SystemMiisgs_BKBWNGLNK - jon.satrom (2008.11.29)

SystemMiisgs_BKBWNGLNK - jon.satrom (2008.11.29)

Labels: .US, 2008, art, digitalPunk, dirty new media, ENEMY CHI noise, glitchery, IL, jon.satrom, Noise, video, video art

  ¶ 11:05 PM 0 Comments

  CheTrooper Bust - UrbanMedium (2006 - 2007)
CheTrooper Bust - UrbanMedium (2006 - 2007)

Labels: 2006, 2007, CheTrooper, UrbanMedium

  ¶ 6:15 PM 0 Comments

  CheTrooper - UrbanMedium (2006 - 2007) CheTrooper - UrbanMedium (2006 - 2007)

Labels: 2006, 2007, CheTrooper, UrbanMedium

  ¶ 6:12 PM 0 Comments

  Night of the Cephalopods! - Spooky Squid Games (2008)
Night of the Cephalopods! - Spooky Squid Games (2008)

/* this indy game looks great + im xcited to play it. the documentation video below made by the developers of the game details the unique waze in which audio/dynamic voice over is used in this game:



Night of the Cephalopods! gameplay documentation video - Spooky Squid Games (2008)

also, in this game health is a measurement of a madness to sanity ratio while madness is also a form of enlightenment in the Lovecraftian Cthulhu Mythos. in the video above there is a moment when this concept is annotated/explained:

Labels: 2008, Art Game, Cthulhu Mythos, games, Lovecraftian, madness, Night of the Cephalopods, Spooky Squid Games, video, YouTube

  ¶ 2:23 PM 0 Comments

  blog.furtherfield.org blogging on Twittering i just replied on blog.furtherfield.org to Aileen Derieg's post on Twittering. this is a post i had bin meaning to make but then a couple of events occurred that re:connected me to the ideas in Aileen's post...

Labels: Aileen Derieg, Furtherfield, Furtherfield.org, Twitter

  ¶ 1:54 PM 0 Comments

  "The moment when our artist has regressed to the point of infinity and... is both the observer and the observed"
"Could you explain 'infinite regression' for us?" - Bill Bonds

"Roll the film.

I came prepared to do just that.

Now, here's a painting of a landscape. Now, the artist who painted that picture says ''Something is missing. What is it?'

'It is I myself who was part of the landscape I painted.'

So he mentally takes a step backward, or regresses, and paints a picture of the artist painting a picture ofthe landscape.

But still something is missing. That is still his real self painting the second picture.

So he regresses further, and paints a third.

A picture ofthe artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture ofthe landscape.

And because something is still missing, he paints a fourth and a fifth until he paints a picture ofthe artist painting a picture ofthe artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a landscape." - Dr. Otto Hasselin

"So infinite regression, then, is..." - Bill Bonds

"The moment when our artist has regressed to the point of infinity and is part of the landscape he painted, and is both the observer and the observed." - Dr. Otto Hasselin

from:

Escape from the Planet of the Apes - Don Taylor (1971)

Labels: 1971, art, artist, Don Taylor, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, feedback, film, infinite, infinite regress, infinite regression, recursion

  ¶ 1:07 PM 1 Comments

  jon.satrom plays jonCates plays I <3 Presets - posted by Jason Soliday posted by jonCates (2008) - jon.satrom (2008)
jon.satrom plays jonCates plays I <3 Presets - posted by Jason Soliday posted by jonCates (2008) from jonsatrom on Vimeo.

jon.satrom plays jonCates plays I <3 Presets - posted by Jason Soliday posted by jonCates (2008) - jon.satrom (2008)  ¶ 2:02 PM 1 Comments

  jonCates plays I <3 Presets - Jason Soliday (2008)
jonCates plays I <3 Presets - posted by Jason Soliday (2008) from joncates on Vimeo.

"23.11.08
Cates plays Presets

1 h4v3 3x4m1n3d m4p5 0f 7h3 (17y w17h 7h3 6r347357 (4r3, y37 h4v3 n3v3r 4641n f0und 7h3 Ru3 d’4u531|. - I <3 Presets (2 from joncates on Vimeo. Labels: david lee where are you now, remix, video posted by cranky at 3:04 PM"

jonCates plays I <3 Presets - Jason Soliday (2008)
http://www.ilovepresets.com/blog/2008/11/cates-plays-presets.php

Labels: art, artist, collaboration, david lee, david lee where are you now, I LOVE PRESETS, jonCates, remix, video

  ¶ 9:45 PM 0 Comments

  1 h4v3 3x4m1n3d m4p5 0f 7h3 (17y w17h 7h3 6r347357 (4r3, y37 h4v3 n3v3r 4641n f0und 7h3 Ru3 d’4u531|. - I <3 Presets (2008)
1 h4v3 3x4m1n3d m4p5 0f 7h3 (17y w17h 7h3 6r347357 (4r3, y37 h4v3 n3v3r 4641n f0und 7h3 Ru3 d’4u531|. - I <3 Presets (2 from joncates on Vimeo.

1 h4v3 3x4m1n3d m4p5 0f 7h3 (17y w17h 7h3 6r347357 (4r3, y37 h4v3 n3v3r 4641n f0und 7h3 Ru3 d’4u531|. - I <3 Presets (2008)
http://ilovepresets.com/555/999.html

(above is a video is documentation of a section of I <3 Presets website, an aspect of their ongoing project. The I <3 Presets website is itself a work of experimental New Media Art, Web Art, digitalPunk, Dirty New Media, glitchery && Noise. This site is also a part of the ongoing I <3 Presets project, a project that is most often articulated as a realtime audio video + noise project. I <3 Presets is a Chicago-based Noise band + an experimental Media Art project:

"As I LOVE PRESETS, Chicago-based sound and new media artists Rob Ray, Jon Satrom, and Jason Soliday do everything wrong the right way. The trio manipulates found sounds and animated GIFs on home-brewed equipment in spectacular live audio/video performances, breaking down, complicating, and glorifying instrument settings, tool presets, and art-making interfaces normally accepted as fixed and stable. From Excel spreadsheets and video games to hacked Casios and discarded drum machines, any and everything electronic is fair game. Tonight, the trio will play several new pieces and demo their latest instruments and a video game."

I LOVE PRESETS: http://ilovepresets.com)

Labels: archive, art, artist, digitalPunk, dirty new media, experimental New Media Art, glitch, glitchery, group, I LOVE PRESETS, Noise, r4WB1t5, site, web, Web Art, website, www

  ¶ 12:41 PM 0 Comments

  Super Mario: Depression - Harvey James (2008)
Super Mario: Depression - Harvey James (2008)  ¶ 10:42 AM 0 Comments

  The Zero Of Form responds to Phil Morton
The Zero Of Form blog has a great post that responds to the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive blog that i develop

in particular, The Zero Of Form writes that "our relationship to what precedes us is essential. Like one’s memory is their most useful tool, OUR collective memory is OUR greatest tool - and that is why the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Creative Commons, the GPL, the FOSS movement, and the accompanying philosophies are so important. And his pioneering of these worlds is why Phil Morton is so important."

it's wonderful to read/hear that this Media Art Histories hyperthread, the cultural work of Phil Morton, is getting reconnected to current Free Culture concerns such as those listed above through the Archive

thnx The Zero Of Form!

Labels: archive, CC, COPY-IT-RIGHT, EFF, FLOSS, FOSS, GNU, GPL, Media Art Histories, Phil Morton

  ¶ 10:08 AM 0 Comments

  65 | 56 on Twitter
today on my Twitter i saw that i am currently Following 65 ppl + have 56 Followers which makes "65 | 56"

Labels: 56, 65, tweet, Twitter

  ¶ 11:47 AM 2 Comments

  GAIN ON - RECORDING PRODUCTIONS

GAIN ON - RECORDING PRODUCTIONS
http://www.recordingproductions.com/machinima/gainon.html

"GAIN ON" is an 8-bit machinima video short by RECORDING PRODUCTIONS. It is a small, music-driven adventure in which our hero continually attempts to transcend his environment. Arcade and NES games were played, captured, and processed to create this video at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY. Original score and final edit were completed at RECORDING PRODUCTIONS' New York studio." - RECORDING PRODUCTIONS

Labels: edu, FVNM, machinima, SAIC

  ¶ 11:11 PM 0 Comments

  my New Media 01 next semester
i am teaching New Media 01 next semester (SPRING 2009). New Media 01 introduces the skills and ideas needed for New Media Art making in the Film, Video & New Media department @ The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Students create, transcode and remix New Media Art. New Media 01 is the prerequisite for all classes in the New Media Path of the department.

Topics and skills covered incl:

* data-bending
* Art Games
* Machinima
* realtime audio-video
* software-as-art/art-as-software
* Hacker/Cracker Art
* Free & Open Source Software Culture
* blogs, vlogs + RSS feeds as Art

courses that follow New Media 01 in the New Media path of FVNM incl:

dotVideo (FVNM 3810)
Realtime (FVNM 3812)
Lost Signals: The Glitch (FVNM 4013)
Radical Software Critical Artware (FVNM 4830)
IF (FVNM 4860)
Machinima (FVNM 4866)
playFull, playMe (FVNM 4865)
OnEvent (FVNM 4867)
0850LEET (FVNM 4225)

Labels: edu, FVNM, Media Art, New Media 01, new media art, SAIC

  ¶ 4:02 PM 0 Comments

  my Graduate Seminar next semester next semester (SPRING 2009) i am teaching a Graduate Seminar on the topic of experimental Media Art Histories as filtered through Chronophobia (both the book Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960's by Pamela M. Lee + the condition which is the fear of the duration or immensity of time). in particular we will compare these issues with their manifestations in New Media Art, particularly Art Games. to do this we will read from Game Studies + Game Theory the ways in which time plays out in games. time in games is often measured against the threat of one's own "imminent symbolic death" in the game. this will be the conceptual framework for our readings, screenings + discussions.

Labels: Chronophobia, edu, FVNM, Media Art, Media Art Histories, new media art, SAIC

  ¶ 3:38 PM 0 Comments

  Disappearing Music for Face - Mieko Shiomi (1966)
Disappearing Music for Face - Mieko Shiomi (1966) from joncates on Vimeo.

Labels: 1964, art, artist, artware, constraint, film, film art, fluxus, instruction set, Media Art, Media Art Histories, Mieko Shiomi, musics, rule set, smile, Yoko Ono

  ¶ 10:17 AM 0 Comments

  Notes from Media Practices discussion of Final Collaborative Projects Notes from Media Practices discussion of Final Collaborative Projects

What is software?
software-as-art/art-as-software
New Media Art
Software Art
Artware
experimental Media Art
instructions, rule sets or programs for generating experimental Media Art


runme.org - Amy Alexander, Florian Cramer, Matthew Fuller, Olga Goriunova, Thomax Kaulmann, Alex McLean, Pit Schultz, Alexei Shulgin, The Yes Men, Hans Bernhard and Alessandro Ludovico (2003 - present)
http://runme.org


"Change gradually from a smile to no smile."
Disappearing Music for Face - Mieko Shiomi (1964)


"1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic).
3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.)
4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).
5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.
6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)
7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)
8. Genre movies are not acceptable.
9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)
10. The director must not be credited."

Dogme 95 - Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg (1995)


Learning To Love You More - Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher (2002 - present)
http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com

The Art of Participation - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2008)

Final Collaborative Project for Media Practices Discussion:

1. SET RULES/CONSTRAINTS/INSTRUCTIONS

2. DETERMINE HOW THEY WILL BE EXECUTED

3. WHAT MEDIUM/MEDIA WILL YOU USE?

4. CONSIDER PREPARATIONS FOR PRESENTATION

5. WHAT ARE THE MECHANICS OF YOUR COLLABORATION? WHAT ARE YOUR ROLES OR RESPONSIBILITIES?

Labels: edu, FVNM, Media Practices, SAIC

  ¶ 4:03 PM 0 Comments

  _indie pavilion_ + _el ojo atómico de hércules_ + _re:move final release_ "_indie pavilion_ + _el ojo atómico de hércules_ + _re:move final release_


curator: nilo casares [http://comisario.net]


curator's assistant: ángeles b brines


architectural narrative: fündc (paz martín + césar garcía guerra + juanjo unceta rivas) [http://www.fundc.com]


technical coordination: javier pereira + raúl rey


institution: _move new media. digital arts fair_ director: ana montes, director's assistant: pilar lópez cordal [http://www.move2digital.net]




opening: 12h00m/13.11.2008

dates: [13.11.08) (16.11.08]

location: expocoruña [http://www.expocoruna.com]



::::::::::::_independent pavilion_ (housed digital art)::::::::

the _indie pavilion_ opens with the new media digital show 008 and illustrates the most risky side of the digital art market

the _indie pavilion_ exhibits works that are entirely digital, that is, those that use the new media in a no banal manner.

the _indie pavilion_ is opens only during the digital arts fair; from 13th till 16th of november 2008.

the _indie pavilion_ tries to test the current digital arts state in its different representations. and aims to become the amplifier of what is being produced, in no way the selection of the artists should be seen as a contest. it tryes to show the latest production of digital arts but not its qualification. the present artists serve to confirm what is there but also to point the posible.

the architectural narrative of the _indie pavilion_ builds an archipelago of ducts of large dimensions on which the exhibition of the artistic pieces take place. it is at the *sea*, or interstitial spaces between the pipes, where the rest of activities happen.

as well as the digital art needs from a strong support of data cabling and electrical wires which feed and connect it, the visitor has another system of conduits, characterized in the pipes, on which he can circulate at different speeds and experience the visual and sound feelings that this art provokes. these channels, equal on the outer part, acquire complexity in their internal section, generating elfin spaces adapted to the needs of perception of every piece: acoustic sections, visual projections, objects exhibition, ...


artists

_b.i.o._: alfonso carrasco
a sound installation and visual composition with loudspeakers. it imitates organic sounds from computer processes.
[http://www.stripart.org/art/?q=node/15]

_orbiter_: vera-maria glahn + marcus wendt
innteractive sound installation. it invites the visitor to reach the stars and interpret music.
[http://www.infostuka.org/projects/orbiter-interactive-sound-environment]

_controlled dream machine_: anaisa franco
this installation puts together a dreamy state for a machine.
[http://www.anaisafranco.com/projects_controlled.html]

_solargrafica_: andreas a. zinguele
video installation that shows the sun´s movements captured by a camera without a lense through long time lapses of exposure producing a new visual and sound landscape. [http://www.andreaszingerle.at/index.php?id=52,0,0,1,0,0]

_almost ashore. visions of bacbuc_: bjørn wangen
it´s an image of mankind´s state of constant internet connection. a landscape slowly but constantly polluted by words fallen from the net.
[http://www.wangen.nu/almost.htm]

_every word i saved (uttered)_: cristóbal mendoza
a software.art that highlights words taken from a database set by the author in 2002. the program picks those words from his database that have been used only once, stressing its lesser presence through a speech synthesizer.
[http://matadata.com/projects.php?id=8]

_the sonic body_: harry neve + anna chocota + thomas michalak
interactive installation shaped as a large stomach that produces all sorts of acoustic reactions when touched by the audience.
[http://sonicbody.co.uk/category/blog]

_lifefloor_: román torre sánchez
installation where the visitor will get involved in a virtual intelligent cell life. throughout the exhibition visitors interact in the ecosystem and the development of different generations.
[http://w3.romantorre.com]

_graffonic_: andré rangel + anne-kathrin siegel
a digital gadget to draw digital graffiti in real time.
[http://indicio.net/graffonic]

_taiknam hat_: ricardo nascimento + ebru kurbak + fabiana shizue
two cybernetic hats that react to the presence of radio waves.
[http://www.popkalab.com/th.html]

_calor, vapor, humedad. turner en el s. xxi_: marina zerbarini
from electronic interfaces and through internet the visitor will be able to interact with a private physical space not only locally but remotely. a webcam will let it visualize it. [http://www.marina-zerbarini.com.ar/calor]

_.newseries2. tout va bien_: annie abrahams
in seven minutes the work will take you to the first pages of 50 international newspapers accompanied by messages of calm to helps us through the tense political scenario of our times.
[http://bram.org/press/newsseries/index.htm]

_arabesque_: peter william holden
mechanical ballet presented as a flower made with legs. a representation of the chaos and harmony in nature.
[http://www.peter-william-holden.com/installations/arabesque/arabesque.html]

_arca_: andreas göransson + fernando lbarrajón
a complete body experience created through interaction where communication and computer games become digital art.
[http://1scale1.com/node/49]

_the viewer_: julio obelleiro + casilda sánchez
interactive work which portraits the actual spectator´s movements on a screen.
[http://www.casildasanchez.net/theviewer]

_lightwriter_: ricardo lafuente
interactive installation where a cyber brush projects a text over photographic material of the person moving the brush.

_las naciones. a no interactive game_: daniel gonzález mellado
a interactive game: two teams two neighbouring towns confronted. the limits are set by game's interface which clearly identify the areas where the user can move freely.

_hysterical machines_: bill vorn
robotic group. it exposes the paradoxical nature of artificial life through dysfunctional, absurd and deviant machines.
[http://billvorn.concordia.ca/robography/hysterical.html]


_soundtoys anthology (1996-2008)_: brian mackern
a retrospective of one of the most relevant pioneers of soundtoys and interactive sound-visual interfaces. it provides the audience the chance to produce their own project.
[http://netart.org.uy]

_it's a kids life_: giles walker
it is a sculptural project. its minute characters shake at the close presence of each other. a reflection of the aggressive cycle produced by the commercialised network that exploits children through fierce marketing toys campaigns. [http://www.gileswalker.org]

:::::::::::::::::public digital art (homeless)::::::::::::::::::::  ¶ 7:31 AM 0 Comments

  Washer with the head of a neon glowing cheetah Washer is a wonderful experimental electronic music person who has an equally wonderful self-portrait (as seen above) on his MySpace profile

Labels: musics

  ¶ 11:13 PM 0 Comments

  "sing sweet software" blog up
jake elliott, my close friend + collaborator, has launched a new blog/podcast of his dj sets called: "sing sweet software" which features "a fortnightly podcast for funky computers. "

the design of the www site (as above) features a drawing by me as the banner/logo. when jake asked me to draw it, he asked me for 'a drawing of a bird on a wire singing a song about a floppy disk' :)

the sing sweet software will feature drawings of floppy disks by others on a regular basis. the 1rst of those floppy disk drawing is by Nicholas O'Brien

Labels: blog, jakeelliott, musics, Nicholas O'Brien, podcast

  ¶ 10:53 PM 0 Comments

  just joined "grouply"
i just joined "grouply" from an invitation that had been languishing in my inbox... i rly like the logo of the service. the 3 ppl in the circle are also sort of arrows, which reminds me of a book from my child hood: Arrow To The Sun - Gerald McDermott (1974)


which is a wonderful book...

grouply uses the 3 ppl as arrows logo well in their overall site design as well. enlarging it + repeating it as a background


the grouply service seems to be a web 2.0/social software/portal type place that aggregates subscriptions to yahoo groups + repackages that experience. maybe there is more to it, but that is my initial read

Labels: group, grouply, logo, socialSoftware, web, web 2.0

  ¶ 12:38 PM 3 Comments

  What color is a chameleon on a mirror? Chameleon? Invisible? Illuminated? As Robert Anton Wilson once asked: "What color is a chameleon on a mirror?" perhaps this video helps to answer the question or perhaps it only distracts us from the search for the answer(s) we seek... Answer(s) in the form(s) of questions such as: Chameleon? Invisible? Illuminated?



chameleon climbing on the mirror - saygak123 (2008)  ¶ 10:25 PM 0 Comments

  The Guardians of the Tradition blog up
we have just created the The Guardians of the Tradition blog for a new collaborative project: "The Guardians of the Tradition are jonCates, Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy, an Art Games guild currently developing a classic cyberpsychedelic Text Adventure in which you (William Crowther) crawl through a generative, cut-up and recombined twisty little maze of passages through timespace that criss-crosses networks such as Mammoth Cave, ARPANET, SAIL and The Hollow Earth."  ¶ 10:28 AM 2 Comments

  Taiwa Hensokuki - Mohri Yuko (2006)
"Two computers, each equipped with speech synthesis software and speech recognition software, interact: the text that one computer reads aloud is analyzed by the other, which reads out the results for the other to analyze. That process is repeated throughout the day, during which the text gradually mutates.
"Seeming somewhat gimmicky at first, "Taiwa Hensokuki," a 2006 work by Mohri Yuko, is comprised of two IBM laptop computers that have speech synthesis software installed - one set to move from text to speech; the other set to speech recognition. Mohri's work, included in the Extended Senses exhibition, provides a new setting for a technological function by challenging the computers to interact with themselves rather than with the typical human user. The two wall-mounted computers are set up to have a conversation by transmitting and exchanging their data, which in turn cycles and morphs into something mundane and incoherent. In fact, Taiwa means 'dialog' in Japanese, and Hensokuki can be translated as 'transmission.' The text that one computer reads aloud is analyzed by the other, which reads out the results for the other to analyze, back and forth like a loop; a process repeated throughout the day. Via 2 RCA cables feeding into an amp, the looping conversation is broadcast over two uncased speakers. The discombobulated results from the digital gabfest, in a Japanese femme-bot monotone, allude to the sensitivity of technological input and the fragility of function. In the end, the results are recorded via a suspended Epson printer about four meters above with paper descending and folding upon itself. - Vicente Gutierrez"

from: http://www.neural.it/art/2008/10/taiwa_hensokuki_due_macchine_c.phtml  ¶ 7:34 AM 0 Comments

  COPYing-IT-RIGHT presentation (web vrsn)
i have a web vrsn up of my recent presentation @ DOCAM's Media In Motion Symposium on the Phil Morton Memorial Research Archive blog. the web version is linked to references and sources but of course also differs slightly from the presented version: http://copyitright.wordpress.com

Labels: archive, DOCAM, Media Art Histories, Phil Morton

  ¶ 11:43 PM 0 Comments

  notes from Installation discussion in Media Practices Marshall McLuhan: media environments; Media Studies; The Medium is the Message; probes

Installation Art; Media Art; Video Art; New Media Art

environmental media

inhabitable; art + life; art as environments vs objects or images; architectural

in museums + galleries or alternative spaces; or outside, i.e. site specific; or in artist constructed spaces

Land Art; Environmental Art; Earthworks

hard to sell, confronts commodification but Video Installation is increasingly more saleable now

Labels: art, edu, FVNM, Media Practices, SAIC, video, video art

  ¶ 10:34 AM 0 Comments

  MEDIA by Michael Archer from Installation Art
"MEDIA
The colonization by artists of the dream and desiring spaces of the media has been of specific political significance. Think, for example, of Barbara Kruger's use of the language of advertising, of Krzysztof Wodiczko's projections or the video installations of Dara Birnbaum, Nam June Paik, Marie-Jo Lafontaine and Gary Hill, and of the words of the U.S. artist Jenny Holzer which you find stuck up in phone booths, flickering across LED displays and pumping out from spectacolor advertising boards:

PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT.

GO WHERE PEOPLE SLEEP AND SEE IF THEY'RE SAFE.

IT TAKES AWHILE BEFORE YOU CAN STEP OVER INERT BODIES AND GO AHEAD WITH WHAT YOU WERE WANTING TO DO.

Although these sentences are not specific they never the less refer in a very direct way to some of the major issues of contemporary existence - AIDS, homelessness, hunger and so on. A key feature of an art like this is that as well as delivering its message, it does so in terms which draw upon the way in which such problems are represented in the media. It is the mode of experience that matters, as much as what it is an experience of.
In the 1920's Laszlo Moholy-Nagy recognized that photography provided us with something else besides its extraordinary ability to represent the world. The 'photogram' or 'camera-less record of forms produced by light' freed photographic technologies from its dependent, reproductive function and indicated that it was 'in a fair way to bringing (optically) something entirely new into the world.' What Moholy-Nagy's 'painting with light' revel is that the manipulation of a medium creates its own space which, unlike the perspectival space of post-Renaissance painting, does not refer to 'real' space but exists alongside it. By extension, many more such 'technological spaces' can be entered by for example, switching on a video monitor, TV set, turntable, slide projector or tape deck. All these media, in addition to possessing the capability to record and represent an event to a spectator in another time and place to that in which it occurred, engender a mode of experience which is quite particular to themselves.
We inhabit these technological environments as much physically as psychologically, a fact which media theorist Marshall McLuhan perceived clearly. Writing in the early sixties he considered how the possibilities opened up by these new spaces radically undercut the conventional tendency to evaluate the cultural experience along the avant garde/kitsch axis. It is the 'depth of experience' provided by the electronic media that erodes the importance of distinctions such as 'high' and 'low' because:

[A]nything that is approached in depth acquires as much interest as the greatest matters. Because 'depth' means 'in interrelation', not isolation. Depth means insght, not point of view; and insight is a kind of mental involvement in process that makes the content of the item seem quite secondary.

Some from the loose association of artists around George Maciunas, known as Fluxus and working both in Germany and the U.S., began to explore these media spaces from the late fifties onwards. Nam June Paik in his work, first with sound and subsequently with video, offered situations in which the audience could interact with the technology, constructing their own 'messages' and thereby challenging the impenetrable authority of the media. For Random Access he cut up a pool of recorded tape and stuck the strips haphazardly on a wall. Playback equipment was provided with a portable head so that one could draw it across the desired selections of tape. Similarly, later set-ups allowed viewers to manipulate magnetic fields or feed sound signals into a TV monitor in order to modify and distort the image on the screen. Wolf Vostell incorporated television screens into paintings.
The limit case of this opening up of new environments. or at least, the one which preoccupies us at present, is the computerized world of virtual reality. Writing of virtual reality or cyberspace technology in 1990, Regina Cornwell said: 'The media has already pounced on it as the psychedelia of the 90s, of the telepornograhy of the future.' We witness this when, for example, we are priveleged with a 'missile's eye view' of the destruction of Baghdad and the compturized target-location of the bomber pilots during the Gulf War. 'This Nintendo war', Aimee Morgana called it. In general, bearing witness to the workings of the mass media by, for example, watching a film or TV programme, or listening to a record, implicates the viewer/listener as a straightforward consumer of spectacle. The majority of the artists in this section, from Peter Fend's proposals for the reshaping of the geopolitical map through Antoni Muntadas's reflection on the phenomenon of television evangelism to Christian Marclay's irreverent treatment of long-playing records, use information technology and the conventions of mass communications to destabilize the authority and power of that spectacle."

from: Installation Art - by by Nicolas de Oliveira, Nicola Oxley, Michael Petry, Michael Archer (1994)

Labels: art, edu, FVNM, Media Practices, SAIC, video, video art

  ¶ 7:23 AM 0 Comments

  Notes on Expanded Cinema





"Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theater where people would lie down and experience movies all around them. Floating multi-images would replace straight one-dimensional film projection. From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and even extraterrestrial intelligence."

(from: Jürgen Claus in Leonardo, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2003, p. 229.)

"Unlike Levine's work, the effect of Wipe Cycle, by the young New York artists Frank Gillette and Ira Schneider, was to integrate the viewer and his local environment into the larger macrosystem of information transmission. Wipe Cycle was first exhibited at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York in 1969. It consisted of nine monitors whose displays were controlled by synchronized cycle patterns of live and delayed feedback, broadcast television, and taped programming shot by Gillette and Schneider with portable equipment. These were displayed through alternations of four programmed pulse signals every two, four, eight, and sixteen seconds. Separately, each of the cycles acted as a layer of video information, while all four levels in concert determined the overall composition of the work at any given moment.

"The most important function of Wipe Cycle," Schneider explained, "was to integrate the audience into the information. It was a live feedback system which enabled the viewer standing within its environment to see himself not only now in time and space, but also eight seconds ago and sixteen seconds ago. In addition he saw standard broadcast images alternating with his own delayed/live image. And also two collage-type programmed tapes, ranging from a shot of the earth, to outer space, to cows grazing, and a 'skin flick' bathtub scene."

"It was an attempt," Gillette added, "to demonstrate that you're as much a piece of information as tomorrow morning's headlines— as a viewer you take a satellite relationship to the information. And the satellite which is you is incorporated into the thing which is being sent back to the satellite. In other words, rearranging one's experience of information reception."8 Thus in Wipe Cycle several levels of time and space were synthesized into one audio-visual
experience on many simultaneous frequencies of perception. What is, what has been, and what could be, were merged into one engrossing teledynamic continuum and the process of
communication was brought into focus." (from: Closed-Circuit Television and Teledynamic Environments, Expanded Cinema; Gene Youngblood; p. 341 - 343)




"EVE is a research and development project initiated at the ZKM Karlsruhe in cooperation with the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. It encompasses the conceptual and technical development of a new form of interactive immersive visualisation environment and virtual-reality apparatus.

In the centre of a large inflatable dome, two video projectors are mounted on a motorised pan/tilt device (e.g. robot arm) which can move the projected image anywhere over the inside surface of the dome. The two video projectors present a stereo pair of images - the viewers wearing polarising spectacles can see the projected imagery in three dimensions.

One of the visitors to EVE wears a helmet (or a 'miner's lamp') with an attached spatial tracking device that identifies the position and angle of his head. This controls the positioning of video projectors so that the projected image always follows the direction of the viewer's gaze. In this way the viewer can move the picture frame over the entire dome surface and interactively explore the computer-generated virtual scenographies which are presented there. A joystick also allows the viewer to control his forwards and backwards movement in the surrounding virtual space."

(from: Jeffrey Shaw's website)

Labels: art, edu, FVNM, Media Practices, SAIC, video, video art

  ¶ 6:59 AM 0 Comments

  Lori Felker as the shadowself of the White Lodge - Lori Felker (2008)


  ¶ 10:43 PM 2 Comments