[-empyre-] Marc Böhlen : Resolution for Digita l Futures
My new year's resolution is to let acts precede intentions wherever possible. Resolutions hardly work for me, unfortunately. But after having been abroad (East Asia) for several weeks and realizing that I did not drink a single cup of espresso during that time I decided upon my return to shun the Starbucks coffee shop. No need for that stuff. Would the proper term for this be actolution, maybe? Some times the term 'digital' comes across as a fashion statement or a Che Guevara T-shirt. 'Digital art' seems an appropriate historical term because it was/is understood what (digital art) people mean by it. Nonetheless, it does not quite sit right. Putting it into a larger context helps (for me). Digital art as we know it is a cultural phenomenon that paralleled computerization of the masses. This in turn is due to (at least) three important vectors: - a system that allows one to represent ideas in a short form which is Boolean logic that is capable of describing a large swath of things of use to us (but surely not everything). - a process that allows the basic element of this system to be translated into the material world. This basic element is the silicon transistor (1947, Bell Labs). The transistor can see multitudes on one side (the rich and messy analogue world) and generate a binary output (the clean cut digital dictatorship) on the other side. It is the translator between the two domains. And it can be combined in myriad ways to form larger entities to (scalable) circuits that arrange the signals pulsing through them along convoluted pathways until they meet our eyeballs or ears. - A global industrial process that improved these elements on all levels until they became reliable and produced them in large numbers to make them cheap enough for the masses (us). The term digital (finger) is an important part of this event sequence, of computability and of computer culture, but it is not the only one and really the easiest animal to recognize in the zoo. It is a bit like discussing painting as woven art because the canvas is of woven fabric (which usually does not matter much). It is not wrong to speak of 'digital art' as such. But it is also not terribly significant unless the work queries (in an interesting way) the flow of charge in the bowls of the machine - laptop undervolting, anyone? The most interesting part (that I have said nothing about here) is this: why was the computer embraced by the masses with enthusiasm (over time) before there was any 'need' for it ? I would like to blame someone (smile). Equally interesting is the meme (maybe) that made someone think: I can do that with a computer machine thing, yes ! Or maybe that historic moment was one of actolution. Bio: Marc Böhlen (US) offers the kind of support technology really needs by contributing since 1996 to diversity in machine culture www.realtechsupport.org. Marc is the Director of the Media Robotics Lab, Department of Media Study, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York. -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Cynthia Beth Rubin: Resolution for Digital Futures
My resolution to broaden the conversation. Creative thinking and the desire to communicate are impulses that take different forms, and with the digital revolution we should be able to reach across the cultural, political, technological, and geographic barriers to exchange ideas, imagery, art. We need to embrace collaboration among artists at all stages of their careers and working in all forms of creative output, going beyond looking for obvious counter-parts in places where they are unlikely to exist. An artist in a technologically under-developed part of the world is not likely to be doing Virtual Reality or programming inter-activity, but s/he might have a developed visual vocabulary in another form, ranging from photo-journalism to designing advertising to structural engineering. We have to stop saying that we know what art is and just get down to working together. Bio: Cynthia Beth Rubin (US) is a media artist. She is a current Connecticut Commission on the Arts Fellowship recipient, is active in SIGGRAPH, and is a former board member and vice-president of ISEA. Rubin works collaboratively and alone, and has been trying to figure out why it is so hard to get a proposal to collaborate cross-culturally off the ground. -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Simon Taylor: Resolution for Digital Futures
I am stealing in to post a resolution for digital futures, if, indeed the plural and the singular ought to occur in that order; the best seem to have been by proxy so far, so to continue the trend of the best if not to come near it: please feel free to delete this post as it comes in from the fat land that is bound to be thinner hereafter: Since art is a faculty we share, perhaps it were better to make art not before reading our emails but before we are not alone, and then alone make what we are happy to call art before being disabused of the notion that we are. The digital social scene is centripetal, in its assumptions, this is the presumption. Or: perhaps we can do with less art; only the art which jams entertainment is green, surely. What calls to be theorised is a new proxemics, which includes more short-term thinking and less altruism. Short-term ought to be taken to an extreme and pushed back into the past, like a cuticle. It will hurt but the carbon burden will be less as the hurt increases. The wisdom of Solon in wiping out debt: capitalism we resolve we will support when it arrives. Insider trading in cultural theory will not be supported. Futures are burdened with no expectations that defaults will be culpable. The punitive regime will not be hypostasised. Neither will representation. It will be new to be near because we will proceed from the notion that mutual understanding with universal textuality is and will be a lie. We will demand better lies from our artists. Every advance deserves to be turned back on itself until we find that thinking of it like we did forward was a futurism which was not creative and moving forward is presumptive and not creative; we will do better imagining ourselves at the end of a long dark age, where knowledge was less recognised than sinned against and limits were more recognised than exceeded... although we like to talk of moving forward... sticking in places, Simon Bio: Simon Taylor (New Zealand) Renate established and ran Stronghold Theatre Co., Auckland, New Zealand, 1992-2007 and Cafe Brazil, in Karangahape Rd., 1995-2007. He currently writes his blog, Square White World, and for and about theatre projects that funding bodies show no interest in. The digital remains a problem for him, a creative one, in terms of its relationship to representation ... if hands do the devil's work , do fingers do it at higher resolution? -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Paul Vanouse: Resolution for Digital Futures
Resolutions as a techno-artist and educator. Techno-resolutions to quell notions of Techno(determinist)-revolutions. Numbers 1-2. (1) The next time someone says the underdeveloped world lacks the infrastructure to suggest to them that the overdeveloped world has too much infrastructure (particularly in the realm of corporate law and bureaucracy) to accomplish much either. (2) The next time someone says this is the genomic age when we are curing lots of terminal diseases, point out to them that research in the past 25 years has actually cured the fewest terminal diseases of any 25 year period since the late 1800s. These (and similar) resolutions (while admittedly not super optimistic;-) are hoped to provide a more realistic assessment of the present, for more productive discussions about the future. bio: Paul Vanouse (US) is an artist working in Emerging Media forms. Radical interdisciplinarity and impassioned amateurism guide his practice. Since the early 1990s his artwork has addressed complex issues raised by varied new techno-sciences using these very techno-sciences as a medium. He is an Associate Professor of Visual Studies at the University at Buffalo, New York. -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
