On HyperCities and Nightcrawler
I came to Los Angeles bundled up in cliché – doe-eyed, homesick, yet utterly determined to build a life in what I felt was a completely heartless city. I have since learned to stop worrying and love LA. Facilitating this process were two strangely connected sources -- HyperCities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities by Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano and Nightcrawler, directed by Dan Gilroy and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Combined, these “texts” offer a way recognizing the deep history of Los Angeles – including the structures of violence it was built on and which have continued to be perpetuated by social inequities. Both HyperCities and Nightcrawler offer a way of contesting the curation of information and narrative in such a way that exposes the underlying power dynamics at play. It might seem curious that such difficult texts might offer emotional consolation but each item, showed me how to “see” Los Angeles in another way. As I stand on the precipice of moving from Westwood to South Central, I recognize the incredible power of the dispossessed and of the dense layering of story and life that populates each brick and wall. Loving a place involves both celebrating its beauty and coming to terms with its “ugly” and the violences that occur here. Hypercities and Nightcrawler offer us an opportunity to bravely open Pandora’s box and let it fill our hearts in constructive and informative ways.
HyperCities will almost certainly be a crucial software, text, and concept in the Digital Humanities. But what exactly is DH? To that I would answer, broadly, that it is the study and exploration of the intersection of technology and human life. More specifically, it is the examination of the intersections of computer technology and a variety of its social implications, including its political ramifications. Unfortunately, in the field, there is often a great emphasis placed on the “digital” or “technological” aspect of the field which results in a preoccupation of “mastering” technological tools with little attention paid to the humanities aspect. This is where HyperCities makes its most important intervention – by effectively marrying and balancing the digital and the humanities elements in order to utilize tools to tell a story that directly impacts human life. The authors ask, “What if the World Wide Web was composed of lives, not pages?...Among other things you might find historical maps, architectural reconstructions, personal stories, pictures, documents, and other sources that bring alive the texture and vibrancy of past places…What if there was a way to let the ghosts return, the memories come to life, and the silenced voices be heard?” (13). HyperCities offers us a way of digging into the past at the crux of an important technological moment without falling into the mentality of technological determinism and in such a way that prioritizes human existence.
In order to accomplish the merging of technology and story, Presner, Shepard, Kawano offer an emergent form of cartography – “thick mapping.” Thick mapping “refers to the processes of collecting, aggregating, and visualizing ever more layers of geographic or place-specific data. Thick maps are sometimes called “deep maps” because they embody temporal and historical dynamics through a multiplicity of layered narratives, sources, and even representational practices” (17). This dense layering of information creates an ever-expanding narrative that both tells a story and, with the help of digital technology, is also able to render this complexity visually by harnessing a variety of media forms across platforms and integrating them into a dense but singular (re)presentation – even while contesting this singularity and noting its incompleteness. This movement towards recognizing the value of human voice and the project of “stitching” together pieces is reflected even in the construction of the text which uses different fonts to differentiate between authors whose narratives and narrations themselves crisscross through each other’s work. This is, in many ways, an inherently political project as it refutes “scholarly” (read: elitist) means of archiving and record-keeping (Kawano’s section grapples extensively with Tweets in the aftermath of a major catastrophy) and offers a new and exciting way of documenting and preserving life. In terms of thinking about the incredibly rich and often problematic history of Los Angeles, HyperCities as both software and theory, provides a powerful way of reapproaching the city’s history. The text provides both a methodology for a variety of fields of study and for life.
This brings me to Nightcrawler – a film that I watched upon its release, when I had first arrived to LA a dewy-faced child and which I recently re-watched as a grizzled graduate student. I think of this movie as one component of HyperCities in action – a story waiting to be stitched together with other stories that is, itself, made up of so many components that reveal the underbelly of the media business. The film exposes the curation of information in the media, of the banal way we too often treat the violence that fundamentally alters people’s lives, and the film literally and metaphorically maps the city. In Nightcrawler, we follow the business exploits of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhall) as he sells horrific content to a news outlet as a stringer. Nightcrawler drags us around and through Los Angeles, showing us which lives matter and which do not. Nina Romina, played by Rene Russo, states, “think of our news cast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut” and clarifies by adding, “We find our viewers are more interested in urban crime creeping into the suburbs. What that means is a victim or victims, preferably well-off and/or white, injured at the hands of the poor, or a minority.” Nightcrawler is one way of giving voice to the voiceless in that it directly addresses the necropolitics of LA and the way in which highways function as technologies of power by segregating the city by race and class.
The position of people of color in the film is very specific and limited, much like real life in LA. In their first exchange, Lou tells Rick Carey (Riz Ahmed) to “sell” himself. Rick answers, “I took three buses to get here. I finished high school. I need a job. I'll do just about anything. That's me. Hire Rick.” Rick, a man of color, is not white and thus lacks a commodity to sell and does not articulate himself in the same way that Lou’s privileged position enables him to. Lou assumes that his white, heterosexual male view is universal. Rick, too, is very quickly able to tell that Lou is a sociopath disguised as a businessman. Later, when Lou videotapes a violent shoot out, his path crosses with Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt), an astute detective and woman of color. Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) like Rick can see through Lou; they see his privilege and how he leverages this in an extraordinarily cold and calculated manner. On the other hand, Nina, a white woman, protects Lou and celebrates Lou’s work at the close of the film – even after her sexual exploitation by Lou (read: repeated rape). Power, profit, and place (both social position and actual place) are always at the center of the discussion in Nightcrawler. Again, it must seem strange that I have found a way to make peace with my fear of Los Angeles through films like Nightcrawler – but we only what we do not know, what we cannot yet make sense of. Nightcrawler works towards a, albeit terrifying, form of transparency in the kinds of exchanges a city like Los Angeles necessitates and facilitates. Gritty and unflinching, it also exposes and unsettles the seat of white heterosexual male power by exposing it as a construction and, in the case of Lou, a kind of insanity.
HyperCities is a collaborative project that works towards showing how all cities are themselves collaborative projects, made up of contingencies and deep running relationships in all forms. Nightcrawler depicts, this, too – the way we crash into one another and even the way our lives our often heavily intertwined by the violences we visit upon each other. Cities and cites are places rich and rife with narration. In the same place where someone experienced their first kiss, someone else may have been shot. What does it mean to recognize this layering? What does it tell us about our own lives and about the kinds of futuries we might envision if it is increasingly possible to build a relationship with the past through digital technology? How might we use technology different if we think of it not only as an artifact of modernity but also a doorway into experiencing history differently? The authors in HyperCities write, “thick maps betray their conditions of possibility, their authorship and contingency, without naturalizing or imposing a singular world-view. In essence, thick maps give rise to forms of counter-mapping, alternative maps, multiple voices, and on-going contestations” (19). In their own way, HyperCities and Nightcrawler offer a means of contestation, a way of exposing the realities of a particular place. Both texts are about seeing what is not immediately visible, about acts of forgetting remembering and the shapes survival takes – the survival of documents
I came to Los Angeles bundled up in cliché – doe-eyed, homesick, yet utterly determined to build a life in what I felt was a completely heartless city. I have since learned to stop worrying and love LA. Facilitating this process were two strangely connected sources -- HyperCities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities by Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano and Nightcrawler, directed by Dan Gilroy and starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Combined, these “texts” offer a way recognizing the deep history of Los Angeles – including the structures of violence it was built on and which have continued to be perpetuated by social inequities. Both HyperCities and Nightcrawler offer a way of contesting the curation of information and narrative in such a way that exposes the underlying power dynamics at play. It might seem curious that such difficult texts might offer emotional consolation but each item, showed me how to “see” Los Angeles in another way. As I stand on the precipice of moving from Westwood to South Central, I recognize the incredible power of the dispossessed and of the dense layering of story and life that populates each brick and wall. Loving a place involves both celebrating its beauty and coming to terms with its “ugly” and the violences that occur here. Hypercities and Nightcrawler offer us an opportunity to bravely open Pandora’s box and let it fill our hearts in constructive and informative ways.
HyperCities will almost certainly be a crucial software, text, and concept in the Digital Humanities. But what exactly is DH? To that I would answer, broadly, that it is the study and exploration of the intersection of technology and human life. More specifically, it is the examination of the intersections of computer technology and a variety of its social implications, including its political ramifications. Unfortunately, in the field, there is often a great emphasis placed on the “digital” or “technological” aspect of the field which results in a preoccupation of “mastering” technological tools with little attention paid to the humanities aspect. This is where HyperCities makes its most important intervention – by effectively marrying and balancing the digital and the humanities elements in order to utilize tools to tell a story that directly impacts human life. The authors ask, “What if the World Wide Web was composed of lives, not pages?...Among other things you might find historical maps, architectural reconstructions, personal stories, pictures, documents, and other sources that bring alive the texture and vibrancy of past places…What if there was a way to let the ghosts return, the memories come to life, and the silenced voices be heard?” (13). HyperCities offers us a way of digging into the past at the crux of an important technological moment without falling into the mentality of technological determinism and in such a way that prioritizes human existence.
In order to accomplish the merging of technology and story, Presner, Shepard, Kawano offer an emergent form of cartography – “thick mapping.” Thick mapping “refers to the processes of collecting, aggregating, and visualizing ever more layers of geographic or place-specific data. Thick maps are sometimes called “deep maps” because they embody temporal and historical dynamics through a multiplicity of layered narratives, sources, and even representational practices” (17). This dense layering of information creates an ever-expanding narrative that both tells a story and, with the help of digital technology, is also able to render this complexity visually by harnessing a variety of media forms across platforms and integrating them into a dense but singular (re)presentation – even while contesting this singularity and noting its incompleteness. This movement towards recognizing the value of human voice and the project of “stitching” together pieces is reflected even in the construction of the text which uses different fonts to differentiate between authors whose narratives and narrations themselves crisscross through each other’s work. This is, in many ways, an inherently political project as it refutes “scholarly” (read: elitist) means of archiving and record-keeping (Kawano’s section grapples extensively with Tweets in the aftermath of a major catastrophy) and offers a new and exciting way of documenting and preserving life. In terms of thinking about the incredibly rich and often problematic history of Los Angeles, HyperCities as both software and theory, provides a powerful way of reapproaching the city’s history. The text provides both a methodology for a variety of fields of study and for life.
This brings me to Nightcrawler – a film that I watched upon its release, when I had first arrived to LA a dewy-faced child and which I recently re-watched as a grizzled graduate student. I think of this movie as one component of HyperCities in action – a story waiting to be stitched together with other stories that is, itself, made up of so many components that reveal the underbelly of the media business. The film exposes the curation of information in the media, of the banal way we too often treat the violence that fundamentally alters people’s lives, and the film literally and metaphorically maps the city. In Nightcrawler, we follow the business exploits of Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhall) as he sells horrific content to a news outlet as a stringer. Nightcrawler drags us around and through Los Angeles, showing us which lives matter and which do not. Nina Romina, played by Rene Russo, states, “think of our news cast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut” and clarifies by adding, “We find our viewers are more interested in urban crime creeping into the suburbs. What that means is a victim or victims, preferably well-off and/or white, injured at the hands of the poor, or a minority.” Nightcrawler is one way of giving voice to the voiceless in that it directly addresses the necropolitics of LA and the way in which highways function as technologies of power by segregating the city by race and class.
The position of people of color in the film is very specific and limited, much like real life in LA. In their first exchange, Lou tells Rick Carey (Riz Ahmed) to “sell” himself. Rick answers, “I took three buses to get here. I finished high school. I need a job. I'll do just about anything. That's me. Hire Rick.” Rick, a man of color, is not white and thus lacks a commodity to sell and does not articulate himself in the same way that Lou’s privileged position enables him to. Lou assumes that his white, heterosexual male view is universal. Rick, too, is very quickly able to tell that Lou is a sociopath disguised as a businessman. Later, when Lou videotapes a violent shoot out, his path crosses with Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt), an astute detective and woman of color. Detective Fronteiri (Michael Hyatt) like Rick can see through Lou; they see his privilege and how he leverages this in an extraordinarily cold and calculated manner. On the other hand, Nina, a white woman, protects Lou and celebrates Lou’s work at the close of the film – even after her sexual exploitation by Lou (read: repeated rape). Power, profit, and place (both social position and actual place) are always at the center of the discussion in Nightcrawler. Again, it must seem strange that I have found a way to make peace with my fear of Los Angeles through films like Nightcrawler – but we only what we do not know, what we cannot yet make sense of. Nightcrawler works towards a, albeit terrifying, form of transparency in the kinds of exchanges a city like Los Angeles necessitates and facilitates. Gritty and unflinching, it also exposes and unsettles the seat of white heterosexual male power by exposing it as a construction and, in the case of Lou, a kind of insanity.
HyperCities is a collaborative project that works towards showing how all cities are themselves collaborative projects, made up of contingencies and deep running relationships in all forms. Nightcrawler depicts, this, too – the way we crash into one another and even the way our lives our often heavily intertwined by the violences we visit upon each other. Cities and cites are places rich and rife with narration. In the same place where someone experienced their first kiss, someone else may have been shot. What does it mean to recognize this layering? What does it tell us about our own lives and about the kinds of futuries we might envision if it is increasingly possible to build a relationship with the past through digital technology? How might we use technology different if we think of it not only as an artifact of modernity but also a doorway into experiencing history differently? The authors in HyperCities write, “thick maps betray their conditions of possibility, their authorship and contingency, without naturalizing or imposing a singular world-view. In essence, thick maps give rise to forms of counter-mapping, alternative maps, multiple voices, and on-going contestations” (19). In their own way, HyperCities and Nightcrawler offer a means of contestation, a way of exposing the realities of a particular place. Both texts are about seeing what is not immediately visible, about acts of forgetting remembering and the shapes survival takes – the survival of documents