New Media Excursions

[research/science/art]

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I was working on the draft for my next Fish Plant blog posting when this arrived in my mailbox. I thought it would be interesting to digress from the usual format of showing a few images and waxing poetic on process to post this article as it addresses issues around interdisciplinary research projects like the CURRA; of which I am a participant. I have tried to embed the article on this post, if you don’t see it below, please go here.

The article articulates a dynamic discussion on how research is done. In my view, we have moved away from observing the world and given data and statistical analysis a primary role in understanding the phenomena and relationships that frame our view of the world in most, if not all, aspects of study. This is neither a positive or a negative, every tool we can assemble to try and understand our role in our socio-ecosystems should be used in unison.

But I do feel that we don’t lift our heads above our spreadsheets and deliverables long enough to actually smell and look at the roses. I like to think that this is where cultural producers and philosophers can contribute actively to accumulating and synthesizing a type of data that can bring observation back into the equation in a dynamic and original way. An aesthetic centred research practice does not necessarily exclude scientific investigation; it may well complicate things since it is not quantitative and its qualitative aspect can sometimes require a bit of work on the part of, for lack of a better word, stakeholders. These are examples of work where artists were given the latitude and freedom to explore, investigate and present findings in a manner that challenges and augments the assembling of data.

 

BOOM… Sproing.

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This new work with sound has got me completely enraptured, and about as insecure as it gets. I know that what I am doing needs to be done live (it sounds pretty good as a recording too, but that’s not the point). It seems that I enjoy the shifts and differences that come with each time I do it better and better. But when I consider all the mistakes I deal with when I am playing with the gear, I shudder at the thought of doing that in front of an audience. But at the same time that might be the point of it anyway.

With no precisely assigned title

Sans Titre Précis

I still like to play around with PhotoShop and explore ways of creating sequences. The software allows me to do that in space as well as linearly. I never liked cutting holes in photographs and quite honestly never had the patience for it. But this is different, there is a fluidity and a level of control that makes it into something more like clay.

The new year, another after last before the next

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And yes, another year begins in earnest.

     I am hoping to explore new territory as well as show paths that go from one land to the other. I know that I am getting known as the “time guy” but in the end, it is in the use of duration, speed, wave or undulation that seems to be what is being brought forward in acute ways within the complex of activity of the human/computer~interface.
     And what of the new landscape created by data pathways? Has it been represented? Should it be? Much is made of the use of affect in New Media, it is articulated as a “fait accompli” of the medium. Brian Massumi, whose writing I very much appreciate, seems to be looking very closely at what is the coming-to-being of sensation and experience. Though the potential is obviously out there, it seems like the artwork that stays at the forefront is the work that uses clever sensorial hooks and technologies that seem to be reviewed in the journals. The look towards them is always fairly similar, using what I perceive to be the Whiteadian position. I still wonder how exact Einstein was in his calculations; much of this thinking seems to build from the concept of relativity and tends to use it as a given, a proof, a theorem. All well and good, but what if it is wrong and instead of the apple falling on Newton’s head, it was rather Newton who fell upward into the apple?

 

Response… kind of

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Just read an interesting post at ArtWords (http://xplsv.blogspot.com/2011/12/rafael-lozano-hemmers-recorders.html?showComment=1324513212403#c5997972311010712949) which got me thinking about participatory media and the convergence of life and culture (they might be the same thing but let us assume for the moment they are not).

Though the following video does not necessarily present an “art piece” is it not, to a certain extent, a cultural expression that takes its cue from present society and the Long Now? And is this not art?