paper with quotations and notes scribbled on them. Slowly this is being synthesised into a new text that is, hopefully, quite innovative and definitely my own.

And now I'm somewhat alarmed, because I can see exactly what Piotr means when he says that a lack of good study skills can cause inadvertant plagiarism. For exampe, if I don't keep good references with those scribbled notes, how easy would it be for Deleuze's words to accidentally be rephrased as my own? I can do something about this now, and I will try to be more organized. But it makes me quite amazed that i've managed to get through years of education, three different university courses, without ever learning good study skills.

Something must be done about this right away! Perhaps some helpful learning objects and a Warwick Skills Programme should be invented? Oh, of course they already have been invented. I wish they were available when I was an undergraduate. Young people today don't know just how lucky they are.


Robert O'Toole : 07 Sep 2004 08:12 |  Comments (6) |  Report a problem