Great intro from Jon Ippolito on Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable MediaVariable Media QuestionnaireProjects that deal with preservation:
Institutions whose goals are to preserve New Media Art:
Variable Media NetworkDOCAMRhizome.org
ArtBaseTime-Based Media Conservation at the TateBAM/PFA-Archiving the Avant-GardeMuseums and the Online Archive of CaliforniaArticles:
Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation, Jeff RothenbergArtwork The Straw that Broke the Museum's Back? Collecting and Preserving Digital MediaArtworks for the Next Century, Richard RinehartProduce, Publish and Preserve: A Holistic Approach to Digital Assets Management-Guenter WaibelDonna Haraway uses the cyborg metaphor to get rid of dualisms like "self/other, mind/body, culture/nature, male/female, civilized/primitive, reality/appearance, whole/part, agent/resource, maker/made, active/passive, right/wrong, truth/illusion, total/partial, God/man." She argues that with the cyborg, "we" are able to surpass our bodies and not be confined to these traps that hinder our progress. She also argues that women should not try to find similarities or common ground just because of gender, rather they should come together by affinity (by choice); she gives Fission Impossible, the name of the affinity group in her town. She emphasizes that we don't need to reach totality, rather we should be satisfied with the nature of our being. She theorizes that the cyborg has a better chance of survival than man and woman.
I first struggled with the metaphor of the cyborg, but then appreciated that she never describes the cyborg (physically/materially); rather she leaves it to the reader's imagination and what he/she can take from it. I think that also allows for the transcendence she is seeking.
Even though she argues that the cyborg is beyond the race, gender, sex categories in place by society, as discussed last week, there is a human behind the machine, so the hybrid of organism and machine is not divided equally in parts, the cyborg faces the hardship of surpassing that. Is there a method so that the machine in the cyborg overcomes the organism. I wonder about the internal conflicts the cyborg might have, and if it truly would be a symbiotic relationship.
I also appreciated: "'Networking' is both a feminist practice and a multinational corporate strategy- weaving is for oppositional cyborgs."
N. Katherine Hayles takes upon a great task of threading through the "condition of virtuality" in a manner I truly appreciated. Instead of jumping directly into the standard method of approaching virtuality as a space, she introduces the theorems of Claude Shannon. She explains the differences between message and information, where information differs from the foremost as it is the signal, in this manner, making information virtual and not dependent on materiality. She goes on to explain virtual writing as found in games like Myth, Universal Tuving Machine, Ornament of Grammar. She then finally relates spatiality and virtual writing and adds the notion of time (physics/formation) in virtuality.
She also raises good points like virtuality and materiality are not separate; afterall, virtuality is created through the material and through people, who are "sensitive to cultural beliefs about what the technologies can and should mean."
Tom Boelstroff's approach in "Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human" is refreshing compared to a lot of text on Second Life, in that he doesn't offer any assumptions on virtual life (or SL). He explains the society that exists in SL through defining events, groups, kindness, griefing and then tying these concepts in between virtual worlds and beyond virtual worlds. He also tackles several misconceptions about residents of SL. For instance, he clarifies that residents cannot be "aggregated into an undifferentiated whole. In addition, he simply points out similarities of the virtual and real; he quotes one of the residents: "people gain strength by being in groups. SL (like rl) is large and disorienting." It is also interesting to note that portability of characters is common and expected among virtual worlds. Could there be a link between portability between virtual worlds and resemblance of character in virtual and rl worlds? How do people keep track of their characters? Or is it just practical to have the same character in virtual worlds?
Another topic is the "virtual virtual worlds" that exist because of the forums and websites related to SL. But in addition to that layer is the existence of activities in SL that are directly tied to rl, which are causing confusion because it changes the perceived limits of real and virtual.
Tethering
How is our identity shaped by our technology? Sherry Turkle examines teenagers growing up with always being on and not having enough time to take time and be alone. This puts pressure on them and requires quick answers to everything. Yes, it can be problematic, but I think as humans, we adapt to new environments quite easily. While I agree with the need for teenagers to have some time alone, it seems very problematic for teens not to carry a cell-phone. Several news stories dramatize that people's lives have been saved because someone was carrying a cellphone and made the call in time.
So are we doomed? Is this new generation going to feel uncomfortable socially? If they will, they are not going to be alone; everyone will be on the same boat, so there will be understanding of this. Yes, it might change policies and how teams work together, and how people perceive one another, but there has always been change, and every generation complains about the new generation coming after it. But if this new generation finds that it needs time to be alone, then, it will have to overcome these pressures, and find new ways to get that time. It most probably will.
In Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self, Turkle raises questions I have asked myself time and time again. I like her use of the metaphor "cycling-through" in reference to how technology forces you to switch roles incessantly depending on who you are communicating with. But I disagree with her when she says that "being 'elsewhere' than where you might be has something of a marker of one's sense of self-importance." This might have been true when cellphones were new, or when telephones were installed in limos, but these days everyone (in the society we live) can have a cell-phone, making it less of a "prestige".
I'd like to apply the same reasoning as Turkle does when she asks if these relational robots can be positive or negative in our lives to this example:
She explains how a 37-year-old housewife from the Boston suburbs compares her real routine life at home with two toddlers and the feeling of meeting new people in Second Life. Let's just assume that this Second Life is helpful for this case, many people use Second Life, it is not targeted to a specific audience with specific needs, it is hard to distinguish when these technologies can be useful (and maybe sometimes necessary) and when they can be pejorative.
Susan Elizabeth Ryan argues for Wearable Technology Art (WTA) to have a place in modern art history. She distinguishes handheld gadgets that are carried, not worn, as opposed to wearable art that is worn. But is wearable art and wearable technology art that different? From an artist's viewpoint, I don't think so, especially in a contemporary context (content over form, and medium). She raises good points about academia needing to revert to different strategies to analyse WTA, such as "variantology". That is very interesting, as it is paradoxical.
Nicolas Bourriaud takes a good approach in the text of trying to explain what has appening with art in the 90s. He explains shifts that happened, for example, from imaginary and utopian realities to existing realities.
He explains how social art in a spatial context can be seen as temporal experiences and "arenas of exchange". "Art is a state of encounter."
Brian Holmes specifically addresses Conceptual Art and insists that is it a “practice that doesn’t produce works, but only virtualities, which can then be actualised, at each time and in each place, as unique performances. When parllelled to the Global Days of Action, the appeal is straightforward: “chance for personal involvement un the transformation of the world”. But this also relates to the 4 commodities that Holmes explains: land, labour, knowledge and money. He also goes on to explain why Internet gift economy works: it is perpetual and is dependent on the receiver also giving. It becomes less of a consumption and more of an exchange. He reminds us that this is not new, and points to academia and its relation to recognition (more important than money). This revenge of the concept he is talking about is the reappearance of the global class struggle. And his ending is important because he follows into his theory and advises future artists.
Not only is it surprising to know that the first virtual sit-in happened in 1994, but that the Zapatistas, with no access to computers, were the people who initiated it. Even in their attacks, and their “war”, they are very poetic, a form of art that has existed without technology for centuries. Why then is tactical media very based in technology and digital art? It seems that the medium is essential to these tactics even though they consider them as gestural and unimportant. Raley explains how this evolved and its relations with borders, geographic politics and traffic control, which includes, money, drugs and workers.
Did this hacking mentality emerge with technology? It seems it is very much tied to it, even in the naming of “Electronic Disturbance Theatre”. CAE emphasizes how power is no longer centralized but has become networked and nomadic, so there is a shift from the streets to the network. The two large projects Raley discusses, Swarm Minutemen and Crosser/La Migra, have different approaches. The EDT’s (and CAE’s) goal was to block information access to disturb their targeted institutions in a temporary manner but very real manner whereas Crosser/La Migra take the same gestural approach but in games that attempt to deal with the real.
I am surprised at how he refers to the Panopticon. I had heard of the Panopticon and knew how it worked, but I always thought that Foucault would be critical of it. How can someone be so proud of such an "invention" or discovery. He talks about it with amusement, because to him as a psycho-analyst, it must be amusing to know that humans can be tricked. He goes into detail about how the system can work on its own and that the person in power doesn't really need to be there, as the person being watched inflects his condition on himself. He even mentions its benefits in a naturalistic sense!
I am surprised at the voyeuristic approach that Foucault takes lightly. He barely mentions it when asserting that anyone can be at the center on the panopticon and that the director at the center can be judged the same way he is judging the people he observes.
His comparison of both extremes, the plague and the panopticon, is very interesting, but he make sit obvious which one he prefers. I though psycho-analysis was more comprehensive, but that's the 70s.
I wonder what Foucault would have thought if he was being observed from the tower. Did he ever think about how the observed felt? Did it not matter to him? Did ethics ever enter the discussion?
Quote: "Discipline is ... technology".
Victor Burgin seems as biased against Jenni Cam as Foucault was biased against the plague disciplinary system. Even though, to his credit, he writes: "If from this position we judge Ringley to be an exhibitionist, we have done no more than acknowledge our own voyeurism". But what tops it is "With its circular lens set in a white sphere it resembles an eyeball" (referring to the Quick Cam). I've read this text before and disagree with Burgin in his interpretation (more like misinterpretation) of Jenni's actions. The technology was there (as was the CU-See Me) and I find Jenni Cam to be less an exhibitionist as some blogs or extreme twittering or certain videos on You Tube. I think Jenni Cam was more of a life-sharing experiment.
Zizek: I have read the text twice and still find it hard to understand his point. Will have to complete this after it is placed in context after discussion in class. I think he blurs a lot of lines with reality/reality shows/surveillance.
Walter Benjamin starts off his essay by placing reproduction of works of art in context. He explains how reproductions will never attain the same level of art as the original as it is "lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."
He goes on to explain that art changed after the introduction of lithography, as it allowed it to leave its basis in ritual and attach itself to politics.
He explains how photography and film changed the place of the viewer and placed her/him in the critics' shoes.
My favorite analogy in this text is the cameraman/painter relationship compared to a surgeon/magician's. He goes on to explain how the camera is the "unconscious optics" as psychoanalysis introduces "unconscious impulses".
His ending was confusing to me. How does art in the mechanical age tie to war. Other than his reference to Marinetti's manifesto, I do not understand why he insisted on the destruction of art in a Fascist manner.
Espen Aarseth's "We all want to Change the World" is a critique on the usage of three words in the context of new media: interactivity, hypertext and virtuality. Aarseth even debates the semiotics of new media and how the phenomenon shouldn't be termed as new media. He argues that this is like fake innovation.
I liked the point he made that "some paper media had more in common with some digital media than certain digital media had with each other." What came to my mind was the early Gazettes and Twitter. They both put snippets of life side by side, in a information overload fashion (besides all their differences...). This comparison is in relation to the gazette and the online news sites. Headlines still exist but one can easily focus on a specific section of news online, whereas in the gazette, all types of news were pasted side by side.
Another important point to take from Aaresth's text is that new communication technologies usually come from the ground up, and its success is not driven by the backing of the industry. In the end, for communication technologies to work, people need to find their practicality and use them!
Last quote I want to mention: "The relationship between innovation and ideology should not be seen as dichotomy but as symbiosis in which the "hype" is an essential element in building new technologies and media." This still doesn't live up to the great title...
Why are these dreams necessary? I only care to see three of these realized:
Why is symbiosis, to the extent that Dietz explains, important? Computers have helped us extraordinarily, but as Neil Postman points out, technology can overcome us. Will computers kill us as a society? I don't think so, I love them, but I also think that as much as we try to make computers more human, we will get to a point in which we will realize that it is not necessary. In the end, we are the ones building the computers (almost) and not the other way around.
Virtuality is helpful in many cases, for example when someone is trying to overcome a phobia of some sort, or for training, or even for architectural demos. I've been in a "cave" in which you find yourself immersed in a molecule. I am not an expert to judge on the usefulness of the last, but it seems limited. I also think I don't like virtuality because of its ties to the armed forces. I realize its importance in training, and I appreciate it, but when people feel truly immersed in an unreal environment, it scares me that reality gets blurred and somehow they will get lost in the midst of it, or that they prefer that environment much more than the real world.
Enough negativity! Hacking the dream is important because that is the source of emergence and creativity. There has to be a continuance to everything as life goes on, so changing directions, remixing the present and breaking conventions are inevitable and necessary.
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