<br><br><br>Gair Dunlop 07973 777725 web art and projects: http://imaging.tvi.dundee.ac.uk/msc/msc2001/one/htm/intro.htm
Here are some reflections on sense of place and sense of the tool in new media: it comes from a larger set of propositions which are online at http://imaging.tvi.dundee.ac.uk/msc/msc2001/one/htm/artb.htm I am very ambivalent about web art: I'm not convinced that interactivity can substitute for relation... of course coming from a photographic background I might be expected to denigrate the lo-fi side of things. But it's not that. I think it's the screen as arena which I find so limiting. In the online essay I go through various arguments and positions, and end up with a way of using new media which intrigues me. Comments? regards from gair "Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future - for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." A situation has arisen where the deep understanding of the tool has been ceded to another, with at best a few particularly driven individuals taking on the concepts of programming in order to chip away at the governing metaphors of windows, pointers, and a simulation of interactivity. Yet it�s good news in the sense of an increase in propagation speeds, and less barrier between thought and transmission of that thought. It also produces a superficial democratisation of image production and distribution, with the proviso that over half the worlds� population have never made a phone call, let alone gained access to the internet. Seduction into a technically led practice is often positive. Flicking back and forward between immersion in and directing of a flow is the very core of process-based art, yet I realised that I needed to think about my relation to process. Had the accessibility and imperative urge of internet art distorted my practice, and cut me off from other forms of dialogue? I became increasingly concerned about a voluntary ghettoisation of "electronic artists" which related to my own earlier experiences in the world of photography. What began as a positive self-empowerment became a straightjacket of prescriptive " photographic galleries" with definite feuding agendas- such as Camerawork in East London-, which was created on the assumption that a new breed of " independent photographer" would be the 1980s/90s version of Neu Sachlichtkeit. Unsurprisingly, this sector became entrenched in defending its " gains"- seen as the funded spaces- while those artists who benefited from it moved into a wider field of working and/or went abroad. This is your dread manager speaking:Does virtual art lead to virtual audiences? Can the wish for an area of shared reflection sit with the distanced nature of web audience? Can a series of propositions on identity and place work on its own terms in an arena where the dominant metaphor is the vr arcade game and the advert? The commodity fetishism inherent in techietalk, which we all find ourselves indulging in occasionally, is a clue to the unresolved nature of our relationship to our equipment. When memory becomes externalised, our sense of self becomes uncertain: how much of these devices has become " us?" We can�t resolve this, and some of us begin to love our equipment in odd ways as a result. Yet painters don�t paint because they like brushes. Authors don�t write because of an abiding passionate fondness for pens. The unresolved emotional tug of new media will take a while to settle down: when it does, that will be the time to think on our changed relation to the world and consciousness. It�s too early yet; we�re still caught in a net of P.R. and corporate computing propaganda, which tries to convey breathless acceleration when an operating system upgrades. Perhaps we need a new form of ironic language: not cynical, but reflexive on the growth of meaningless excitement, and related to the degree of communal interaction of those in discourse. "Making information resonate globally, which is necessary in the age of the great planetary market, is in many ways going to resemble the practices and uses of military intelligence, and also political propaganda and its excesses. [�]The emergence of a new kind of tele-vision; a television which no longer has the task of informing or entertaining the mass of viewers, but of exposing and invalidating individuals� domestic space, like a new form of lighting, which is capable of revolutionising the notion of the neighbourhood unit, or of a building or a district." VIRILIO IN THE INFORMATION BOMB place and non-place The World- bestriding " N" of the netscape navigator logo makes a step without specific path: the internet explorer planet once showed the western hemisphere (and the edge of Europe) but now makes a logoplanet of the letter e in a way familiar to designers working for Boeing and NASA. It brings forward a clean vision of world unity, a mission statement in one ideogram. Instead of geography, we are invited to identify with a circular orbit: we are going to inhabit circulation rather than location. Timelessness and immediacy are connoted: a world where geotime intervals are without relevance. A world reduced to an iconic reminder designed for a small screen. The implicit message that you might as well be anywhere, so what�s the point of actually going? At one time, the experience of being abroad was encapsulated in the comic vision of the travelling photographer too busy looking through the viewfinder to really live in the present. Now travellers spend an appreciable amount of time in internet cafes, mixing with their own kind, following a prescribed path from fashionable guidebooks, and looking for the expected experience. Travel becomes another extension of the call centre.For commerce and the image inflected by the "new creative industries"- whether on television or in a game scenario- the great taboo is not that one may become bored but that one might change channel. A breathless acceleration of sensation crowds out that possibility by compressing game-time into a simulation of life or death struggle; a policy of mobilization, but with real-world action indefinitely deferred. Psy-ops translated from the strategic thinking of the 1960s- the Rand Corporation, etc, to the recruitment and mobilisation of the individual. Foucaults� disciplinary grid shifts from the body in ordered space to a hierarchic goal-oriented mental arena, a metonymy of the collapsed role of the citizen. Some conclusions on my relation to the digital 1 I may continue putting art on the web, but any future web art projects will refer specifically to real-time real-place events. More like the Gagarin website than the Utopias site, to be specific. 2 Projection expands: webcasting reduces. Less is sometimes really less. 3 Net art is not necessarily any more about communication than any other context. 4 There is some good web art around: it just isn�t obligatory. 5 I don�t want to go to Ars Electronica. Facing the future, far from being a manifesto of new creativity evolving over a series of gatherings, is a series of corporate PR statements on behalf of the computer graphics industry. 6 The concept of the "screenload" is limiting- people see a screen and expect a specific process. A couple of things to click at, an animation or two: this can be a limiting interaction with any concept of surprise relating to a few possible outcomes. Copenhagen, November 1996. Crisp, low sun. Entering through a courtyard, I looked up. A goods lift, of the type seen on small building sites, was carrying some dirty plates up to a bedroom, which had a floor but no walls. There seemed to be someone sleeping up there. I entered the building, passing an intensive care bed, a suburban railway platform, an office in the back of a nightclub, a teenagers bedroom, a small gallery, and many other Western European environments. There were a large number of people around- after all, this was a major event in Copenhagens� European City of Culture programme. It soon became clear that the ones who pretended you weren�t there were the performers. Conversations, confrontations, gossip, whisperings, ignorings; all the routine ways of being in Europe, in our families, in or out of our heads. There was no pressure on time: I could stay as long as I wanted. Similarly, the actors seemed free to wander between environments, to improvise the stuff of lives. Sometimes quiet, sometimes melodramatic, it soon became apparent that it was the rooms that had a script, and that different actors were free to work around the overall theme of each place. I wandered: a micro-flaneur with the city brought to me. A bell sounded loudly: I noticed a panel of coloured lights in the corner of each room. The actors stopped what they were doing, noted the new colour flashing, and seamlessly shucked off their previous behaviour repertoire. Conversations switched, dominance swapped characters, some actors left, and others arrived. I was disoriented and thrilled. To play with and discard senses of self as a trifling matter, to wear personality like a changeable coat. I was in Weltsuret , an installation by Lars von Trier. For three hours daily, four days per week over a period of 7 weeks, the cast gave themselves over to this building, the Danish equivalent of the ICA although a lot bigger. They willingly became inhabited by behaviour dictated by the set itself, and by the imperious prompting of an all-powerful lighting panel. Bells would sound and lights would flash at unpredictable intervals. Half an hour could go by, and the cast would have developed fantastically elaborate scenarios, to be discarded without hesitation on cue. At other times barely a sentence would escape; the cut-up effect would see words of one character transform into those of another, sometimes from the mouth of the same actor. The sense of discipline was extraordinary. What was prompting this mechanisation of theatrical experience? There was no correct way through the building: at first glance the control room seemed to be just another set. The actors entered and exited as in any other room. In this room, however, the audience could not enter the equipment space. For the first time since entering this behavioural maze, freedom of movement was restricted to one side of the desks. Actors were looking up references on character and behaviours, which had been built up over the previous weeks and indexed by researchers. Monitor screens glowed: internet connections were monitored, and a large screen showed a night-time infrared picture. Scale was difficult to make out: nothing seemed to be happening. A small scurry of movement occurred, and the bell rang. Still unsure of what I was seeing, I waited for it to happen again, while looking intently at the surrounding monitors. There seemed to be a connection with a web server in the American Southwest� A second scurrying-and a better view of the screen. An insect� the bell rang again, and the full realisation of what was going on suddenly hit me. Fifty or so people in Europe were being controlled by the movement of ants on the other side of the world. A series of infrared light beams were laid across one square metre of New Mexico. Neither too near nor too far from a nest, the speed and direction of the ant was translated into a specific code. Reaction to the realisation of what was happening became a second performance in itself, this time one by the audience. Many people seemed outraged. A feeling that the natural order of things had been breached- but to no good purpose. A feeling of having been cheated was in the air. Perhaps the famous Danish sense of propriety and order had been offended. On the other hand, many people didn�t seem to realise what the control room was, assuming it to be just another setting. A strong polarisation of the audience had been achieved, and a visceral realisation of new media communication possibilities. "You are interested in the unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here." � _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ------------------------------------------------- a m b i t : networking media arts in scotland post: [EMAIL PROTECTED] info: send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and write "info ambit" in the message body -------------------------------------------------
