Talk:Mosso Ergograph

Mosso Ergograph

�A-

�Good work here on a very interesting piece of dead media. I like how �you spoke on the remediation of earlier devices, of both writing and �experimenting. You also did a good job talking about Crary, and Flusser �too on the second industrial revolution, the standardization of human �activity, and the need to create identical conditions. Nice job �bringing in some of the critical techniques during the Q&A such as bad �weather (the human being; needing to create a consistent test subject), �the obvious (the use of metal [brass] and materials that would have �been readily available), and pops and hisses (the sheer materiality of �the medium getting in the way). I like how you answered the question �"Why is it a medium rather than a tool?"-- because of the graphing �function, because it wrote and had to be interpreted, that it �translated a sensory experience into something that can be read by �scientists. The device is a mediation of the body also because of how �it trains it, similar to Purkinje's afterimages. (One wonders, then, if �the ergograph would have a side effect of strengthening and �conditioning the very muscles it is aiming to record.) You also showed �how the graph is literally digital in the sense that it is a series of �discrete movements. While the graph itself is more like a wave in that �it is continuous. This is a solid dossier. By way of improvement, I �would suggest that you engage more directly with the reading and with �the critical methods. There is still a lot of material in your dossier �that is descriptive and follows the neutral language of Wikipedia. It's �okay to have a bit of that, but your dossier is already quite long, so �beware of getting bogged down. What I'm really looking for is for you �to stake a position and defend it, to make an argument. Overall, a good �first dossier.