Network Aesthetics: Part 1 — Linear Forms
In Jagoda’s first book, Network Aesthetics, he states that he “attempts to revise the common treatment of networks as control structures that originated in the computing and cybernetics research of the early Cold War” (7). Referencing the “network imaginary… [meaning] the complex of material infrastructures and metaphorical figures that inform our experience with and our thinking about the contemporary social world”, Jagoda “turns to narrative, visual, and procedural art forms that encourage an active, critical, and even transformative engagement with the network as the new dominant configuration and category of life” (3, 16). Specifically, Jagoda looks at four texts (two literary, two cinematic) and through a close reading of the networks presented in each, discusses the influences behind the origins, and how that influence can be “read” in terms of networking.
The Network Novel: Meaning & Mapping
Jagoda begins by looking into the literary network texts of DeLillo’s Underworld (1997) as well as Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (1999), and discusses what makes each a “network novel”, which by his own definition is “a late twentieth-century genre that reworks and intensifies the cultural concerns regarding a world interconnected by communication and transportation networks, and made unprecedentedly dependent upon an informational economy”, which he believes began in the 1990s during the rise of the Internet (44).
Despite both being pieces of science fiction, Jagoda chose to study these novels specifically because “[the] pieces are not predominantly speculative” (compared to works such as The Matrix), and demonstrate domestic interconnectivity through various processes of “mapping” (41, 44). Jacoba asserts that “[w]hile network visualizations offer a stable representation or a map of elements configured as nodes and links, the novel makes possible processes of mapping networks across space and time” (44). To provide an example of this, he writes about a baseball featured in Underworld, acquired by character Nick Shay. Partially due to the fact that the novel uses a non-linear timeline, the baseball in question has its own lineage, thus defying the conventions of space and time (similar to family heirlooms). As Jagoda points out, “For Nick, as for the reader, the significance of the ball derives from its historical linkages” (50). In and of itself, the baseball is meaningless. It is due to the ball’s mapping, Nick can derive meaning.
Network Cinema: The Butterfly Effect
The butterfly effect is a popular concept used to explain how small actions can have large consequences. It has been used in numerous mediums, such as the 2004 film of the same name, or the 2015 video game Until Dawn. Within network films, this effect is highly present, however Jagoba is specifically interested in its manifestation through technology.
The two works of cinema Jagoda is interested in are Syriana (2005) and HBO’s The Wire (2002-2006). The means of interconnectivity and network within cinema primarily deal with character relations to one another, within a specific space and time, which is then punctuated by cinematic language (cinematography, mise-en-scene, etc). In Syriana, audiences follow a CIA officer, an energy analyst, an attorney, and “a Pakistani immigrant worker”—though seemingly separate storylines—negotiating their respective ways through or with the oil industry (76). As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the actions of one character, though he may not know it, directly correlate to the (often negative) actions of another. Jagoda notes that this type of movement has been seen in films before, though believes Syriana has far more complexity than many of its counterparts due to the themes it addresses, and “through frequent camera movements, quickly paced dialogue, and rapid montage” (88).
Network cinema is far less interested in “epic battles” as Jagoda puts it, and far most interested in “perpetual violence”, which is derived though each character interacting with another (91). For example, Wasim Ahmed Khan (the Pakistani immigrant) discovers his “path to terrorism” through connectivity, “from unemployment to violent mistreatment by immigration officials to enrolment in an Islamic school to training for a role as a suicide bomber” (89). Network films are not the story of a protagonist on a journey to rescue the princess, but typically about an ensemble of protagonists (occasionally anti-heroes) with interlocking narratives through technology.
In a scene Jagoda focuses on, CIA officer Bob Barnes (George Clooney) attempts to warn Prince Nasir of his impending assassination by the CIA. The audience experiences multiple perspectives at once, as the film cuts to the CIA headquarters where a man counts down to the impending bomb that will kill both the Prince and Barnes, to a flashback of a moment in the past when the Prince and Barnes met in an elevator, to the Prince and Barnes together in the desert. The last words the Prince says is, “You’re the Canadian” to Barnes, remembering his previous fictional persona under the CIA. As Jagoda states, “[t]his scene could be read as a moment of reflective alliance, but it more properly conveys the profound dimness with which all global actors, regardless of their access to privileged political information, encounter the vast network of relations through which their lives unfold” (92).
Similar to Syriana, HBO’s The Wire uses an impoverished Baltimore as the setting in which “plotting is subordinated to the detailed mapping of Baltimore’s intersecting social worlds”, while “explor[ing] social networks by forging audiovisual and narrative links among a web of major and minor characters” (107). Like with Syriana, characters are connected through technology, though far more so than in the former example. In a particular scene during the Baltimore city election, three candidates debate on television, though the fictional audience is what is primarily shown to the real-world viewers. What is interesting is not the debate itself, but how characters react to it. Jagoda writes that “detectives in the homicide unit watch with distant interest, listening selectively for issues that pertain to their daily criminal investigations. The ex-con Dennis ‘Cutty’ Wise, in another vignette, notices the debate on his screen before immediately switching the channel to a football game… This human web is arguably one of the reasons that this series has been so often celebrated and debated by social scientists” (106-7). This combined connection and apathy is centred around the technology of networks, as well as the sociability of the networks themselves. As Jagoda accurately asserts, this is not Baltimore—it’s Baltimores (107).
Networks, be they literary or cinematic, help to illustrate the ways in which people relate to one another through the medium of technology, but must compounded with their social status and physical locations in order to be truly understood. Jagoda concludes similarly to how he began, writing, “The networked narrative forms that I have explored… mediate and compose the ordinary that sustains the network imaginary” (138).