Brett Stalbaum
Since the beginning
Works in La Jolla, California United States of America

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BIO
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, LSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084

C5 research theorist (www.c5corp.com) 1997-2007
Graduate (MFA) of the CADRE Digital Media Laboratory at San Jose State
University.
Professional affiliations:
Electronic Disturbance Theater
C5
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DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Arts


One more quick thing that I thought of when I was driving around doing
some errands... re the issue that Curt has identified. Jeremy Hight has
a text that I think is somehow related. Certainly, it is related to the
issue of space and narrative. A good read in any case.

Narrative Archaeology, Xcp: Streetnotes: Summer 2003
http://www.xcp.bfn.org/hight.html

Brett Stalbaum wrote:

>
>
> curt cloninger wrote:
>
>> Brett Stalbaum wrote:
>>
>>
>>> the virtual is closer to
>>> the real than fiction - in fact, the virtual and the real are
>>> co-adaptive in C5's thinking. I don't care about fiction actually, it
>>> is
>>> more interesting for me to take on the virtual/real axis as something
>>> to
>>> contest (database politics) or something to work with and explore
>>> (database formalism).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Brett,
>>
>> This is where your position asserts a neutrality it doesn't seem to
>> actually occupy.
>
>
> Neutrality? I hope the work is not neutral... at least in terms of the
> kinds of emerging spaces we are seeking to explore or what the
> implications are.
>
>> Neither activism nor "database formalism" sidestep fiction. Tactical
>> media is a
>
> > performative form of fiction, and "database formalism" seems a
> philosophical form
>
>> of fiction (more like an essay -- albeit with a kind of performative
>> object lesson as its footnote). Even "real science" is fiction, as
>> David Wilson celebrates.
>
>
> I don't know Wilson's work... but my best guess in terms of an issue
> that might be used to peel back the layers of this problem is
> autopoiesis... ie, real science reveals data and information about the
> real, a real which exists externally and removed from our (second and
> third order) autopoiesis (biological processes through which humans and
> societies produce and maintain our experience... which are more or less
> congruent with the outside, but not a representation, nor a fiction.)
>
> But I don't know if we are on the same track here. Your thought about (I
> will substitute) database as a "performative form of fiction" is
> interesting (indeed, it is at least operational if not performative),
> but I think that (I may be wrong - don't want to put meanings in your
> text that are not there), substituting "fiction" for "simulation"
> ignores the generative (in a material sense) relationship that computer
> simulation can achieve (allowing predictive power through action on the
> possibilities revealed). Fiction seems something else to me... a very
> different way of producing possibilities, (no value judgment here...)
> perhaps because it is not bound to actual in the same way. Fiction and
> science are both rigorous in their application toward the real, but
> seemingly with very different methods. Do you disagree? The relation
> between them is certainly due more consideration... maybe you can
> speculate about how David Wilson might respond.
>
>> The only thing not fictional is the ontological one to one
>> relationship that exists betwen the world and its hypothetical
>> lifesize map. But as soon as Borges observes and describes that
>> abstract relationship, his observational "research" becomes narrative
>> (and a resonant narrative, since Borges is a crafty writer). As soon
>> as you write an artist statement or a paper explaining the "meaning"
>> of your GPS experiments, your experiments become their own genre of
>> fiction (particularly when your para-art texts are written prior to
>> the enacted experiments). The virtual may in some sense be closer to
>> the real than fiction (unless crafty fiction is a lie that tells the
>> truth), but your research itself is not the "actual" virtual. It
>> can't escape being a kind of obtuse fiction about the virtual.
>
>
> You are correct that there is the virtual in a Deleuzian sense of
> abstract machines and that there is computational simulation of it.
> Simulation allows a new kind of interaction with those (a predictive
> one) that has revolutionized science (or maybe more accurately, speed it
> up... caused a phase shift.) We are interested in the spaces where these
> computational virtual realities come back to and impinge upon the real
> as a way of returning to the real, because simulation has such
> interesting material effects that are not new, but the scale they have
> achieved (participating in rearranging the surface of the Earth), is
> something considerable. I hold to that and suggest that there is a role
> for artists to play in exploring these spaces - which can unite
> data/information with communications, social processing, performance,
> the body, location, and ultimately re-representation. (I think I have
> just described my colleague Jack Toolin's project - which he led - "The
> Perfect View" - http://www.c5corp.com/projects/perfectview/index.shtml)
>
> If you want to equate fiction with simulation (or in our case simulation
> as "para-art text") and assume these have the same kinds of material
> effects, then I don't think anyone can argue with your position. But I
> don't believe that they can be easily equated. Curt you *almost* have me
> wanting to do some research in this area! (I'm so easy to bait;-) But,
> I'll freely admit that I don't care about parsing the issues relative to
> fiction quite as much as many other artists might... but I would
> certainly love to read the work.
>
> best,
> Brett
>
>>
>> best,
>> curt
>> +
>> -> post: list@rhizome.org
>> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>>
>

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

DISCUSSION

Re: An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Arts


Dirk Vekemans wrote:

> Hi Brett,
>
> It needn't concern you, but i have now gone through your essay a first time.
> I'm very slow at these things but i already concluded it is much more
> balanced than Manovich's latest work(that i feel has a very wrong basis to
> it apart from being way to prescriptive in its self-promotion) and anything
> but the horsething and quite receptible for further scrutiny untsoweiter.
> It's a worthy effort, congratulations. I do see some serious flaws, however,
> in your scheme of things.
>
> A very basic one, i think, is transcribing the speed of light of
> transmission of data to the systems triggering the transmissions. That is a
> very Virilian way (although i readily admit to not reading the guy i can
> conclude as much from what i gather from second-hand versions- reading
> Virilio is simply sth that didn't happen in my life yet, not sure if it ever
> will) of transcoding a metaphorical perception of things to reality. That's
> just basicly untrue. If things were truly happening at the speed of light, i
> needn't bother writing anything anymore, because the connection would be
> instant. ( see also http://nkdee.blogspot.com/2005/12/fiction-absence.html)
> I suspect this is the very switch that allows him to run the cycles of his
> discours, and although i see some nice things coming out of it by way of a
> positive critique of overcoming what he deems to be a catastrophic state of
> affairs ( to that i would not agree either, -it's bad but only as bad as it
> gets, any talk of catastrophy is easily undone by walking out the door
> and/or having a chat with your neighbour or by pointing at the very real
> catastrophies that crack through our imagined control over things), these
> cycles also seem to be headed to an ideological, normative view on art, like
> what is so obvious from the quote Eric sent in.

I actually disagree with Virilio's thesis that speed necessarily leads
to catastrophe... a bigger more dangerous crash... because speed also
allows solutions. I am speculating here that speed leads to more
frequent catastrophe but also more frequent optimization/control and
indeed some crash avoidance. I'm glad for example that we can track bird
flu, and maybe this system of surveillance and control will be
appreciated if the virus does cross species or something catastrophic
like that. But if it does so, and it transmits between people as readily
as it does birds, it will be simply because that is what viruses do -
and not due to the speed of information technology. Yet if information
tech does actually prevent the catastrophe through surveillance and
control - that would be an example of IT mediating something very real
(lives) and I would call that a material difference. Information
technology is in the material loop - and of course IT itself (machinery
of simulation) is very real. (I note, bird flu is not now a catastrophe
for anyone other than people who are having their flocks culled and a
few unfortunate individuals who have contracted it...)

So I don't think that I made the mistake - because I only use Virilio to
track the trajectory of speed through different faster technologies in a
teleological sense, in order to show that speed is the difference, which
helps me to point out that disembodiment is not. That is all I am doing
with Virilio... who I do very much enjoy reading. I should have been
more careful - some of his argument that I don't agree with rode into
mine as a parasite. Even though I did not talk about catastrophe.

Now if you want to talk about politics and my country in particular - we
can talk about catastrophe! But it comes from hubris not database.

>
> Now i have been postponing a serious investigation of the line of thinking
> Manovich is prescribing for lack of time to do it thoroughly, and here i
> find you adding a more subtle variety to the strain, a higher quality
> product, surely, allowing more openness and avoiding the normative. As much
> as i welcome the soberness and quality of thought in it, it puts me back
> another step in my Laurence Sterne look alike attempt to explain what the
> hell it is i'm talking about. Your essay points to a confusion of terms, i
> see something similar in the confusion of ontology with epistemology,

yes!

> and in
> the obiquitous use of the 'virtual' to avoid the ditches one might fall into
> while taking the step. As much as i agree with discerning a flow from the
> virtual towards the material, so rather an embodiment instead of an
> disembodiment, i cannot agree with what it is in fact that is getting
> 'magically' materialised and certainly not with the catastrophic speed you
> seem to ascribe to the process, leaving the artist with a very meagre
> possibility as a fourth wheel on the database wagon.

See above re my view on catastrophe, I don't adhere to that... but also,
as a materialist let me point out that I am very anti-magic. All kinds
of magic - including the notion that an artwork and by proxy the artist
is a strong social mediator between "an audience" and their beliefs,
attitudes, experience and political opinions. Especially when we are
thinking about the act of art making as exclusively representational,
presentation layer, image, output, interaction, interface, etc, which I
relate non-judgmentally to superficiality as in the surface
representations produced by computational machinery. (The presentation
layer is ontologically superficial, not epistemologically superficial.)
I am interested in a holistic analysis - the cycle between
database->data access->application logic->network->presentation
layer->user->world->sensor network/surveillance systems->back to
database, as a cycle. In other words, how computation, social and
material worlds now constantly mediate each other with information
technology in a loop. It is possible that artists are in a very meager
situation relative to what I have just said, but I don't (more honestly,
probably can't) believe it. (I think we share this.) I think if we focus
our investigations on reconfiguring the above cycles to make them do
things that they were never intended to do, that the role of the artist
is very secure. If we use them to make pictures and think that showing
those to someone else will have any kind of deep impact just because we
are artists and artists should be taken seriously due to our special
social status... I worry about that!

> Relational databases
> are very important in our business, but they needn't be the all explaining
> base to how we deal with data. They are mere grids, results from (already)
> an algorhytmic categorisation belonging to the upper end of episteme. Taking
> them for the essence of things is an ontological move into the fictional,
> spatialised representation of events, an arresting of energies that is, in
> my book, ethically illegal. Basicly it's wishfull thinking, the same
> wishfull thinking that inspires Wolfram to a similar ontological move, doing
> away with time because he doesn't need it, using science as a
> business-driven super scriptograph enscribing his fiction into reality.

That is a valid critique - I am with you. I am also opposed to
Baudrillard in that I don't believe the sign surpasses or replaces the
signified - I agree that taking them for the essence of things is a
mistake. I am also anti-Platonist, as in, I believe that there there are
no essences. Delanda replaces essences with Deleuzian abstract
machines... putting us right back at exploring the relationships between
the virtual and the actual and their cooperative generation in a
material sense. So I guess I am saying that we take database very
seriously as a mediator of the real, because the virtual is closer to
the real than fiction - in fact, the virtual and the real are
co-adaptive in C5's thinking. I don't care about fiction actually, it is
more interesting for me to take on the virtual/real axis as something to
contest (database politics) or something to work with and explore
(database formalism).

>
> In that way, Virilio, or any other theory of catastrophy, is right in
> assigning urgency to the matter at hand, because we are dealing with an
> ontological disfiguration on a global scale. Time remains, however, there's
> always time, because things only get as bad as they get.
>
> Again, there's nothing thorough here,only some hints at what i think could
> be substantial objections. I'm hoping i 'll get there some other time
> around.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> dv
>
>
>
> Dirk Vekemans, poet - freelance webprogrammer,
> Central Authoring Process of the
> Neue Kathedrale des erotischen Elends
> http://www.vilt.net/nkdee
>
>
> dv@vilt.net
>
> http://www.vilt.net
> http://www.viltdigitalvision.com
>
>
>

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: Re: An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Arts


Thanks for transposing that Eric...

Somewhat an aside, but one of the ugrad majors that I am the coordinator
for, (ICAM at UCSD, which was developed in the mid/late 1990's by
Manovich, Sheldon Brown, Adriene Jenik, Miller Puckette, Peter Otto and
others), has pretty much the same orientation toward artists and
software as Virilio. As most of you know, Puckette is certainly the most
notorious in this mode of practice where the artist (or in this case a
classical musician) is writing software tools that form the basis of new
modalities of arts practice, in addition to enabling their own work. So
much of the interdisciplinary rapprochement between music and visual
arts has been mediated by the software tools that Puckette
innovated/evolved, (not to mention their extensibility and the
communities that grew up around those platforms, of course...) I'd argue
Max/msp over Final Cut Pro as among the greatest art works of the 20th
Century... Processing and the artists who created it fit this mode
too... (I talk about Ben Fry's work in the essay...)

Re ICAM, I'd add that we strongly advise that students in this major
also take a minor in CS. I'd add also that ICAM is not all tool
making... many students find that the CS background helps them develop
more rigorously integrative appraches to things as far flung as
installtion, sculpture, robotics, music, theater, computer games... you
name it. (ICAMerals are a diverse bunch - I am always impressed with and
proud of the breadth of work our students produce...)

The description of the major and the requirements can be found here:
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/undergraduate/major/icam

Eric Dymond wrote:

> I saw Virilio mentioned here, and thought this extract (from Micheal Taormina's translation of The Accident of Art - Sylviere Lotringer/ Paul Virilio) added something, and he is so very clear and easy to understand.
>
> SL
> "The visual arts no longer speak to the eyes...
>
> PV
> The situation I am describing is totally catastrophic, but I don't think it's the end of the world if we recognize it.
> If we don't, academicism has won. That is what academicism is, standards that are connected to the pressure of special interests...
>
> SL
> Today there is an entire area of art in which artists work on computers.
>
> PV
> I have nothing against it.
>
> SL
> They do visual art, but they know very well that they're using pixels as a medium. Will this art be more legitimate in your eyes?
>
> PV
> If they are able to penetrate the software. I'm not worried. If the software is still the fruit of anonymous programmers dependent on big corporations, I'm against it. I said as much to architects:so long as you don't design your own software, you guys are losers.What do I expect of architects? That they do not follow the example of Frank O. Gehry, using Mirage 2000 software to design the Bilboa Opera. If architects today want to prove themselves equal to the new technologies, like Paolo Uccello or Piero de la Francesca, they would make the software themselves, they would get back inside the machine. Whereas now they are sold the equipment, and they work with it. That's what I can't accept. This doesn't mean I am some Luddite eager to destroy machines, not at all. I have always said: Penetrate the machine, explode it from the inside, dismantle the system to appropriate it. here we come back to the phenomena of appropriation.
> "
>
> As well, how do the rules of normalization fit in? How does the language Codd originally used traceroute to todays social/artistic incorporation of database technology?
>
> Eric
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

DISCUSSION

[Fwd: Re: RHIZOME_RAW: Re: An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Arts]


I sent this reply directly to Myron yesterday instead of to the list...
and already have a really thoughtful personal response... and he
reminded me to send it to the list as I had intended... thanks Myron. I
also found some info on Malakoff Diggins.
http://www.calgoldrush.com/travel/malakoff.html

Brett

Myron Turner wrote:

> As usual, Brett Stalbaum gives us a lot to think about in this essay.
>
> But I'm not sure I am convinced by his argument that speed is the differentiating element in current information technology.
> As he points out human beings have from earliest times sought to abstract data from the material world, and the Sumerian
> accountant is a case in point--accounting is historically one of the most important instances of data abstraction. But the
> issue for the ancient Sumerian, if he had wanted for some reason to communicate his data to others, was not speed alone.
> By showing his tablets to his neighbor, he could very speedily communicate his data, just as he very speedily could tell his
> neighbor what what on his mind by talking face to face with him.

Hi Myron... I do think I do index linguistic networks that transport
data and information at foot speed... but did not very deeply treat
automation and speed. More below but two things here: I owe it to note
debt to Paul Virilio (good reading - and a better source to address
questions than I, and to point out that much communication now is human
to machine or machine... so neighbors don't always matter in the
distribution of material reality. (I'm not celebrating that... btw. That
political issue is the job of database politics to solve - my paper is a
humble attempt at interpreting a range of artistic practices that
include database politics...)

>
> The issue for the ancient Sumerian would be communicating his data and his ideas to increasingly larger numbers of others.
> How would he deal with this? He could gather interested parties into a large group and speak his
ideas to them. Or he could
> get on his horse and using its greater capacity for speed go from farm to farm. In other words, I feel that the issue isn't
> speed but numbers and space. His horse would enable him to carry his data to one neighbor at a time over considerable distances
> (as he understood them) at the speed of a horse. His convocation of interested parties would enable him to communicate his ideas
> as widely as his voice could carry. The problem of numbers is really a problem of space. How much space can you cover in a given time.
>

He might not want to communicate confidential business data to large
number, but if he did, would he do so by going faster to reach those at
greater distances instead of having them come to him? (There is a well
known relationship between distance and speed...)

> If we move ahead into the industrial era, we see that we've had speed for a long time -- the telegraph, the telephone.
> But they had the same limits as the ancient Sumerian -- limits in how much space could be traversed at one time. These technologies
> could do it faster than the ancient Sumerian's horse, but they were still largely face to face technolgies:
>
> "Hello. That you, Jack? I have 30 bushels of corn. Have to run. Still have to call Sam and Wayne. Bye."
>
> But we've had other technologies which have addressed in different ways the issues of space, numbers and speed: printing,
> the phonograph, photography, radio, tv--each of which could communicate to large numbers of people with various degrees of speed.
> An interesting technology in this context is the teletype which communicated the same data to large numbers of people across a wide
> geography and as fast as the wires could carry the words(and later the pictures).
>

So another difference making difference may be that that speed enables
greater ubiquity and more widespread use and thus greater numbers of
users? I'll sign up with you on that of course... But it occurs to me
that, although this is not a topic I treated, that the issue of who gets
to use these technologies during their initial and arguably most
culturally influential phases is at play. Who gets to use speed (or
Myron's quantity) and for what? Note that the CAE quote in the essay
implies something, to which I will add:

One of the first phone lines in California was used to control the
release of water from damns in the Sierra Nevada to control flumes for
very destructive hydro mining practices, literally changing the
landscape. (Check out Malakov(sp?) Diggings State Park in California.)
The introduction of digital database systems begins in the the 1950's
(roughly contemporary with new random-access storage technologies - the
earliest disk drives...), and Lockheed and IBM developed the first large
hierarchical database system to support supply chain management for the
Apollo moon mission, and Oracle Corporation's first client was
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. So even if quantity of users is the
real issue and not speed, (and I think the case that quantity is enabled
by speed is not really that hard to make, the telephone and books
eventually become ubiquitous right?), the impact of these increasingly
fast (or ubiquitous/quantious) technologies through who is in position
to first adopt them is interesting. Who it is that is in a hurry to be
the first users of "the difference" (whether the difference is speed or
quantity or lethality or marketability) that a new technology brings? In
the essay I deal with the *material and distributive*
effects/possibilities of speed and try to situate a broad range of
practice against it. I identify database politics as part of my
interpretive framework but don't do database politics here...

> I really don't have answers as to what distinguishes digital culture from earlier technogologies.

I do actually address this, although laconically... when I mention
Claude Shannon. He showed that digital information could be measured in
terms of difference - and that you could measure it in automatic ways
(semantically neutral) that allowed data transmission to be better
managed in digital networks, which later allowed a high degree of
automation, which in turn led to greater speed! Interestingly he worked
for the phone company; and it should be no surprise that AT&T was very
interested in the digital transmission of data, and developed UNIX,
which is a very early operating system used in telephone switches. (And
today lives on as Linux/Mac/Solaris/etc...) So in fact, the digital does
allow an increase in speed through more effective control, even if
across "the wire" the electromagnetic carrier wave of older analog phone
systems, and the carrier waves carrying digital data, both travel at the
same speed of light. It is faster to control and manage digital
switching and data compression (because they are discrete) than it is
analog data. This is another reason that speed makes a difference in the
digital.

> It seems to me more than just
> differences of degree--greater speed, greater numbers, more geography.
> My feeling is that it has to do with networking and the
> nature of networks and how networks have been organized.

I'd put networks right up there with disembodiment in that we have made
way too much of them... they are archaic too! Networks existed on
sailing ships as I pointed out, (including digital-to-analog and
analog-to-digital conversions!), but also in archaic economies long
before digital computation. Some archaic networks can be
reconstructed... for example much is known about prehistoric trade
networks in western north America from studying lithics - obsidian in
particular. However, I agree, how a network is designed is of course a
formal influence on how it it used. TCP/IP vs UDP (and their limits) can
be thought of as formal foundations of the net we know of as "inter",
but it is a mistake to look at the Internet as if if the mother of all
networks, or the only network, or that the net in Internet is the
difference making difference. It is just very fast and digital which in
many ways closes distances faster. And the flow and shape of the
material world changes because of it - from where you get to live to the
freshness of your carrot juice. (I hasten to add, we can't forget energy
as the second dimension of matter as Virilio has it... which interacts
with information as the third...) But, there were archaic networks of
Egyptians that carried business records and messages around on
scrolls... it is important to understand the ontology of various
networks - but speed is the difference that makes the Internet...

>
>
> Myron Turner
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> +
> -> post: list@rhizome.org
> -> questions: info@rhizome.org
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

--
Brett Stalbaum, Lecturer, PSOE
Coordinator, Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM)
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Department of Visual Arts
9500 GILMAN DR. # 0084
La Jolla CA 92093-0084
http://www.c5corp.com
http://www.paintersflat.net

Info for students, winter quarter 2K6:
-ICAM and Media (computing emphasis) faculty advising:
Tuesday 1-2PM, VAF 206, Contact via email stalbaum@ucsd.edu
-Vis 40/ICAM 40 (Introduction/Computing in Arts) office hour:
Tuesday 2-3PM, VAF 206, Contact via WebCT
-Vis 141A (Computer Programming/Arts I) office hour:
Tuesday 3-4PM, VAF 206, Contact: via WebCT
- Notes:
Week 7 (Feb 21st) No office hours today
Finals Week (March 21st) Yes.

DISCUSSION

Re: An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Arts


Manovich's intro to new media reader is very interesting... here is a
provocative snip that maps to the distinction you make between painting
and tool:

"That is, not only have new media technologies