9/7/22, 9:24 AM keyword | The Chicago School of Media Theory

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DIGITAL STORYTELLING HISTORY KEYWORDS MEMBERS PROJECTS RESOURCES

keyword Search

There are many types of familiar keys in the world. They are in your pocket, on
your map, in your google search bar. Keywords are just as familiar. Like the
metal tool they are named after, keywords unlock, index, cipher, map, and
Archives
also telegraph. That these functions contradict one another actually helps
January 2012
illustrate the multiplicity of functions keywords enact. They are the words that
September 2010
we use constantly, so much so that understanding what they mean statically
August 2010
becomes difficult. Raymond Williams began what became the keyword project
May 2010
in 1948 as a way to try to make sense of the changing use of the word
“culture.” Or, to be more precise, to use the changing word as a way to
understand the more general changing in what we now comfortably call Main Pages
‘culture.’ Starting with this key term, Williams started trying to map a new Digital Storytelling
social and cultural terrain. “Culture itself has now a different though related History

history” (Williams 11). In thinking about the use of this project, we have to Keywords

think deeply about how to read the essays themselves. We have to be aware of absence/presence

the many ways that keywords function as openings to understanding while abstraction

simulataneously lock-in a particular moment’s meaning. In short, we have to adaptation

think about how keywords let us work with something that if used correctly, is advertising
aesthetics
not quite a definition.
affect
agent/agency
Williams began the project as a way to bridge a gap. He had been in school at
alphabet
Cambridge and then entered the service during World War II. Upon returning,
alterity
the world seemed somehow different and the distance between the world that
amateur
Williams’ left and the one he returned to was felt in the language being used to
analog/digital
describe and evaluate it (9). Williams began with culture and started adding
animation (1)
more words as they caught his attention. Importantly, the words that entered
animation (2)
into the dossier all had the same kind of frequent use despite imprecise
architecture
understanding. The words were also free-ranging, not stable within a field or
archive
discipline. “…it was the significance of its general and variable usage that had
artifact
first attracted my attention: not in separate disciplines but in general artist
discussion” (14). This fluid prominence across disciplines can be seen as audience
attesting to the importance of the word. In this respect, Williams’ keywords augmented reality
follows the word’s traditional use in literary studies. Keywords in this respect aura (1)
are the words that appear in any text more frequently than one could assume aura (2)
is by chance. It is a quantitative technique to determine the emphasis of a text. auteur
The assumption is the more central a word or concept in a text, the more authenticity

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frequently it will be used. However, rather than indicating a text’s focus avant-garde
whatever its central argument may suggest, Williams’ critical mass indicates a beautiful/sublime

convergence around a term despite the contrast of the places being used –its body/embodiment

interdisciplinary impact. “I called these words keywords in two connected book

senses: they are significant, binding words in certain activities and their camp

interpretation; they are significant, indicative words in certain forms of code

thought” (13). collective consciousness

color
comics
The keywords project evolved, as the words themselves did. New words were
common sense
accumulated, became obsolete and others still were reimagined. “…these
compression
elements are an active vocabulary –a way of recording, investigating and
cosmetics
presenting problems of meaning in the area in which the meanings of culture
creativity
and society have formed” (13). Beyond the shifting collection, the meanings
cybernetics
behind the included elements changes too. “The original meanings of words
cyberspace
are always interesting. But what is most interesting is the subsequent
cyborg
variation” (Williams 18). For instance, we can look at Williams’ first word,
dance
culture. Importantly, the history of the word, from Williams’ account, is as
decoration
much about divergence and shifting meaning as it was convergence into a
dialectic
single meaning. He points to the once-popular use of ‘culture’ to signify what digital art
we might call high cultural products which had become “more distant and was discourse
becoming more comic” (11). We can see from this example though there is drawing
more than strict meaning to understand in a keyword’s function. We need to ear
have a grasp of the cultural position of the meaning, where it fits between ekphrasis
discourses in addition to its strict meaning. Williams, and I think keywords as epic theater
a project, focuses on how a word is used not what it means. Again, we are event
looking at a living function not a history. exhibit/exhibition
exteriority
The keyword essays themselves rarely, if ever, provide an answer or single face
definition as such. Rather, they are an investigation which allows the reader fantasy (1)

and writer to consider more the multiple functions and spaces of a word. This fantasy (2)

is partly because words themselves are “elements of the problems” they fashion

describe (Williams 14). More than just flagging the multiple meanings of a fidelity

word, Williams deemphasizes the importance of definitions in thinking about figurative/figural

keywords. He acknowledges that definitions can, of course, be useful in film

filter
understanding the difference between basic nouns. However, given the
food
complicated legacy and large meaning of any culturally significant keyword, a
forgery
precise definition may not be as useful as an in-depth consideration of its
form
contemporary usage. “We find a history and complexity of meanings,
frame (1)
conscious changes, or consciously different uses; innovation, obsolescence,
frame (2)
specialization, extension, overlap, transfer; or changes which are masked by a
game
nominal continuity so that words which seem to have been there for centuries,
gaze
with continuously general meanings, have come in fact to express radically
gender
different or radically variable, yet sometimes hardly noticed, meanings and
genre
implications of meaning.” (15). It is easy to understand these fleeting but
gesture (1)

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accurate sketches as the definitive perspective. But, they are not authoritative gesture (2)
and permanent definitions. They are not intent to lock-in set meanings, but graphic novel

rather are notes on the changing meanings of words. grotesque

handwriting

We can easily see how reading about keywords provides an opening to better hieroglyphics

understanding the complex usage of the words about culture circulating hypermedia

around us. But, keywords, like their namesakes, can lock in as much as they icon
iconoclasm/iconoclash
can open. While the keyword project is about trying to make sense of the
ideology
meaning of these words, it is not as simple as compiling a concise definition.
image
As described above, the meaning of the keyword, even their status as a
imagination
keyword are subject to change. “It is not a dictionary or glossary of a particular
immediacy/immediate
academic subject. It is not a series of footnotes to dictionary histories or
information
definitions of a number of words. It is, rather, a record into an inquiry into a
installation (1)
vocabulary: a shared body of words and meanings in our most general
installation (2)
discussions, in English, of the practices and institutions which we group as
intention
culture and society” (15). But, while keywords are a mapping of the evolution
interactive
of a word, they can potentially also be a pinning down of that shifting by
interior
providing a doctrine or official history. We can move beyond this potential
interpellation
pitfall by seeing keywords not as static and eternally true. It is useful to intuition
consider them as an open, working understanding rather than a full, durably involution
true and inflexible definition. This is entirely inline with the keyword project irony
as Williams saw it and how it is executed now. kanji
keyword
The keyword essays themselves chronicle these changes. More, what these kitsch
words about words about culture offer is a reflection back of our own landscape
valuations. Like keys, they demonstrate what we hold dear enough to protect. language
While they can be seen as locking in a specific history and view point, they do law
offer a way to begin to see current debate and themes. However, as liminal
participants in contemporary culture whether we like it or not, we know these listen

terms generally, like acquaintances. Rather than seeing them as a key opening literacy

up a previously closed space, we can see them as a cipher, a key understanding logic

a code that floats all around us, that we even use without fully grasping the logo

meaning By considering these keywords and the concept of keywords we can logocentrism

begin to chart the discourse of culture. By no means can we ever fully crack the magazine
manuscript
code, so to speak. Rather what we can do is seek to better understand how the
mask
words have come to mean the many things they do, in the many spaces they
mass media
do. They are not static. They are evolving based on use.
material/materiality
mediation
The attempt to try to understand the potential limitations and usefulness of
medium specificity
the form of keywords, I think is in line with what Raymond Williams’s original
melos/opsis/lexis
project was interested in. In order to understand the cultural discourse around
meme
us we have to understand the way that the words we use mean and don’t
memory (1)
mean. We have to see what they index and when and to whom. Their functions
memory (2)
are often contradictory: simultaneously opening up positions and also
metaphor/metonymy

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momentarily freezing the discourse itself for evaluation. Like any mimesis (1)
methodology, we have to be aware of their potential to elide their own errors, mimesis (2)

obscure their lapse, despite the great work they may do. Keywords can provide mind

a flexible vocabulary that we are in desperate need of, but not without their mirror

own caveats and particularity. mode

modernism

Keywords are an effective tool and part of media theory. But, like all good money
montage
theory, it must always be considered in relation to its ability to deal with its
movement
object; that is, be seen as a work in progress. The keywords are not permanent
multimedia
models. Rather, they are notes toward a useful consideration that is meant to
museum (1)
shift as the objects themselves that they work to describe change.
museum (2)
music
Rebecca Giordano
music
narrative/lyric/drama
network
newspaper
noise
notation
numbness
object petit a
objecthood
olfaction
orality
painting
palimpsest
perception (1)
perception (2)
performance/performativity
perspective
phantom vibration
phenomenon
photography
picture
poetics
poetry
portrait
post
postal system
posthuman
practice
print
process
projection
propaganda
prosthesis

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protocol
publish
pun
purity
radio
reading
reality/hyperreality (1)
reality/hyperreality (2)
reception
reciprocity
repetition
replica
representation
reproduction
rhetoric
rhizome
scopic / vocative
screen (1)
screen (2)
sculpture
selfies
semiotics (1)
semiotics (2)
senses
sequence
shock
sign
silence
simulation / simulacrum (1)
simulation / simulacrum (2)
site (1)
site (2)
smartphone
social network
space/time
spectacle/spectator (1)
spectacle/spectator (2)
speech
spirit
star
stimulus/stimulation
storage
surface
symbol/index/icon
symbolic/real/imaginary
synaesthesia (1)

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synaesthesia (2)
system
tableau vivant
taste (1)
taste (2)
technology
telegraph
telematics
telephone (1)
telephone (2)
television
text
theater
thing
touch
transitivity/intransitivity
translation
transmission
type/print
uncanny
unconscious/subconscious
ut pictura poesis
vehicle
veil
ventriloquism
video
video game
virtuality
virus
visual field
voice/sound
weapon
webcomic
wiki
window
writing
zoographia
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