Art Basel Miami: U-Ram Choe’s Robotic Life Forms

Art Basel Miami: U-Ram Choe’s Robotic Life Forms

"Yours for the Telling" by Raymond Queneau

-1973
-a kind of "choose your own adventure" in the form of footnotes underneath "Brief History of the Oulipo" by Jean Lescure.
-"'It would not seem that the composition of poems arising from a vocabulary composed by intersections, inventories, or any other process may constitute an end in itself.'"
-"...like mathematics, literature could be explored.

There are a few things that make this article particularly intriguing. First and foremost, "Yours for the Telling" is this weird little choose your own adventure blurb inserted at the bottom of a history of the Oulipo. Assuming this was an active decision on the Authors' part, what exactly does this insertion achieve? While the historical document is very interesting, the footnoted "Yours for the Telling" is actually more engaging. It establishes boundaries and gives the reader a minimal amount of power by simply offering 2 choices at each intersection. It's disgustingly simple, yet it's still more engrossing than the article itself.
Second, the historical article explores language as a set of limitations, which is something I feel like I've been raving about in this blog for months. And such limitation is illustrated beautifully. The author asks the reader to consider a stomachache. The word is incredibly vague and does absolutely nothing to convey the specific pain one feels when experiencing a "stomachache" beyond locating it to a general section of the human body. Furthermore, the article explores language as a concrete object, something to be manipulated and reworked to discover new modes of representation, to redefine/reconfigure perception.
Burroughs, in his article about the cut-up method, expresses similar ideas. Even if the object of language is made abstract, language itself is concrete enough for the human brain to try and cope, to attempt to decipher and find meaning in the object.

Yet, if language is an object, is it not subjected to the human projection of meaning? With physical objects, people make certain associations. A bicycle, as viewed/experienced by a person is not just a bicycle but also a hypertextual/metaphysical construction of the object based on memory and associated memory. Now to read the word "bicycle" has the exact same effect on human perception, including the mental fabrication of the image of a bicycle.
But language attempts to objectify some extremely abstract concepts such as human emotion, and in that sense, literary language could actually be too limiting, couldn't it?

So where do we go from here? What happens when we find that literary or even sensory language doesn't cut it?

Prediction:

You want to know exactly how I'm feeling emotionally? Send me a link to your emotional database. I'll forward it to you. Feel for yourself.

"A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems" by Raymond Queneau

-1961
_"To enjoy A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems and allow this literary work to function as intended, please cut along the lines to allow any of 10 lines to occupy each of the 14 positions in the sonnet. Those too timid to operate on their books may wish to photocopy the pages and cut the photocopies. Cutting out a small gap between each strip will allow the strips to turn and be interchanged most easily."
-"Only a machine can appreciate a sonnet written by another machine."
~Turing

Interesting. Beyond, simply using one or several audience members to complete a work of art, this "poem" requires that the reader actually construct a poem by following simple instructions and operating within boundaries established by the author. In many ways this isn't even literature. It's programming. Or something in between.
Let's consider this "potential literature" in terms of Turing's quote. The reader/writer is asked to interact with this "machine," and then what? Would you consider the poem you chose poetry? Would you consider yourself the author? Or do you simply become a part of the machine?
In the intro, Italo Calvino asserts that the art of it lies in deviation from the systematic process, in the insertion of personal and cultural experience.

There. "Personal and cultural experience." Is this really where the art lies in New Media? What happens when New Media is the vernacular, when emerging technologies are the vernacular? I've been considering the idea of folk (or naive or vernacular) art in a contemporary urban context, and what that might look like in a digital landscape.

How many creative movements have flown by on the world wide web, have been dismissed as stupid graphic trends?

Could Fail Blog be considered a gallery for artists of a VERY specific vernacular?

The computer has become a highly utilitarian and decorative medium. And while there's a lot of digital work out there that is academically informed and conceptually heavy, there's also quite a bit of creative digital work out there made to be used for very specific purposes, even decoration, that does not concern itself with the verbal language of those purposes. Is this the new Metropolitan Folk?

"A File Structure for the Complex, the Changing, and the Indeterminate" by Theodor H. Nelson

-1965
-coined the word "hypertext" to signify "a body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper"

Nelson describes a system that is "multifarious, polymorphic, many-dimensional, [and]infinite." Understanding that the internet as we know it only embodies a fraction of his idea of hypertext, how must a system that embodies the definition fully operate?
I feel like it would include pretty much all of the technologies we've discussed thus far. It would be accessible anywhere at all times (maybe even to the point of digitally augmenting human perception and modes of communication?). I'm not entirely certain. The intro asserts that such a system would be difficult for an average web used to visualize. But I feel that many modes of human expression seek to more aptly articulate, even emulate, the human experience, so why should the world wide web not integrate spatial and temporal dimensions as perceived by the human being? I keep thinking about the scene in "Minority Report" where the protagonist is walking through a shopping center and each advertisement is speaking specifically to him. Take this idea a step further, and everything a person sees or hears is met with options to identify, relate to a bank of memories saved since birth, and modify.
Memories and ideas are available for filesharing. The internet can be used for much more than objective understanding. It could be used to relate more deeply to the people immediately around you and to expand your own subjective understanding.

"The Construction of Change" by Roy Ascott

-1964
-Ascott was reevaluating art with Weiner's cybernetics in mind
-Frank Popper makes a distinction between interaction and participation in art theory

Participation: involvement on the intellectual and behavioral level

Interaction: The artist stimulates a two-way interaction between the object and the viewer through which the viewers' questions are answered by the work itself

-"All are is, in some sense, didactic: every artist is, in some way, setting out to instruct. For, by instruction, we mean to give direction, and that is precisely what all great art does."

-"Symbollically, [the artist] takes on responsibility for absolute power and freedom to shape and create his world."

-"Cybernetic method may be characterised by a tendency to exteriorise its concepts in some solid form; to produce models in hardware of the natural or artificial system it is discussing. It is concerned with what things do, how they do them, and with the process within which they behave. It takes a dynamic view of life not unlike that of the artist."

The bulk of this article is concerned with the changes brought about by the widespread use of cybernetic technology; changes in the how we operate and interact with and within our environment. While this idea isn't very different from anything we've discussed thus far, it's interesting that this is the first we've read that proposes that artists actually utilize this kind of technology. Ascott foresaw how cybernetics could change the human condition and, as early as 1964, asserted that artists should be all over this.
And they should. Many of the technologies we've been exposed to thus far are presented primarily from an engineering standpoint, and while it is important to understand why a certain engineer came to a specific conclusion, it is also important to explore other capabilities of that technology beyond original intention. This is one of the things I really enjoyed about visiting Eyebeam. We just started looking at augmented reality technology a matter of months ago in class, and now, artists are using it for their own creative purposes. The speed at which we operate socially is absolutely phenomenal, and to know that we're in a time in which it doesn't take hundreds of years for an aesthetic style to spread just floors me.

"Sketchpad" by Ivan Sutherland

-1963
-graphical ancestor of contemporary man-machine interaction and computer graphics.
-the screen as more than virtual paper
-first direct-manipulation interface
-images as objects
-"users can assemble complex objects out of previous constructions, from their personal library..."

The automatic update system Sutherland implements is pretty interesting. Change a single brick, and every identical brick follows suit. The system allows a user to easily change a complex construction. It could be argued that a complex construction is given the ability to build upon itself.
Also, one thing worth thinking about is how this compares to Burroughs's essay on the cut-up method. While Burroughs encourages a chaotic reworking of a given text or object in the pursuit of improvement, Sutherland's approach is systematic and simplifying. One seeks to deconstruct and undermine while the other proposes expand and fortify.

Something I've been Thinking about Lately

A Yahoo! ad,

a Ryan Trecartin video in which the family is a corporate unit, personality can be up/downloaded, and online avatars operate independently of those who created them,

Zhu Yu and the contemporary avant garde in China,

and Star Trek's borgs.

It's intriguing that certain artists in China are allegedly practicing cannibalism as a means of creative expression. I watched a critical documentary on the subject called Beijing Swings, and some of the artists use it to draw a comparison to Chinese cultural-economic practices, while others seek to aid in the augmentation of human perception. Those who are re-imagining the human condition describe future-humans as a race that utilizes everything and everyone including our dead, a race that is able to accept death as a natural process but not as a final note.
At the same time, western culture seems to be focusing on translating experience into a digital format, on a dimension in which the distinction between the real and the virtual is made ambiguous. Should I want the internet to have my personality? Yahoo! seems to think I already do. And Trecartin evidently accepts it as a plausible premise.

Now, who here would like to be a borg?

Raise your hands.

And who here is fearful of the prospect?

Would love to hear feedback on this one.

"From Augmenting Human Intellect" by Douglas Engelbart

-1962
-Engelbart invented the mouse, the window, and the word processor and the hyperlink (independantly of Ted Nelson).
-helped establish the Internet, investigated computer-supported cooperative work, demonstrated videoconferencing and mixed text/graphic displays, created structured programming editors and used remote procedure calls
-1) complexity of human problems increasing more rapidly that our ability to cope
2) dealing with new and complex problems might be best be done by younger engineers
3) text/graphic interface
-simultaneous, continuous cooperation

Engelbart went to work at the Stanford Research Institute and pursued funds for the augmentation research program.
-ideas often portrayed as science fiction. (!)

This seems to be the first excerpts we've read thus far that illustrates an active push to...well...augment human intellect. All of the art, media, and technologies we've been presented with thus far have given me plenty of food for thought as to how all of this is changing our perception of the physical realm, but to hear that this was, to at least one person, the desired reaction completely blows my mind. The fact that he was proposing to ACTIVELY "pursu[e] new opportunities for evolving our language and methodologies" is, in a way, rather frightening.
How must Engelbart view the way we operate now? He demonstrated a text/graphic interface, and now we're walking around, regularly and frequently interacting with touch screens, and lamenting any lapse in the immediacy or ubiquity or portability of our tools. Spoken language actually limits us, reduces our efficiency and productivity. Why spend the time describing a beautiful work of architecture when you can send a link to a 3D virtual reconstruction that utilizes thousands of photographs posted online?
I find it intriguing that many of Engelbart's ideas are illustrated through science fiction. On the one hand, Engelbart has absolutely proven himself to be a successful engineer, what with all of the tools he's created. On the other hand, the fact that he conveys his ideas through creative means also gives him a very strong humanist edge. For him to straddle that line between humanist and engineer affords him the power not only to make a human life faster and smoother but also to reconfigure the human condition entirely.

"The Cut-up Method of Brion Gysin" by Bill Burroughs

-1961
-rearranging a text can result in a new text with potential for unexpected meaning
-"Cut-ups are for everybody."

There are quite a few interesting concepts in this short essay.

The idea that anyone can do a cut up and that the result can still be artful is pretty punk, and in this, Burroughs is ahead of his time. Secondly, in the last paragraph before Burroughs demonstrates the cut-up method, he notes that the method could be used in game theory and military strategy to add an element of randomness.

The cut-up method seems incredibly relevant to contemporary practice. People are going nuts over intellectual property rights all because of the simplicity and profound power of the copy/paste function. Movements in music and visual arts are entirely based on appropriating and remixing.

Collage isn't entirely new, but is collage (in music, art, or literature) necessarily the only result of remixing something?

"Computing Machinery" by Alan Turing

-1950
-Turing test
-"Can a computer...fool a person into believing it is human?"
-posed to philosophers rather than computer scientists for the purposes of challenging their notions of intelligence.
-describes a computer than can converse fluidly

I read this essay last year in a philosophy course. And it does pose an interesting question: how do we define intelligence? If a person can hold a believable conversation with a computer, could it be said that the computer is thinking? One might say that a distinction must be made between computing and thinking, but that isn't really the question at hand. Rather, the question pertains to how we perceive the objects with which we are interacting.
At what point can we say that our computers are intelligent? Must they be fallible? Is THAT a prerequisite for intelligence? Do they have to be able to offer an opinion? Must they emote?

Maybe it's the absence of will that helps us to believe that they are not intelligent. A person can have a relatively fluid conversation with a computer, but can a computer start a conversation?

"As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush

-1945
-Director of Office of Scientific Research and Development

Benefits of Science
-increased control of material environment
-increased knowledge of biological. physiological and psychological processes
-swifter communication

*expresses demand for speed, accessibility, portability, cost efficiency, mechanization, universality, and versatility

It's interesting to look at the inventions in this article and think about how they would hold up today. On the one hand, some of them seem too simple. Many of them perform one or few functions, resulting in a cumbersome pile of objects with which a person is expected to interact throughout the day. Now, we have access to tools that perform several functions such as the iphone, digital Swiss Army knives that give us access to the worldbank of human knowledge.
On the other hand, many of Bush's ideas are just starting to be put into practice. The introduction mentions Bush's "trails" as an invention that would be incredibly useful, one that would essentially follow and supplement a human's train of thought by approaching it as a hypertext.

A wikipedia article on his Memex machine notes that it wasn't until the use of wiki and social software that people could trace their trajectory and share it.

But it IS happening. With sites like delicious and tools like google wave, one can trace and share his/her trajectory and post it publicly, even hold a conversation in hypertext.

The data is there. It just needs to be framed.

Now. What would happen if we were to take that kind of software, the kind that can trace our trajectories, and apply it to brainscan technology?

And does our desire to hold conversations in hypertext not demonstrate that language, alone, is not enough?

Digital Dirt

I mean, this does seem like common sense at this point. If you're looking to be hired by an employer who cares whether you're partying or talking shit, then don't allow documentation of your partying to find its way the web, and don't talk shit. Or do what you want, and find an employer who doesn't mind. I feel like this is the kind of information that has been fed to my generation for years. And if we don't get the message by now, well then we don't deserve to be employed by the higher-ups (if that is, indeed, what we want).

The thing is, if older generations managed to keep things classy even at the parties, then why can't we? If you want to have an orgy, and you don't want it all over the internet, then you sure as hell want to be positive there won't be a camera.

FLUXUS

1) Fluxus is an attitude. It is not a movement or a style.
2) Fluxus is intermedia. Its creators like to see what heppens when different media intersect. They use found and everyday objects, sounds, images and texts to create new combinations of objects, sounds, images and texts.
3) Its works are simple. The art is small, the texts are short, and the performances are brief.
4) Fluxus is fun. Humor is always an important element.

~Fluxus, Wikipedia

More information on Fluxus.

A couple films by Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono's film "Fly" provided an incredible amount of food for thought. We spoke of the element of eroticism within the film, and while my own reading of the film differs slightly, the human body plays an integral part in my own trajectory of thought in reference the piece. I feel that the body was presented as a landscape. The incredibly close footage of the fly exploring/invading body establishes the body as its own space with its own unique topography. Every curve and crevice becomes new and unfamiliar territory, and Ono's sound design seems to separate the viewer from his own understanding of the body and places his experience within the perceptional limits of the fly. Then, near the end of the film, as the camera moves further from the human body, the body is presented as an object within a space, revealing life and objects in space on an almost fractal level. When the camera is incredibly close to the human body, it is apparently inhabited/invaded/saturated with life,and when the camera moves away revealing the bleak architecture of the L.E.S., Ono seems to acknowledge that the human body, too, is an inhabitant, an invader, a tiny cross section of a greater living organism.

Fly



"Rape" really was one of the most uncomfortable films I've ever seen. Beyond the fact that the filmmakers aggressively stalked this woman, broke into her home, and incarcerated her within her own room, effectively traumatizing her, playing on her perception of the situation, and exploiting her apparent ability to communicate with them (due in part to her inability to speak English as well as their refusal to even speak to her), I was forced to question how I would react to such a situation and evaluate my own perception of surveillance and the role of media in my own life. I wonder if maybe the ideas behind the film are a little dated. When the piece was shot, there were a number of anxieties expressed through the arts, anxieties that stem from postmodern paranoia and disillusionment, from fear of technology and its potential power for destruction and absolute law. Now, in the digital age, we can expect to be observed, followed, even. Digital media has also broadened cultural understanding to the point where I have to question whether or not the woman's inability to communicate would be as profound a problem today. Granted, the filmmakers went beyond the point where her inability to communicate is the biggest problem, and their actions were an incredible breach of territory and privacy. However, in a time when 24 hour surveillance and streaming user-based media, I wonder whether the anxieties that John Lennon and Yoko Ono wished to convey are as strong as they were half a century ago or if they have proven to be prophetic visions of a hyper-real present.

Rape



Streaming media available at ubu.com

On Ken Perlin

Ken Perlin is a fascinating person. On the one hand, he's a genius. He's created the noise-turbulence technique for which he won an academy award. And early on, he recognized the potential in the spatial qualities of computer programming. Noise-turbulence is a little beyond me. The complex mathematics behind the technique prove to be a language that I no longer speak. But the fact that he has learned to use this language as a tool of expression is just beautiful.
PAD is interesting to me. Partially because it begins to realize the spatial qualities of computer programming. Mostly because the spatial qualities are not fully realized. PAD is a program that allows the user to zoom in or out as far as s/he pleases, a function that affords the user the ability to include an insane amount of detail. The ability to zoom in establishes the interface as a three dimensional one...sort of. The part that gets me is that while the interface appears to be three dimensional, the user is still not allowed to place objects and information behind one another. The program isn't quite complete (in my head).
But Perlin seems like a really cool guy. His blog isn't just filled with science and math. It's full of poetry and memory and speculation. It's human. He's human. Maybe that's what I'm so intrigued by. His thoughts are similar to my own. We're asking similar questions. He may come to different conclusions, but in a way, it connects us.

I just wish I was capable of expressing my conclusions in his language. Math and science are so definite. So concrete. But visual arts...Sometimes I have a really difficult time expressing the thought process behind my work. I try not to be too vague and abstract. But sometimes what I feel and think isn't concrete enough for numbers or words.

I feel like I'm from Saturn.

Paranormal Activity

Ok, so aside from the fact that I really wanna see this movie, I think the consumer based distribution system is brilliant. I don't think this model would work for everything, but to build up hype around a movie and then suggest that potential audience members demand the movie be screened where they live not only ensures that the movie won't be screened to a dead theater, but also implements a certain amount of interactivity. Instead of a lineup of films that's fed to you at the box office whether you like it or not, this model guarantees a list of films that the audience members of any given area want to see.

Coooooooool stuff!

Steampunk Month

Is this why I'm starting to see steampunks everywhere. Since this aesthetic/way of life was brought up in class, I've been seeing it everywhere. On the street, in bars, at art and media events. I thought at first that it was one of those things that I just hadn't noticed until it was mentioned, and now that I know about it, I'm seeing it everywhere. But if October is a month devoted to steampunk, then I guess I feel a little less insane.

Augmented Earth

I think I'm one of those people who isn't really thrown off by surveillance. I know I'm on video. I know there are hundreds of photos of me on the internet. It doesn't really bother me. I'm not trying to be president. And if someone IS trying to be president, then maybe they shouldn't be doing things that they really don't want caught on camera. Surveillance is not the issue here. Yes, everyone has the right to privacy, but nothing you do in public (save maybe going to the restroom and changing in a dressing room) is really all that private. The issue here is how the government uses this technology.

This is what terrifies ME.



Look at their logo!!!!! What the fuck?! Is that the All Seeing Eye?!

Terrifying.

Photosketch

My fascination with this program goes hand in hand with my thoughts on the font software. It's pretty cool that you can draw in a really general shape to go with the object you intend to portray, and the program will go through ALL of the photos available to find the best match.

When we spoke in class about it, there seemed to be a lot of concern about the idea that Photoshopped images are starting to look more authentic. Though I'm not really sure why this should come as such a surprise. Most of the complaints about Photoshop have to do with the fact that if a pic isn't authentic, it shows. So why would engineers NOT address this issue? But Autumn did mention that her job as a graphic designer might be at stake. And while I tend to agree that new software changes the landscape of certain jobs, it doesn't necessarily destroy them. Maybe instead of being immediately rejected, the software should be embraced, used as a tool that would effectively open up other opportunities within the graphic design field.

Create Your Own Font

I'm not entirely sure what to say about this development. I do think it's pretty cool, but I'm not sure that it's the kind of thing that I personally would invest a lot of time in. I do think it's awesome how quickly we are learning to create technology that recognizes. It's fascinating that while the best way to go about making your own font is to use a scanner, it isn't entirely necessary, and the idea that you can just take a picture of the paper and the software will still operate kind of blows my mind.

On "'Happenings' in the New York Scene" by Kaprow

-Interactivity in art

-"Some of us will probably become famous. It will be an ironic fame fashioned largely by those who have never see our work."

-Desire to break down distinctions between creator and audience

-How does one model of interactive performance compare to another?
--Kaprow - creation of new experience and type of attention

-Work threatened to overflow and even wash away the boundaries between disciplines that the "total forms" (such as opera) subsumed and reinforced

I think happenings are where it's at. I listened to this interview with Ivanka Trump, and she mentioned that she is an opera fan but that she prefers traditional opera over opera that stems from more progressive thinking because traditional opera is "classic." The "total forms" set up conventions and this idea of classicism that can actually inhibit the artists working within those boundaries. It's one thing to impose restrictions on your own work or even to work within the restrictions that another artist sets up, but to strictly work within the bounds of a form to maintain its purity seems only limiting. Why not allow disciplines to merge and overlap? Combination and experimentation of forms and disciplines and aesthetics and THOUGHTS can lead to unbelievably beautiful things, and it seems pointless to maintain the boundaries that we set up for ourselves.

I feel like now might be a good opportunity to plug the happening that I'm curating in May. Many of the ideas that I'm working with are actually very relevant to the stuff we talk about in class, and I think that maybe some of you might be interested in participating.

One of the first articles we read mentioned that much of the technology available to us today, the interactivity, the spatial quality of it, etc. can be traced back to some of the happenings that were occurring in the 60s, to work that expressed a desire for interconnectedness and total understanding.
Now, I'm looking to create a happening that is actually derived from that technology in ideology and in practice. Here, we have the ability to learn and understand the people and events around us, and as many have expressed, it actually seems to have separated us from the world around us. We have a library of human knowledge available to us, and yet, look at how it seems to be affecting actual human interaction. The anonymity that the internet affords us has made us brave enough to express anything we want, and yet much of what we say and do online is rarely reflected in any physical realm.
So I want to emulate an online experience. No, this event will not involve a library of human knowledge, but it WILL involve people from several walks of life who, if you can bring yourself to just talk to them about something, could potentially teach you something. And to further emulate the online aesthetic, the performers I'm working with WILL not be presented in a linear fashion. Several things will be happening at once, and it will be up to the viewer to decide what s/he wants to experience. Most of the performances will involve the use of computers. There will be video art, DJ sets, improvised electronic soundscapes, dance, jazz, avant garde cirque performances, and a number of characters who may or may not be acting, characters who, at the very least, will have everyone talking about them by the end of the night.

Mind you, this project is still a work in process, but it's something that I'm putting a lot of time and energy into right now, and I want to know if anyone is interested in being involved. We're looking at some pretty large venues right now, so we're planning on having a lot of space to fill.

Here are some of the people I'm currently collaborating with:


Mic & ike



Shoulder Pads



Anima Anonima



Modern Gypsies

Among others. So if you're interested in getting involved, let me know, and we'll talk about it in person.

Something Cool

Note: This article is not new, but i think it's pretty interesting.

Reality Sandwich | Meeting in the Dream World: Oneironauticum

Source: realitysandwich.com


Image by Allegra Ricci

***On the last Saturday of the month, Oneironauticum participants enter dream space together. We do this by sharing things that induce vivid dreams – often substances but sometimes practices or sensory triggers.***

I think it's really awesome that the goal is not necessarily to achieve anything but to experience dreamspace collectively. There's a lot to be said about the collective experience and collective existence. There are things we do that we consider private or personal, things that are often characteristic of everyone around us. Most everyone fucks. Everyone shits. Everyone dreams.

And people participate in orgies. Public restrooms are easily accessible. Why not tap into dreams as a unified experience?

Anyway, here are the people who do this regularly. They operate out of San Fransisco. And I think it would be really cool if there was something like this in NYC if anyone would be interested in starting it with me.

On Licklider and "Man-Computer Symbiosis"

-Licklider redirected ARPA funding from companies to Universities.
->Broad benefit.
->established the iron triangle of technology in industry, academia, and the military.
-1962: memo to "Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network" encouraged universities to link their computers.
->the INTERNET!!!
-"In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face."
->against communication as one-way process between sender and receiver
->cyber romance?
->will "to be online" be a privilege or a right?
->speech and handwriting recognition
-Need: for a quick access to computing to aid in decision-making.

What's interesting to me here is the notion of symbiosis. Note that most of the definitions involve plants or people or groups of people. The definition typically implies life. Life and a mutually dependent relationship. How do we benefit from the relation ship? Well, here, we have a tool that aids us in communication, learning, decision-making, and military purposes. But how does the machine benefit? We maintain these systems we create, yes. But is that enough to say that the machine benefits? Does existence hold any meaning for the objects that we fabricate for ourselves? I mean, human beings grow marijuana for the sake of smoking it, effectively guaranteeing its continuation as a species. A relationship that is identifiably symbiotic. But does that idea of symbiosis apply to the inanimate objects we create? What about an idea? Can humanity be said to have a symbiotic relationship with the ideas we have on a collective level?

Augmented Reality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08&feature=player_embedded

Ok, so I'm pretty sure at this point that subconsciously (or maybe not), we are trying to turn ourselves into cyborgs. I imagine this is actually how we will perceive things in the future. (Or at least this is a prototype for the new perception) I imagine someday, I'll be able to simply look at something and know all about it. Though, as I see it, text won't be involved in the interface.

This is simultaneously wonderful and terrifying.

This actually reminds me of this story I've read. I don't have the book on my at the moment, but as soon as I find it, I'll be updating this post.

Project Natal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDvHlwNvXaM

I'm really interested in the complexity of the character with whom the woman is interacting here. I heard this theory once, in a philosophy class, that could essentially render the idea behind The Matrix a very real possibility. I don't remember every intricate detail of the theory, but basically, the argument was that if we had the desire to, we could potentially create a computer that operated with the intellectual and emotional complexity of a single human brain within the next ten to twenty years. Now, as the capabilities of technology increase exponentially as time passes, we could create a computer that operates at the level of billions of human brains, given enough time. And if we were to start creating computers that operated at that level of intellect and emotion, we would have no choice but to question whether or not we, ourselves, are nothing more than the inner workings of an incredibly complex computer.

So what interests me about this character is his ability to react to the woman based on her body language, her tone of voice, etc. and act accordingly. At what point do we know that the fictional characters we create are as complex as we are? If we can legitimately interact with this character, and he can truly make those judgements that the creators are claiming he can make, what separates him from us other than the limits of our own perception?

On Brain Scan Technology

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it helps the disabled become "more human." And for that purpose, it's absolutely incredible. On the other hand, this IS the beginning of cyborg technology. To link the human brain directly to a computer is a frightening prospect.
I imagine what could happen if the brain had a kind of iPhone function. Where one could think about anything and immediately begin navigating the internet without sitting down in front of a computer. Where it no longer takes anything more than desire and will power to know something. If we had the power to just think about something and know it (to download knowledge instantly), how would this affect the way we think, the way we speak, the way we interact? What would happen to literacy? Or language?
Of course, I couldn't help but consider the creative possibilities. Hook me up to a digital projector or a monitor, and let's see what I can do without my hands.

Water is Phenomenal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOAsjYgTK-8

made me think of this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OklIm5a1Lc

and


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU

Of course the military gets to use this technology first. Of course.

Newest Obsessions

YouTube

Ryan Trecartin

*** Fucking phenomenal. If you check out more of his stuff on UBU, you'll find more of his work and, in some cases, that you can download some of his scripts. This stuff is nuts. The dialogue is mostly nonsense, but he manages to convey really complex ideas of violence, sexuality, and consumer culture among other things. A lot of his work voices anxieties that I feel characterize our generation. I saw this for the first time the other day and fell in love immediately.

He reminds me of Jack Smith...only digital.***


UBU

***



Black Dice
YouTube
Wikipedia


*** A friend of mine showed me this the other day. It makes me feel crazy. ***

On Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths"

-Concept: a hypertext novel; one that can be read in a number of ways
-Based a theory of the universe around this concept
-Also deals with issues of race, war, espionage, ancestry, and the nature of academic discourse about history
-Borges's concept influenced author Julio Cortazar, who actually wrote a hypertext novel

"...everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now. Centuries of centuries and only in the present do things happen; countless men in the air, on the face of the earth and the sea, and all that really is happening is happening to me."

"I thought of a labyrinth of labytinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars...I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world."

I'm stuck. I see my future as a series of vague images, colors, laughing, an unclear sense of accomplishment. I'm not sure. How can one be? I heard once that the only things worth holding on to are memories. Though I don't really know that I could hold onto me memories if I tried. My memory curls and fades like smoke. I can't touch it, really. My own memory conflicts with the memories of others with whom I have shared experiences. How can that be trustworthy?
Don't get me wrong. This is not anxiety. I have no desire to escape the present. It has yet to cripple me. To weigh me down to the point of absolute indecision. But human consciousness is limited. Singular. "All that really is happening is happening to me." I believe many things. I know very little.
If I think about it long enough, I can't even be certain of the consciousness of the people around me. And I wonder sometimes if it's just a polite assumption.

After watching these videos, someone in class brought up the fact that they follow the standards of relatively conventional media. This was approached as a problem: If they follow the conventions of old media, how can they be considered new media works? I find this a pretty interesting line of thought. In terms of visual representation, the animation is absolutely beautiful, especially in RYAN, but when it comes to the ideas behind the media, how can one go beyond linear format and create something that more closely resembles the online mentality?

I found a video artist that does almost exactly what I mean:



It's everything. All at once. Banking. Product symbology. Cinema. Flash art. Pornography. It like we're looking into a library of human expression and interaction and information and tracing the artist's trajectory, which is anything but linear.

On "New Media from Borges to HTML" by Lev Manovich

The thing that strikes me most about this article is the struggle to define the term "New Media." The author presents eight different lenses through which to perceive the term:

1) New Media vs. Cyberculture
2) New Media as Computer Technology Used as a Distribution Platform
3) as Digital Data Controlled by Software
4) as the Mix between Existing Cultural Conventions and the Conventions of Software
5) as the Aesthetics that Accompanies the Early Stage of Every New Modern Media and Communication Technology
6) as Faster Execution of Algorithms Previously Executed Manually or through Other Technologies
7) as the Encoding of Modernist Avant-Garde; New Media as Metamedia
8) as Parallel Articulation of Similar Ideas in Post-WWII Art and Modern Computing.

The lens I found most interesting is the fifth. As new modes of communication have been made available to the masses (the internet, television, radio, literacy etc.) There have been countless attempts by those who utilize these modes to consider the implications of their use, to establish conventions, and to push against and through those conventions.
I thought almost immediately of one reading of Plato's "The Cave." Many consider "The Cave" to be Plato's reaction to the idea of widespread literacy, and for reasons similar to people's refusal to immerse themselves in digital information exchange (alienation from the "real" world, etc), Plato seems to be against it. And yet, as with reading, internet users have the ability to opt out. The internet still does not have the power to fully emulate the human experience. Virtual reality is still largely text based, even if there are spacial and interactive qualities to the internet.
But digital technology does afford me, as an artist, a whole new dimension of expressive ability. Looking through Manovich's sixth lense, I understand that I cannot do the work I do without the use of a computer and that everything I make is the result of piling on algorithm after algorithm to achieve an image that I feel is successful.
But beyond understanding what the computer can do for me, I want to revisit Wardrip-Fruin's desire for people to question how the computer limits them in terms of expressive capabilities.
What would I like to see personally? I want my process to be more tactile. If I could create abstraction out of representation by touching the screen as opposed to using the mouse, the process would be much more satisfying.

Something a little like this:



But with my own video work...

Noah Wardrip-Fruin

I asked Noah what he wanted to see in terms of using the computer as a tool of expression, and I found that what he said was pretty interesting. His response had very little to do with how he envisions the future of digital technology and human expression; he seemed more concerned with how the computer is treated now as a creative enabler. He wants to see more people thinking not of how the computer can help them express whatever is is they wish to express but of the ways in which the computer limits expressive capability. He used video games as an example. Visually, video games have become incredibly cinematic aesthetically, and now that we know our technology is capable of achieving such heights, more focus could be placed on the development of games with the narrative capabilities of such media.
When you think about it, video games are so limited in terms of narrative possibilities. Typically, either you win, or you don't. Very little attention is paid to how a character's actions affect other characters' emotions, and what few emotional possibilities are available are based on a point-based system. But if we were to create a game that utilizes certain algorithms to emulate human emotion, then what does that say about the complexity of human emotion, and if we are to create digital avatars that we can affect emotionally, then at what point are we to assume that we are dealing with digital, self-aware entities?
I think the implications are dangerous, and while the narrative possibilities are astounding, truly astounding, theorists are going to go apeshit over the idea.

After all, if we are creating such emotionally capable, digital characters, how can we know the validity of our own existence?

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

~Andy Warhol




5,904,941 views



2,489,398 views



Prophet?

On “Inventing the Medium” by Janet H. Murray

The birth of the computer, according to Murray, is a signifier of a completely new mode of thought, a shift in human consciousness. She cites Borges and his Garden of Forking Paths. Also, Vannevar Bush and his infinite and omnipresent library. Both men note the inadequacies of language and linear thought.
Murray makes a point to set up a dichotomy here: one between the humanist (Borges) and the engineer (Bush). The former sees the advances in technology and the exchange of information, and he reacts with uncertainty, discomfort, even fear. He sees contradiction and limitation. The latter, on the other hand, sees potential. He isolates a problem and offers/invents a solution. He does not necessarily consider the consequences of his solution.
Throwing these archetypes – humanist and engineer – into the context of post WWII society, Murray discusses the trajectory of postmodernist thought: obsession with and phobia of technology and its incredible and terrifying potential, awareness of social construction and subsequent deconstruction, self-doubt and loss of faith in meaning, irony, creative ecstasy and chaos.
When Deleuze and Guattari suggested a horizontal model for the organization of information, something snapped. According to Murray, humanists found meaning in interconnectivity, and when the engineers released the first personal computers, middle ground was discovered, and eventually, the internet was born.

Yup. There it is. It occurs to me that I am all over it. You can Google my name, and you will find me. You can find hundreds of pictures of me on Facebook along with my date of birth, gender, sexuality, religious and political views, my favorite movies and TV shows, books, and the list goes on and on. If I had a twitter account, I could share my status with you anytime. I am always accessible. Information flows more readily than water, and for some reason or another, that doesn’t really bother many people my age. It doesn’t bother me. Though, I have to wonder how anyone in my generation will be voted president.

I am confronted daily with the awareness that all human knowledge is available to me all the time. I am also incredibly aware of the fact that I am constantly being advertised to, being told subliminally what to wear, what my body should look like, what food I should eat, how I should perform my gender, my sexuality. I not really sure that any of the sources of postmodernist anxiety ever went away. Social construction is still pretty real. But maybe that’s the beauty of the internet. Just having all information available to me all the time really does seem to undercut any idealized reality that would be socially constructed for me. It’s like, “Here. Here’s everything. Now carve yourself out of it.”