[-empyre-] Networked Catastrophe until December 3rd
Dear -empyre, Just an organizational note_We will be exending our conversation on Networked Catastrophe until Wednesday, December 3rd. At that time Christina McPhee will be taking over for the month of December on empyre. We are hoping that all of our guests this month will continue to chime in! Thanks Renate and Tim Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Fine Arts, Inter-media Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Website: http://www.renateferro.net Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Ricardo Dominguez + Diane Ludin: Resolution for Digital Futures
. Thrashing in their containers as she carried them down the steps, the particles would speed eat each other, till nothing was left the last one left would always eat itself the highest state of artificial evolution, her sister would whisper to her before the accident. She would have to hurry, shuffling as fast as she could under the weight of so many containers, to the Neighbors. The Neighbors only paid her for the ones that were left alive. It was piecework. Dr. Ludin: Its a Small World After all Nanoera Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism does not represent a new phase of capitalism in a temporal sense yet, at the same time there is an uncanny sense that something new is happening here. Dr. Ludin: Your Matter Is Our Market NanoMiX Corp. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism is not just an encroachment of capital on a new domain of science. But that this new domain of precise atomic and molecular manipulation is now being constituted as a business plan about what constitutes material reality as just another tale of the matter market. Dr. Ludin: Reassembling Your World One Atom at a Time NanitesNow Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Particle Capitalism functions as unregulated form of venture science that implodes the ethos of science to the valuation of life-as-matter with the valuation of the market. Dr. Ludin: Market Catch Your Self NanoCatch Inc. Dr. Dominguez: Recombinant society falls quickly before nano-fest destiny. Biotechnology, like digital networks, becomes a side event before the next state of command and control society. Each of us will rapidly become the by product of artificial nanotechnology vitamins, interdependent molecular subassembly engines, and marked by inter-linked termination dates. We will become more than replicants and less than nothing. The cross-roads between the imaginary and all too real construction of nanotechnology is perhaps already behind us. Dr. Ludin: In the game of life and evolution there are three players at the table: human beings, nature, and machines. I am firmly on the side of nature. But nature, I suspect, is on the side of the machines. Dr. Dominguez: Not much difference between a banana and a human. Same Atoms, just arranged differently. Dr. Ludin: Not much difference. Dr. Dominguez: Not much difference at all. [Both lab workers shut down their computers, eat a banana, and walk away.] p.s. An illuminated nanoscript by Amy Sara Carroll, Ricardo Dominguez and Diane Ludin for iPod nano video presentation created for the *particle group* project installation at gall...@calit2 (http://gallery.calit2.net): http://post.thing.net/node/2234 In(rez)solute/resolution(s) for 2009! To all softskins! from the *particle group* -- Professor Ricardo Dominguez is principal investigator at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology and an assistant professor for University of California at San Diego's visual arts department. He has had extensive experience both participating in and investigating activism; he created a program that allows an activist group to slow any Web site to a halt by flooding it with requests, a form of protest known as a virtual sit-in. Through this, Dominguez got the attention of the National Security Agency. He is currently developing a performance project on nanotechnology called B.A.N.G. lab (Bits, Atoms, Neurons and Genes). Project sites: site: http://gallery.calit2.net site: http://pitmm.net site: http://bang.calit2.net site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom Diane Ludin is an artist and writer. She filters the ideological gaps of power through a radical poetics by playing with the representations of biotech and informatic labour industries. Resulting projects include internet-based collages, installations and performances that explore ideas of media representation as information. Diane Ludin has presented her work in the US and Europe. Commissioned works include internet art projects for The Walker Art Center, Franklin Furnace, New Radio and Performing Arts and The Alternative Museum. Collaborative performances and broadcasts with The Electronic Disturbance Theater, FAKESHOP, Las Fantasmas, Prema Murthy, Francesca da Rimini, Ricardo Dominguez and Agnese Trocchi. Diane Ludin lives and works in Brooklyn and received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. http://www.thing.net/~diane ___ 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-] Linda Dement: Resolution for Digital Futures
Dear Tim and Renate I have some new year's resolutions for digital futures: 1. I will never again upgrade to a new system unless someone else tries it first. 2. I will not buy a new computer unless the old one has stopped working. 3. I will always carefully seal the cracks and joins of the scanner before placing dead birds or bodily fluids on the glass. 4. Between 1am and 4am, I will not delete files I think I won't need again. 5. I will only pay for hosting on servers powered by renewable energy. 6. In the mornings I will make art before checking my email. 7. I will not answer the phone. 8. I will never again let an old computer go to landfill, even though I have to arrange the whole palaver to send it to Minto and they never pick it up when they say they will. 9. I will use open source software wherever possible. 10. I will learn to solder despite my failing eyesight. bio: Linda Dement (Australia) has been working with arts computing since 1989. She has authored screen based interactives, multi-computer installations and collaborated in translocal and performative new media events. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the ICA in London, Ars Electronica, International Symposia of Electronic Art and the Impakt Media Arts Festival in Europe. She is twice winner of the Australian National Digital Art Award and has been awarded a New Media Arts Fellowship by the Australia Council for the Arts. -- 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-] Frédéric Neyrat : Resolution for Digital Futures
Digital Metaphor Since the world has been encircled, and the true world has become a fable, and the fable an Integral Reality, the earth became flat like an orange. Integral Reality doesn't replace reality but metaphor, as Baudrillard says. Yet metaphor has never taken the sensible toward the intelligible, because the sensible was always both insensible and sur-sensible, less and more than sensible, and the intelligible has always been pierced by the vanishing Good, that interrupts the Ideas web - interrupts and nothing more. Thus metaphor is always quasi-metaphor (Derrida), because being substracts itself on giving itself. Thus Integral Reality is not the end of the splitting of the worlds, rather its invisible continuance right in the midst of the immanents flux. A question for the digital future: how to give body, artistically, culturally, politically, to the metaphors of a being faced with its fundamental disappearance, its liberating retreat and its foundational dissipation ? What kind of metaphor while the substracted being is overexposed ? We seek new metaphors, digital metaphors able to take body and soul into the living fire. Alerted to the rifts of being, the art that follows will know how to invent a new reserve, without letting free reign to the desert. Frédéric Neyrat Bio: Frédéric Neyrat (France) is a philosopher, a former Director at the College International de Philosophie in Paris, and a member of the Editorial Board of the inlfuential interdisciplinary French journal, Multitudes, currently in residence at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University. He has published books on political imaginary (Fantasme de la communauté absolue, 2002) ; the function of the images (L'image hors-l'image, 2003) ; the globalization and the postmodern condition (Surexposés, 2005) ; Heidegger (L'indemne. Heidegger et la destruction du monde, 2008) ; the relations between eco-politics, immuno-politics and bio-politics (Biopolitique des catastrophes, 2008). His next books will be Instructions pour une prise d'âmes. Artaud et l'envoûtement occidental (http://www.phocide.fr/neyrat.htm) and Le terrorisme (Larousse, march 2009). -- 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-] Michelle Citron: Resolution for Digital Futures
RESOLUTION: I want to reach beyond the art/academic/digitial worlds to farmers, factory workers, healthcare workers, store clerks, and everyone else. If we are to change the way we use the land, and think about money, and treat each other we need to use digital/art to expand the conversation beyond ourselves. BIO: Michelle Citron (US) is a media artist whose work includes the films Daughter Rite and What You Take For Granted ,and the interactive narratives As American As Apple Pie, Cocktails Appetizers, and Mixed Greens. Her work has shown at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of Art (New York), the Walker Art Cente (Minneapolis), and the MCA/Chicago, as well as the New Directors, Berlin, London, Edinburgh, SeNef Seoul Net, VAD Festival Internacional de Video I Arts Digital, and Viper film/media festivals. She is the author of Home Movies and Other Necessary Fictions, and chairs the Department of Interdisciplinary Arts, Columbia College Chicago. -- 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-] Melinda Rackham: Resolution for Digital Futures
Thanks so much Renate and Tim for the invitation to submit a Digital Resolution- I watched Pollyanna the other night and it changed my life.. instead of being Resolute I am delighted to be playing the Glad Game... 9 Reasons to be Cheerful.. I'm glad we have the internet- it gives Governments somewhere new to try to enforce censorship regulations. I'm glad hardly any institutions really bothered to collect internet art- it will make it so much more valuable in 15 years time. I'm glad internet software updates rapidly and is often not backwards compatible - it provides senior artists with an income in recoding their unusable early works. I'm glad my newton/palm/xda/iphone/blackberry fell into the sea water and fizzled and died on Valentine's day - so I could get a newer/better/faster/bigger/slicker model. I'm glad I can follow the intricacies of the lives of my 600 closest friends on Facebook and every minute career enhancement of my 200 most valued business colleagues on Linkedin. I'm glad I'm scared of Twitter Im glad $50 computers are saving the lives of people who live in poverty around the world - I suppose that means they eat them? I'm glad Mitchell Whitelaw showed me the Internet cause I would have had an enormous amount of spare time in the past 15 years otherwise. I'm glad of my terminal connections - my receptors have adapted and I get withdrawal symptoms without them. Love muchly and often. Xx Melinda +++ Melinda Rackham (Australia) is an artist, writer and curator in the fields of networked art, 3d multi-user environments and emerging technologies. Her projects span the theoretical, aesthetic and social aspects of identity, locality, trans species relations and augmentation. Dr Rackham is currently the Director of ANAT - an innovative cultural organisation generating new creativities at the intersections of art, science technology. -- 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-] David Tolchinsky: Resolution for Digital Futures
Regardless of the technology being used, regardless of the mode, the sphere, interactive or linear, often what separates what is effective, moving, intellectually fascinating from the one-liner, the distant, and the trivial is the quality of the writing. So I resolve in 2009 and beyond to as much as possible put the writing first, the technology second. To start with an idea, a shape, an arc. To ask myself: How do I want to affect my audience? What is there about the work that forces the user to remain immersed? Why can't we walk away? What can I do in the digital sphere that has been done in writing-centric films like Sullivan's Travels, Raging Bull, Mulholland Drive, Memento, and more recently The Wrestler? Mulholland Drive (MD) in particular is a great model for me as I think about the digital as MD is mysterious and the subject is not just the story, but also the apparatus. That is it's as much about the filmmaking and filmmaker as it is about the story, which has been my experience with a lot of emergent projects. The digital box is as important as the contents. But what makes MD accessible and profound: each scene is well-written: simple, moving and/or scary. The film is built on a traditional 4-act structure (yes, 4 acts not 3 acts in my world). It has shape and purpose -- a series of clues/tasks/missions for its terrified and terrifying characters and a series of questions for its audience -- even though on first glance it seems like just a dream. So back to resolutions for the digital: whether an immersive environment, a game, an installation, etc: There should be structure even though the structure may not be apparent. There should be characters (whatever that means to you) that people can relate to, with problems that need to be solved. There should be questions, secrets and/or mysteries that force us to remain connected. The technology should be secondary to story or the immersive aspects of the projects, even as we're aware of the technology. We don't have to wrap everything up, but there should be some sense of a background purpose that drives the piece forwards and deeper. Traditional I know and certainly only one vision and certainly not relevant to all projects (maybe just relevant for me as I make my way from narrative project to emergent project and back again), but I do believe if the writing is considered first, there will be many long happy lives in the digital realm. I welcome the evolving conversation. Bio: David E. Tolchinsky (US) is Chair of Northwestern University's Department of Radio-TV-Film and Director of Northwestern's MFA in Writing for the Screen+Stage/Creative Writing for the Media Program. As a screenwriter, he has been commissioned by such studios as Touchstone/Disney, MGM Pictures, Ivan Reitman's Montecito Pictures, USA Networks, Edward R. Pressman Film Corp, and Addis-Wechsler Assoc. to write feature screenplays. He also creates sound designs for interactive computer projects and video installations. He is a graduate of Yale (BA) and USC School of Cinema-Television (MFA). Last year, he was chosen to be a Northwestern University Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence. -- 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-] Maria Miranda: Resolution for Digital Futures
Digital New Year's Resolution: Currently the Australian government is considering some stultifying if not downright terrifying changes for Australian Internet users. These changes are referred to as clean-feed internet and will force ISPs to censor the internet for all Australians. What this will mean is - and I quote: 1. Filtering will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country. 2. The clean feed will censor material that is 'harmful and inapproriate' for children. 3. The filter will require a massive expansion of the ACMA's (The Australian Communications and Media Authority) blacklist of prohibited content. 4. The Government want to use dynamic filters of questionable accuracy that slow the internet down by an average of 30%. This is a short but horrible list of some of the changes proposed So my digital resolution and/or hope for the new year would be that either the Australian government comes to its senses. Unlikely. That the local and global networks can work their magic through political pressure, international outrage and somehow stop this crazy action. http://nocleanfeed.com/http://nocleanfeed.com/ Bio: Maria Miranda (Australia) works in collaboration with Norie Neumark on media projects - we call our collaboration Out-of-sync. We've been working together for over 15 years, and have made work across media from radio plays to CDROM to networked installation. Currently I am completing a PhD in Media Studies at Macquarie University Sydney researching uncertain practices and unsitely aesthetics in media art, including artists' use of the Internet as one site of their work. -- 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-] Adriene Jenik: Resolution for Digital Futures
Adriene Jenik's New Year's Resolutions for Digital Futures *** I resolve not to fear the future. But to face the headwind. To stand fast and, when needed, still. When I am awake I resolve to be fully awake and alive to all possibilities. To remember those who came before me and those who will come after. I resolve to try and imagine 7 generations into the future at least once each day. When I am asleep I resolve to switch off all of my power strips. to remember my dreams and to learn from them. to call upon all the lessons I've learned already. To get up from the computer and dance. I resolve to use the laptop and the street and the classroom to uphold the rights and dignity of all beings. To recognize both the power and the frailty of networks. I resolve this year to not pass up any opportunity to offer my voice. To not be ashamed by its weakness or shrink away from its rawness. I resolve to remember that listening is an action. To not be afraid. of what is to come. to become a hollow bone. *** Adriene Jenik (US) is a telecommunications media artist and Professor of Computer Media Arts in the http://visarts.ucsd.edu/Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego. Her works combine high technology and human desire to propose new forms of literature, cinema, and performance. Renate -- 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-] Sean Cubitt: Resolution for Digital Futures
There are not enough rare earths on the planet to replicate for the developing world the density of personal computers and wireless devices that prevails in the West. Even the most efficient recycling cannot extract 100 per cent of the materials in defunct kit, and the recycling villages of West Africa and Southern China are not only inefficient but fatal sumps of carcinogenic pollution. The era of the personal computer, premised on the individual as the prime consuming unit in contemporary capitalism, is nearing its close. Soon we will be unable to power the networks, such is our profligate use of finite energy sources. Compression doesn't resolve this problem: decompression has an energy cost, regardless of the degree of compression in the network signal, it has to be decompressed elsewhere, so maintaining the same cost. Information is energy hungry: that is the meaning of the second law of thermodynamics. The laws of physics have us over a barrel. We will have to get used to using less computer power in fewer machines. Time-sharing may yet prove to be the fundamental social economy of computing. It is time to demand better - and less! Bio: Sean Cubitt (Australia) is Director of the Program in Media and Communications at the University of Melbourne. -- 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
[-empyre-] Richard Rinehart: Resolution for Digital Futures
I resolve to deploy digital media within cultural institutions in order to make them more open; open to access, to dialogue, to critique, to participation, to change. I further resolve to increase my own capacity for rigorous scholarship so that such openness is not pandering, but rich; not obvious, but surprising. I resolve to do these tiny tiny things (in the greater context of the world) with a sense of humor. Bio: Richard Rinehart (US) is Digital Media Director Adjunct Curator at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California bampfa.berkeley.edu -- 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-] Christina McPhee: Resolution for Digital Futures
My new project in 2009 is Tesserae of Venus -- a science-fiction like study moving between fantasy and documentation, in ink/watercolor drawings, photomontage and especially series of abstract experimental documentary films shot as single channel videos, like a concept album, This project interprets energy-producing technological landscapes in California as if they were saturated by the carbon atmosphere of Venus. The videos will take place in remote central and southern California, at the edges of the urban environment, at oil fields, geothermal seismic system plants, and solar energy fields. the complex ecosystem/tech environment at the edges of urban space. I film a single person, myself or another, in a solo remote performance in spontaneous performance making a drawing like gesture inside a remote landscape environment. The shoots involve a poignant gesture or kairotic moment, which in urban slang now means, not only the 'perfect time or apt moment of luck,' but in a strange reversal also is used to express gayness or queerness or just to make fun of people who you don't like as in You are very kairotic or go away you kairotic bastard (urbandictionary.com). So somehow in these stressed, out of the way, even underimaged, presumably ugly topographies -- bastard spaces i dream of salamander moves , tracking the slimey traces of petroleum, following the fire lizard into the fires. Fires of another kind- pulling up energy from heat near the mantle deep, heating water to steam pitch for turbine drives-.I have been shooting since late 2006 at Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California; the Sunset Midway oil fields near Taft, California in Kern County; and, in the near future, at new solar energy fields at the Carrizo Plain northwest of LA. In December I shot at San Ardo oil fields in the upper Salinas Valley. I am also now shooting in the Salinas Valley, the east of Eden of Steinbeck's vision. Yesterday I shot Pacific Gas and Electric substations in Soledad. All of these sites are under intense pressure from the scramble to survive in a desperate economy, and the collapse of outlier urban development. The desperate search for work by migrants and the native poor-- the carlots loaded with cars no one can afford-- the spectacular panoramas of the mountains above the plains unchanged since preColumbian times-- these layers intersect and weave into a narrative of strange beauty and restless tensions, something wild at heart; the landscape takes on an aspect of tracings or shimmerings at the edges as if the swoosh of the unpredictable goddess of beauty and desire sounds like the Doppler effect of passing frieght on the Union Pacific. It's intriguing to push an extreme fantasy into this mix, by comparing them to Venus. In an allegorical-- or maybe, metanymic, sense , as a 'stand in' shorthand for the mysterious arrival of 'Aphrodite-' love-- but also, carbon atmospheric saturation-- The slippage between our love of Earth and our desperate scramble to build new energy systems-- is there anything beautiful about carbon? Across multiple related sites, I want to say, these sites generate another kind of energy, an erotic or, better, kairotic energy. Just to witness this as a process moving through every media, drawing to montage to print to video and back again--. ---Christina Bio: A moderator of -empyre-, Christina McPhee (US) was born in LA, studied at Kansas City Art Institute (BFA) and Boston University in painting (MFA), and later moved into cinematic media and photography as well. New exhibitions 2008/9 include Bucharest Biennial 3, twice upon a time at Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna; Bad Moon Rising at Boots Contemporary, Saint Louis, Pace Digital Gallery New York in April 2009 for 'Plazaville' with GH Hovagimyan and Artists Meeting; Videoformes 2009 Clermont-Ferrand, France. Tesserae of Venus will debut at Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, in October 2009. http://christinamcphee.net -- 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-] Thanks for your Digital Futures
I'll take this opportunity to add to Tim's comments from yesterday. Many thanks to all of you who participated in our New Year's Resolutions for Digital Futures. It has been most exhilarating. Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year. Renate -- 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
Re: [-empyre-] local currencies: Ithaca Hours
I've been lurking this month but have enjoyed the diverse posts.
Ithaca,NY has its own local currency as well called Ithaca Hours. This
local currency system not only sustains local economic strength but also
encourages community self-reliance. It ideally wants to improve economic
conditions as it relates to social justice, ecology, and community among
others. While there are over 900 participants that publicly exchange
Ithaca HOURS for goods and services there are a few who are paying wages
out in the currency. It has been in existence for as long as I can
remember! For a glimpse of the system go to
http://www.ithacahours.org
Renate Ferro
these people may really be on to something with this practice...why
wouldn't or shouldn't every locale have their own currency?
NRIII
Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org
- Original Message
From: davin heckman davinheck...@gmail.com
To: soft_skinned_space empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009 2:35:14 PM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds
I just read an article in the Detroit News on their new local currency:
http://www.detnews.com/article/20090323/BIZ/903230389/Detroit+cash+keeps+hometown+humming
It's not extra-marketable... but I do like that it tries to keep money
local.
Davin
On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 8:58 PM, { brad brace } bbr...@eskimo.com wrote:
On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:
ghh...what might an 'extra-marketable' utopia look like...?
... In New York there are hundreds of artists collectives that
are now functioning outside of the market. They share loft spaces,
produce work online and offline and function despite the
market...
you'd know better than me G.H. (I haven't set foot in NYC
since the 70-80's), so I'm genuinely interested to know
about all these many suddenly successful artists' co-ops...
care to name a few? (or is this wistful posturing...)
/:b
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empyre forum
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Renate Ferro
Visiting Assistant Professor
Department of Art
Cornell University, Tjaden Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Email: r...@cornell.edu
Website: http://www.renateferro.net
Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre
Art Editor, diacritics
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[-empyre-] intersections
Dear Ashley, Stamatia, and Erin, snip ...In a certain sense, I do think that dance, theatre and all performance art, amplify gestures, not in the sense of an enlargement and an ostensive display, but in the sense of a close vision, so close and microscopic to lose the sense of all clear visibility and neatness of detail: movement, as Erin was saying, is something that will never be comprehended in its entirety, so imperceptible and diffuse is its resonance (the resonance o the micro-movements Ashley refers to). -- Thank you so much for an amazing beginning to our discussion this month on Critical Movement Practice. I am so excited by the possibilities you all raise. I realize that you are all choreographers/dancers but I'd like to press you to step out of the boundaries of dance and talk about the implications of your work in everyday ordinary space and time. How is movement in everyday life-- moving through a public space (that is permeated with the human constructions of gender, race, age, etc). affected by technology such as in surveillance cameras, personal computers, iphones, ipods, etc? What affects do these technologies have on infinitely moving bodies? Do these technologies divide/ create gaps in relationship to these human constructions or do they provide a way to suture the gaps? As an installation artist working with technology and media from video to sound to sensors, I consciously think about bringing everyday life into the exhibition/gallery/museum space. And vice versa how to bring the exhibit into the real, practical world. Are my interventions in the critical architectural space of the gallery relevant outside of the art context? As choreographers how do you critically look at the space in which you perform? What common intersections of critical thinking and philosophy exist between choreography and artistic intervention? These questions are certainly not meant to interrupt but to perhaps add new twists and turns into the discussion. At the heart of my installation, Screen Memory the ordinary movements of the viewers body within the exhibition traverses the physical and technological data. At times the body completes synapses of vision and meaning at other times she creates gaps or pulses. http://www.renateferro.net/screenmemory.html And then work within the context of a public, urban space: I'm thinking of the work of Jill Magid whose installation/performance entitled Evidence Lockerhttp://www.jillmagid.net/EvidenceLocker.php takes place over 31 days in Liverpool, England. Magid nurtured personal relationships with local police whose duties were to watch the video surveillance system throughout the city. She staged her own performances for these police wearing a red rain coat as she maneuvered through the city blindfolded. Her safety and orientation were guided by whomever happened to be on call that day. Magid phoned details to the surveillance police of where she was and asked them to film her in particular poses, places or even guide her through the city with her eyes closed, This project enfolded the system of surveillance and the process of the male gaze and looking upon itself. I'm also thinking about Sophie Calle's much older piece, Suite Venitienne/Please Follow Me, where she secretly follows a traveller to Venice shadowing his every move and documenting those movements through the city. Hoping that we can continue to talk about these crossovers throughout the next few days and weeks. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Introducing June-Participatory Art: New Media and Archival Traces
Dear empyre, Tim and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Johannes Birringer (Germany/UK), Laura Cull (UK), Sarah Drury (US), Ashley Ferro-Murray (US), Erin Manning (Canada), Stamatia Portanova (Italy/UK), Nora Zuniga Shaw (US), and Stelarc (Australia/UK) for leading us through a stimulating and engaging month of discussion on Critical Motion Practice. Between the end of the semester and travels you all came through with incredibly thoughtful and dense responses to each other and our list serve subscribers. Sarah Drury's conversations at the end of the month sparked an impromptu idea for the June's discussion Participatory Art: New Media and Archival Traces. Stay tuned for the introduction to this month's theme. Renate and Tim Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Moderators, empyre soft skinned space Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Introducing Sarah Drury and Hana Iverson
Welcome to Sarah Drury and Hana Iverson who have been discussing the socially inscribed networked body in relation to their own work. We invite them to consider this month's theme: Participatory Art: New Media and the Archival Trace. This notion of Participatory Art has resonances from the writings of Nicholas Bourriaud and Claire Bishop. While Hana and Sarah discuss their own ideas about the topic we will be interspersing other posts from other artists, curators, and writers who also were thinking about these issues in relationship to their own work. We also want to encourage all of our empyre subscribers (close to 1250) who have been lurking during the past month to PARTICIPATE. So welcome Hana and Sarah! Featured Guests: Week 1: Hana Iverson (US) and Sarah Drury (US) Hana Iversons work spans photography, video, installation, and interactive media. Her current work focuses on location-based installations that integrates mobile interfaces. Iverson currently teaches at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and is the founder and director of the Neighborhood Narratives Project, an internationally networked, community-based learning environment where students investigate the complex means by which cell phones, GPS, mobile recording devices, interactive public installation and social network games affect their knowledge of and relation to lived space http://www.neighborhoodnarratives.net. She is the former Director of the New Media Interdisciplinary Concentration at Temple University. Sarah Drury is a media artist working with video, interactive installation and performative media. Her work has been presented at international venues, including: BAM¹s Next Wave Festival, National Theater of Belgrade, and Boston CyberArts Festival, Brooklyn Museum, the Kitchen, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, Sound Cultures Symposium, Performative Sites, ACM Multimedia, Artists Space, Hallwalls, Worldwide Video Festival (Hague), and on PBS. Grants include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and grants from the Leeway Foundation, and Franklin Furnace. Drury¹s work with sensing technologies engages body, sound and image in complex multisensory narratives, in diverse contexts such as installation, opera and performance. Recent projects explore issues of embodiment, collaborative creation and emergent narrative. Sarah Drury is an associate professor of video and interactive media at the Temple University Film Media Arts Program. She holds masters degrees from the NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program and NYU/International Center of Photography. She has also been on the faculty of the New York University Interactive Telecommunications Program, NYU Art Media Program and the International Center of Photography. Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Moderators, empyre soft skinned space soft_skinned_space emp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks to Menotti/Welcoming Anna Munster on _empyre
Dear _empyre subscribers, We join in thanking Gabriel Menotti for guest moderating this past month's discussion of Denied Distances. We appreciate his generous offer to moderate this past month's discussion and enjoyed the varied posts that related. We will be turning the month October over to Anna Munster who will be moderating a conversation, Networked_Art. Based on a collaborative Turbulence project, Anna will be introducing her roster of guests who will join our over 1250 subscribers to discuss the convergence between networked aesthetics and texts. While Anna will be introducing the guests for the month and posting the first discussion post, I will take this opportunity to introduce Anna's biography. We thank her for taking over from Gabriel. Anna is from Australia where it is already October 1st so we will say good=bye to Gabriel for now and welcome Anna to _empyre soft-skinned space. Biography Anna Munster is a writer, artist and educator in the area of new media arts and theory. In 2006 she published the book Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics (Dartmouth College Press) and writes for the journals CTheory, Fibreculture, Culture Machine among others on networked culture and art, biomedia and bioart and contemporary art and politics. She helped to found the journal Fibreculture and is actively involved in online list cultures and their on and offline projects and events. She works collaboratively with Michele Barker in the area of immersive and multi-channel audio-visual installation, exploring the relations between visuality, perception and neuroscience. Munster works as an associate professor at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney Australia. Her current research investigates dynamic media, particularly the relations between the technical aspects of networks and network visualisations on the one hand, and emergent forms of cultural and aesthetic experience on the other. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks Anna and all things viral
Dear empyre subscribers, Many thanks again to Anna Munster and her guests for the October discussion of Networked_art. As I was re-reading the posts again yesterday, I was struck by the fact that our discussion this month resonates. The process of networking via the internet has a vast range of positive and negative affects and outcomes. As practitioners, theorists, programmers, and educators we will take the opportunity this month to pause and reflect critically on the omnipresence of the concept of viral economies within the network and the act of networking on the internet and its affect on culture. While I remain here in Upstate New York, Tim is en-route to Taipei via a brief over-night stop on the West Coast. Both of us will be your hosts this week as bookends one East and one West. We are hoping that all of you in-between will join in. An introduction of our topic and guests' biographies is coming soon. Stay tuned. Renate ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] empyre: circumventing and disrupting norms in art and in advertising
Thanks Tim for mentioning the media theorist, Bernard Steiglers, writing on the virulent unstoppable market of a web of data that we acknowledge today is often times subliminally positioned within the proliferation of value. In Viral Economy Baudrillard writes about biological virus, terrorism, the stock market, company takeovers and specifically art as contagious. art, which is now everywhere subjected to the problem of the fake, the authentic, the copy, the clone, the simulation-a veritable contagion that de-stabilizes aesthetic values, causing them to lose their immunity as well- and simultaneously undergoing the delirious, speculative bidding wars of the art market. It is no longer a market in fact; it is a centrifugal proliferation of value that corresponds exactly to the metastases of a body irradiated by dough. While over the next four weeks we will highlight the art-practices of those who circumvent, disrupt and critique the data streams of the virulent art market and those of advertising messages, images, videos and all the rest, Ive linked a few historical marketing campaigns whose high-profile advertising agencies circumvented and disrupted old norms of image mass-marketing. These advertising messages were crafted to be personal and contemporary and were most times directed at specialized, targeted audiences. At first glance these messages were not obvious as advertisements using gaming strategies, animation, avatars, You Tube, Flickr, blogging, among many others. In all cases advertisers banked on the fact that their target customer would share the information with her own social networks. And indeed it worked. One of the early examples of this appropriation from 2001 is Burger Kings Subservient Chicken. While based on a series of television ads the online, viral marketing campaign was disguised as an interactive gaming site featuring a person in a chicken suit who interactively playacts the viewers typed directives out as if they were both at home playing a charades like game. Other segments of the online site feature a casino game and a chicken mask you can construct and wear. The campaign was so successful it ran until 2007. http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html Cadburys Gorilla campaign was disguised as a music video in 2007. Launched on You Tube after the company was facing huge losses due to a batch of salmonella tainted chocolate. The You Tube video received 50,000 hits during the first week of viewing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnzFRV1LwIo The Total Blender ads are featured on an internet site as infomercials for the entry level Blendtec Blender. Disguised as science fair lab experiments that you should not perform in your own home the ongoing series has blended everything from laser pointers and silly putty to an I phone. The other side of the site provides a variety of items that are safe to blend at home such as coffee and chicken soup. My favorite blends glow sticks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l69Vi5IDc0g While introduced on You Tube the phrase Will it blend? has become an internet meme. The Blendtec Company now not only sells their blenders but merchandise based on the infomercials star and originator, Tom Dickson. Dickson himself has become a celebrity in his own right appearing on late night TV and the history channel. The site as of June of this past year boasted of 83,238,033 views, an average of 967,884 views. The Viral Factory is notorious for using mockumentary film or computer generated animation and viral seeding for advertising a promotion. They have even emulated pornography as in their animation for Diesel, the London based clothing firm who was celebrating their thirtieth birthday. We created a film titled SFW XXX to globally celebrate Diesels 30th birthday. The charming viral featured clips from a raft of 80s porn films that we cunningly censored with humorous CGI. Diesel consumers should continue to expect the unexpected. Dont watch this one with your kids around! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p6pSi6x46Y On that note Ill say good-bye for now. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] empyre: circumventing and disrupting norms in art and in advertising
Hi Shervin and welcome to empyre soft-skinned space. Your examples are ones that use social networking in the physical world to create brand marketing. Many of the examples that I chose in my last post did have physically based elements as well that led to the internet sensations that they became. Your post reminded me of several historical examples of artists using physical social networking and the media to display confusions between what Tim and I called in our recent talk designing vs. de-signing. I'm thinking about the early networking of the Gorilla Girls who posted thousands of posters in the 1980's to critically engage the art world about gender politics. Or perhaps Muntadas' Limousine from 1991 that promoted anti-capitalist slogans screened on the windows of a black stretch limousine. As the limo was driven around the urban center, an obvious symbol of corporate wealth and power, projections displayed de-contextualized ads, headlines, or political slogans that were aimed at reformulating the discourse of popular culture. Or the work of Critical Art Ensemble who in 1994 in their project Useless Technology designed pseudo advertisements for hi-tech weaponry and appliances for a newspaper insert that was inserted into Sunday editions of major urban newspapers. Or even Nancy Nisbet's exchange project, where she trucked the entire contents of her personal belongings each with an RFID tag across the borders of Canada, the United States, and Mexico to test the cross border laws on exchange. These examples used analog networking and/or media to deconstruct and comment on the system that the project was embedded in. The projects were playful exchanges with critically hard political messaging. The boundaries between artist, designer and critical activist seems to be more slippery than it used to be in this economically precarious time. Im hoping we will be able to talk about this over the next few weeks. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Introducing Week 3 on empyre: Viral Economies: Hactivating Design
Many thanks to Zach, Daniel and David for being our guests this week on empyre. I'm am hoping that they will continue to participate throughout the rest of the month as their schedules permit. As the discussion threads continue on grids and viruses I'd like to introduce Art Jones, Ricardo Dominguez, and Brooke Singer as our guests this week. They are great friends and have all visited us in Upstate New York here at Cornell. I have attach their biographies below and look forward hearing about their recent work. Art Jones is an image/sound manipulator working with film, digital video, and hybrid media. His films/videos, CD-ROMs, live audio/videomixes and installations often concern the inter-relationships between popular music, visual culture, history, and power. As a VJ he has performed with a variety of musicians and artists, including Soundlab, DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, DJ T-Ina, Amiri Baraka, Femmes with Fatal Breaks, and Alec Empire and Phillip Virus. He has completed a trilogy of music videos and a CD-ROM, and continues to perform at various locations in Chicago and New York. He is from the Bronx and lives and works in and between Chicago and New York. Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. He is a co-Director of Thing (http://post.thing.net) an ISP for artists and activists. His recent Electronic Disturbance Theater project with Brett Stabaum, Micha Cardenas and Amy Sara Carroll the *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (http://bang.calit2.net/xborder ) - (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border was the winner of Transnational Communities Award, this award was funded by *Cultural Contact*, Endowment for Culture Mexico - U.S. and handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico), also funded by CALIT2 and two Transborder Awards from the UCSD Center for the Humanities. Ricardo is an Associate Professor at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2 (http://bang.calit2.net). He also co-founder of *particle group* with artists Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll (http://pitmm.net). *particle group* has a new project archive entitled nanosfÉRICA at (http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/particle-group-intro) and you can also find a video meditation by EDT and *particle group entitled, (nano_Garage(s): Speculations about (Open Fabbing) here: http://medialabprado.es/article/nanogarajes_especulaciones_sobre_fabbing_abierto Brooke Singer is a media artist who lives in New York City. Her work blurs the borders between science, technology, politics and arts practices. She works across media to provide entry into important social issues that are often characterized as specialized to a general public. She has exhibited at the Warhol Museum of Art, The Banff Centre, Neuberger Museum of Art,Diverseworks, Exit Art, FILE Electronic Festival, Sonar Music and Multimedia Festival, The Whitney Artport, among others. Recent awards and commissions include a New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) Individual Artist award, a Headlands Center for Arts residency, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) award, a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship and an Eyebeam and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Social Sculpture commission. She is currently Associate Professor of New Media at Purchase College, State University of New York, and co-founder of the art, technology and activist group Preemptive Media. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Critical Movement Practice, Viral Communication, and Design
Dear empyre, I just received a pix from Ashley Ferro-Murray at the University of Berkeley. Those of you on empyre will recall that she was a guest during our discussion on Critical Movement Practice. She is in the streets right now with many other graduate students, staff, and faculty from her department as well as many others in the humanities, rhetoric, film. Her department of Performance Studies has been supporting other students and staff who also went on strike a few weeks ago. The image reveals fully geared security who appear armed. She reports that some students are taking over a building as I write this and one student was accosted and beaten by one of the security team. The factory model of their political action has been generated by viral organization and communication that makes their efforts engaging, contagious, and efficient. How ironic as I sit here at my computer thinking about a new design rampage that seems to be brewing rampantly in the visual arts here in NY within the art world and our world at the university. Generated and I think influenced from digital technology and design initiatives, this shift appears to me at least to be void of models that engage politics and the economic crisis. It is the space that is situated between political and social action, viral communication, and design spectacle that prompted our discussion this month on empyre. Wishing I could be on the West side of the country right now. But I'm thankful for email, pix messages, and facebook which places me virtually there for now. In solidarity, Renate Hi Micha, yes, thank you for sharing those precious links. At UCSD, very few students, faculty and staff that I've talked to knew about or support the strike do. Myself and a handful of other faculty, staff and students are striking, but is the very idea of a strike not viral but more based in monolothic constituencies and factory models of labor? No, I just think that after 3-4 decades of resting on dreams of unabated growth Americans (and Californians in particular) need to be re-educated and reawakened as to what it means to lose one's job, as to what it means to fight for it, and what it means to risk of losing your job for defending it. So thank you for taking on this rather humongous task ;-) To me it is not a matter of virality but of culture. People in Latin America, Asia, Europe and all over the world keep going on strike for defending their jobs, demanding higher wages, security on the workplace, etc. It is only in this country that three decades of brainwashing have led to the obliteration of historic memory (the cancellation of May1st being the most notable example), and to the perception that going on strike is somehow out of fashion. In actual fact, there exists a growing global movement to defend public education, and to build an entirely different model of knowledge sharing. You are probably familiar with this site: http://www.edu-factory.org which reports the news of 15 arrests at UCLA: http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=240:students-arrested-at-uclacatid=34:strugglesItemid=53 and whose picture eloquently show the response of public authorities to this growing mobilization. Perhaps the spreading occupations are more viral? I wonder about this as I start going on strike tomorrow and join actions at UCSD... Well, it is not up to me to say that strikes and occupations are just two sides of the same coin. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Hactivating Design
research demonstrates that some of these pollutants, even at very low doses, can cause serious health problems. Previously it was thought that decreasing the concentration of a substance would mitigate its impact. Dilution is no longer seen as the pollution solution. Timing of exposure is crucial and sensitivity is particularly high when exposure occurs in utero or early development. For many years, cancer was the primary health concern. Today, laboratory studies and wildlife observations demonstrate that chemical dangers are extensive. Chemical exposures disrupt endocrine, reproductive, immune and nervous systems as well as contribute to cancer and other diseases. In its first scientific statement published in 2009, The Endrocrine Society -- an international body with 14,000 members founded in 1916 -- stated: Results from animal models, human clinical observations, and epidemiological studies converge to implicate EDCs [endocrine- disrupting chemicals] as a significant concern to public health. The United States government does not require manufacturers to prove a chemical is safe before use and companies generally do not voluntarily do so. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has only required testing for some 200 of the 90,000 chemicals already in circulation. In response, many groups and concerned citizens are promoting the precautionary principle, which states that the manufacture of certain products should cease even when there are only hypothetical and untested risks. This places the burden of proof on the industry to show that a substance is safe rather than on society to demonstrate there is a specific risk. Some scientists are creating new frameworks, citing the failure of the scientific method alone to sufficiently protect human health and ecological effects. Funtowicz and Ravetz, for example, have introduced postnormal science, which is useful when facts are uncertain, the stakes are high and decisions are urgent. These scientists encourage dialogue and participation with a full range of stakeholders since scientific objectivity cannot provide all that is needed for decision-making on high, risk issues. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Demand Nothing, Occupy Everything? California is burning ....
Many thanks to Brooke Singer (US), Ricardo Dimenguez (US) and our subscribers whose threads on viral communication, trans-border activism and physical movement practice were expecially relevant to the activities so pronounced in the state of California this past week. I was working with an undergraduate student yesterday who was complaining that he and his peers participate in activism virtually online and after reading Malcolm X he was if that was not a complacent place and space to exist in. I was happy to be able to show him the links that Ricardo, Ashley, David and Cara shared with us this past week. Week #4 on Viral Economies and Hactivating Design we welcome Trebor Scholz who organized the recent conference in NYC, The Internet as Playground and Factory and Machiko Kusahara who attended a recent conference here at Cornell University on Networks and Mobilities. Their respective biographies are below. After their introductory remarks I'm hoping that guests and contributors from previous weeks will join our subscribers in closing out the November discussion. Week # 4 Trebor Scholz (US) and Machiko Kusahara (Japan) Trebor Scholz teaches in the Department of Culture and Media Studies at Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts in New York City. He graduated from the Art Academy in Dresden (Germany), University College London (UK), The Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, the Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in Zürich (Switzerland) and The University of Plymouth (UK). Over the last two years, Scholz' work was comprised of writing, teaching, and conference organization. Dr. Trebor Scholz' research interests focus on social media, especially in education, art, and media activism (specifically outside the United States and Europe). His artwork was shown at several Biennials and he has contributed numerous book chapters and articles in the area of Internet Studies. Scholz presented at many dozen conferences worldwide. In 2004, he founded the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC). Its mailing list, which he moderates, is one of the leading discussion forums in network culture. Autonomedia published The Art of Free Cooperation of which he is the co-editor in 2007. Scholz convened several major conferences including Kosova: Carnival in the Eye of the Storm, Free Cooperation (with G. Lovink), Share Widely, and Situated Technologies (with M. Shepard and O. Khan) and The Internet as Playground and Factory (2009). He is currently working on a monograph and an anthology on digital labor. http://digitallabor.org/ Machiko Kusahara is a scholar in media art, digital media culture and media history who is a professor at Waseda University, Tokyo, and currently a visiting scholar at the Art/Sci Center at UCLA. She came into the field of digital media in early 1980s as a curator, critic and theorist in computer graphics, co-curating and writing on the SIGGRAPH Traveling Art Show in Tokyo in 1985. Since then she curated, juried, organized and wrote internationally in digital art. She was also involved in launching the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. Her major publications in English include: Telerobotics and Art -Presence, Absence, and Knowledge in Telerobotics Art (The Robot in the Garden, MIT Press 2000), From Ukiyo-e to Mobile Phone Screens - A Japanese Perspective (Migrating Images, House of World Cultures 2004), They Are Born to Play: Japanese Visual Entertainment from Nintento to Mobile Phones (Art Inquiry, 2004), Panorama Craze in Meiji Japan (Panorama Phenomenon 2006), Device Art: A New Approach in Understanding Japanese Contemporary Media Art (MediaArtHistories 2007), Device Art: Media Art Meets Mass Production (Digital by Design, 2008). Currently Prof. Kusahara's major activities are on two related fields: Device Art and Japanese history of visual entertainment from the 19th century. Device Art is a project that involves ten artists and researchers in Japan that focuses on developing and theorizing a new form of media art that connects art, technology, design and products, with five-year grant from JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency). The interplay between art, technology, culture and society has been the theme of her research. During this academic year Prof. Kusahara will be organizing Gadget OK!, a Device Art Symposium at UCLA. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Chindogu and re-design
Hi Kevin, What were you thinking of specifically here? Got any links? I'm curious... - The nineties saw a string of ludic interfaces in early net.art, yet many of these now read as cold as any reflexive, modernist compositional exercise. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Chindogu and re-design
Chris, That was actually Kevin's post not mine.I was also curious hence my post. Hope you saw Kevin's most recent post.R Hi Renate - I'm intrigued by your use of the descriptive phrases below: ludic Interfaces as well as now read as cold as any reflexive modernist compositional exercise. If possible, I'd appreciate you furthering this position - Many thanks - Chris On Nov 28, 2009, at 10:14 AM, Renate Ferro wrote: Hi Kevin, What were you thinking of specifically here? Got any links? I'm curious... - The nineties saw a string of ludic interfaces in early net.art, yet many of these now read as cold as any reflexive, modernist compositional exercise. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Viral Economies: Hactivating Design extended into December
Dear empyre subscribers, I want to thank all of our guests and subscribers for participating in the November discussion Viral Economies: Hactivating Design. Our December moderator was unable to organize this month's discussion point due to unforeseen circumstances so Tim and I have decided to extend our viral discussion into the first two weeks of December. We will take the last two weeks off for a December break. To enable the discussion to go forward we will be introducing new guests tomorrow and a few more next week. So stay tuned. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Two new guests.....
of becoming Las Gagas ricas y famous and just be one more poll dancing trans-national threat. Meanwhile here in New Aztlán, otherwise known as North County Times we have entered into a temporal cold war: Here's help crossing the border illegally but safely http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/columnists/vandoorn/article_6c7c6ca2-89dc-55a8-a206-b19bd80e657f.html This vato say SI! But, just click away it all become Fear of the nanocommunist Planet! http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/strickland/article_d06ba121-0a35-5632-b278-0b2df98cd9ff.html What can we say CCG likes their nanonuts con un poco de programable matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B6NJy9d7Vo Which by the way is playing at the Kid's Museum of Art in SD! No one is safe now! Ha..Ha..Ha!!! Bueno much mas to tell but we have to go hit the dance flores they are playing our song. Abrazos grandes, CCG P.S. The pome of the day just for you c...@as: DUBLINERS La isla que se repite: dub liners, el Caribe. Derridian hospitality, Joycean as a Yes, resounding. por la doctor carroll http://vimeo.com/6108310 -- Ricardo Dominguez Associate Professor Hellman Fellow Visual Arts Department, UCSD http://visarts.ucsd.edu/ Principal Investigator, CALIT2 http://calit2.net Co-Chair gall...@calit2 http://gallery.calit2.net CRCA Researcher http://crca.ucsd.edu/ Ethnic Studies Affiliate http://www.ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/ Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies Affiliate http://cilas.ucsd.edu Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Board Member http://hemi.nyu.edu University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0436 Phone: (619) 322-7571 e-mail: rrdoming...@ucsd.edu Project sites: site: http://gallery.calit2.net site: http://pitmm.net site: http://bang.calit2.net site: http://www.thing.net/~rdom blog:http://post.thing.net/blog/rdom ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] introducing Kevin Hamilton and Christina McPhee this week!
Dear empyre subscribers, Dear empyre subscribers, A very special thanks to Patty Zimmermann for posting her collaborative thoughts and writings on viral witnessing. Also thanks to her collaborator, Sam Gregory. The posts on viral witnessing and human rights advocacy via the media lent an important aspect to our discussion this past week. I would like to invite Patty and Sam to stay tuned this week as we complete our discussion. Also, to all of the other guests we have had tis month I hope they will also join in the discussion during this closing week. This week on empyre I would like to introduce Kevin Hamilton who was our guest most recently at the Networks and Mobilities conference at Cornell in October. He not only shared his research with the conference but also gave an artist's talk and led a workshop for the Department of Art. Also we welcome Christina McPhee who you all know as an empyre moderator and empyre online collaborator. We are thrilled that they both agreed to close out this our discussion of Viral Economies: Hactivating Design. Below are their biographies. My apologies to both of them for making this introduction so late in the day. Kevin Hamilton is an Associate Professor and Chair of New Media in the School of Art Design. He has exhibited in galleries and public spaces across Europe and North America, lectures internationally, and publishes on topics such as memory and monument, creativity and collaboration, and interface history. He's currently working on a commission for the State of Illinois, an artwork about the history of cybernetics, to be displayed in this campus' Institute for Genomic Biology. Christina McPhee (central coast California/San Francisco) is a media and visual artist. Her work is involved with the poetics of post-digital abstraction and environmental crisis. She works in drawing, photomontage and video. Recent video installations and screenings in 2009 include VIBA Buenos Aires (November), Cinema by the Bay, San Francisco (October), Chapman College/Guggenheim Gallery Los Angeles (for Because the Night) (October); ISEA, Belfast (July)'; Pace Digital Gallery, New York (April); and Videoformes 09, Clermont-Ferrand (March) . Drawings and photomontage from Tesserae of Venus', considering the future of carbon atmospheres on Earth, showed at Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (October-December 2009) and were featured at the NADA fair/ Art Miami with Silverman Gallery. New critical writing about her film work appears with Sharon Lyn Tay's new book, Women on the Edge : Twelve Political Film Practices New York: Macmillan and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 . BOMB Magazine has published a new interview by Melissa Potter with Christina McPhee online at http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=5307 http://us.macmillan.com/womenontheedgetwelvepoliticalfilmpractices http://silverman-gallery.com/exhibition/view/1770 http://christinamcphee.net http://naxsmash.net http://www.vimeo.com/christinamcphee Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] a digital pause until January 1st--Happy Holidays from empyre.
Dear empyre guests, Thanks to all of our discussants and subscribers for contributing to our topic for November and December, Vial Economies: Hactivating Design: Dan Lichtman (UK), Brooke Singer (US), Ricardo Dimenguez (US), Zach Blas (US), Machiko Kusahar (Japan), Trebor Scholz (US) Patricia Zimmermann (US), Christina McPhee (US), and Kevin Hamilton (US) We take time out now to wish all of our subscribers and friends a very Happy Holiday season. At the beginning of January in 2009 empyre hosted many of your thoughts entitled Digital Futures of 2009. Most amazingly the Digital Futures of 2009 have now past and we take this time to off to ponder about the potentialities of the Digital Futures of 2010. -empyre soft-skinned space will be taking the remainder of December off to rest and rejuvenate. We look forward to January 2010 when our moderator Nicholas Ruiz will be intoducing the January discussion. Our best to all of you, Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] second try
Johanna et al, Weirdly my first post did not go through so I'll try again. Writing from upstate NY's very snowy winterland and wishing all of our empyre subscribers and guests a very Happy New Year! in regards to your post most specifically snip... Activist art is a different matter, though it walks a thin line between patronizing benevolence and community empowerment, it can be an agent of actual change, creating cultural capital and symbolic force. I'm hoping you were able to follow November and early December's discussion on empyre Viral Communication: Hactivating Design Many of our subscribers and guests such as Zach Blas, Ricardo Dominguez, Brooke Singer among others talked about how their work, writing and actions work within yet against the system they create in as a way to implode or critique politically or socially. Actually I'll pull out Zach Blas' post most specifically as he describes his Queer Technologies project: To put it simply: QT starts from within the capitalist system so that it may exploit its flows, distributions, and deployments in order to actually expand outside of it and corrupt it. QT has always been interested in the Deleuzian notion of accelerating a system to the point of implosion. This seems to speak to the directionalities of resistant practices, that is, QT thinks it is more productive, more subversive--in fact, it generally increases the stakes--to not primarily practice a purely oppositional resistance. Of course, when this is needed and/or called for, Queer Technologies does not hesitate to perform in this manner. By using technologies that buy into capitalism to exploit capitalism or to use complicity as a way to work back against it. Is this counterproductive? Often times it can be humorous, thought provoking, etc but is it counterproductive? Does it defeat the point? Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks to Christina McPhee
The online community of -empyre soft-skinned space bids adieu to our collaborator, Christina McPhee, who has decided to step aside from moderating -empyre- after years of tireless service. Christina has been a moderator of -empyre- since its earliest years (the list was instigated in 2002 by Melinda Rackham). Succeeding Melinda, Christina served tirelessly as the managing moderator of -empyre- for many years until spring 2008, when she passed the baton to Tim and Renate. During that time, Christina helped to spearhead the three moderated conversations in 2006 and 2007 that were featured as part of the documenta 12 Magazine Project. The list discussionshttps://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2006-March: Is Modernity our Antiquity?; https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2006-JulyBare Life; and What is to be done (education)? were produced and edited by Christina.Last spring, 2009, she was responsible for arranging the three -empyre- scholarships to the Anderson Art Ranch in Colorado. She has been one of the corner stones of our listserv and we will miss her moderating energies, creative ideas, and dedication to -empyre-. While we look forward to receiving her lively posts as a subscriber, we wish to take time out today to thank her for her loyalty, her energy, her creative inspiration, and her dedication to the moderator team. We will announce February's topic later in the day, but for now want to pause to extend our thanks and best wishes to Christina. Christina McPhee: Biography Christina McPhee (central coast California/San Francisco) is a media and visual artist. Her work is involved with the poetics of post-digital abstraction and environmental crisis. She works in drawing, photomontage and video. Recent video installations and screenings in 2009 include VIBA Buenos Aires (November), Cinema by the Bay, San Francisco (October), Chapman College/Guggenheim Gallery Los Angeles (for Because the Night) (October); ISEA, Belfast (July)'; Pace Digital Gallery, New York (April); and Videoformes 09, Clermont-Ferrand (March) . Drawings and photomontage from Tesserae of Venus', considering the future of carbon atmospheres on Earth, showed at Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (October-December 2009) and were featured at the NADA fair/ Art Miami with Silverman Gallery. New critical writing about her film work appears with Sharon Lyn Tay's new book, Women on the Edge : Twelve Political Film Practices New York: Macmillan and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 . BOMB Magazine has published a new interview by Melissa Potter with Christina McPhee online athttp://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=5307http://bombsite.powweb.com/?p=5307 http://us.macmillan.com/womenontheedgetwelvepoliticalfilmpracticeshttp://us.macmillan.com/womenontheedgetwelvepoliticalfilmpractices http://silverman-gallery.com/exhibition/view/1770http://silverman-gallery.com/exhibition/view/1770 http://christinamcphee.nethttp://christinamcphee.net http://naxsmash.nethttp://naxsmash.net http://www.vimeo.com/christinamcpheehttp://www.vimeo.com/christinamcphee -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Managing 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-] February on -empyre Theorizing Animation: Content and Context
February on empyre soft-skinned space: Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray with invited discussants Thomas LaMarre (CA), Lev Manovich (UK), Susan Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK), Eric Patrick (US), Richard Wright (UK), Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), with others to be announced. Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context http://www.subtle.net/empyre Animated worlds are proliferating globally. In consideration of what seems like an explosion of online and museum exhibitions celebrating animation, we would like to spend the month considering the intersection between art, animation, and theory. While some of our guests theorize cinematic interventions in animation (timely given the success of Avatar) others create, curate, and ponder the experimental narratives and animated paintings that have captured the curiosity of the art world. What are the advantages of creating and thinking through animation? How do real worlds and virtual worlds overlap? What about the trend to feature animation in museum contexts, often at the expense of digitally interactive work which might be more expense to mount and opaque to witness? Can a critical distinction be made between blockbuster animation and boutique creations, often with more poignant narrative content? Earlier this fall, Tim marveled at the extent to which animation was featured in the Asia Art Biennial in Taiwan, with fascinating pieces by the Israeli filmmaker, Ari Folman and the Russian collective AES+F, as well as a separate show of Korean animation at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. That is now followed by the Animamix Biennial-Visual Attract and Attack now ongoing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taiwan. The cross platform solo exhibitions also have caught the eye of much of the museum public. Tim and Renate visited Sadie Benning's (USA) essay on queer sexuality in Pause Play at the Whitney Museum in New York and look forward to William Kentridge's (South Africa) Five Themes exhibition, a survey of almost thirty-years of work including many animated films, that opened last season at the MOMA San Francisco and will be at MOMA New York at the end of this month. Kentridge's work explores themes of colonialism and apartheid often through lyrical and comedic lenses that sometimes poke fun at the artist himself. His work merges the real world into animation and back again. Just this week Cornell hosted an extravaganza of The Quay Brothers film work with an exhibition of their set design. It was exciting to hear them talk about their work in several on campus forums. This month we invite our guests and subscribers to engage critically with the development of animation. We will be inviting artists and theorists to consider the concepts and context of contemporary global animation. We look forward to this months international discussion of all things animated. Renate and Tim Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] visualization as the new language of theory
Lev, Thanks Lev and Tom for your introductions to your work and the links. I wanted to ask Lev how he felt the data in Cultural Analysis manipulation differed from the concerns of modernist, formalist art criticism where line, value, texture, or color were analyzed? In what ways is the data different and how does the computer manipulation enhance our understanding of say Rothko's work using the first links example. The other thing that popped into my mind was an observation I made a few Sunday afternoons ago. It is not uncommon that the sports networks are on in our home especially during Super Bowl playoff season. NFL Fox football has a moving graphic animation of a he man football robot named Cleatus of all things that is cast off the frame of the playing screen. Cleatus dances, points to interesting items on the screen, and entertains sports enthusiasts reminding me that cultural art theorists may need to investigate contemporary typography and graphics but sex, gender, race and politics desperately needs to be remembered in deconstructing todays popular culture and tv graphics...moving or stil!. What do you think? Can post-modernist theoretical concerns be a part of new design? This is a question that I've been wrestling with in light of curriculum changes within the university where there is a resurgence of interest in graphics, typography and animation. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] design vs. animation
Dear empyre, Our discussion this month is on animation and from my perspective animation is a very broad and all encompassing medium and includes not only high corporate production (disney, pixar) but also independent artistic production. That said what fascinates me is that there seem to be two, maybe three trajectories of the discussion so far. So I post this question to all of you (I think this points to Tim's last post about film theory) what's the advantage of theorizing about the moving animation as opposed to the still frame? What does it mean to take images that were meant to be still, a painting for example, and activate the still image via data visualization? What are the implications of studying the haptic flow of the moving image and its affect? Can we come up with some kind of theoretical agreement about its effect on the maker, the theorist and the viewer? I think that the trend in Japan that Tom describes is one that warrants some time to talk about. snip It is often said by scholars in Japan that character design has replaced character animation; in fact, they say, there is so much emphasis on design and typography that animation itself is vanishing. It has been my observation that in watching most particularly art students, their obsession with making obscures their understanding of what is between and certainly of what is overall received by the viewer. In observing the computing students working on gaming, their obsession with the programmatic aspects clouds their visions of the image and also the moving images overall affect on the viewer. For this reason I see the process of animation a multi-disciplinary venture. Just look at the credits of the movie Avatar and the orchestration of the cast of thousands! Thanks Tom for the link to toL's Tamala 2010...I'll share it with my students tomorrow as well as your glorious description of the theory of culture and flow! Best to all of you. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] visualization as the new language of theory
. Farley, Rebecca. How Do You Play? M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.5 (1998). http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9812/how.php. Ren, Hai. Subculture as a Neo-Liberal Conduct of Life in Leisure and Consumption Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge 10 (Spring 2005): http://www.rhizomes.net/issue10/ren.htm. Ward, Paul. Animation Studies, Disciplinarity and Discursivity. Reconstruction, 3.2 (Spring 2003): http://reconstruction.eserver.org/032/ward.htm. Not just for children's television: Anime and the changing editing practices of American television networks / Laurie Cubbison http://reconstruction.eserver.org/082/cubbison.shtml Animated realities: the animated film, documentary, realism / Paul Ward http://reconstruction.eserver.org/082/ward.shtml Technological Determinism and the Poisoned Apple: The Case of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs / Sean Chadwell http://reconstruction.eserver.org/082/chadwell.shtml ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] animetic machines/assemblage/compositing/potential forms
as a space/field/concept of continuous machinic variation. While I've tended to foreground the more baroque and cinematic aspects of the fold in my writing, your post and recent book sensitize me to the fact that much greater attention should be paid to the role played by the legacy and conceptuality of animation in the development of the digital fold, particularly within the space of cinema. Thanks ever so much for such a cogent summary of the very complex argument you launch in The Anime Machine. Best, Tim -- Timothy Murray Director, Society for the Humanities http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/ Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu Professor of Comparative Literature and English A. D. White House Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Timothy Murray Director, Society for the Humanities http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/ Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu Professor of Comparative Literature and English A. D. White House Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks to Lev Manovich and Tom Lamarre
Thanks Tom and Lev, Tim and I appreciate your discussion this week and are thankful that you gave us a peek into your work. Many thanks to both of you and we hope that you will chime in throughout the next few weeks during our discussion. Best to you both. Renate and Tim Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] An overview of our discussion on Animation
Here is the entire line up of guests as well as an overview for anyone who might be joining our discussion late this month. You can access this past weeks discussion as well as months and years past by going to our archive at https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ At the left a list of the months appears. Then the posts can be organized by date, author, etc. Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray with invited discussants Thomas LaMarre (CA), Lev Manovich (UK), Suzanne Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK), Eric Patrick (US), Richard Wright (UK), Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), and Melanie Beisswenger (SG) Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context http://www.subtle.net/empyre Animated worlds are proliferating globally. In consideration of what seems like an explosion of online and museum exhibitions celebrating animation, we would like to spend the month considering the intersection between art, animation, and theory. While some of our guests theorize cinematic interventions in animation (timely given the success of Avatar) others create, curate, and ponder the experimental narratives and animated paintings that have captured the curiosity of the art world. What are the advantages of creating and thinking through animation? How do real worlds and virtual worlds overlap? What about the trend to feature animation in museum contexts, often at the expense of digitally interactive work which might be more expense to mount and opaque to witness? Can a critical distinction be made between blockbuster animation and boutique creations, often with more poignant narrative content? Earlier this fall, Tim marveled at the extent to which animation was featured in the Asia Art Biennial in Taiwan, with fascinating pieces by the Israeli filmmaker, Ari Folman and the Russian collective AES+F, as well as a separate show of Korean animation at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. That is now followed by the Animamix Biennial-Visual Attract and Attack now ongoing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taiwan. The cross platform solo exhibitions also have caught the eye of much of the museum public. Tim and Renate visited Sadie Benning's (USA) essay on queer sexuality in Pause Play at the Whitney Museum in New York and look forward to William Kentridge's (South Africa) Five Themes exhibition, a survey of almost thirty-years of work including many animated films, that opened last season at the MOMA San Francisco and will be at MOMA New York at the end of this month. Kentridge's work explores themes of colonialism and apartheid often through lyrical and comedic lenses that sometimes poke fun at the artist himself. His work merges the real world into animation and back again. Just this week Cornell hosted an extravaganza of The Quay Brothers film work with an exhibition of their set design. It was exciting to hear them talk about their work in several on campus forums. This month we invite our guests and subscribers to engage critically with the development of animation. We will be inviting artists and theorists to consider the concepts and context of contemporary global animation. This months February edition of empyre Theorizing Animation: Content and Context is moderated by Renate Ferro (US) www.renateferro.net artist-conceptual/new media, Department of Art, Cornell University, and Tim Murray (US), Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell University. Week 1: Thomas Lamarre (CA) and Lev Manovich (UK) Thomas Lamarre is a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and associate in Communications Studies at McGill University. He has written three books on the history of media and material culture in Japan. The first, Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, centres on the formation of inter-imperial media networks linking 9th century Japan to kingdoms in Korea and China, showing how calligraphic styles and poetic exchanges served to ground a cosmopolitical order. The second, Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Junichir#333; on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics, looks at how cinema in 1910s and 1920s Japan radically transformed urban experiences of space and time, resulting in a new image of world and world history wherein Japan was reconfigured as the Oriental subject and object of empire. The third, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, explores how animation technologies spurred the formation of distinctive lineages of technological thought in Japan of the 1980s and 1990s. With funding from SSHRC, he is currently finishing a book entitled Otaku Movement: Capitalism and Fan Media (under contract with MIT) that explores fan activities, transformations in labour, and cultural activism in contemporary Japan. He is a participant in a CFI grant to construct at Moving Image Research Laboratory. Thomas Lamarre (Department of East Asian Studies, McGill University) is a specialist in Japanese history, literature, cinema
[-empyre-] Welcome Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward
Tim and I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting the Quay Brothers here at Cornell a couple of weeks ago. It is at that time they recommended Suzanne Buchan as someone they considered to be an expert in Animation Research. We are delighted to welcome her. We are also happy to welcome Paul Ward whose name was sent to us by Simon Biggs. Paul's expertise in documentary, television and animation are sure to add a new dimension to our discussion thus far. Both Suzanne and Paul are new subscribers to empyre and we are hoping that all of our subscribers will welcome them with comments and responses to Theorizing Animation: Content and Context Suzanne and Paul will be making introductory posts soon! Thanks again. Renate Week 2: Suzanne Buchan (UK), Paul Ward (UK) Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics and Director of the Animation Research Centre at the University for Creative Arts, England (www.ucreative.ac.uk/arc). She is the Editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com/). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on aesthetics and theory of the manipulated moving mage in animation, digital culture, and experimental film. Publications include Trickraum : Spacetricks (Christoph Merian Publishers, 2005) that accompanied the eponymous exhibition, Animated 'Worlds' (John Libbey, 2005), and The Quay Brothers: Into the Metaphysical Playroom will be published this year by University of Minnesota Press. Paul Ward is a Principal Lecturer in the School of Media at the Arts University College at Bournemouth, UK. He teaches on the BA (Hons) Animation Production course and contributes to a cross-disciplinary MA course. His research interests are in the fields of animation and documentary film and television. Published work includes articles for the journals animation: an interdisciplinary journal, Animation Journal, and the Historical Journal for Film, Radio and Television, as well as numerous anthology essays. Paul is also the author of Documentary: The Margins of Reality (Wallflower Press, 2005) and TV Genres: Animation (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming; co-authored with Nichola Dobson). He serves on the Editorial Boards of animation: an interdisciplinary journal and Animation Studies and is a member of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College with special interest in animation and documentary research proposals. Paul is the current President of the Society for Animation Studies. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward
My apologies to Suzanne Buchan who would like you to have this bio. We look forward to both Suzanne and Paul Ward's introductory posts. Sorry about that. Renate Suzanne Buchan is Professor of Animation Aesthetics and Director of the Animation Research Centre (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/arc) at the University for Creative Arts, England (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk), where she also has the role of College Research Professor. She is Editor of animation: an interdisciplinary journal (http://anm.sagepub.com/). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on aesthetics and theory of the manipulated moving mage in animation, digital culture, and experimental film. She has a PhD from the University of Zurich and has been Guest Professor at Stuttgart University for Applied Sciences, University of British Columbia Film Department and most recently at 'Boundary Crossings' at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Founding member and Co-Director 1995-2003 of the Fantoche festival in Switzerland (www.fantoche.ch), she is active as a film, exhibition and conference curator including Pervasive Animation, Tate Modern 2007 (webarchive: http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/37995738001#media:/media/37995738001/24922396001context:/channel/most-popular). A founding member of Cinema and Media Studies special interest group Ex-FM, Buchan has published on a range of topics, including spatial politics, animation spectatorship, animation curatorship and James Joyce. Books include Trickraum : Spacetricks (Christoph Merian Publishers, 2005) (http://www.museum-gestaltung.ch/Htmls/Verkauf/E_Publikationen.html) that accompanied the eponymous 2007 exhibition in Zurich, Animated 'Worlds' (John Libbey, 2005) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Animated-Worlds-Suzanne-Buchan/dp/0861966619) , and The Quay Brothers: Into a Metaphysical Playroom will be published this year by University of Minnesota Press. She is currently preparing an AFI Reader on animation theory. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] posted for Suzanne Buchan
, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie: http://channel.tate.org.uk/media/37995738001#media:/media/37995738001/24922396001context:/channel/most-popular Now a University! One of Europes leading arts and design institutions, the University for the Creative Arts builds on a proud tradition of creative arts education spanning 150 years. Our campuses at Canterbury, Epsom, Farnham, Maidstone and Rochester are home to more than 6,000 students from 76 countries studying on courses in fashion, graphics, design, media, fine art and architecture. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of the University . This message may contain confidential information and will be protected by copyright. If you receive it in error please notify us, delete it and do not make use of it, or copy it. Any reply may be read by the recipient to whom you send it and others within the University. Although we aim to use efficient virus checking procedures, the University accepts no liability for viruses and recipients should use their own virus checking procedures. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] high/low art economies
, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A20531611.) This comment is symptomatic of the common misconceptions of 'animation', as the Parasol Units selection of artists merges just animation with art, perhaps, in reversal, challenging in its own way the high/low divide. The concern is that the terms elides some (of course not all of it is art) animation from art economies and I agree with what you write, that Like documentary, another term that is utterly straightforward to some people, utterly contentious to others (with the truth being that, really, most people find it somewhere in between; which is to say, a useful term to describe what they do/watch/make/critique on a day-to-day basis). My critique of the term is not that it is pejorative - rather that in (many) people's mind it doesn't differentiate between Looney Tunes and Vanderbeek's 'Dance of the Looney Spoons): http://www.ubu.com/film/vanderbeek_dance.html (Ubuweb has over a dozen of his films online) So I think it is very much in the ballpark of writers and filmmakers to contribute to expanding and defining the term, and this is increasingly the case as more animation and moving image studies scholars apply their specialist knowledge and expertise to animation in all its variety. This is what I mean by tired canons. So I'll end this post here and look forward to what comes next. Suzanne ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] CG and all things fuzzy
Dear Paul and Suzanne, Can you both talk about how CG fits into your animation programs? At Cornell, Computer Graphics and 3D animation is taught by Computing faculty. It is in the art department where students, particularly recently, have been creating stop action, frame by frame, roto-scoping, drawing based and a medley of other fuzzies. Whether working from photography based or original drawing. their novel, quirky rendering styles, interdisciplinary interests and criticality make their work fresh and innovative. How does it work in the UK? Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] from Renate Ferro Re: on eli broad
Dear Nicholas, We have received posts in regards to your link below that I have not accepted. In the past we have agreed that any post off topic will be returned to the sender. Please understand that because of the flow of the monthly discussions and in fairness to the moderator that is organizing posts such as the one below should not be sent. You will note that on the first, after you had finished your month, Tim and I sent out an all call for international moderators as well as a thank you to Christine. Many thanks. Renate Ferro greetings alla fine and 'animated' month at hand - I am following it with intrigue...please forgive the unrelated interjection mentioning eli broad - but I thought it was of interest to those following that aspect of complicity, regarding last month's -empyre - exchange, as his name did come up in an interesting entanglement: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/mpls/messages/post/6Ym6HJigCggcJ7KSo6ifit pax et lux Nick Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D NRIII for Congress 2010 http://intertheory.org/nriiiforcongress2010.html Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Whoops My apologies.
Whoops. My apologies to Nicholas as well as our entire list serve. The last email was a personal one that was meant to for our moderators and not the list serve. Sorry about that. Now onto animation for the remainder of the month. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks to Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward
Thanks so much to Suzanne Buchan and Paul Ward for being out featured guests this week on -empyre soft skinned space, Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context. It has been a great week on fuzziness, high/low art, and animation program models. Paul just made a post that I'm hoping will stir more interest in discussing program models. We are extending an invitation to Suzanne and Paul to stay tuned with us this week and to also give a call out to Tom and Lev who I'm hoping will also chime in if their schedule permits! This has been a great month so far and I'm thrilled that it has exceeded my expectations given that the discussion was pulled together in an impromptu manner. So thanks again for Week 2's discussion and please feel free to continue the threads from this week. Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Introducing Eric Patrick (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), and Melanie Beisswenger (SG
Welcome to Weed 3 of February on empyre soft-skinned space: Theorizing Animation: Concept and Context Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray. Introducing Eric Patrick (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), and Melanie Beisswenger (SG) for Week 3. A warm welcome to Week 3 guests: Eric Patrick (US), Christopher Sullivan (US), and Melanie Beisswenger (SG). Eric and Patrick will be writing from the US and Melanie from Singapore so my apologies for the late introduction in the east as it is almost Tuesday there. Our guests' biographies are below and I invite them to each post a bit about their own work and their relationship to our topic: Theorizing Animation : Concept and Context. Eric Patrick combines animation, live action, photographic effects, sound collage and performance to create experimental narratives. He has been the recipient of numerous awards both domestically and internationally including a Guggenheim fellowship, and awards from The Black Maria Film Festival, Semana de Cine Experimental de Madrid, South by Southwest Film Festival, The Ann Arbor Film Festival, and Festival de Cinema Independent de Barcelona. His films have screened extensively at festivals, museums, and on television throughout Europe, Australia, Asia and the Americas, including screenings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and The Rotterdam Film Festival. In addition to his film work, Eric has also worked extensively in commercial animation in both New York and Los Angeles. His animation for the Nickelodeon program Blues Clues has been nominated for multiple Emmys and received a Peabody award. He has additionally written articles on animated documentaries and ritual in animation. He is currently working on a film titled Retrocognition, and is an Assistant Professor in the Radio/TV/Film program at Northwestern University. Christopher Sullivan http://mediaartists.org/content.php?sec=artistsub=detailartist_id=516 Is an animator, filmmaker and performance artist. He has been creating experimental film and theatre for over 20 years. He has shown his work in festivals, theatres and museums all over the Country and in Europe. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship. Recently, he has been programming experimental films and animations in community settings such as libraries, elementary schools, and educational conferences, and puppet festivals. He lives in Chicago with his wife Susan Abelson, and their daughters Carmen and Silvia, and teaches Animation and Film at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Melanie Beisswenger joined the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technical University in July 2007 as Asst. Professor in the Digital Animation Programme, where she is teaching 3D Character Animation I and II and Animation Development and Preproduction. Melanie has a decade of production experience as artist and character animator on feature films and TV commercials. Credits include the Academy Award winning feature film Happy Feet, the stereoscopic 3D feature film Fly Me to the Moon and the BioShock Game launch trailer among others.Melanie Beisswenger's research interests are digital animation, story telling, and 3D stereoscopy, and how technology and tools can be adapted to employ them intuitively within the creative process. Her current research work focus on the production pipeline and process of the animated short film creation in 3D and stereoscopic 3D. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Introduction to week 4 and BLENDO
I can't believe that we are into week 4 of empyre's discussion on Theorizing Animation: Content and Context. A sincere thank you to Christopher, Eric, and Melanie for being our guests this past week. I'd like to introduce Thyrza Goodeve who has made a number of posts already this month. I met Thyrza at the Quay Brothers exhibition here at Cornell and she so graciously agreed to be our guest this month. Also, Richard Wright has also made posts especially this past week. We are also most grateful for his participation. Welcome to Eileen Reynolds from Singapore who will join in on this weeks discussion as well. I have attached their biographies below. We will be continuing our discussion through Monday, the 28h of February. I'm hoping that all of our subscribers who have been lurking this month will feel free to make posts as well. I just got back from USC in Southern California and noticed that this week they are hosting an exhibition entitled BLENDO: A hybrid approach to moving image art - combining 2D / 3D animation, Photography, Motion Graphics, Text, Green Screen, or other elements. Anyone else heard of the term BLENDO used to characterize manipulated moving imagery. Anyone know where it comes from? Thanks to all of you once again. Renate Week 4:Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (US) , Richard Wright (UK), Eileen Reynolds (SG) Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, PhD is an art writer and Adjunct Professor at The School of Visual Arts in New York City who teaches in the film, art history, and MFA Art Criticism and Writing departments. She has known The Brothers Quays since 1996 when she interviewed them for *Artforum* in conjunction with the premiere of *Institute Benjamenta*. Most recently she has followed the Quays foray into the exhibition space with their traveling exhibition DORMITORIUM (curated by Ed Waisnis), a rare selection of vitrines of original puppet theaters f such as *Street of Crocodiles* or *The Cabinet of Jan Svankmeyer.* Last week she was with the Quays as they installed the exhibition at the invitation of The College of Architecture, Art and Planning at Cornell University where the Quay Brothers work was featured. Richard Wright is a visual artist working in animated media who made several pioneering computer animated films and interactive pieces. Heliocentrum (1995), an animation about Louis XIV, was described by writer Hari Kunzru as an amazingly effective way of showing how a sovereign manipulated power and The Bank of Time was nominated for a BAFTA in 2001. His last short film was Foreplay (2004), described as a porn film without the sex . Richard helped set up the MA in Digital Art and Animation at London Metropolitan University and was postproduction and animation tutor at the National Film and Television School for three years. He has a PhD in the aesthetics of digital film making and has published forty book chapters, articles and reviews. From 2004 to 2009 he collaborated with Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji, initially as Mongrel. Their last project 'Tantalum Memorial' won the transmediale.09 award. Current projects include a public video work called decorative surveillance, researching a book about contemporary animation practice, the narrativising of new media and data visualisation as the successor to documentary film making. Eileen Anastasia Reynolds is an experimental media artist working with painting, photography, and stop motion animation. She is interested in the visceral responses that stop motion animation creates, using tactility to explore levels of emotional impact. Her current work, is an experimental animated documentary that attempts to bridge illusion and reality while embracing the magical realism of stop motion. Her ultimate goal is to preserve the integrity of stop motion which, she feels, is the perfect mix of art; including but not limited to sculpture, painting, photography, lighting, performing, writing, and music. Eileen continues to exhibit her personal artwork, consisting of painting, photography, and stop-motion animation. As an Asst Prof at the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University since 2005, she has taught stop motion animation, animation seminar, and animation history. Her research interests include bioethics and emerging technologies, which raise scientific, social, and ethical concerns. Her most recent project embarked on a journey with 33 EEE students from NTU who helped in the creation of an animated film series called Synchronicity Series. They performed, choreographed and animated their bodies using the stop motion technique called pixilation. Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia
Re: [-empyre-] animation and gender
what he does nor interested in the way I am or the Quays or for that matter, those who use it for visualization, but depending on why you do what you do we are here to discuss the breakthrough insights of theory and technology and animation, but its just sometimes Ive felt weve let the technology get away with doing too much of the talking, not that it doesnt have a lot to say. But a more hardy, if overly general, topic is temporality and time, now-time vs say the way cinemas capturing, sculpting, control of time was such a huge part of its magic. Siegfried Kracauer describe in an essay how powerful just having the wind in the trees a moment captured on film is for him. How different from one of my students when I showed some film, perhaps Tarkovsky, Why does he keep leaving the camera on the trees so long? Students of cinema are different. We know this: ADD and short digitized attention spans. But how do you see this in your worlds of animation either in terms of resistance or something emerging that is part of this. One thing I thought was very relevant was the post of the shift tilt which is amazing and disturbing in this respect. Lots to say about it: not only the time lapse but the way the world is miniaturized. Here the real profilmic world is literally made into an stop motion animated cartoon. One could talk about the Quays work and time both in terms of period and affect; rhythm and texture of their worlds (In Absentia, the film they made with Stockhausen, is in some ways about light/time, metaphorically written all at once over and over (the character n the film) hence no time. Endless time. Speed of light .) But I do not know what people have seen. I am more interested in hearing you all discuss temporality and animation todayboth theoretically and examples. These discussions are so energetic. They amaze me. Thanks, Thyrza On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:39 AM, christopher sullivan csu...@saic.edu wrote: Hi Richard, I am the guy that wants animations about love, hate, birth, sex, and death.(not necessarily in that order) your rules of engagement leave me a little cold. why would this be a goal? greatest possible distance between human senses and computer code that is achievable through the simplest material means what part of the human condition would make this a mandate? why would this be effective, or rather effective at doing what? I know I am being a little aggressive here, but this is coming from someone who does not think Data means anything, nor does emulsion. chris. Christopher Sullivan Dept. of Film/Video/New Media School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] kentridge at moma
of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 Christopher Sullivan Dept. of Film/Video/New Media School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201 Christopher Sullivan Dept. of Film/Video/New Media School of the Art Institute of Chicago 112 so michigan Chicago Ill 60603 csu...@saic.edu 312-345-3802 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source
Thanks Cynthia for sharing. I've been lurking this month, enjoying Adrienne's posts and others. I just wanted to add that the new media artist and designer Maurice Benayoun visited our Cornell Art Department this week where he shared with our students his open source website of ideas and projects that for him were either unusable, not possible, or too expensive on the-dump.net (google will translate the page from French to English). He explains that the-dump is his open source sharing space where anyone can pick up one of his ideas freely and indeed many have done. The work was part of his PHD dissertation in Paris. Right now he is spear heading the design of an open source website for artist's to share their images both still and moving at theartcollider.org Renate Wow - I love the concept that we are all changing and that each of us an ongoing prototype for the next generation of ourselves At the CAA session on Open Source (chaired by Patrick Lichty), Michael Mandiberg gave a presentation arguing for giving away Design ideas, for making practical design concepts Open Source, patent free ideas to be shared among the industrious. In his talk he presented some Open Source Design ideas developed at Eyebeam. A member of the audience who identified herself as a graduate student in Fine Arts at the Chicago Art Institute asked the question about what it the equilivant of Open Source Design in the Fine Arts, and how could Fine Arts students establish a Fine Arts Open Source practice. She left before I could respond with the thought that as Fine Arts faculty members in art schools and art departments we are always giving away our ideas, our sense of how art works, what it can do, or what it might be in a certain situation. The very act of engaging in a critique session is an Open Source exchange of ideas. When students leave the room after a crit, they have no obligation to cite their professors as the source of their ideas, they simply take them and go. Of course in an academic setting Ideas are not completely free, because students are paying tuition, and faculty members are being paid. We have a contractual agreement to share ideas, to be (nearly) Open Source Fine Artists. If we are all prototypes, then as individuals outside of the academic world, we can share our Ideas as artists, as thinkers, as critics without a contractual agreement. But isn't that what we are doing already in spaces such as this one - in discussion lists, in artist meetings, even when we show work in progress to friends and colleagues? Now the question of second order prototyping as turning to others -- not sure that I am ready for that! It sort of reminds me of my teenage years going shopping for clothes with my mother, who somehow poured me into dresses and pulled on one corner or another to make them look like they fit, even when they remained uncomfortable. Cynthia Cynthia Beth Rubin http://CBRubin.net On Mar 18, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Julian Oliver wrote: ..on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 03:10:01PM -, Johannes Birringer wrote: Davin wrote: At one point in time, discrete objects were things that were considered prototypes that could be thrown into an existing system and tested. Increasingly, it seems like the prototypes are geared to test individual and collective consciousness. In other words, maybe we are the prototypes? Being tested so that we can be effectively processed, shrink- wrapped, labeled, bought and sold Hmm, This statement from Davin confused me also. I thought it was fairly clear that any act of learning - or any 'attempt', which all action is at it's root - simultaneously produces the self as a prototype, even if only for the duration of that act. The very notion of a prototype assumes a platonic and eventuating objecthood, a finished thing. When are people ever so singularly resolved? Second order prototyping is the work of other people, especially aquaintances, marketeers and those that resource people. Beast, -- Julian Oliver home: New Zealand based: Berlin, Germany currently: Berlin, Germany about: http://julianoliver.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source
Adrienne, But what is unusable you some may be usable by others, no? I agree though that the idea finding phase is more nuanced but am not convinced that there must be implementation. Renate always giving away our ideas, our sense of how art works, what it can do, or what it might be in a certain situation. The very act of engaging in a critique session is an Open Source exchange of ideas. When students leave the room after a crit, they have no obligation to cite their professors as the source of their ideas, they simply take them and go. A more nuanced analysis of the whole cycle might help. You seem to be talking about ideation. Most meaningful works of art, prototypes and societal contributions involve, ideation, implementation and cultural resonance. I am rather impatient of these discussions revolveing around just the ideation part. It is the source of the rather common critique of the MIT media lab's demo/charismatica focus. Similarly you see many dreamy, inspiring examples of Arduino and Lilypad demos. that simply can't be implemented reliably or usefully or legally (e.g. FCC regulations) and for which cultural resonance is often low. You can see the real challenges involved when you look at the history of the OLPC project as they attempted to rationalize the initial charismatic idea and implement and sell something. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] seeing yourself a prototype - the limits of open source
Yes of course, I believe it is a collaboration as I said. Are there not many collaborators, Lynn? Actually the Art Colider is a joint project with the San Francisco Art Institute begun nearly 2 years ago. http://theartcollider.org/ l On Mar 18, 2010, at 9:12 PM, Renate Ferro wrote: Thanks Cynthia for sharing. I've been lurking this month, enjoying Adrienne's posts and others. I just wanted to add that the new media artist and designer Maurice Benayoun visited our Cornell Art Department this week where he shared with our students his open source website of ideas and projects that for him were either unusable, not possible, or too expensive on the-dump.net (google will translate the page from French to English). He explains that the-dump is his open source sharing space where anyone can pick up one of his ideas freely and indeed many have done. The work was part of his PHD dissertation in Paris. Right now he is spear heading the design of an open source website for artist's to share their images both still and moving at theartcollider.org Renate Wow - I love the concept that we are all changing and that each of us an ongoing prototype for the next generation of ourselves At the CAA session on Open Source (chaired by Patrick Lichty), Michael Mandiberg gave a presentation arguing for giving away Design ideas, for making practical design concepts Open Source, patent free ideas to be shared among the industrious. In his talk he presented some Open Source Design ideas developed at Eyebeam. A member of the audience who identified herself as a graduate student in Fine Arts at the Chicago Art Institute asked the question about what it the equilivant of Open Source Design in the Fine Arts, and how could Fine Arts students establish a Fine Arts Open Source practice. She left before I could respond with the thought that as Fine Arts faculty members in art schools and art departments we are always giving away our ideas, our sense of how art works, what it can do, or what it might be in a certain situation. The very act of engaging in a critique session is an Open Source exchange of ideas. When students leave the room after a crit, they have no obligation to cite their professors as the source of their ideas, they simply take them and go. Of course in an academic setting Ideas are not completely free, because students are paying tuition, and faculty members are being paid. We have a contractual agreement to share ideas, to be (nearly) Open Source Fine Artists. If we are all prototypes, then as individuals outside of the academic world, we can share our Ideas as artists, as thinkers, as critics without a contractual agreement. But isn't that what we are doing already in spaces such as this one - in discussion lists, in artist meetings, even when we show work in progress to friends and colleagues? Now the question of second order prototyping as turning to others -- not sure that I am ready for that! It sort of reminds me of my teenage years going shopping for clothes with my mother, who somehow poured me into dresses and pulled on one corner or another to make them look like they fit, even when they remained uncomfortable. Cynthia Cynthia Beth Rubin http://CBRubin.net On Mar 18, 2010, at 11:50 AM, Julian Oliver wrote: ..on Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 03:10:01PM -, Johannes Birringer wrote: Davin wrote: At one point in time, discrete objects were things that were considered prototypes that could be thrown into an existing system and tested. Increasingly, it seems like the prototypes are geared to test individual and collective consciousness. In other words, maybe we are the prototypes? Being tested so that we can be effectively processed, shrink- wrapped, labeled, bought and sold Hmm, This statement from Davin confused me also. I thought it was fairly clear that any act of learning - or any 'attempt', which all action is at it's root - simultaneously produces the self as a prototype, even if only for the duration of that act. The very notion of a prototype assumes a platonic and eventuating objecthood, a finished thing. When are people ever so singularly resolved? Second order prototyping is the work of other people, especially aquaintances, marketeers and those that resource people. Beast, -- Julian Oliver home: New Zealand based: Berlin, Germany currently: Berlin, Germany about: http://julianoliver.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http
[-empyre-] empyre archives on open source
I thought you all might enjoy looking back to the February, 2003 archived discussion of Open Source moderated by Melinda Rackham https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2003-February/msg4.html Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Art Cornell University, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu Website: http://www.renateferro.net Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] confused no
Dear Chris, Hope all is well with you. We are in the midst of finishing our semester and I have a number of beginning students who are working in photoshop with the animation palette. I work primarily in Final Cut Pro because my work is so heavily video and image based. In my student's research with the animation palette they have been experimenting with tweens. My recommendation was to stay away from tweening and just introduce more still imagery or drawings for the inbetween states. However, still some are persisting. Can you help us with our observation? When tweening and the frames are transparent you obviously see a change in state but the frames are actually transparent which shows up when playing. When the frames are not transparent there appears to be no shift in the state of the object. Do you have some good advise for these students. I have been researching online and could not seem to find the exact solution. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping you were able to use our month of empyre as a resource for your advanced students. Im hoping that at some point we can meet but until then best wishes. Renate Ferro On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 6:28 PM, christopher sullivan csu...@saic.edu wrote: just because someone does not agree with you, or does not share your enthusiasm for Open Source, and free exchange, does not mean they are confused. I usually run into this in discussions with believers and non believer..I.E. you don't believe in God? you will in time. similar to the language of new media open source. you are surely confused to imply that free software, might contain, the gene for free culture. and perhaps your crits are based on prototypes, mine are not. I will go away for a while. chris. Quoting Julian Oliver jul...@julianoliver.com: ..on Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 04:34:05PM -0400, Cynthia Beth Rubin wrote: I offered the critique system of artist-to-artist discussion as evidence that the artist dialog is generally based on Prototypes, and generally Open Source. Art, in any format, real or virtual, can be considered as a manifestation of ideas and the synthesis of insights, and each iteration (each new work) can be considered as a prototype for further iterations. Few of us are interested in repetitively reproducing similar works over a lifetime. As for the Open Source aspect - - ideas, insights, responses, suggestions, connections, all of these are exchanged when artists get together to discuss work using the critique model. This way of discussing is not limited to academia, but that is where many of us learn it. I felt that I needed to point out that this is not true Open-Source in the academy because it is not technically free. Nonetheless, generally we not change how we speak when are not being paid, so in some sense it is still an Open-Source exchange of idea, insights, etc. I think you've confused a few concepts here. First of all, something /can/ be Open Source yet restrict modification. As a computer programmer I come across this fairly often, code released freely as Open Source means that it is code you are allowed to read, nothing more: the source is open for reading yet is not allowed to be modified or redistributed. It merely refers to the fact that the information, not the rights, are shared. The OSI has a different definition but it's not always attended in practice. Open Source is a confused, confusing and difficult term. In my opinion is better not used, along with 'copyleft' which suggests so-called copyleft licenses are anti-copyright, polarised by principal. This of course simply isn't the case. The term “open source†has been further stretched by its application to other activities, such as government, education, and science, where there is no such thing as source code, and where criteria for software licensing are simply not pertinent. The only thing these activities have in common is that they somehow invite people to participate. They stretch the term so far that it only means “participatory†. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html Free Software (and perhaps Free Culture) are definitions strategically independent from Open Source for this very reason. Hence there can be Open Source software that is truly free: Free (Libre) Open Source Software (or FLOSS). This is software released under a pro-copy Copyright license that declares it free to be read, redistributed and modified. This kind of software I've used almost exclusively in my practice for around 12 years, from the operating system to 3D modeling packages, video and image editors. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html I agree that artists in countries with true poverty artists face a different situation. In wealthier economies we often live from the academy, but also where the standard
[-empyre-] Closing out Process as Paradigm
Tim and I would like to thank our two guest moderators, Susanne Jaschko (D) and Lucas Evers (NL), and their invited guests whose discussion theme for the month of May was Process as Paradigm art in development, flux and change. There discussion inspired by the exhibit at Laboral Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial in Gijon, Spain has attracted some new participants to empyre and we are hoping that they will continue to participate in the months to come as well as many of our regulars. I will be introducing our guest moderators and the new topic for the month of June in a couple of hours so stay tuned empyre subscribers. Renate ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] FW: June Topic
Dear empyre subscribers, I would like to warmly welcome our guest moderators for the month of June, Michael Deiter (N), Morgan Currie (N/US), and John Haltiwanger (US/N). They will be introducing the discussion, Publishing in Convergence shortly. This timely topic is sure to invite debates around new models for writing, collaborating, distributing, reading and interpreting knowledge. Within the last two weeks, Tim and I have been to a Digital Humanities Conference at Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire as well as a daylong discussion on the same topic at the University of Toronto. At the center of these discussions was the influence of digital code, its translation into text/image, and how that information was distributed and thus interpreted. -empyre soft-skinned space looks forward to this international discussion. Michael, Morgan and John's biographies are below. They will be introducing the topic and their invited guests later today. Stay tuned. Renate Morgan Currie was born in the United States and is studying for a Masters degree in New Media at the University of Amsterdam. Her thesis explores how batch digitization of print collections is changing (and challenging) the traditional role of institutional libraries. Her related topics of interest include digital archives, open access publishing, and sustainability of the commons. Currently she is researching for the Institute of Network Cultures and De Balie in Amsterdam and remains a frequent contributor to the Masters of Media blog. Prior to her current studies she worked for eight years as a researcher and producer of documentary films for American public television and GOOD Magazine. Michael Dieter is currently completing a PhD on critical media art and materialist philosophy at University of Melbourne, where he has lectured in the School of Culture and Communication on digital publishing and new media theory since 2007. His academic work has been published in M/C and Australian Humanities Review. He is an ongoing contributor to Neural Magazine, an assistant editor at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, and a member of the editorial committee for Fibreculture Journal and Digital Culture Education. John Haltiwanger arrived in this world in the United States, where he has lived in many corners. Currently he attends the University of Amsterdam where he studies for a Masters degree in New Media. His thesis investigates generative design in the context of typesetting with open source software. Related interests include new futures for screening publishing, the potentials of new platforms for collaboration, and issues of freedom and control both on the Internet and in flesh life. Prior to his current studies he has worked as a librarian, lived as a media activist at an animal rights campaign, attended hippie schools, and spent his early years consulting as a Perl programmer. Renate Ferro URL: http://www.renateferro.net Email: r...@cornell.edu Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Can you give us a little more insight?
Morgan and Sean, I just read both links and am fascinated by your project. Can you explain both the RG and The Public School? What's the relationship between the two specifically. And the AAARG site is static right now? Renate On 6/2/10 6:49 PM, Sean Dockray sean.patrick.dock...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, Morgan asked me to introduce myself and my experience with RG as a distribution platform and give an update on what's happening now, so I'll follow her questions more or less to the letter. I think there is enough background about the project in these two links and I'll try and avoid repeating it here. * email interview with Julian Myers: http://blog.sfmoma.org/2009/08/four-dialogues-2-on-rg/ * chat interview with Morgan: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/2010/01/05/small-is-beautiful-a-discussion-wi th-rg-architect-sean-dockray/ There's a lot that I'm interested in discussing, but from the perspective of distribution there are a couple of things that stand out at the moment: Now that digital reading devices like the Kindle or iPad are becoming popular and widespread, PDFs (and other digital text formats of course!) seem like a viable market. Obviously manufacturers are competing for students and trying to partner with academic publishers. The person who wrote the cease and desist letter from Macmillan (iPad partner?) describes himself as an expert from the music industry. RG has been around for more than 5 years -- there are a lot of places around that host or index the same material, not to mention the totally common practice of people sending each other PDFs -- and it's been in this last 12 months that all of the cease desist letters have come in. What was once just a bad copy now becomes the product itself. Another point in this constellation are non-profit services like JSTOR, which again makes partnerships with publishers and academic institutions. An individual is absolutely aware of being outside of the academy here - most material is not accessible at all and the material that is accessible costs a lot of money. And for those in institutions but outside of wealthier countries, it's often a similar situation. Within these kinds of shifts, who has the right to build a library? We're technically and legally not allowed to share a PDF between Kindles (the way I might give you a book after I've finished reading it) so what does that mean for similar collective acts? I'm thinking about the history of the public library, of little traveling libraries, of how collections were acquired, donated, redistributed, etc. about how one book might be read by hundreds of eyes. Now, of course, every individual is responsible for purchasing their individual file and sharing is reframed as unethical, illegal, naive, etc. Maybe that's enough for now? Oh, finally, for an update on what happened and what's happening now: see the very end of the interview with Morgan above! Before this week is through there will be more news, but for now I'll just say that some people will be unhappy and many more will be happy. Sean ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Voracious consumption and Let's not Alienate any kind of Labour
Hi Sean, Just thought you would like to know that my students this past semester were obsessed with RG-- downloading all of the texts that they wanted to read especially historical ones revolving around their own thirst for theory and philosophy. So after assignments in the reader that I gave them NOT from AAARG,they would download other related texts from AAARG and consume them voraciously. The fear that RG might now be there tomorrow fueled their energies to download more. It was pretty amazing to witness. On another note, (I don't mean to seem school marmish here) but I want to encourage us to acknowledge the fact that we are all laborers. Some of us work with words, or images, or code but hopefully we are all lucky enough to get up in the morning and systematically work regardless of whether it is in academia or elsewhere. To draw distinctions I feel is unproductive on our -empyre list serve. By the way thanks for explaining the correlation between RG and The Public School. Renate On 6/4/10 8:55 PM, Sean Dockray sean.patrick.dock...@gmail.com wrote: If it helps, Emmett, I also have mixed and contradictory feelings about the practice. I know I've been playing too much chess recently - I'm imagining how discussions over book piracy seem to open up along fairly common lines: e4 - why are there restrictions on the movement of texts when it is technically possible to overcome geographic, political, or economic limitations? c5 - authors and publishers have put in real labor and deserve monetary compensation in return. The variations that might come out of this position? Attempts to prove that piracy actually helps book sales as opposed to reducing them. Arguments to settle for symbolic capital or other forms of valorization that can be cashed in elsewhere. Assurances that if piracy just went away the market would make sure that all those limitations were overcome. Proposals for micro-payments, creative commons, and other reforms. (This is obviously not the route chosen by Macmillan, who made news last year for standing up to Amazon over lower prices for digital books). Less common lines might be that piracy amounts to a strange form of unpaid marketing; that when it comes to art and theory, reading and writing doesn't break down so cleanly along the lines of consumption and production, or leisure and labor. Emmett's argument about alienated labor resonates with me at this moment in particular because I have had to wait until finishing my full-time day job (which is the equivalent of writing ad copy) each day to participate in this week's discussion! I'm assuming some in this discussion have a university job based in these issues, or are teaching a class on them, or are writing on the topics? Some are in the position to translate the knowledge or symbolic value from discussions on this list into real income. I'm conflicted when tenured faculty use RG to make a reader for their classes, to save themselves time. I completely agree with the calls to think about the unaffiliated, selfishly I suppose, because that's my camp! [ One thing that I'm wondering is, should these discussions be based on the assumption that each download represents quantifiable lost income for publisher and author? Obviously this has legal precedent, where people end up owing a few million dollars because of the music they downloaded. But the zero-sum logic of it all frames the discussion in a certain way. The actual economics of publishing are a mystery to me and it isn't public, so I'm left with speculation (watch out!) based on anecdotal data. I spend roughly the same amount on books and art as what I make on sales, fees, and rentals (OK, I'm flattering myself a little bit here). Is this common? Is it the same thousand dollars passing through all of our hands? ] How might we pose our mixed feelings in a way that isn't point- counterpoint, but something less identifiable; or even how do we try and imagine possibilities beyond the capitalist framework, something that's not just turning the price dial down on a product until it hits the level where people start using their credit card again? Jumping over to Michael Dieter's post, which says that file-sharing, like gentrification, produces value that ends up in the pockets of those few who own the networks or buildings or whatever, I'd agree that Free Culture is not the road map or destination point or anything (and so I haven't argued for that anywhere). Looking at the specificity of RG, which is composed of people who are generally cognitive workers themselves, reading and referencing as a part of their practice, I see a space of confrontation over the very materials with which we produce; many of the authors on RG are also registered and several of them have expressed extraordinarily nuanced, ambivalent, and internally conflicted positions: Paul Gilroy, Jason Read, and Stuart Elden
[-empyre-] Welcoming Simon Biggs and CREATIVITY AS A SOCIAL ONTOLOGY
Dear empyre subscribers, Tim and I are very honored to introduce our July moderator at this time, Simon Biggs. Simon has not only agreed to be our guest moderator this month but will join empyre's long-term facilitating team as we prepare to celebrate empyre's tenth anniversary. We welcome Simon as we shepherd the list-serve through the next decade of its existence. Just a few months ago, we were thrilled to spend some time with Simon at Cornell University as a guest of Cornell's Society for the Humanities at a conference on Networks and Mobilities. Simon not only gave a stunning talk and presentation but was the life of the party and ended up being a very savvy wine consultant! Needless to say we are looking forward to Simon's intervention into this month's discussion and as well as to working with him as part of the empyre team. Simon Biggs is a visual artist born in Australia, 1957. He moved to the UK in 1986. Since 1978 Biggs has been working with digital and interactive systems in installation, networked and other media. Venues presenting his work include Tate Modern, Whitechapel, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Ikon (Birmingham), Centre de Georges Pompidou, Academy de Kunste and Kulturforum (Berlin), Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Macau Arts Museum, Cameraworks (San Francisco), Walker Art Center, Paco des Artes (Sao Paulo), Museo OI (Rio De Janeiro), McDougall Art Gallery (Christchurch), Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Publications include Autopoeisis (with James Leach, Artwords, 2004), Halo (Film and Video Umbrella, 1998), Magnet (McDougall Art Gallery, 1997) and CD-ROM's Book of Shadows and Great Wall of China (Ellipsis, 1996 and 1999). He is Professor at Edinburgh College of Art. His URL is http://www.littlepig.org.uk Simon will host the a discussion entitled CREATIVITY AS A SOCIAL ONTOLOGY. I have included a short description below but Simon will be sending you all a lengthier description as well as introducing this months guests. CREATIVITY AS A SOCIAL ONTOLOGY Creativity is often perceived as the product of individual, or groups of creative practitioners. However, it might be considered an emergent phenomenon of communities, driving change and facilitating individual or ensemble creativity. Expanded concepts of agency allow us to question who, or what, can be an active participant in social and creative interactions, providing diverse models for authorship. Creativity might be regarded as a form of social interaction, a reflexive mediation, rather than an outcome. Many thanks to you Simon and we look forward to this month's conversation. Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Renate Ferro URL: http://www.renateferro.net Email: r...@cornell.edu Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ On 7/3/10 11:20 PM, Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu wrote: Dear empyre, Many thanks to Michael Dieter as well as Morgan Currie and John Haltiwanger and all of their guests for hosting this past month's discussion Publishing in Convergence on empyre. It was an engaging discussion and one that seems to be at the pinnacle of humanities' discussions these days. To have so many participants involved in the discussion who are in the middle of the logistics of electronic publishing was especially valuable for all of us. Our next discussion will be moderated by Simon Biggs (UK) so stay tuned. I will be introducing Simon tomorrow. Renate Renate Ferro URL: http://www.renateferro.net Email: r...@cornell.edu Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ On 7/2/10 10:02 PM, Michael Dieter mdie...@unimelb.edu.au wrote: Morgan Currie and John Haltiwanger ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] FW: Welcome back -empyre subscribers!
Welcome back to all -empyre soft-skinned subscribers! Tim and I are still trying to come to the realization that another academic year has begun. Tim will be introducing the September discussion topic soon; our apologizes for the slight delay. Many of the guests this month (as I know many of our subscribers) have been away because of the holiday here in the Sates this past weekend and others remain on semester break. The topic this month Archiving New Media Art: Ephemerality and/or Sustainability will get under way within the next couple of days. The discussion is inspired by a conference in Argentina this past week. In fact as I write this, Tim is high in the sky above South America right now. Tim is excited to welcome many of the colleagues who joined him at this conference and will introduce them in a day or so. Our commitment to nurture-empyre¹s global readership has been both Tim and my mission as managing moderators. We were so happy that Simon Biggs (Scotland and UK) agreed to join the moderating team in July and are grateful to him for moderating the successful and widely followed discussion Creativity as Social Ontology. We are also happy that Gabriel Menotti (UK and AUS) as well as Nicholas Ruiz III (US) will continue to help us as part of our international team of moderators. Tim and I are honored to also announce that empyre's founding organizer Dr. Melinda Rackham has agreed to join the team as well after a hiatus of a few years. - empyre will be celebrating its upcoming 10th anniversary with a new look and many new discussion topics. We are very thankful to Melinda for joining us once again. In fact she will be moderating our November discussion. Many of you already know Melinda but I attach her recent biography below with the bios of our entire team. There are times during the year when one of our moderators will invite a guest to moderate. Those special guests will be introduced during the year just before their moderating discussion. Tim and I hope you have had a great month off and we are both looking forward to your joining us on empyre. Best to all of you, Renate Ferro Biographies: -empye¹s team of international moderators Simon BIggs (UK and AUSTRALIA) Simon Biggs is a visual artist born in Australia, 1957. He moved to the UK in 1986. Since 1978 Biggs has been working with digital and interactive systems in installation, networked and other media. Venues presenting his work include Tate Modern, Whitechapel, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Ikon (Birmingham), Centre de Georges Pompidou, Academy de Kunste and Kulturforum (Berlin), Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Macau Arts Museum, Cameraworks (San Francisco), Walker Art Center, Paco des Artes (Sao Paulo), Museo OI (Rio De Janeiro), McDougall Art Gallery (Christchurch), Experimental Art Foundation (Adelaide) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Publications include Autopoeisis (with James Leach, Artwords, 2004), Halo (Film and Video Umbrella, 1998), Magnet (McDougall Art Gallery, 1997) and CD-ROM's Book of Shadows and Great Wall of China (Ellipsis, 1996 and 1999). He is Professor at Edinburgh College of Art. His URL is http://www.littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ Renate Ferro (United States) is fa media artist working in emerging technology and culture. Her artistic practice reflects critical interactivity incorporating social and theoretical paradigms of the psychological and sociological condition with networks of technology. At the heart of her most recent interests, Ferro critically engages the corporal body's symbiotic relationship with technology by aligning artistic, creative practice with critical approaches to cyber configurations. She permits emerging creative skins of networks and resources whose resulting configurations range from drawing and text to performance, installation, and net-based projects. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in the United States as well as Canada, Germany, and Mexico. Her work has been published in the journals Diacritics, Theater Journal, and Epoch. She is Managing Moderator of the online list serve -empyre soft skinned space and the art/imaging editor of Diacritics. She is the founder and director of her cross-disciplinary lab, The Tinker Factory housed at Cornell University where she is Visiting Assistant Professor of Art. Her artistic work can be accessed at http://www.renteferro.net/ http://www.renteferro.net/ . Gabriel Menotti (Australia and UK) is a PhD Candidate on the Media and Communications department of Goldsmiths University of London. He works as an independent media curator and producer, and has already done remix film festivals, cinematographic videogame championships, porn screenplay workshops, installations with super8 film projectors and generative art exhibitions. His MA thesis, ³Through the Dark Room Spatial Dynamics for Audiovisual Consumption², received the Itaú Cultural Cybernetic Arts 2006 award. Timothy Murray (US
[-empyre-] Welcome Mona Jimenez, Gabriela Previd illo, Lluis Roqué
For our final week's discussion (which will take us through Monday, Oct. 4, we are pleased to be joined by three very experienced curators/archivists of international new media. We have long admired the work of Mona Jimenez on preserving new media, particularly the heroic work she has done with Sherry Miller Hocking and Kathy High in preserving the 40 years of videotapes produced at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York (http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/). Tim was delighted to meet Gabriela Previdello of the renowned FILE electronic language international festival and Lluis Roqué of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona durig the Taxonomedia Buenos Aires conference. They represent a range of approaches and opinions that will be welcome in the last week of September's focus on Archiving New Media Art: Ephemerality and/or Sustainability. Welcome to you all. Mona Jimenez (US) teaches Arts and is Associate Director of New York University's graduate program in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation, where she teaches video preservation and the preservation of complex media. From 2005-2010, she was a participating researcher with DOCAM http://www.docam.ca/en.htmlhttp://www.docam.ca/en.html. As a Researcher-in-Residence at the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, she created a cataloging template for custom and commercial machines used to make media art. http://www.fondation-langlois.org/flash/e/index.php?NumPage=708 She is currently working with Kathy High (RPI) and Sherry Miller Hocking (Experimental Television Center) on a book project on 1970s custom-built electronic art tools, and dialogues between pioneers of tool development and current practitioners. For the past two years has led teams of moving image archivists to Ghana to work with caretakers of audiovisual collections. Gabriela Previdello (Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Graduated in Fine Arts, she developed her work in art direction, producing different events, media and art exhibitions, including FILE electronic language international festival. As FILE Archive Coordinator, she works on digital memory research, with emphasis in conservation, preservation and exhibition of electronic and digital art. Lluis Roqué (Argentina) works in the Department of Conservation and Restoration at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (http://www.macba.cat/) where he is responsible for the conservation of audiovisual and photographic materials. He was trained in Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona where he specialized in the Conservation and Restoration of Images. We are looking forward to a very helpful and provocative discussion. Best, Renate and Tim -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Managing Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned space Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art Cornell University Ithaca, New York 14853 ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] posted for Johannes
This post made by Johannes did not go through on the moderators site. Our apologies to him. RE: [-empyre-] Culturally specific archives You replied on 10/8/2010 1:32 PM. Sent:Thursday, October 07, 2010 10:30 PM dear all Craig's and Mona's interventions, on culturally specific archives, protocol-aware content, safe places/revealing and persistence, were timely and very important, throwing us off a bit in a way that I had not expected, yet am very grateful to, since you have experiences with communities and particular, as Mona calls them, pre-digital and pre-industrial cultural works -- are we here then talking about oral traditions and practices, performance and dance (non verbal practices), or are you, Mona, mostly engaged with the film and TV heritage, and what, then do you mean by works with behaviors? are these moving images of what kind of instantiations? Jon has now thrown in a splendid text which brings forward the performative dimensions of live archiving that we tried to discuss last weekend when Yann's creative ever-moving l' archive recombinante showed up here. The works with behaviors could mean films or moving image documents of performative/restored behavior, but heritage -- is this notion now mashable with Diana Taylor's crucial terms of the archive and the repertoire, and is not Taylor's binary itself not a binary but a wonderfully alive dialectic? oral traditions, i would suggest, are living archives with living repertoires, and thus always potentially or actually variable and modifiable, contingent, no? I wish to add a small observation (salty, I hope), as just as Craig wrote to us about the Warumungu community, I receive a gift here from a Canadian friend, a bi-lingual book that was years in the making, so let me introduce it: (I don't have the font type for the Inuit language): Art and Cold Cash, edited by the Art and Cold Collective (Ruby Arngn'naaq, Jack Butler, Sheila Butler, Patrick Mahon, and William Noah), Toronto: YYZbooks, 2009. this is a mind-blowing, multi-layered, creative investigation, having taken place from 2004 to 2007 and connecting contemporary art to discourses surrounding money (capitalism, traffic, etc), in a series of artistic activities and experiments located in northern and southern Canada. Jack Butler, Sheila Butler and Patrick Mahon, three contemporary artists whose practices are normally situated in southern Canada, here worked on the project in collaboration with writer Ruby Arngna'naaq and artists William Noah, two Inuit members of the Art and Cold Cash Collective who lived through the change from a barter economy to capitalism in Baker Lake, Nunavut, during the twentieth century. The book is a compelling document of a formidable project that involved storytelling, interviews, community-based art practice, drawings, sculpture, and videos produced for exhibitions in galleries and airports in the north, and in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Barrie, Ontario. Art and Cold Cash features documentation of those activites and artworks, and includes essays by the collective members and other commentators, as well as interviews in English and Inuktitut, where eight Baker Lake residents, some of whom are artists, recall their poignant first engagements with capitalist exchange in response to the query, “Do you remember when you first used money? In the foreword, I notice that Smaro Kamboureli refers to the document as a living archive, addressing the highly convoluted politics of exchange (between north and south, the residents and the artists, the domestic and the foreign) that were taking place, highlighting the conflicts that money inevitably introduces when art is forced to shed its mask of putative purity, when it becomes documented or a government instrument, when - more specifically – Eskimo art is invented in the double name of sustainability and benign accountability. Without going deeper into this, it seems apparent that the uneven politics of cultural exchange are not sufficiently addressed by us, as we discuss Yann's digital swarm performance theory, and look at cases of persistence where they are undertaken. Some one pointed out we need to be grateful to the archivers (e.g. Daniel Langlois Foundation), and why is is this necessarily so, and what are the unspoken hierarchies implicit in Jon's post, not only for broadcasting. and Yann then comes back with another provocation: I believe that there is no archive, but only things pointing to other things, lost in compressed and always reconsidered times. Archiving is an utopian capitalistic concept. Preservation does neither act on the past or on the future, it's a posture trying to understand the actual. well, the more unmasking, the better. regards Johannes ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Welcome Lorna Collins and the Making Sense Colloquium
Welcome to our October discussion, ³Contextualizing Making Sense. The alignment of criticality and configurations of embodiment and space permit creative flows of networks, resources, research and discussions whose configurations prove limitless. Lorna Collins and her team of collaborators have invited Tim and I to represent empyre this month at the ³Making Sense Colloquium² at the IRI-Centre Pompidou, Institut Télécom the 19th and 20th of October. http://www.makingsensesociety.org/ http://www.makingsensesociety.org/ Lorna is a theorist and a PhD student at the University of Cambridge where she is a Foundation Scholar at Jesus College. Her academic research pushes to forge the development of Making Sense via her research and writing but also through various events such as the ³Making Sense² colloquium. The colloquium brings together a wide variety of international theorists and artists some of whom will be our guests this month on empyre. Both independently and collaboratively, Tim and I have worked between the spaces of theory and practice for many years. Through Tim¹s international curating as well as his work in founding and directing the Rose Goldsen Archive for New Media Art and in my case the founding and directing of The Tinker Factory, an interdisciplinary lab for research and practice we have independently found venues for forging theory and practice. Together our collaboration with empyre has given us an opportunity to investigate the negotiations between theory and practice historically in May 2009 our discussion Critical Motion Practice merged intersections that entailed both self-reflective and interactive movement at the intersections of art, choreography, architecture, activism and theory. Again in September, 2007 our discussion on Critical Spatial Practice highlighted themes of social responsibility at cross-disciplinary intersections. The questions we asked revolved between the technological and critical approaches between practice and theory and how those questions empowered creativity, enhanced artistic activism and encouraged artistic/performance practice and collaboration. We are looking forward to joining the Making Sense participants and anticipate the international online discussion that will evolve with our 1400 subscribers. Each week we will highlight a handful of Making Sense guests in hopes that their own project descriptions will entice our members to add their own ideas and comments. Together collaboratively we are hoping to open up the discussion of Making Sense. As an artist my practice involves instincts, whim, research, reading, discussion, investigation and critical analysis. When a research thread ³makes sense² I assume that my inquiry is finished and the project is finished a cue to proceed to the next. The act of ³Making Sense² implies a search for resolution. Though in the process of making it is the uneasiness, the questioning, the restlessness, the point that is not making sense that excites me to continue. Welcome to ³Contextualizing Making Sense² or not? We would like to welcome Lorna Collins as our first guest. We will begin this month on empyre by asking Lorna to answer a few questions for our -empyre members. Can you fill us in a bit more about your own work as it relates to the Making Sense Colloquium? Additionally what can we expect from the forum itself coming up in a few weeks? Renate and Tim Renate Ferro URL: http://www.renateferro.net Email: r...@cornell.edu , Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Co-moderator of _empyre soft skinned space http://www.subtle.net/empyre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Cambridge and Paris
Lorna Collins wrote: ...We want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students, thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience, we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This Colloquium... Good Morning Lorna, Thanks for giving us a general overview of your own philosophy and the history of the Making Sense Colloquium. I'm wondering if you could talk about the event being held at the Pompidou in Paris? Do you have a mission for this event that might be slightly different that the Cambridge event in 2009? Was there a publication that cam out of the Cambridge event or what kind of information was gathered that perhaps has informed the event in Paris? The statement above is so broad so I'm wondering if you have defined the Paris event differently based on what happened in Cambridge? Lorna will be introducing two of the Visiting Artist's who will be featured in Paris later today but I'm hoping that she will give us more of a sense of the event's history so that perhaps that would give our empyre subscribers a idea of the underpinnings of potential discussion points. Thanks Lorna. Renate On 10/10/10 12:34 AM, Lorna Collins lp...@cam.ac.uk wrote: Dear Renate, Thanks for the intro! I’d like to say a bit about Making Sense… This is the second interdisciplinary colloquium of Making Sense. The first was held at the University of Cambridge in 2009. At these events we want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students, thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience, we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This colloquium can be seen as an artistic creation or installation in itself. I think we can all be artists. Participants are encouraged to react and articulate their opinion. How does this fit into my own work? I am neither specifically a writer, nor artist, nor philosopher, but use these genres simultaneously to make sense of the world, to discover my place within it, and to think about what might threaten our most basic need to inhabit it. I use art to write philosophy, and I use philosophy to inspire the plastic forms of art I make; in between my visual, intellectual and phenomenological experiments I hope to invent a practical, accessible method for ‘making sense’. I take academic theory to the creative resources of practising art, in the efforts to challenge and invigorate the political scholarship of academic discourse through the basic, replenishing and regenerative facets of creativity. In this sense I am perhaps a diplomat and curator who seeks to arrange and mobilise the emancipatory interface that art can offer everyone, whilst trying to confirm and cement this chance in the more formal terms of academia. This is the kind of ethos that lies behind Making Sense the collective, which is the emerging group of artists and philosophers who came to the first and are coming to the second colloquium. Making Sense is bigger than singular events. We are trying to start a movement. The Making Sense project, beyond the colloquia, is ultimately about founding a communitarian practice, through art, that provides a restorative social act. It would be very interesting to discuss what that means and how it might be possible… I look forward to hearing your thoughts... Lorna 2010/10/10 Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu: Welcome to our October discussion, ³Contextualizing Making Sense. The alignment of criticality and configurations of embodiment and space permit creative flows of networks, resources, research and discussions whose configurations prove limitless. Lorna Collins and her team of collaborators have invited Tim and I to represent empyre this month at the ³Making Sense Colloquium² at the IRI-Centre Pompidou, Institut Télécom the 19th and 20th of October. http://www.makingsensesociety.org/ http
Re: [-empyre-] Cambridge and Paris
Dear all, We will be introducing Fred McVittie and Janice Perry the two visiting artists soon. I presume that Lorna is fast asleep right now as she is coming to us from the UK. In the meantime Patty Zimmermann presents us with some pretty broad questions that may be answered as the colloquium unfolds and our month on empyre actually progresses. I find definitions quite fascinating as an artist. Aesthetics is so often understood differently by whether you are operating in the philosophical/theoretical world or the practical world. That said I don't think at this point it is a good idea to set up theory and practice as a dichotomy. From Lorna's descriptions Making Sense is all about negotiating a dance between many venues. I'm hoping that all of our empyre subscribers will revisit our archives from May 2009 our discussion Critical Motion Practice merged intersections that entailed both self-reflective and interactive movement at the intersections of art,choreography, architecture, activism and theory. Again in September, 2007 our discussion on Critical Spatial Practice where social responsibility is at the cross roads of this interdisciplinary convergence. Tim and I are hoping that our discussion this month will build upon those investigations and bring in a wider audience for discussion. For archives go to https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ Renate On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 9:29 AM, Lorna Collins lp...@cam.ac.uk wrote: The event in Paris is going to be held at 3 locations -- we are at the Centre Pompidou on the first day, where there will be a performance by artist Yves-Marie L'Hour in the evening. The second day we are at the Institut Télécom where we also have 3 exhibitions being shown (the French society Mémoire de l'Avenir, the American group of artists Prometheus and the engineer/artist Claudiane Ouellet-Plamondon. Then in the evening our grand finale is at New York University, Paris, where we have another perfomance, by Kelina Gotman. During the colloquium we have a variety of presentations from an eclectic range of participants who all bring a different way of making sense... I think we can all think of ourselves as artists, and the colloquium is like a collaborative installation or performance. We will all be performing and creating work together, particularly during the 2 workshops that take place on the second day. We are currently publishing the first Making Sense book, which contains papers inspired by the first colloquium at Cambridge. We hope to bring together a second book in response to the Paris colloquium. We also have a new website, http://www.makingsensesociety.org./ Through our artist-in-residence Fred McVittie we will be publishing footage from the colloquium onto youtube. He is a subscriber to Empyre -- it would be good to hear his view about what he's going to be doing in Paris, and how we might interact with a cyber-community. Our other artist-in-residence is Janice Perry. We hope that our artist-in-residences will create site-responsive work at each of the locations that offers a way of making sense of Making Sense. Lorna 2010/10/10 Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu: Lorna Collins wrote: ...We want to analyse and discuss the aesthetic encounter and an art practice as a medium that can help us make sense of the world. We bring together artists and philosophers, scholars and students, thinkers and writers, from all around the world, to build an interface between artistic creation, theoretical debate and academic scholarship. At the colloquium we want to formulate new ways to frame and develop discourse, and found a new way of making sense, which can challenge and invigorate the protocol, regulation and system of academia. This is a different kind of conference – there is no hierarchical division between the plenary speakers and the audience, we have an economy of mutual exchange and intimate debate. This Colloquium... Good Morning Lorna, Thanks for giving us a general overview of your own philosophy and the history of the Making Sense Colloquium. I'm wondering if you could talk about the event being held at the Pompidou in Paris? Do you have a mission for this event that might be slightly different that the Cambridge event in 2009? Was there a publication that cam out of the Cambridge event or what kind of information was gathered that perhaps has informed the event in Paris? The statement above is so broad so I'm wondering if you have defined the Paris event differently based on what happened in Cambridge? Lorna will be introducing two of the Visiting Artist's who will be featured in Paris later today but I'm hoping that she will give us more of a sense of the event's history so that perhaps that would give our empyre subscribers a idea of the underpinnings of potential discussion points. Thanks Lorna. Renate On 10/10/10 12:34 AM, Lorna Collins
[-empyre-] Introducing Artists-in-residence Janice Perry and Fred McVittie
While Lorna is offline I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce the artists-in-residence, Fred McVittie and Janice Perry. Fred may also be offline for a few more hours as he is coming to us from the UK as well. I have invited both Fred and Janice to talk a little about their own practices and also to explain to us how they see their process fitting into the Making Sense Colloquium. Janice Perry (USA) Performance artist Janice Perry tours internationally with her solo stage work. She’s received multiple grants and fellowships for live performance, teaching, and visual art from the Fulbright Commission/US Department of State, the Vermont Arts Council and the NEA, and others. Perry has led groups of emerging and established artists in creating new multi-media work in the USA, Europe and South Africa. Her work has been adapted for radio, television and print, screened at film festivals, and exhibited in the USA and Europe. Perry teaches interdisciplinary theatre courses at the University of Vermont and holds an MFA-IA from Goddard College. Being Derrida was a semi-finalist in the (USA) National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian Institution’s 2009 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. See also www.janiceperry.com Fred McVittie (UK) Fred McVittie is an artist and educator currently based in the Performance department of University College Falmouth. His background is in performance and experimental theatre, having worked with companies such as Forced Entertainment, Manact, and Pants Performance Association. More recently his work has been in social media, particularly blogging and video sharing, looking at these media as both sites for performative engagement and as tools which allow for the redefinition of concepts such as knowledge and art.** Lorna Collins wrote .snip. **..Through our artist-in-residence Fred McVittie we will be publishing footage from the colloquium onto youtube. He is a subscriber to Empyre -- it would be good to hear his view about what he's going to be doing in Paris, and how we might interact with a cyber-community. Our other artist-in-residence is Janice Perry. We hope that our artist-in-residences will create site-responsive work at each of the locations that offers a way of making sense of Making Sense. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] FWD: From Artist-in-residence Janice Perry
-- Forwarded message -- From: Janice Perry j...@janiceperry.com Date: Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 10:05 PM Subject: RE: [-empyre-] Making Sense? Well, as you know, it is not so simple to talk about one’s work. Especially work one hasn’t yet made. I’m just going to jump in and start with a bit of background. I have a very active international performance practice. I work live onstage, in multi-media live art, in video, and installation, and I teach. I also engage in collaboration with emerging and established artists around the world. I often use web technology to facilitate and document new work. I have a strong interest in physical, social, and natural sciences, linguistics, and philosophy, and a history of making work that reflects and translates human experience and concerns. I’m creating multi-media pieces in hopes of making abstract concepts more accessible. For example at present I’m using live performance, video, photography, audio, and installations to illustrate some of the extremely contradictory predictions about the effects of climate change on our lakes, streams, rivers and seas, and to speculate on the consequences for our cultural landscapes. A recent piece, Being Derrida began as an act of mourning, integrating practice and theory through live performance. Being Derrida reflects and embodies Jacques Derrida and aspects of his system of ideas through technology, physical engagement and re-creation. The piece is comprised of two simultaneously screened 6-minute videos. Objects resembling those used in the videos (a cordless phone, knife, jar of honey, etc) lie on a table at the side. A “deconstructed” version of the documentary film “Derrida” is projected on a large screen while an original video (in which I’ve imitated Derrida’s movements as closely as possible) is shown on a monitor. The videos are synchronized-- Derrida and I move together in a deconstructive dance that illustrates remarks on the myth of Echo and Narcissus, Self and Other, and Being, made by Derrida in the deconstructed documentary. In installation, the audience is invited to use the objects on the table to imitate the movements shown on the videos, to themselves, “Be Derrida.” Hard to describe, and surprisingly fun. In making the piece, I realized that “being Derrida” -- breaking down Derrida’s movements and actions, reinterpreting and re-ordering them—is itself a performative deconstruction of Deconstruction. I don’t have any specific plans about what I’ll make at/of Making Sense. I will be as present as possible, and try to respond quickly to what happens during the colloquium. Hard to know what those responses will look like, but I will know more once I see the physical space and see what is available to work with. And then of course, once the intellectual space comes into being, well… we’ll see! Looking forward to seeing you there. Best wishes, Janice PS: Take a look at my web site-- www.janiceperry.com ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] always negotiating
snip But we want to impress the sensuous over the theoretical, the making and doing rather than get involved in French politics...snip Dear all, As an artist and curator I am not so much interested in isolating out the practical, the theoretical/philosophical, or the the political. I am much more interested in the possibilities that exist in negotiating between those factors and any others that may come up. As an artist I am involved in the negotiating between variations of the material and the immaterial, the visual and the synaesthetic, the private and the public, the cultural and the political, not setting these delineations up as dichotomies but finding the nuanced gestural, performative spaces between them. Recently I have been influenced by our recent guests, Kevin Hamilton https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2009-May/001613.html who identifies himself as a researcher and Erin Manning https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2009-May/001613.html who characterizes her process as research-creation. These two artists and others while being influenced by models in Science and Technology also are influenced by philosophy and language based models. Additionally the work of (also guests on empyre) Millie Chen https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2009-May/001613.html, Ricardo Dominguez, and Teddy Cruz whose practices integrate social responsibility, culture, and politics into the core of their practice/production. I am troubled at this time that we attempt to separate out these paradigms by privileging one over the rest. Would you agree that there is always a negotiation in the process of art making? More a little later. Renate ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Introducing John Cayley and Penny Florence
* * At this time I would like to introduce John Cayley and Penny Florence to our empyre members. Both John and Penny will be describing their own work and what they will be doing at the Making Sense event. I am hoping that Fred and Janice will also join the conversation that Lorna has initiated during the first few posts. * * John Cayley is Visiting Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, leading the programme Writing in Digital Media. He has practiced as a poet, translator, publisher, and bookdealer, and all these activities have often intersected with his training in Chinese culture and language. His poetry is internationally recognised, twice winning the Electronic Literature Organization's Award for Poetry (in 2001 and 2010). He has held a number of research positions at universities in the UK and the US. Penny Florence is Chair of Humanities and Design Sciences at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. Until recently, she was Professor of Fine Art History and Theory, Head of Research Programmes at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where she is now Professor Emerita. She has published a number of books and articles on issues related to this conference and presentation, including the prefiguring of the digital in Mallarmé's Un coup de dés She has worked as an artist and filmmaker and is an interdisciplinary scholar and experimentalist, deploying practice and practice-related metholodogies to explore visuality in and through language. SA. Renate ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] always negotiating
My response was to this comment that Lorna made: The problem with Rancière's aesthetics as politics is that he seems to be utterly unaware of the technology that, Stiegler says, defines the human and the present. In a recent conversation with Rancière I asked him where were new media and techné, and the 21st century, in his thinking, and he said to me that he is not Bernard Stiegler and there was a difference of opinion. When I asked Stiegler what his philosophy would say to Rancière's he said that Rancière's 'partage du sensible' had no sense of sharing the distribution of virtual reality or cyberspace, et cetera. Now this is politics... We did not invite Rancière to this year's colloquium, this year the theoretical focus is on Stiegler. But we want to impress the sensuous over the theoretical, the making and doing rather than get involved in French politics... To privilege the sensuous over the theoretical and the making over the doing would be impossible for me. Instead I suggested a negotiation. Renate On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 8:27 AM, gh hovagimyan g...@thing.net wrote: All art is a negotiation of some sort. Unless the artist is a hermit or an art Naif or Art Brut, art is made with an eye to context. It's also about the patron. For some artists the patron is the university. They make art that reflects the academic environment. For some artists the patron is the non-profit alternative spaces. Of course there is also the gallery/museum/market system which is a big patron. All of these patronage systems are negotiated with during the process of art creation. I had hoped that the internet would present a new system that was not of these existing systems. That was the case with the early internet but now it's been subsumed. Personally I'm always looking for a way around these systems. I know one must negotiate but each system has it's restraints which inhibit the free flowing creative process. One of the principals of creativity is to engage these systems and enlarge their scope to include your own point of view and discourse. That appears to be the negotiation of which you speak. On Oct 11, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Renate Ferro wrote: Would you agree that there is always a negotiation in the process of art making? ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Week two on Contextualizing Making Sense
*It has been tremendously helpful for me to lurk the past couple of days to get a better sense of what so many of you already accomplished during the Cambridge Making Sense event. Tim and are are looking forward to leaving for Paris in just a couple of days. At this time I'd like to introduce four new participants in this week's discussion of Making Sense: Frank O'Cain, Rebekah Samkuel, Cristina Bonilla, and Xena Lee. I welcome them to empyre and hope that they will tell us a bit about their work in relationship to Making Sense. Renate* * * *Frank O’Cain* was born in San Diego, California, and studied at the Art Students League of New York under Vaclav Vytlacil. O’Cain has had solo shows at Purdue University; the Miriam Perlman Gallery, Chicago; the Miriam Perlman Gallery, Flint, Michigan; the Princeton Art Association; Levitan Gallery I and II, New York City; the Saginaw Art Museum; the Ella Sharp Museum, Jackson, Mississippi; Northern Illinois University; and the Theano Stahelin Kunstsalon, Zurich, Switzerland. He has participated in group and solo shows at DDB Gallery, New York City; Gallery Korea, New York City; Yale University; the Centre Pompidou; and Gen-Paul Gallery, Paris, France. His work is represented by a number of private collectors; the collection of the White Building, University of Michigan; the Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana; and in the Saginaw Art Museum. He is currently an instructor at the Art Students League of New York and has presented at Yale University and the Centre Pompidou. *Rebekah Samkuel* was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. Her works have been shown in group shows in Germany, France, Chicago, and New York. She likes the solitude of her studio and to search for deeper levels in her work. In her words: “Art is as old as the human race. Why the need to express in pigment, volume, line and stone? And dance, music and drama? Others buy and sell or choose to be warriors and tillers of the earth. It is a mystery. I am a painter. My soul seeks both inspiration and liberation in art. Art allows me to escape the crude reality of contemporary life where we find the masses ruling and mediocrity reigning. Although I seek the refinement and beauty in life, the themes in my work are the disturbing pathos of the aftermath of the battle, the ancient battles; the struggle between darkness and light. I do search for an understanding. I am a warrior.” *Cristina Bonilla* has had solo exhibitions at the Galerie d’Art du Parc, Galerie Lieu Ouest and the Galerie d’Art d’Outremont in Montreal and at the Southampton Cultural Center in New York. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, the Sandra Goldie Gallery and the Gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts of Montreal. As part of her artistic practice, she also teaches and lectures to painters, collectors and general audiences, to help them understand the visual reality that is at the core of painting. This has included adult education courses at the City University of New York and Southampton College, New York City gallery tours and visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was public liaison at the Dia Art Foundation’s Dan Flavin Institute and was awarded the First Grand Prize of Contemporary Painting by la Peau de l’Ours, an association of Montreal collectors. She currently mentors professional painters in the United States and Canada in small critique groups. *Xéna Lee* seeks an expression that utters the unpronounceable, giving shape to the formless. As poetry reveals aspects of truth that are inaccessible to discursive prose, she believes that visual art, like music or dance, can go further to touch upon experiences that cannot be expressed in words. There are moments in life when we catch glimpses of intrinsic truth, when we seem to reach into the depths of reality. These moments of fundamental wisdom and sublime joy are what she strives to capture in her paintings. In contrast to the fleeting nature of these moments, expression of them comes only from continuous cultivation and development of the human spirit. For these reasons, Xéna studied physics, literature, medicine, psychiatry, theology, and anthropology, to understand better the human condition, while she apprenticed after modern master Frank O’Cain to develop her artistic vision. She showed in numerous solo and group exhibitions since 1995, including in New York (SoHo and Chelsea), Scotland (Edinburgh), France (Tonneins-Unet and Paris), Italy (Modena), Spain (Barcelona), and Qatar (Doha). Additional influences include her East Asian heritage, martial arts training, travels to Africa, and participation in social movements to promote justice and peace. Most recently, she has been exploring projects across disciplines, including painting the backdrop for SYREN Modern Dance and serving as visual-artist-in-residence for the Lincoln Center group Ensemble du Monde in New York
[-empyre-] prolitariat
In our jet-lagged state Tim and I spent a day and a half in the Making Sense Colloquium held at the Georges Pompidou Center and the Institut Telecom. Paris is in the middle of a social crisis prompted by a major labor strike against the government due to its potential plan to change the age of retirement from 60 years to 62 years of age. French philosopher Bernard Steigler the Director of the Institute of Recherche and Innnovaion at the Pompidou Center addressed the Colloquium the first morning citing the twentieth century as the century of the Proletariat. Steigler also cited the work of Duchamp and Beuys as figures to consider in the discussion about Making Sense, Faire Sense. His talk entitled Art, Territory, Epoque Individuation of Post consumerism and Post Modernism made no mention of the strikes outside in the streets of Paris. For Steigler criticality is a faculty of the sensing process and at the core of the creative process, but was blatantly absent from also was absent in many of many of the disparate presentations. We have had very limited access to the internet but will post more later today and also introduce to you three more presenters who will hopefully give the empyre subscribers a clearer idea of what the Colloquium is attempting to do. Renate ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Fwd: Fw: from Tim Murray prolitariat
Forwarded from Tim Murray earlier today. Pace, Xena (who organized Making Sense and celebrates the romantic universalism of art without ever acknowledging the crisis during the conference), my friends throughout France confirm that the situation here is very fragile. It could deteriorate over night or the French citizenry could cave in to the beligerent will of Sarkozy. Tim Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry -Original Message- From: xéna lee pirolamb...@yahoo.com Sender: empyre-boun...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:45:20 To: soft_skinned_spaceemp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Reply-To: soft_skinned_space emp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: Re: [-empyre-] prolitariat ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Sense as space
Thanks so much Alexander for sharing your work particularly your project The Hinge Dimension. It has been a brutal transition back to reality this week after the amazing sights of Paris. Tim and I were able to taks some time after the Sense Colloquium to see the FIAC Contemporary Art Fair. Additionally we roamed the streets of Paris for day without any itinerary just sensing the streets and using our whims to direct us from one place to the next. There are many choreographers and performance studies scholars who work from the departure of movement and criticality within space. In fact in May of 2009 we hosted a discussion on the topic of Critical Motion Practice. Sedimentation in relationship to the ³architecture of sense² appears to be contradictory in my mind especially in your desire for the ³people to test the spaces they inhabit, entice people to stop taking spaces as unchanging and determining factors of their bodily movements.² In regards to sedimentation, the body still follows the land structures. Can it be that we have an environment where the land follows and morphs the movement of a critical, discerning, thinking and sensing body? If Johannes, Sally, Erin, Ashley or any of our other empyre subscribers have thoughts about sedimentation I curious about what you think? Renate On 10/26/10 4:35 PM, Alexander Wilson 0...@parabolikguerilla.com wrote: Hello again, Thanks to those who responded. I feel encouraged to expand on these ideas of sense as space. Insofar as the topological body can take part in sense¹s production, there are several different angles from which this production can be explored. For a time I explored this idea from the point of view of architecture. An architecture is a built space, an artificial one. However, most of us never take part in the production of these spaces: most of us merely follow the corridors they offer us to move through. If we reduce the idea of architecture to two essential characteristics : walls which restrict movement, and passageways which allow movement. Like a labyrinth, sense allows movement in certain directions while hindering others. For a while my art was invested in offering people more ways of modifying the spaces they inhabit. In 2007 I collaborated (with architect and interaction designer, Karmen Franinovic) on a project that would experiment with this idea. The project was called Hinge Dimension and was commissioned by the Enter Festival in Cambridge, UK. We built a two-dimensional array of freely pivoting walls that could be rearranged in various ways to form corridors and rooms. There was embedded circuitry in all of the walls that allowed us to analyze the the ³flow² of the entire space. This flow factor and it¹s directions drove a surround-sound and a visual representation of the flow which was projected onto the ceiling of the space. (it was a monster of a project) We installed it in Lepers Chapel in Cambridge. The goal was to demonstrate how different topologies of space allow for different movement, and to encourage people to test the spaces they inhabit, entice them to stop taking spaces as unchanging and determining factors of their bodily movements, but to actually start taking action to reorganize the architecture¹s topology. (An inspiration for Hinge Dimension was Cedric Price¹s ³fun palace² which was an architecture which reinvented itself cybernetically to adapt itself to it¹s inhabitants needs and desires.) (Though somewhat different, this work resonates with Gordon Matta-Clark's as well.) If sense is spatial, then the production of the ³architecture of sense² can be understood along the lines of ³sedimentation² (phenomenology). Sedimentation happens when that which is flowing becomes the structure through which it flows, when the particles flowing through the river become the land supporting the river, directing it. In a way, all sense is imperatively conjugated: we tend to allow ourselves to be guided wherever the current is the strongest and wherever one¹s body can most easily steer clear of obstacles, avoid running up ashore or hitting bottom, avoid friction. For to avoid the sediment is to avoid death. The poet, the artist, on the other hand, digs his heels into the mud and draws water from unknown sources. I see sedimentation as a physical process in which sense is constantly involved. It is the other arrow of time, the reason why memory always moves from from explicit to implicit, from conscious to reflexive, from creative action to automatic gesture. Language, it could be said, has physical properties. As made explicit in the sculptural writings of Valère Novarina, words attract each other, repel each other, bounce off of each other, neutralize each other, etc. They make the body and mind move in and out of specific spaces. And though words take on a new world of possibilities each time they are spoken, there is something about them that
[-empyre-] goodbye to Making Sense, Welcome Melinda Rackam
Many thanks to Misha, Steve and Kelena for finishing out the last week of Contextualizing Making Sense. I think all three of your posts brought out the incredibly delicate balance that cross-disciplinary collaboration requires. In any collaboration, given a set of participants, each one must bring his\ her own expertise and engaged critical voice to the process. In merging our practical and theoretical interests, Tim and I have collaborated in both creative and curatorial endeavors each bringing a different perspective to our joint ventures. While I tend to envision the practical as an artist, Tim's work as a writer and theoretician brings to the mix a more theoretical voice. What this merger allows for is a relational space where theory and practice conjoin at times and at others resist. *As artist, writer, curator, teachers our practices often originate in the seeds of instinct, whim, and hunch and then proceed through play and work via research, reading, discussion, investigation, often ending up in reflective critical analysis only to return to the fold of our instincts again. It is our collective observation that the process of “Making Sense” enfolds pleats of uneasiness, questioning, and restlessness. The destabilization of this process incites and excites us to flow through the momentum and energy at certain junctures NOT Making Sense that push us through the flow of productive processes.* ** * Our collaborative work has long been influenced by broad reflection on matters of performativity especially as it relates to politics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, memory and fantasy, as well as the broader social paradigms of technology, culture, and art. What’s been exciting to both of us to realize how each of our various interdisciplinary interfaces combining practice and theory has led us to do such projects as moderators of -empyre soft-skinned space. * This month on empyre, In examining the collective notion of Sense, our mission was to provide an opportunity where the virtual space of empyre and the real spaces of the Pompidou, Paris and the participants of the Making Sense Colloquium would collectively consider the possibilities of the act of making sense through an inclusive understanding and the broader notion/translation making sensorium a space where practice and theory converge as performance and space (both virtual and real). Through this inclusive reflection that was simultaneously practical and theoretical we attempted to collectively move between making and thinking art and philosophy. We thank all of our guests who participated in our discussion this month for their generosity in sharing their ideas. This morning as we close our discussion we are writing from Berkeley, California where we have been enjoying a visit with Ashley Ferro-Murray. We travelled to the West coast to see her collaborative performance with CNMAT musicians, David Coll and Rama Godfried who worked with six performers to create a relational space where movement and sound, real-time interaction via sensors with networked information made Noisense. The mediatized space of Noisesense, enabled a sensorium of spectacle, sound, movement, and theoretical thought that presented to the audience spaces where critical thought and engagement could network out from the performance. Informed and carefully crafted collaborations will generate the fruit of theoretical thinking and from our point of view that is when these sorts of experiments do lend themselves to successful marriages of practice and theory. With that both Tim and I sign off for the month and welcome Melinda Rackam who will introduce the November discussion on empyre. Our apologies to her in closing a bit late. We look forward to her upcoming discussion. Renate and Tim ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] February on -empyre-: New Media and the Middle East
February 2011 on -empyre- soft_skinned space New Media and the Middle East Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray (US) with Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon), Eliot Bates (US), Isak Berbic (UAE), Tarek Elhaik (US), Mayssa Fattouh (Qatar), Shuruq Harb (Palestine), Horit Herman Peled (IS), Laura U. Marks (Cn), Kevin and Jennifer McCoy (US/UAE), Nat Müller (Netherlands), Larissa Sansour (UK). http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ This month's geopolitical focus on new media and the Middle East will provide a framework for engaging in a wide-range of interdisciplinary approaches to new media art and theory. Featured guests will introduce their practices across a range of media and cultural traditions, from video, interactive, and relational media to photography, sound, and gaming. Equally important will be curatorial and social initiatives.In so doing they will engage in a discussion of how the cultural, political, and theoretical specificities of the Middle East contribute to and impact artistic practice? What role does technology play in artistic and curatorial practice, and how do Middle Eastern histories, customs, and politics inform this contribution? Is there a way that new technologies and their artistic expression enhance reflection on geopolitical considerations important to the region and its reception? Or might new technology itself exemplify the paradoxes or tensions that in themselves have informed the artistic and curatorial practices of our guests. And, flowing from January's discussion, how might the list's discussion of the Netopticon dialogue with artistic and curatorial practices in the Middle East? Are there ways that flows between artistic and geopolitical borders contribute to political and conceptual thinking about the Middle as it informs both East and West? = Moderated by: Renate Ferro (US) is a conceptual and new media artist working in emerging technology, participatory installation, and digital culture. She is the Co-Managing Moderator of -empyre- and the art/imaging editor of the journal diacritics published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. She teaches in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. She has recently staged participatory exhibitions and installations in Berlin, Chiapas, Mexico, and Pécs, Hungary. She directed an intervention in October for -empyre- at the Making Sense Colloquium at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and teaches new media and conceptual art at Cornell University. Tim Murray (US) is the Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University and Co-Managing Moderator of -empyre-. He is Director of the Society for the Humanities and Professor Comparative Literature and English at Cornell. He sits on the Steering Committee of HASTAC and is the author of numerous books and articles on new media, film and video, contemporary art, performance, and theory, including Digital Baroque: New Media Art and Cinematic Folds. Featured Guests: Mirene Arsanios (Lebanon) is curator, critic, and co-founder of 98weeks Project Space and artist organization in Beirut. She studied art history in Rome and received her Masters in Contemporary Art from Goldsmiths College, London. She previously worked as a researcher at Ashkal Alwan and as an Assistant Curator at MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. She now teaches at the American University of Beirut. Eliot Bates (US) is an ethnomusicologist specializing in digital audio recording cultures and the production of contemporary music in Istanbul, Turkey. He is a Society for the Humanities ACLS Fellow in Music at Cornell University. He has published, Music in Turkey: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture (Oxford) and co=founded the dancecult.net collaborative bibliography project and the open source journal, Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture. Isak Berbic (UAE) is an artist, writer and lecturer born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time called Yugoslavia. In 1992 as Yugoslavia dissolved and Bosnia was under attack, he and his family became refugees, moving from Croatia, through the Czech Republic to a refugee camp in Denmark, and lastly to the United States. In 2007 he moved to the Middle East; United Arab Emirates, where he currently teaches media at the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah. He is a continuing contributor to numerous projects and publications on contemporary art. His research deals with histories, politics, tragedy, memory, humor, exile, and the limits of representation. Tarek Elhaik (US) is an anthropologist, film curator, and Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University. He situates his conceptual, sensorial and ethnographic investigations of Modernity at the frontier of anthropology, trans-cultural
Re: [-empyre-] Transitions: New Media and the Middle East
Hello, everyone. As we transition into a new discussion in February of New Media and the Middle East, we want to express our appreciation to Simon Biggs and all of the featured guests of January for leading us in such a fascinating and important discussion of the Netopticon. What a tremendously exciting way to bring -empyre- into the new decade. So thanks so much, Simon, for your contributions to the moderating team of -empyre- by directing our focus to such an important and lively topic. While we often seek to program transitions from the focal theme of one month to the next on -empyre-, they don't often come quite as naturally as they do now. Clearly we didn't foresee the flow of current events when over the past couple of months we starting approaching featured guests for this month's discussion. It's very likely that recent discussions of the impact of social networking on events in Egypt will flavor this month's discussion and profit from last month's wide-ranging consideration of the Netopticon. But just as the centrality of Twitter and Facebook to the Middle East uprisings have been subject to critical debate on our sister list, iDC, over the past week, our hope is that added focus on the ongoing artistic, curatorial, and critical projects of our featured guests will provide an additional context for understanding the relationship of new media, art, and the cultures and politics of the Middle East. To do so, we're very happy to be joined this month by an exceptionally diverse set of guests whose practices and approaches derive from very different specific relations to the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. Our aim in managing -empyre- has been to maintain a robust international perspective, and we're now pleased that this month's discussion promises to broaden not only our list's perspective about the international range of artistic work and critical thought pertaining to technology and the arts but also, and most importantly, about the interrelation of projects in new media art to the geopolitical environments in which they occur. We look forward to another robust month of discussion of -empyre-, and we thank all of our 1,450 subscribers for their commitment to the list. Best wishes, Renate and Tim -- Renate Ferro and Tim Murray Managing 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-] Hope you will all post--One last day to discuss New Media and the MIddle East
Dear all, I have absolutely enjoyed the discussion this past month and have actually shared it with a group of young students in a Visual Culture class here at Cornell. From the detailed descriptions of new media artists difficulty in getting tech equipment to the nuanced cultural translations that you have laid out before us, the discussion has been timely and informative for all of us. I was fascinated by Isak's post on Saturday about the young child who will go through life with the name Facebook (?!). Indeed the reports that I have been following have painted a picture of a vast network of both technological networks, Facebook, Twitter, Cable television, cellphone technology, and even UPS, that have allowed incredibly brave, courageous, and committed citizens to rise up for what they believe to be injustices. Obviously the younger generation has been inspired to rise up against years of what they know to be antiquated ways of governmental abuse. I am incredibly humbled and inspired though not by not the technological tools being used, but the people who are using that technology in innovative, creative, and inspiring ways. If there were not people on the ground willing to confront the regime's they are facing, no technological innovation would have been or will be successful. The videotape feeds of Egyptian citizens locking arms to prevent intrusion into Liberation Square was an image that for me that especially memorable. Here in the states both Tim and I have been involved in grassroots politics. If only the citizens of democratized countries such as the US could become as committed in the process as what we have been witnessing in the MIddle East. I'm so sad to report that so many neighbors as well as students are complacent or too busy to become involved in the process. Many years ago I attended a information panel for an artist's granting panel. The first item of business was simply a question...Are you registered to vote? This granting agency wanted all of the attendees to become actively engaged with a government who would be in control of how much granting money and support was distributed. My hope is that our Middle Eastern friends will inspire all of us to remember that active participation in governmental processes is imperative to keep it relevant and just in meeting the needs of its people. Later tonight we will be closing out this month's discussion on empyre and welcoming Christina McPhee to introduce a new discussion topic tomorrow. I'm inviting all of you to make wrap up posts and encourage all of our subscribers to chime in for one more day of discussion, New Media and the Middle East. Renate On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 3:49 PM, Isak Berbic isakber...@yahoo.com wrote: http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/family-parenting/man-names-his-firstborn-daughter-‘facebook’-blog-17-yahoo-lifestyles.html A young Egyptian man has decided to call his first-born daughter Facebook in a tribute to the social media site’s role in his country’s political revolution. Even though initial Facebook pages by Google executive Wael Ghonim and others were a significant means of information dissemination and a rally for protest, I find it over-insistent that Facebook was the most significant medium in Egypt and the other recent protests across the Middle East. I would think that mobile phone text messaging is the more relevant and powerful catalyst for the organizing of assembly that is occurring. This is how people came together, and this is also how the Egyptian government rallied for supporters to go and demonstrate their own numbers. On the other hand television is major since the whole country came out into the streets on the day they heard of Hosni Mubarak's resignation on the state channel. Only at this point did everyone feel the safety of the mass and the ubiquity of the revolution. Critical Mass is also an interesting example where text messaging and fliers are the dominant means of communication. (At least 3-4 years ago it was) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass In my opinion there is something suspicious about the fact that western media channels keep referring to the happenings in the Middle East as Facebook Revolutions. I can assure you that while this kind of title was mentioned on the television channels in the Middle East, by no means did it become a constant branded title. During the winter holiday season of 2010/2011 I was watching a North American television station: CNN, or MSMBC; and a few times daily they reported on FedEx and the enormous historical count of packages they are delivering. They did a story LIVE from a delivery truck. They talked about the recipients joy as they open the present inside the purple and white box. These last few weeks, the stories on the snow storms in the US north-east and mid-west are accompanied by a Home Depot worker (an american hardware store) telling us how to operate a roof rake and get the dangerous
[-empyre-] off to work
Christina, It has been interesting to lurk the past few days and I'm prompted to write very briefly as I'm headed out the door to teach this morning. Your invitation to wake up the list is one that I think about quite often as one of empyre's managing moderators. Hello, is anyone out there? As I fly out the door this morning I'm thinking that courageous and dangerous women are all working women who by uniting locally to network world wide as a field of participants could field world-wide change. BTW add S. Anne Vorce, Susan Hale Kemenyffy, Marsha Cisek, and Mary Lou HIggins all women artists who may not be recognizable to probably all of you but influenced me greatly very early in my career. Off to work. Renate On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 7:15 PM, Cara Baldwin carabaldwi...@gmail.comwrote: 100 women and new media artists http://p-art-icles.blogspot.com/2011/03/celebrating-100th-international-womens.html On Mar 8, 2011, at 2:09 PM, christina christ...@christinamcphee.net wrote: Not yet and in fact let's riff on more media artists, yourself included in my personal list : c On Mar 8, 2011, at 8:07 AM, Lynn Hershman wrote: Has anyone mentioned Tina Modotti? l On Mar 7, 2011, at 10:21 PM, Christiane Robbins wrote: And ... for the record ... in case she has not been yet mentioned: Ralf Huebner Earth News March 7, 2011 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/370619,womens-day-feature.html Wiederau, Germany A bronze statue in front of the childhood home of Clara Zetkin is one of the few remaining landmarks commemorating the socialist women's rights campaigner who founded International Women's Day. At the second International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen in 1910, Zetkin proposed an annual day to honour women's rights. Her suggestion was approved and International Women's Day was first held 100 years ago, in 1911. It is now celebrated on March 8 each year. Zetkin was born in 1857 in Wiederau, a town nestled in the sparsely populated region between the eastern German cities of Leipzig and Chemnitz. She died in exile in the Soviet Union in 1933. In the former Communist East German state, the socialist politician was a national icon whose profile featured on the 10-Mark banknote. But 20 years after German unification, she is virtually unknown to the residents in Wiederau. None of its streets is named after her, and the former school and gardening collective that bore her name have been closed. Her old home, once known as the Clara Zetkin Memorial Site, is now simply called the Museum in the Old Village School. Zetkin lived in the schoolhouse until the age of 15, when her family moved to Leipzig. Today, the building is filled with memorabilia from the early 20th century, a time of social change and class conflict. During the East German regime, visitors filled the house on March 8 each year, said Ursula Bergmann of the local heritage society. Every year on Women's Day there was a trip first to the memorial site, then something to eat, Bergmann said. The memorial was a form of socialist pilgrimage site. The guest book bears testimony to the worker's collectives, school groups and delegations from around the world who stopped by to honour Zetkin's memory. The locals did not like all the fuss, Bergmann said. When the East German state crumbled in 1989, Zetkin's statue was not left unscathed by the revolutionary turmoil. It was an obvious target at the town's main junction. One morning it was found face down on the ground, and was subsequently moved out of the town centre, to Zetkin's former home. Wiederau is in a part of Germany that has suffered from the failure of Communism, as state-run industry collapsed after unification and young people left the region in droves. The town's streets are empty, the former department store is up for sale and Wiederau's former knitwear factory has been converted into a home for the elderly. These days the museum draws just 200 visitors annually, Bergmann said. But March 8 is still the busiest day of the year, she said, when radical Left Party legislators bring guests to celebrate their Comrade Clara. Members of the heritage society sell coffee and cake to earn a few euros. The visitors are hardly ever locals - but the residents of Wiederau have now made peace with the socialist hero who once lived in their midst, Bergmann said. We know that Clara Zetkin was born here, said a saleswoman in one of the town's small grocery stores. But she thought it was right that Zetkin's statue no longer graced the town's central crossroads. She's doing okay where she now stands, she said. ___ On Mar 7, 2011, at 1:11 PM, Ana Valdes wrote: Some names I should like to add, Flora Tristan, grandmother of Gauguin and
[-empyre-] Welcome Patrick Lichty
Many thanks to Christina McPhee for being a guest moderator during the month of March and leading the discussion, How a Field Becomes Visible. Christina is a long time collaborator and friend of -empyre- and we really appreciate her willingness to moderate this past month. Thanks Christina! Tim and I would like to welcome Patrick Lichty who has agreed to join the empyre moderating team. It was great to catch up with Patrick at the College Art Association this past February and we are thrilled that he has agreed to host this month. His commitment and interests to conceptual art, curating, and media activism will provide the impetus for many future months discussions. Patrick a warm welcome to you from the -empyre- community and thank you for agreeing to join the moderator's team. Patrick's biography is below. He will be introducing this month's discussion and guests later today, Reemergence of the Augment. Patrick Lichty (b.1962) is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer, independent curator, animator for the activist group, The Yes Men, and Executive Editor of Intelligent Agent Magazine. He began showing technological media art in 1989, and deals with works and writing that explore the social relations between us and media. Venues in which Lichty has been involved with solo and collaborative works include the TED Conference, Whitney Turin Biennials, Maribor Triennial, Performa Performance Biennial, Ars Electronica, and the International Symposium on the Electronic Arts (ISEA). He also works extensively with virtual worlds, including Second Life, and his work, both solo and with his performance art group, Second Front, has been featured in Flash Art, Eikon Milan, and ArtNews. He is also an Assistant Professor of Interactive Arts Media at Columbia College Chicago. Best Wishes to all of you, Renate and Tim Renate Ferro and Tim Murray -empyre- soft skinned space ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Thanks to Patrick Lichty for organizing and moderating the April discussion on -empyre
Thanks so much to all of the subscribers and guests who participated in the April discussion on -empyre soft-skinned space organized by our Moderator, Patrick Lichty. Patrick you organized an awesome month and we are all so excited that so many of our subscribers participated in your discussion. Renate and Tim will be introducing the May discussion later this evening, Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Venues. We are hoping that this discussion will actually piggy-back off from many of the points made last month. Thanks to all of you again. Renate Ferro and Tim Murray -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Welcome to Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures”
Welcome! May 2011 on –empyre soft-skinned space “Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures” http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ Moderated by *Renate Ferro (US*) and *Tim Murray (US)* with guests: *Janis Jefferies* (UK), *Valérie Lamontagne* (CA), *Ashley Ferro-Murray*(US), *Sabine Seymour* (US), *Susan Elizabeth Ryan* (US), *Danielle Wilde*(AU/FR), *Sarah Kettley (UK), **Lucy Dunne* (*US)* During the month of May 2011, -empyre soft-skinned space will be featuring a discussion of wearable technologies, means through which technology augments or enables the body in interacting with the surrounding environment. The integration of wearables that augment the body with technological capabilities permeate our diverse worlds from entertainment to the military. During a recent episode of American Idol, singer Katy Perry wore a white body suit that flickered with pink LED lights to the beat of a song with Kanye West. Just a few days ago, during a US military secret mission to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, elite Navy Blue Seals wore special goggles that allowed them to see in low light conditions and helmets installed with video cams that beamed the capture and killing of Bin Laden in real time for the President of the United States and other onlookers in the White House Situation Room. In the realms of art and technology, wearable technologies have proliferated while linking the areas of art, design, science and engineering. In the art and technology DIY world, the arduino and lilypad platforms and open source software have made these technologies more accessible. Embedded accelerometers within ubiquitous communication and computer hardware such as the i-phone, i-pod touch, and the i-pad among others have simplified the relationship between code and interactivity. Some of the questions to be considered over the course of the next four weeks will include: How do wearable technologies enhance the body’s capabilities to interface with the environment as transmitters, receivers, enablers of data-in-the-world. How do the technologies of material protect the body upon harmful impact (fire, heat, microbes) or enhance more pleasurable sensation? What is the role of risk in relation to the failure of design or delivery? What are the relationships between the practical aspects of use and the aesthetic concerns of design? How do we understand wearable technology in relation to the excesses of commodified culture? While some of our guests will discuss interface design and practice we will also encourage others to theorize about interventions between technology, the body, and architecture. This months guests biographies are below: Week of May 4th *Janis Jefferies* (UK) is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of Visual Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London, Academic director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Centre for Creative and Social Technologies and Goldsmiths Digital Studios. Jefferies was trained as a painter and later pioneered the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture, internationally through exhibitions and texts. Since 2002 she has been working on technological based arts, including Woven Sound (with Dr. Tim Blackwell). She has been a principal investigator on projects involving new haptics technologies by bringing the sense of touch to the interface between people and machines (MIT) and generative software systems for creating and interpreting cultural artifacts, museums and the external environment. She is an associate researcher with Hexagram (Institute of Media, Arts and Technologies, subTELA Lab directed by Professor Barbara Layne, Montreal, Canada) on two projects, electronic textiles and new forms of media communication in cloth. Wearable Absence was launched in Montreal in June 2010 and shown as part of the Science Festival in Edinburgh, April 2011. She has had numerous publications but most recently: 'Loving Attention: An outburst of craft in contemporary art' in *Extra/ordinary: Craft Culture and Contemporary Art*, (2011) and ‘One and Another: a Handshake with the Ancestors’ in *The Shape of Thing* and ‘The Artist as Researcher in a Computer Mediated Culture’, in *Art Practices in a Digital Culture*. *Valérie Lamontagne* (CA) is a digital media designer-artist, theorist and curator researching techno-artistic frameworks that combine human/nonhuman agencies. Looking at the rich practice of performance art, social intervention and interactive installations – she is invested in developing responsive objects (specifically wearables) and interactive media scenarios which interlope the public-at-large, the environment and matter as “performer”. She is the Founder and Director of 3lectromode, a design group invested in developing wearables that combine D-I-Y technology with current fashion research. Her work has been showcased
[-empyre-] Week One: Wearable Technologies
During the month of April, Patrick Lichty hosted a discussion on -empyre dealing with Augmented Realities. During the month I was noticed that the discussion often included wearable technologies that augmented the senses. I recently came across an interview with Stelarc on You Tube just a few days ago where he said in relationship to his own performance work, “The body is obsolete: These performance projects position the body as a kind of evolutionary architecture for operation and awareness in the world. Here we have the biological architecture of the body and when you add technology to it you can extend its operational capabilities. The body is not seen as a site for the psyche more for social inscription but is seen as a structure not as an object of desire but as possibly an object for redesign.” Perhaps during the month we will be able to talk more about the intersections of the body, technology and architecture. Tim and I are hoping that last month's discussion and guests will join this month's group as we talk specifically about wearable technologies. We would like to introduce *Janis Jefferies* (UK) and Valérie Lamontagne (CA) whose biographies I just sent out a few minutes ago. Janis and Valérie will be making posts tonight or tomorrow given our time zone differences. Welcome to them! Renate Ferro Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures”
Dear Valerie and Janis, Thank you so much for starting our our discussion this month. After an incredibly long day of teaching my last classes of the semester today I was able to reread both of your posts. There were so many interesting points that you made but I'd like to pick up on something that you both mentioned that resonated with my interests and I'm hoping that you will continue to talk about the following in relationship to your own practical and conceptual work and research. Valerie wrote last night about her interests in three areas but the first was: 1) materiality (what materiality defines a wearable? what are wearables made of? what are the delineating characteristics which define wearables?) Janis wrote this evening: Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s observation 1964 that the garment is an interface to the exterior mediated through digital technology, Seymour 2008 writes that, “ the electric age ushers us into a world in which we live and breathe and listen through the entire epidermis”...snip... Fashion and wearable technology have as their departure point the ability to act as *second skins* interfaces to a world in which we live and breathe and listen through the entire epidermis as Sabine Seymour describes ...snipWearables, as a technology, co-habitate with the body and “perform” stories of amplification. Can you both talk what happens when material and technology merge, ( Sabine will be joining us next week by the way and I know she is traveling this week, but perhaps we can also get her in on this discussion later) particularly when the notion of material becomes literally a second skin, an epidermis that breathes, that joins with the body to augment the body and in turn enable it as mobile architecture (not that of decoration) but of a rebuilding and enhancing of the bodies' capabilities. Any thoughts in relationship to your own work? Renate Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Welcome to Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures”
Hi all, I thought I'd take this opportunity to remind all of our subscribers that the archives for almost ten years of empyre discussions can be accessed at https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ If there is a dialog box that pops up just accept and proceed. The archives are organized according to date, subject, etc. Hope that helps Danielle and the rest. All other information for empyre can be accessed by our website that is now hosted by the Cornell University Server http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ Renate On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:25 PM, danielle wilde d...@daniellewilde.com wrote: hi renate, can you please advise how people new to the list can find this thread (complete up to today)? I have a colleague who wants to join but he would also like to access the existing conversation. many thanks danielle On 5 May 2011 11:37, Renate Ferro r...@cornell.edu wrote: Welcome! May 2011 on –empyre soft-skinned space “Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures” http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ Moderated by *Renate Ferro (US*) and *Tim Murray (US)* with guests: *Janis Jefferies* (UK), *Valérie Lamontagne* (CA), *Ashley Ferro-Murray*(US), *Sabine Seymour* (US), *Susan Elizabeth Ryan* (US), *Danielle Wilde*(AU/FR), *Sarah Kettley (UK), **Lucy Dunne* (*US)* During the month of May 2011, -empyre soft-skinned space will be featuring a discussion of wearable technologies, means through which technology augments or enables the body in interacting with the surrounding environment. The integration of wearables that augment the body with technological capabilities permeate our diverse worlds from entertainment to the military. During a recent episode of American Idol, singer Katy Perry wore a white body suit that flickered with pink LED lights to the beat of a song with Kanye West. Just a few days ago, during a US military secret mission to hunt down Osama Bin Laden, elite Navy Blue Seals wore special goggles that allowed them to see in low light conditions and helmets installed with video cams that beamed the capture and killing of Bin Laden in real time for the President of the United States and other onlookers in the White House Situation Room. In the realms of art and technology, wearable technologies have proliferated while linking the areas of art, design, science and engineering. In the art and technology DIY world, the arduino and lilypad platforms and open source software have made these technologies more accessible. Embedded accelerometers within ubiquitous communication and computer hardware such as the i-phone, i-pod touch, and the i-pad among others have simplified the relationship between code and interactivity. Some of the questions to be considered over the course of the next four weeks will include: How do wearable technologies enhance the body’s capabilities to interface with the environment as transmitters, receivers, enablers of data-in-the-world. How do the technologies of material protect the body upon harmful impact (fire, heat, microbes) or enhance more pleasurable sensation? What is the role of risk in relation to the failure of design or delivery? What are the relationships between the practical aspects of use and the aesthetic concerns of design? How do we understand wearable technology in relation to the excesses of commodified culture? While some of our guests will discuss interface design and practice we will also encourage others to theorize about interventions between technology, the body, and architecture. This months guests biographies are below: Week of May 4th *Janis Jefferies* (UK) is an artist, writer and curator, Professor of Visual Arts at the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths University of London, Academic director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles and Artistic Director of Centre for Creative and Social Technologies and Goldsmiths Digital Studios. Jefferies was trained as a painter and later pioneered the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture, internationally through exhibitions and texts. Since 2002 she has been working on technological based arts, including Woven Sound (with Dr. Tim Blackwell). She has been a principal investigator on projects involving new haptics technologies by bringing the sense of touch to the interface between people and machines (MIT) and generative software systems for creating and interpreting cultural artifacts, museums and the external environment. She is an associate researcher with Hexagram (Institute of Media, Arts and Technologies, subTELA Lab directed by Professor Barbara Layne, Montreal, Canada) on two projects, electronic textiles and new forms of media communication in cloth. Wearable Absence was launched in Montreal in June 2010 and shown as part of the Science Festival in Edinburgh, April 2011. She has had numerous publications
[-empyre-] Week 2 on empyre: Welcome to Sabine Seymour and Ashley Ferro-Murray
We got off to a rather late start this month on -empyre's discussion Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures but we are introducing Week's 2 guests tonight. An invitation to last week's guests Valerie and Janis to join in our discussion this week if their schedules permit. A warm welcome to Ashley Ferro-Murray who has been a guest on empyre previously during our discussion on Critical Movement Practice a couple of years ago. Sabine is a new subscriber to empyre and we are looking forward to her participation. Looking forward to both Ashley and Sabine joining to extend our discussion throughout the week. Thanks. Renate Ferro Introducing: *Ashley Ferro-Murray* (US) is a choreographer who uses process-based and improvisatory movement structures to interrogate emergent technology in performance and installation. Past works include wearable sensors, digital animation software, 16mm film technology, and various mechanical apparati. Without assuming the political potential of technology or the interactive capabilities of digital media in performance, Ferro-Murray takes both a historical and experimental approach to building choreographies that encourage active viewing environments in which media is installed to instigate subversive energy. Both her artistic and scholarly work revolves around the histories of and future possibilities for experimental dance, installation art, and tactical media. Ferro-Murray is a PHD candidate in the Graduate Program in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in new media at the University of California, Berkeley. *Sabine Seymour* (US) May 9th, 15th -17th Dr. Sabine Seymour focuses on fashionable technology and the intertwining of aesthetics and function in design and technology. She is described as being an innovator, visionary, and trend spotter in her work as researcher, conceptual designer, economist, professor, and entrepreneur. She is the Chief Creative Officer of her company Moondial, which develops fashionable wearables and consults on fashionable technology to companies worldwide. Moondial’s work is based on the convergence of fashion, design, science and wearable wireless technologies. Dr. Seymour is Assistant Professor of Fashionable Technology and the director of Fashionable Technology Lab at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and lectures worldwide at numerous institutions. Additionally Dr. Seymour serves as a jury member for many internationally renowned institutions and conferences. She recently was the design co-chair for the ISWC2009 and a jury-member for the Prix Ars Electronica 2009. She frequently presents and exhibits for instance at Ars Electronica Festival, Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and Smart Textiles. She has received numerous grants and awards and was awarded the Michael Kalil Endowment for Smart Design Fellowship in 2010. Dr. Seymour is an editorial review board member for the International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction and is widely published. Her recent books ‘Fashionable Technology – The Intersection of Design, Fashion, Science, and Technology’ and ‘Functional Aesthetics – Visions in Fashionable Technology’ have received excellent reviews. She received a PhD and MSc in Social and Economic Sciences from the University of Economics in Vienna and Columbia University in New York and an MPS in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU’S Tisch School of the Arts in New York. -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] science, medicine, the inner-psychological
of the emotional connections between wearer and garment. On Literature and communication: One of my MA Fashion Bodywear students, (I run a small MA practice-based design programme exploring the fusions between intimate apparel and outerwear design at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK) wrote in her final thesis (unpublished) on the subject of emotional wearing and commented on the traditions that have generally existed in the discipline giving reference to the spectacle, saying: Fashion theory has generally focused on the relationship between consumer and clothing in the sense of the ‘seen’ garment. Writings are extensively concerned with the notions of identity and portrayal of oneself through the adornment of the body and of the self. Consumerism of clothing is inextricably linked with external communication of personality, being either real or false, to fit in with the surroundings and the social acceptances of the location of the wearer… Subsequently, it could be suggested that the person who adorns their body with these garments would be aware of this fact and is therefore subject to the judgement inflicted upon them by the gaze of others… Nicola Williamson, MA Fashion Bodywear graduate 2010. One can most definitely argue that Chalayan’s video dress is all about the ‘seen’ garment and the notion of the spectacle with its opening and closing rose displayed via 15000 LEDs… His laser dress and also his transformer dresses explore the creation of memorable appearance as they shapeshift through various fashion silhouettes of C20th fashion. But these dresses are not for the commercial world of fashion or for the everyday wear but explore new possibilities, blurring of boundaries and new ways of attracting attention as they are picked up by the trendhunters of this world. Prof. Helen Storey’s Wonderland collaboration with chemist Tony Ryan also explores spectacle but of a slightly different nature in their dissolvable eco-fashion dresses. In fact, they are exploring spectacle and memorable but dissolving appearance within a performative context to convey to the world more serious messages about our world and the importance of closer fashion science connections. Interestingly, when I attended a joint presentation by Storey and Ryan, each was approaching the collaboration for very different reasons, Storey, to abandon the frivolous superficiality of fashion and become more serious, Ryan, to find a way to publicly display science and make visible what is not always apparent. These kind of public scientific displays are not new however but perhaps have not been explored so much recently. I recall my intrigue on hearing about the historic public display of experiment with electricity in the 1800’s when a young boy’s body was negatively charged so as to attract thousands of positively charged feathers which would then cling to his suspended body…Suzanne Lee’s biocouture introduced earlier in these discussions clearly falls into this fashion-science fusion and perhaps in a more wearable sense (although still dissolvable in water) allows the presence of the physical and material artefact/garment to convey and tackle the more serious issues of our world under threat. With regards, Michèle Danjoux DAP Lab http://www.danssansjoux.org ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Welcome to Susan Elizabeth Ryan Week 3
*Welcome to Week 3 of our discussion on Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Venures. * *I'd like to welcome Susan Elizabeth Ryan to our discussion this week. I'm hoping that our guests from weeks 1 and 2 will continue to write in as our discussion continues. Best Wishes to all of you who are ending your semester! Renate * * * *Welcome to **Susan Elizabeth Ryan* (US) Biography: Susan Elizabeth Ryan, Ph.D., Professor of Art History at Louisiana State University and Fellow of the LSU Center for Computational Technology (CCT). She teaches contemporary and new media art history and has helped found an interdisciplinary Art/Engineering undergraduate minor at LSU entitled AVATAR. Currently she is researching artists' wearable technology. With Patrick Lichty, she curated *Social Fabrics*, an exhibition sponsored by the Leonardo Educational Forum, for the College Art Association, Dallas 2008 ( http://www.socialfabrics.org/). She has lectured internationally on dress and creative technology, and contributed articles to *Leonardo *and the online journal *Intelligent Agent*. -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] until Thursday Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures
We will be wrapping up our discussion on Thursday and introducing a new topic on Biennial Culture. We have a couple of more days left on Wearable Technologies: Cross-disciplinary Ventures. I'm hoping that *Janis Jefferies* (UK), *Valérie Lamontagne* (CA), *Ashley Ferro-Murray* (US), *Sabine Seymour* (US), *Susan Elizabeth Ryan* (US), *Danielle Wilde* (AU/FR), *Sarah Kettley (UK), and **Lucy Dunne* (*US)* will make a few closing remarks based on the discussion thus far and the questions and comments that a few other subscribers including Johannes have raised. Our intent on focusing this month was to highlight particularly those who work in the fields of wearable design technology. In 2005 Christina MePhee hosted a discussion on wearable technology in relationship to social and public art practice. For a review of that discussion go to https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2005-August/date.html Renate On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 4:41 AM, Johannes Birringer johannes.birrin...@brunel.ac.uk wrote: hi all I think it was Sarah who wrote that she is interested in the distributed nature of wearable systems at all levels, and i was wondering why that is being assumed, that wearables are distributed?Did not David argue the exact opposite when speaking of habitus and the distinctiveness of social performativity which would then seem to require some kind of expressive or articulated difference from general circulation; i guess one would have to discuss more specifically how aesthethic and functionalist wearables distribute anything, or how they are distributed. I was also curious about the contention to work from people (material) to concept and why this is an advantage? In terms of craft, one of my main proposals is that we work from the material to the concept (or function) – and here material can mean cloth, circuitry, or people. In this way, wearable technology and systems might become grounded in patterns of the everyday instead of being characterised as gadgetry. (Sarah Kettley). Referring to wearables as gadgetry seems to run somewhat against the various interesting points Danielle has raised regarding body worn technologies; i think I understood Danielle to be arguing almost for a magical/spiritual or metaphysical dimension of our beloved wearable technologies (Despite relatively little advance over the years artists, scientists and other researchers rather stubbornly continue to push in this area --- yes, indeed, a strangely futile faith in the future, reminding me of the bizarre gestures of Cuando la fe mueve montañas.) I'd like to hear more about the magic of bringing us back into contact with our most visceral freedoms? and how you distributed it or how you incited interest in body worn technologies as learning tools? with regards Johannes Birringer ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Fwd: the Friendship Jewellery
, please take no action based on it nor show a copy to anyone. In this case, please reply to this email to highlight the error. Opinions and information in this email that do not relate to the official business of Nottingham Trent University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by the University. Nottingham Trent University has taken steps to ensure that this email and any attachments are virus-free, but we do advise that the recipient should check that the email and its attachments are actually virus free. This is in keeping with good computing practice. ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Closing our discussion on Wearable Technologies: Cross-Disciplinary Venues
This week has been crazy. My apologies for not wrapping up our discussion but on this unusually quiet morning I will attempt the task. The last several posts especially the one from Johannes prompted me to reread again the entire month's archive this morning. See https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ with many thanks to COFA. -empyre soft-skinned space uses a list-serve format. It is a non-hierarchical space that invites practitioners and theoreticians, artists and programmers, to come together to discuss various issues each month. Whether our over 1200 subscribers are actively participating or lurking all of our monthly discussions are archived and have been for the past ten years. For many the list-serve is a construction of the past but in our discussions with Melinda Rackham who began -empyre close to ten years ago and other moderators the ebb and flow of the system is what makes it so distinctive and still currently viable as a venue for our purposes. Over the past few years Tim Murray and I as well as many of our moderators have been working hard to entice a more diverse, global group of participants and have done so by introducing discussions that would invite new interests and points of view especially those in which we do not ordinarily hear from. This past month of all of our invitees only two were already subscribers. I also felt that it was the right time for a more practically applied discussion. So for me this month's discussion opened up a wealth of threads, perspectives, new artists/designers, and interesting links to not only practical issues but also theoretical references from Turkle to Kozel, Heidegger to Bourdieu, to new theoreticians that I had never heard, V. Dureschu and L. Neri Belkaid from Geneva. This is the nature of a list-serve where threads are introduced and articulated and others are left to float. This venue is unlike the crafted conference presentation or the edited published paper, as it is one that invites discussion in real time about issues that are emerging. It is a research platform, a receptacle, a place to return to perhaps in the future for ideas and information. I am so thankful to our guests this month *Janis Jefferies* (UK), *Valérie Lamontagne* (CA), *Ashley Ferro-Murray* (US), *Sabine Seymour* (US), *Susan Elizabeth Ryan* (US), *Danielle Wilde* (AU/FR), *Sarah Kettley (UK), Lucy Dunne* (*US). * Our early discussions of performance and spectacle to materiality that both Janis and Valerie introduced were followed by Ashley's contributions about choreography and sensor technology in her piece Noisense. Sabine's introduction to us of her seminal book *Functional Aesthetics* was appreciated. In her post she extended the definition of technology broadly including biotechnology to nano, digital, and textile technology. At mid-month Susan discussed wearable technologies and the social dimension and reminded us of Susan Kozel's writing. And finally this last week, Danielle asked us to think about and contextualize what we mean by wearable siting her work with performance tools and finishing with her interests in speculative design. Sarah pointed us back to previous discussions about wearables dispersed in the everyday vs. those in spectacle and performance and the social dimension of wearable technology. Lastly, Lucy brought up issues of security and privacy in particular those of personal data and the control of inner states. Thanks to Johannes Barringer for playing such an active role in our discussion this month as well. He shared valuable insights about the posts and information about his own work and perspectives from the point of view of performance studies. David Heckman and Melinda Rackham mentioned how interesting it might be to continue this venue in Istanbul at ISEA. It looks like Tim Murray, Simon Biggs, Patrick Lichty and myself will all be at ISEA. Looks like Melinda and David will also be there and perhaps others of you? We will be hosting our discussion in September influenced by the conferences events and will keep all of you posted on that later this summer. Perhaps we can organize an -empyre get-together during the conference for those of you attending. For now though, Tim Murray and I will be jointly hosting a discussion to commemorate the opening of the 54th Venice Biennale and other biennales happening throughout 2011, Biennales Plus and Minus in considering global interfaces, digital environments, and contemporary arts. If there are any subscribers who would like to be featured as special guests for this discussion please contact Tim or Renate via -empyre as soon as possible. Simon Biggs will be hosting our July discussion and then in August -empyre soft-skinned space will take a break for the month to re-open in Istanbul at the 2011 ISEA in September. More information about those discussions a little later this summer. Thanks to all of you again. Renate Ferro Tim Murray and Renate Ferro
[-empyre-] -empyre- June 2011: Biennales Plus and Minus
June 2011 on -empyre- soft-skinned space Biennales Plus and Minus: Global Interfaces/Digital Environments/Contemporary Arts http://empyre.library.cornell.edu Moderated by Tim Murray (US) and Renate Ferro (US) with featured guests: Ian Baucom (US), Isak Berbic (UAE), Caterina Davinio (Italy), Manuela de Barros (Fr), Kimberly Lamm (US), Jolene Rickard (US) To commemorate the opening of the 54th Venice Biennale and other biennales happening throughout 2011, -empyre- hosts a discussion of Biennales Plus and Minus in the context of considerations of global interfaces, digital environments, contemporary arts. How might we understand the status of the biennale model in the context of global digital environments? Is the Venice model of artistic pavilions that feature the nation commensurate with -empyre-'s more global model of digital citizenry? How might we understand the promotional aspect of the biennales in relation to the visibility they lend to international contemporary art? How do we understand the valence of counter- or anti-biennales, along the model of the Salon des Refusés, that often accompany state-sponsored biennales? How do politics and ideology function in relation to the biennale model?What about the economies of exclusivity, capital, and patronage that drive the biennales? Featured Guests: Ian Baucom (US) is Director of the Franklin Humanities Institute and Professor English at Duke University. Baucom works on twentieth century British Literature and Culture, postcolonial and cultural studies, and African and Black Atlantic literatures. He is the author of Out of Place: Englishness, Empire and the Locations of Identity (1999, Princeton University Press), Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History (2005, Duke University Press), and co-editor of Shades of Black: Assembling Black Arts in 1980s Britain (2005, Duke University Press). Isak Berbic (UAE) is an artist, writer and lecturer born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time called Yugoslavia. In 1992 as Yugoslavia dissolved and Bosnia was under attack, he and his family became refugees, moving from Croatia, through the Czech Republic to a refugee camp in Denmark, and lastly to the United States. He studied Photography, Film and Electronic Media at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In Chicago, he practiced art, worked in theater, and was art director of a political monthly journal. In 2007 he moved to the Middle East; United Arab Emirates, where he currently teaches media at the College of Fine Arts and Design, University of Sharjah. He most recently co-curated an exhibition in Sharjah, Brief Histories, at the same time as the Sharjah Biennale. Caterina Davinio (Italy) is a net.poet/net.artist who is a pionneer of Italian electronic poetry. She was the first woman artist utilizing in Italy computer and Internet in literature and poetry. Author of novels, poetry, essays, visual and sound poetry, she created also works with traditional techniques, such as painting. She collaborated to netOper@ in 1997, the first Italian interactive work for the web by the composer Sergio Maltagliati. She also initiated Net-poetry in Italy in 1998 with the website and network Karenina.it. Her art has been featured several times in the Venice Biennale in collective projects where she has collaborated also as curator. Manuela de Barros (France) is a French philosopher and theoretian of art who teaches in the Department of Arts, Philosophie, Esthétique at the Université de Paris, 8 (St. Denis), and in the Ecole Médias Arts, Chalon sur Saone in France. Emphasizing the relations of art, science, and technology, Manuela is the author of L'Art à l'époque du virtuel (2003, L'Harmatton), and L'Art a-t-il besoin du numérique (Colloque de Cerisy) (200, Hermès Lavoisier). Kimberly Lamm (US) is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University. Her research moves within the fields of feminist theory, American Studies, literature, and visual art, but I consistently pursues moments in which seamless identifications between language and the image are interrupted. Her essays ranging from African-American visual culture to American poetry's relationship to feminist theory have appeared in Callaloo, Michigan Feminist Studies, American Quarterly, and the anthology Unmaking Race, Remaking Soul. She is working on two book projects: Inadequacies and Interruptions: Language and Feminist Reading Practices in Contemporary Art and The Poetics of Reciprocity in Contemporary Women's Writing. Jolene Rickard (US) is a visual historian, artist, and curator interested in the issues of Indigeneity within a global context. She is Director of the American Indian Program and professor of art and history of art at Cornell University. Under the auspices of a Ford Foundation Research Grant, she is conducting
[-empyre-] Thanks Isak and Jolene; welcome Linda Carroli, Manuela de Barros, Kimberly Lamm,
Thanks so much to Isak Berbic and Jolene Rickard for providing us with a stimulating beginning to our June discussion of Biennale Plus or Minus. This week's guests promise to extend the discussion in even more directions. Welcome to Linda Carroli (Aus), Manuela de Barros (France), Kimberly Lamm (US). We're looking forward to hearing your perspectives. Best, Renate and Tim Linda Carroli is a Brisbane based writer who blogs for [co]design studio, a non-profit, multi-disciplinary community oriented design organisation, and writes a regular feature about urban innovation and creativity for Arts Hub. She is an associate with Harbinger Consultants, working in community, cultural and communications contexts. She has had significant involvements in the art, science and technology field including fineArt forum and the Australian Network for Art and Technology. She is currently working on two blog-based writing and publishing projects: Changescaping (changing practice/practicing change) and Placing (writing place/place writing), both at http://placing.wordpress.com http://placing.wordpress.com/ Manuela de Barros (France) is a French philosopher and theoretician of art who teaches in the Department of Arts, Philosophie, Esthétique at the Université de Paris, 8 (St. Denis), and in the Ecole Médias Arts, Chalon sur Saone in France. Emphasizing the relations of art, science, and technology, Manuela is the author of L'Art à l'époque du virtuel (2003, L'Harmatton), and L'Art a-t-il besoin du numérique (Colloque de Cerisy) (200, Hermès Lavoisier). Kimberly Lamm (US) is Assistant Professor of Women's Studies at Duke University. Her research moves within the fields of feminist theory, American Studies, literature, and visual art, but I consistently pursues moments in which seamless identifications between language and the image are interrupted. Her essays ranging from African-American visual culture to American poetry's relationship to feminist theory have appeared in Callaloo, Michigan Feminist Studies, American Quarterly, and the anthology Unmaking Race, Remaking Soul. She is working on two book projects: Inadequacies and Interruptions: Language and Feminist Reading Practices in Contemporary Art and The Poetics of Reciprocity in Contemporary Women's Writing. -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Fwd: August on -empyre signing off
Yes, thanks Simon! May we all have a joyful and fun filled August. Many thanks to Simon for taking charge this past month for a truly interesting and busy month on empyre. -empyre- soft-skinned space is taking the month of August off-line. Our plans are to return to you in early September for a month long discussion hosted by four of the members of the moderating team: Tim Murray, Patrick Lichty, Simon Biggs and myself. Excitingly, the four of us will be hosting from the 14th of September to the 20th at the ISEA conference in Istanbul, Turkey.We are hoping to see many of you there. More details will follow at the beginning of September. In the meantime best wishes to all of you. Renate Ferro and Tim Murray co-moderators, -empyre soft-ekinned space Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre -- Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
[-empyre-] Reminder about how to post on empyre
Sent from my iPad Begin forwarded message: From: Renate Ferro renatefe...@gmail.com Date: September 12, 2011 1:54:57 PM EDT To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au Subject: ATTENTION ALL EMPYRE MODERATORS AND SUBSCRIBERS: changes to empyre contacts ATTENTION ALL EMPYRE MODERATORS AND SUBSCRIBERS: PLEASE BOOKMARK THE FOLLOWING CHANGES. OUR EMPYRE SITE HAS BEEN UPDATED AND THE FOLKS AT COFA HAVE MADE THE FOLLOWING CHANGES. 1. TO MAKE A POST TO THE SUBSCRIPTION LIST USE: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au NOT emp...@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au 2. TO ACCESS TEN YEARS WORTH OR ARCHIVES USE THIS URL: http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ NOT https://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ 3. TO ACCESS THE WEBSITE FROM THE CORNELL SERVER GO TO: http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ HOWEVER PLEASE NOTE THAT THE LINKS ON THIS WEBSITE HAVE NOT BEEN UPDATED. HOPEFULLY THIS WILL BE RESOLVED IN A FEW DAYS. MANY THANKS FOR YOUR PATIENCE. ANY QUESTIONS CAN BE DIRECTED TO r...@cornell.edu Renate and Tim Renate Ferro Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Cornell University Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office #420 Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: r...@cornell.edu URL: http://www.renateferro.net http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net Lab: http://www.tinkerfactory.net Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyre Art Editor, diacritics http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/dia/ -- ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
