ARTBASE (3)
PORTFOLIO (2)
BIO
Christina McPhee http://christinamcphee.net
Streaming situationist: invisible cities: eyes
New streaming
Weimar/Berlin(Hallestor) + invisibie cities (cities + signs 1 calvino/weaver
1974) + naxsmash music = new video 2004
Premiere Interactive Futures Victoria BC Open Space January 29 2004
--
Transmedia architectures
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
Weimar/Berlin(Hallestor) + invisibie cities (cities + signs 1 calvino/weaver
1974) + naxsmash music = new video 2004
Premiere Interactive Futures Victoria BC Open Space January 29 2004
--
Transmedia architectures
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
January on -empyre- : Nova Media Storia: Histories and Characters
..........................
January on -empyre- :
Nova Media Storia: Histories and Characters
With Jill Scott, Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Is new media a field? Does it have a history? What history? And, how does it
matter?
The new year brings us the pleasure of hosting three lively minds from the
interdisciplinary worlds of new media science, art and humanities. Noah
Wardrip-Fruin (US) and Nick Montfort (US) will explore the genesis and
critical issues that have lead to the publication of The New Media Reader
(MIT Press 2003), a compendium of intertextually annotated readings from the
last century. To the double helix of art and computation in new media, Nick
and Noah hope to interweave empyrean comments in the coming month. With
Noah and Nick, we are honored to share time and thoughts with a
distinguished new media artist, Jill Scott, whose new book, "Coded
Characters" (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2003), explores the mediation and role of
the audience, as well as the mythical representation of the human body on
both stage and screen, are constantly questioned. Jill's nomadic hegira,
from the Bay Area to Australia and to Europe, bears witness to a consistent
development of new media art as a series of cyberphysical metaphors--analog
figures, digital beings, and mediated nomads.
Please join Jill, Nick and Noah this coming month on -empyre- soft-skinned
space.
Subscribe at:
<http://www.subtle.net/empyre>
.........................................
Nick Montfort writes on interactive fiction, the literary uses of
artificial intelligence and machine learning, game studies, and
analogies between new media, narrative and poetry. At the University of
Pennsylvania, where he is a PhD candidate in computer science, Nick
researches computational aspects of behavioral game theory. Recent
publications include "Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to
Interactive Fiction" (MIT Press, 2003), regarding such "text adventures" as
Adventure and Zork from literary and computational perspectives.
<http://nickm.com>
<http://newmediareader.com>
-----------------------------------------------
Jill Scott and her oeuvre have contributed to a new concept of the human
body with respect to its functionality as an interface and as a player in
the rapidly developing technological spaces and in physical reality.
Since 1975, her work has evolved from making surveillance-performance
events, to video art, and onto new computer art and interactive cinema.
<http://www.jillscott.org>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a new media scholar and artist. He has recently
edited two books, both from MIT Press - The New Media Reader (with
Nick Montfort, 2003) and First Person: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game (with Pat Harrigan, forthcoming). As an artist
his work focuses on new media text, including The Impermanence Agent
(a storytelling web agent that "customizes" based on reader browsing
habits) and Screen (an immersive VR text that interacts with the
reader's body). His work has been presented by the Whitney and
Guggenheim museums, as well as discussed in reference books such as
Information Arts (MIT Press) and Digital Art (Thames and Hudson).
<http://hyperfiction.org/>
January on -empyre- :
Nova Media Storia: Histories and Characters
With Jill Scott, Nick Montfort and Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Is new media a field? Does it have a history? What history? And, how does it
matter?
The new year brings us the pleasure of hosting three lively minds from the
interdisciplinary worlds of new media science, art and humanities. Noah
Wardrip-Fruin (US) and Nick Montfort (US) will explore the genesis and
critical issues that have lead to the publication of The New Media Reader
(MIT Press 2003), a compendium of intertextually annotated readings from the
last century. To the double helix of art and computation in new media, Nick
and Noah hope to interweave empyrean comments in the coming month. With
Noah and Nick, we are honored to share time and thoughts with a
distinguished new media artist, Jill Scott, whose new book, "Coded
Characters" (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2003), explores the mediation and role of
the audience, as well as the mythical representation of the human body on
both stage and screen, are constantly questioned. Jill's nomadic hegira,
from the Bay Area to Australia and to Europe, bears witness to a consistent
development of new media art as a series of cyberphysical metaphors--analog
figures, digital beings, and mediated nomads.
Please join Jill, Nick and Noah this coming month on -empyre- soft-skinned
space.
Subscribe at:
<http://www.subtle.net/empyre>
.........................................
Nick Montfort writes on interactive fiction, the literary uses of
artificial intelligence and machine learning, game studies, and
analogies between new media, narrative and poetry. At the University of
Pennsylvania, where he is a PhD candidate in computer science, Nick
researches computational aspects of behavioral game theory. Recent
publications include "Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to
Interactive Fiction" (MIT Press, 2003), regarding such "text adventures" as
Adventure and Zork from literary and computational perspectives.
<http://nickm.com>
<http://newmediareader.com>
-----------------------------------------------
Jill Scott and her oeuvre have contributed to a new concept of the human
body with respect to its functionality as an interface and as a player in
the rapidly developing technological spaces and in physical reality.
Since 1975, her work has evolved from making surveillance-performance
events, to video art, and onto new computer art and interactive cinema.
<http://www.jillscott.org>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is a new media scholar and artist. He has recently
edited two books, both from MIT Press - The New Media Reader (with
Nick Montfort, 2003) and First Person: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game (with Pat Harrigan, forthcoming). As an artist
his work focuses on new media text, including The Impermanence Agent
(a storytelling web agent that "customizes" based on reader browsing
habits) and Screen (an immersive VR text that interacts with the
reader's body). His work has been presented by the Whitney and
Guggenheim museums, as well as discussed in reference books such as
Information Arts (MIT Press) and Digital Art (Thames and Hudson).
<http://hyperfiction.org/>
Re: Net Baroque
That's it exactly!
C
On 10/5/03 4:31 PM, "troy@iconica.org" <troy@iconica.org> wrote:
> Hello Christina,
> Enjoyed the work and your thoughts on a net baroque.
>
> It would be interesting to explore the idea of these spaces having what
> can be described as ?agency? ie. electronic space can be populated with
> ?intelligent entities? that interact with the user. Clearly the moving
> image/sound
> fields in piranesia have agency in that they pursue the viewer in order
> to immerse them in loops of image and sound. ie. what ?happen(s) in human
> imagination and memory, in the affective experience of resonance and recursion
> inside the spaces of the Baroque? is also happening within the ?mind? of
> the machine in its model of the player/user. It is not only the perception
> of the space that changes in the mind of the player/user, but an electronic
> space can literally change / mutate / reform / loop around etc.
>
> Perhaps this agency is embodied in the religious associations of Baroque
> experience in that they are mediating / simulating experience of other
> mysterious
> / spiritual forces. The notion of the ghost in the machine / cyborg could
> be perceived as a new manifestation of this ?other? force.
>
> The immediacy of the space and its actualisation of abstract logics / codes
> through simulation makes the difference ? the space interacts with the user
> in a literal / real way.
>
> Troy.
>
>
>>
>>> Hi Christina,
>>>
>>> What is the plugin to install for
>>> <http://www.internet3d.net/paratopias/piranesia/index.html> ? I got a
> new
>>> hard drive and did a clean install of xp, so i don't have all the plugins
>>> installed i used to, but would like to view your vrml.
>>
>> Blaxxun for pcs
>> http://www.blaxxun.com/services/support/download/install.shtml
>> Cortona for mac
>> http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortonamac/
>>>
>> There should be music fragments in interactive crashes, that are stimulated
>> by the users exploration but at least on my server the sound isnt coming
>> across. Does it work on yours? I sincerely apologize if the sound isnt
>> working as it is crucial to the sense of space in the work.
>>
>>> concerning 'baroque', it seems like a term that has been used by some
> to
>>> primarily disparage plugin net.art. and it is misapplied to work that
> uses
>>> plugins but doesn't really seem baroque, though there is some net.art
> that
>>> does seem (vaguely) baroque. but it seems mainly a term of disparagement,
>>> doesn't it? Though I should add I don't think that's the way you're using
>>> it.
>>>
>> Well, just for a quick thought here, the Baroque is a very rich period
> in
>> music, visual art and architecture, rich because its sense of space and
>> meaning is hybrid and has an interest in interactivity, interpolation,
>> recursion, reversal, reflexivity, juxtaposition and emergence. Think Bach,
>> Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Piranesi, Bernini, Borromini. The term 'baroque'
>> has an idiomatic connotation of a quality of excess or immersion,
>> totalizing, over the top.
>>
>> I suspect that an argument could me made to link analogically between
>> aspects of the nature of electronic space representation and affect and
> the
>> space generated by the Baroque. Troy Innocent identifies some aspects
> of
>> electronic space (excerpts), which I link (very anecdotally), in the spirit
>> of play, to Baroque spatial obsessions in the following imaginary dialogue.
>> (Apologies to Troy for misapplying his very finely tuned definitions and
>> wholesale lifting out of context, my fault entirely):
>>
>> For the Troy Innocent complete text please see
>> <http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n09/reviews/reviews_i
>> ndex.html>
>>
>> (TROY)"....Feedback loop. A combination of direct control and immediate
>> feedback create a strong sense of engagement between the user and the
>> electronic space... "
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) In the Baroque, the inside space of the work attempts to
>> stimulate a constant shifting so that as you engage with the space it opens
>> up volumes that invite imaginative projection beyond themselves... The
>> feedback loop is in the function of the 'user's kinaesthetic memory inside
>> the baroque space
>>
>> (TROY) - "the starting point is a void, these spaces do not need to follow
>> the rules of the real world - fantastic new experiences may be created
> based
>> on their own rules of existence. "
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Baroque aesthetics of space often involve emergence from
>> darkness, doubt, the unknowable, the unseeable, and towards transformation,
>> transfiguration, excess, illumination, and back, to shadow. An interest
> in
>> complexities of form arising dynamically and in unstable combinations,
> cliff
>> hanger specials, out of the darkness.
>>
>> (TROY)... "intense focus is placed on the user's immediate experience of
>> the
>> virtual world. This connection is often strong enough that, psychologically,
>> the user is inside that world...."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) The affective space of the Baroque wants to draw you into
>> itself, absorption is the watchword rather than independent status.
>> Cartesian space is not privileged. What you see may not turn out to be
> what
>> you can know; complex transformations are just offstage and about to come
>> on.
>>
>> (TROY)...."This sense of immediacy is partly to do with the way these spaces
>> are perceived. Engaging with the real world is an experience that immerses
>> the body in their surroundings. Direct and peripheral vision, sound
>> resonating within the environment, being able to move over, around, through,
>> in and out of spaces, and the ability to observe and manipulate solid
>> objects all contribute to this feeling of being in the world...."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Obviously this could not happen in a pre electronic space in
>> such a literal, hands on way. But, did it not, does it not, happen in
>> human imagination and memory, in the affective experience of resonance
> and
>> recursion inside the spaces of the Baroque?
>>
>> (TROY) "...Transmutational space. Electronic spaces are artificial
>> constructions - simulations where the entire virtual world is a code, every
>> part of the space is a re-representation. They allow multiple forms of
>> representation to easily coexist and be blended with one another, creating
>> hybrid systems of signs."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Especially so in the Baroque, I imagine...created in a time
> of
>> breakdown and clash of ideologies, loss of normative or rule based cultural
>> standards, nearly continuous warfare, and rapid commercial and technological
>> advances, leading to a taste for fragmentation, the edge of chaos,
>> dissolution at the edge of organization--generally, a hybridity, a fluidity
>> of forms, to quote Eisenstein.
>>
>>
>>
>>> looking at the def below, for instance, i don't see it applying to my
> own
>>> work or much of the work discussed at
>>> http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Review/index.cfm?articleE , which is interactive
>>> audio work
>>
>> Probably true enough..
>>
>>>
>>> are you 'reclaiming' the term 'baroque'?
>>>
>> That would be far too grandiose an aspiration!
>>
>> Significantly, Eisenstein recounts that he came up with the idea of montage
>> from studying the Carcieri series of Piranesi, a series of imaginary prisons
>> with irrational spatial configurations. My vrml piece, to which you refer,
>> was inspired by Eisenstein's remark:
>>
>>
C
On 10/5/03 4:31 PM, "troy@iconica.org" <troy@iconica.org> wrote:
> Hello Christina,
> Enjoyed the work and your thoughts on a net baroque.
>
> It would be interesting to explore the idea of these spaces having what
> can be described as ?agency? ie. electronic space can be populated with
> ?intelligent entities? that interact with the user. Clearly the moving
> image/sound
> fields in piranesia have agency in that they pursue the viewer in order
> to immerse them in loops of image and sound. ie. what ?happen(s) in human
> imagination and memory, in the affective experience of resonance and recursion
> inside the spaces of the Baroque? is also happening within the ?mind? of
> the machine in its model of the player/user. It is not only the perception
> of the space that changes in the mind of the player/user, but an electronic
> space can literally change / mutate / reform / loop around etc.
>
> Perhaps this agency is embodied in the religious associations of Baroque
> experience in that they are mediating / simulating experience of other
> mysterious
> / spiritual forces. The notion of the ghost in the machine / cyborg could
> be perceived as a new manifestation of this ?other? force.
>
> The immediacy of the space and its actualisation of abstract logics / codes
> through simulation makes the difference ? the space interacts with the user
> in a literal / real way.
>
> Troy.
>
>
>>
>>> Hi Christina,
>>>
>>> What is the plugin to install for
>>> <http://www.internet3d.net/paratopias/piranesia/index.html> ? I got a
> new
>>> hard drive and did a clean install of xp, so i don't have all the plugins
>>> installed i used to, but would like to view your vrml.
>>
>> Blaxxun for pcs
>> http://www.blaxxun.com/services/support/download/install.shtml
>> Cortona for mac
>> http://www.parallelgraphics.com/products/cortonamac/
>>>
>> There should be music fragments in interactive crashes, that are stimulated
>> by the users exploration but at least on my server the sound isnt coming
>> across. Does it work on yours? I sincerely apologize if the sound isnt
>> working as it is crucial to the sense of space in the work.
>>
>>> concerning 'baroque', it seems like a term that has been used by some
> to
>>> primarily disparage plugin net.art. and it is misapplied to work that
> uses
>>> plugins but doesn't really seem baroque, though there is some net.art
> that
>>> does seem (vaguely) baroque. but it seems mainly a term of disparagement,
>>> doesn't it? Though I should add I don't think that's the way you're using
>>> it.
>>>
>> Well, just for a quick thought here, the Baroque is a very rich period
> in
>> music, visual art and architecture, rich because its sense of space and
>> meaning is hybrid and has an interest in interactivity, interpolation,
>> recursion, reversal, reflexivity, juxtaposition and emergence. Think Bach,
>> Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Piranesi, Bernini, Borromini. The term 'baroque'
>> has an idiomatic connotation of a quality of excess or immersion,
>> totalizing, over the top.
>>
>> I suspect that an argument could me made to link analogically between
>> aspects of the nature of electronic space representation and affect and
> the
>> space generated by the Baroque. Troy Innocent identifies some aspects
> of
>> electronic space (excerpts), which I link (very anecdotally), in the spirit
>> of play, to Baroque spatial obsessions in the following imaginary dialogue.
>> (Apologies to Troy for misapplying his very finely tuned definitions and
>> wholesale lifting out of context, my fault entirely):
>>
>> For the Troy Innocent complete text please see
>> <http://www.fineartforum.org/Backissues/Vol_17/faf_v17_n09/reviews/reviews_i
>> ndex.html>
>>
>> (TROY)"....Feedback loop. A combination of direct control and immediate
>> feedback create a strong sense of engagement between the user and the
>> electronic space... "
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) In the Baroque, the inside space of the work attempts to
>> stimulate a constant shifting so that as you engage with the space it opens
>> up volumes that invite imaginative projection beyond themselves... The
>> feedback loop is in the function of the 'user's kinaesthetic memory inside
>> the baroque space
>>
>> (TROY) - "the starting point is a void, these spaces do not need to follow
>> the rules of the real world - fantastic new experiences may be created
> based
>> on their own rules of existence. "
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Baroque aesthetics of space often involve emergence from
>> darkness, doubt, the unknowable, the unseeable, and towards transformation,
>> transfiguration, excess, illumination, and back, to shadow. An interest
> in
>> complexities of form arising dynamically and in unstable combinations,
> cliff
>> hanger specials, out of the darkness.
>>
>> (TROY)... "intense focus is placed on the user's immediate experience of
>> the
>> virtual world. This connection is often strong enough that, psychologically,
>> the user is inside that world...."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) The affective space of the Baroque wants to draw you into
>> itself, absorption is the watchword rather than independent status.
>> Cartesian space is not privileged. What you see may not turn out to be
> what
>> you can know; complex transformations are just offstage and about to come
>> on.
>>
>> (TROY)...."This sense of immediacy is partly to do with the way these spaces
>> are perceived. Engaging with the real world is an experience that immerses
>> the body in their surroundings. Direct and peripheral vision, sound
>> resonating within the environment, being able to move over, around, through,
>> in and out of spaces, and the ability to observe and manipulate solid
>> objects all contribute to this feeling of being in the world...."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Obviously this could not happen in a pre electronic space in
>> such a literal, hands on way. But, did it not, does it not, happen in
>> human imagination and memory, in the affective experience of resonance
> and
>> recursion inside the spaces of the Baroque?
>>
>> (TROY) "...Transmutational space. Electronic spaces are artificial
>> constructions - simulations where the entire virtual world is a code, every
>> part of the space is a re-representation. They allow multiple forms of
>> representation to easily coexist and be blended with one another, creating
>> hybrid systems of signs."
>>
>> (CHRISTINA) Especially so in the Baroque, I imagine...created in a time
> of
>> breakdown and clash of ideologies, loss of normative or rule based cultural
>> standards, nearly continuous warfare, and rapid commercial and technological
>> advances, leading to a taste for fragmentation, the edge of chaos,
>> dissolution at the edge of organization--generally, a hybridity, a fluidity
>> of forms, to quote Eisenstein.
>>
>>
>>
>>> looking at the def below, for instance, i don't see it applying to my
> own
>>> work or much of the work discussed at
>>> http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/Review/index.cfm?articleE , which is interactive
>>> audio work
>>
>> Probably true enough..
>>
>>>
>>> are you 'reclaiming' the term 'baroque'?
>>>
>> That would be far too grandiose an aspiration!
>>
>> Significantly, Eisenstein recounts that he came up with the idea of montage
>> from studying the Carcieri series of Piranesi, a series of imaginary prisons
>> with irrational spatial configurations. My vrml piece, to which you refer,
>> was inspired by Eisenstein's remark:
>>
>>
Cyborg's reddance at San Francisco Performance Cinema Symposium
Thanks to Henry Warwick for organizing this superb event, and to all the
artists who came to participate, including criticalartware (Chicago)
<http://www.criticalartware.net/>, Fred Collopy (Cleveland), Gregor White
(Dundee), Scott Arford (SF), Sunit Parekh (SF), Lynn Marie Kirby and Alex
Killough (SF), Greg Bowman (Seattle), Kit Clayton (SF), and Tommy Becker
(SF)....also to Dimension 7's Grant David and Ben Sheppee who helped with
every technical element. I was honored to be there.
"What I remember was that it was the combination of the
unrelentingly dark content, the flickering video, the
swinging collection of large film sheets that looked
like Xray films of some mysterious cyborg internals,
and that all combined with your sombre affect in
performance, and the results were just... creepy." --Henry Warwick
<http://www.christinamcphee.net/texts/cyborg1.html>
cm
--
Transmedia artist
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>
artists who came to participate, including criticalartware (Chicago)
<http://www.criticalartware.net/>, Fred Collopy (Cleveland), Gregor White
(Dundee), Scott Arford (SF), Sunit Parekh (SF), Lynn Marie Kirby and Alex
Killough (SF), Greg Bowman (Seattle), Kit Clayton (SF), and Tommy Becker
(SF)....also to Dimension 7's Grant David and Ben Sheppee who helped with
every technical element. I was honored to be there.
"What I remember was that it was the combination of the
unrelentingly dark content, the flickering video, the
swinging collection of large film sheets that looked
like Xray films of some mysterious cyborg internals,
and that all combined with your sombre affect in
performance, and the results were just... creepy." --Henry Warwick
<http://www.christinamcphee.net/texts/cyborg1.html>
cm
--
Transmedia artist
<www.christinamcphee.net>
<www.naxsmash.net>