Hypertext. Hypermedia. High Performance Computing. It's enough to make a humanities scholar hyperventilate. A debate has raged in the last decade (at least) about whether or not the Digital Age will see the death of The Book, The Library and perhaps, The Humanities more broadly. Part of the debate resides in the historical separation that began with Erasmus and the Renaissance, where "hard" was divorced from the "soft" sciences and arts -- a division that is still visible both geographically and intellectually on university campuses, as well as amongst scholarly disciplines themselves. But some see the reciprocal and perhaps limitless possibilities of emergent technologies and humanities scholarship -- how digital technology cuts across disciplines, creates new ways of looking at artifacts, as well as producing new forms itself.

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Aleksandra Domanovic is a Berlin-based artist who works primarily on the internet. Much of her art contrasts and recontextualizes content derived online, such as found videos and Google Maps, in an effort to establish a dialogue between these different materials. I interviewed her via email. - Ceci Moss

You were born in Serbia, grew up in Slovenia and now reside in Berlin. Has this transnationalism inflected your work? How so?

I was born in Serbia, but in a Slovakian minority in Vojvodina. Hmm, I can't say how this expresses in my work...most of the artists I know are global nomads. I have a blurred sense of nationality and have no real feeling of belonging anywhere, which may explain my obsession with maps. I also lived in Vienna for six years and spend some time in Tokyo before moving to Berlin, and for now I still enjoy not having a permanent residence.

As a blogger for VVORK, you obviously spend a lot of time surfing the web. How does this daily routine influence your practice as an artist?

I became an artist through and with VVORK. Studying graphic design, but always making video on the side, I joined VVORK about one week after it was founded by Oliver, Georg and Christoph. Surfing the web extensively, seeing so much good work and discovering it for myself, motivated me.

You completed two projects which paired online mapping and video: Srbija Do Tokia and Tesla. Could you explain the concept behind these two works?

There are 3 pages: Srbija Do Tokia, Tesla and Holivud, all written as they are pronounced in Serbian language, which is the grammatically correct way of writing foreign words in Serbia. All reflect Serbian nationalism and the recent independence of Kosovo. The day after the declaration, there were videos ...

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Lately, a number of institutions, based on more or less conventional models, seem to be focusing on fomenting art and culture created with digital, networked and portable devices. This is not a new phenomenon, but there seem to be different approaches, and a variety of unfoldings that shift away from the classic MediaLAB models, as the convergence of art, science and technology no longer seems to be dominant on a field nowadays diverse enough to range from social and educational perspectives to artistic experimentation of all kinds. There are mixed scenarios, on this context, in which digital culture reaches places such as China and India, while mobile and wireless networks adds layers of complexity to our connected society. At the same time open source communities grow, as well as approaches to alternative / recycled devices, and a number of organizations seem to provide air for those developments to consolidate, despite their distance from the corporate agendas. To discuss possible models and perspectives for media centers and net art organizations, representatives from institutions or independent initiatives in Brazil, England and US will share their experiences, aiming to debate differences and similarities as well as possible challenges and / or local peculiarities. How are we reacting to an epoch when, says Ned Rossiter, "there is urgent need for new institutional forms that reflect "relational" processes to challenge existing systems of governance and outmoded representational structures"? - empyre -'s guests for this month are Anne Nigten (V2, Rotterdam / Netherlands), Gabriel Menotti (Cinefalcatrua, Vitoria/ Brazil), Gisela Domschke (MediaLAB MIS, Sao Paulo / Brazil), Marc Garrett (Furtherfield, London / UK) and Sarah Cook (Eyebeam, New York / US). Later on the month, Amanda McDonald Crowley, also from Eyebeam and already an - empyre - guest on former discussions, will join the debate. To follow the discussion, subscribe to - empyre - @ https://mail.cofa.unsw ...

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Web cam of the install through November 16, 2008

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Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Always After (The Glass House) (still) 2006
Super 16mm film, transferred to HD digital video, single-channel projection exhibited from HD DVD, 16:9, colour, mono, 9:41 minute loop
Image courtesy: The artist and Galeri­a Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid.
Copy right: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Queensland Art Gallery Modern Ruin
An Australian Cinematheque exhibition and film program
12 July - 12 October 2008 Stanley Place
South Bank
Brisbane
Australia
http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/home

A rich vein of contemporary artistic practice revaluates the utopian dreams of the modern period. "Modern Ruin" brings together artists and filmmakers who look back to modern art, architecture and design in order to visually and critically explore their historical failures. The profusion of recent images of modern ruins in art and film can be seen both as a response to particular physical and aesthetic qualities, and also as a metaphor for loss. The works in the exhibition and film program speak of living in the ruins of Modernism; some translate a mood of disappointment, while others are imbued with a melancholy sense of dreams half-remembered. They examine the decay, detritus and survivals of historical modernity.

Ruination is the shadow of progress and utopian thinking. From the Enlightenment, the idea of the modern was associated with the creation of new bodies of knowledge, progress and the perfection of self and society. From the second half of the nineteenth century, modernity came to signify industrialisation and urbanisation. Modernism as a movement in art, literature, architecture and design, is associated with the avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, with radical innovation and the creation of new languages. A return by artists and filmmakers to Modernism's purified forms and autonomous objects represents an attempt to imagine new meanings for them. The forms of the past ...

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Thu Nov 06, 2014 18:30 - Sun Jan 11, 2015

Oakland, California
United States of America

New York-based artist Lucy Raven uncovers the diffuse, obscured systems that support contemporary life through a research-led practice that encompasses films, installations, illustrated lectures, and essays. Deeply attuned to the processes of production often unseen within visual culture in a networked, globalized world, Raven’s contemplative storytelling uncovers the economic, historical, geographic, and material complexities at play in technology through an exploration of topics such as the outsourcing of post-production work for the film industry from Hollywood to countries around the world, evolving technical standards in film projection, and the immense infrastructure behind the global copper mining industry.

For her solo presentation at YBCA, Raven stages a new anaglyph 3D video installation entitled Curtains (2014). The project emerges out of the artist’s ongoing research into the global network of post-production facilities that create the visual effects for Hollywood’s blockbuster films. Post-production is meticulous and labor intensive, involving hours of frame-by-frame detailing. Film studios seek the least expensive labor force worldwide to complete their work, outsourcing labor to studios that span Bombay, Beijing, Toronto, London, and Vancouver. Raven visited and documented some of these spaces through sound and image. The result is Curtains, a 3D video that creates a portrait of an otherwise invisible global assembly line, providing a glimpse into the quiet reality and human hands that lie behind the spectacle of fantastic computer-generated simulations found in today’s mainstream films.

A series of screenprints from Raven’s ongoing RPx project are also featured in the exhibition, as well as a new lenticular print. RPx emerged from research undertaken during a 2011 residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where Raven unearthed and archived motion picture test patterns used by projectionists to calibrate the quality of film projection. The “RP” in Raven’s project stands for “recommended practices,” a directive set by the standards-developing committee in Hollywood, the Society of Motion Pictures, and Television Engineers (SMPTE) to ensure continuity across viewing experiences. The test patterns featured in the RPx prints are images meant for machines and the technicians who maneuver them, a relic and a precursor to the standards that surround our current high definition images. Both RPx and Curtains point towards the careful engineering involved in the fabrication of illusion, including the construction of human vision within that process.

About the Series
Control: Technology in Culture is a new series of exhibitions in the YBCA Upstairs Galleries showcasing work by emerging and mid-career artists who examine the social, cultural, and experiential implications of technology. The exhibitions in this series seek to prompt timely questions about the profound and far-reaching influence of technology in our daily lives by focusing on artists whose work spans a multitude of disciplines and relates to a diverse set of issues, including architecture, acoustics, psychology, labor, consumerism, the environment, and the military.

The term “control” refers to philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory that, as a result of the ever-increasing role of information technology, Michel Foucault’s “disciplinary society” of the 20th century has given way to a “control society” in the 21st century. In contrast to discipline, which molds the individual through confinement in factories, prisons, and schools, control is diffuse, adaptable, and ubiquitous, modulating rather than molding the individual.

Control: Technology in Culture is curated by Ceci Moss, Assistant Curator of Visual Arts.

Fri Mar 07, 2014 18:00 - Sun Jun 15, 2014

San Francisco, California
United States of America

Los Angeles-based artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon works in sound, installation, and sculpture. Her work is often devised around audio and spatial feedback systems that manipulate the visitor’s awareness of sound and space, incorporating the physical and sonic qualities of surrounding architecture to engage the viewer’s senses. Gordon investigates sonic and architectural applications of cybernetic systems in the 20th and 21st centuries to technological design, from anechoic chambers to the military’s use of Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) speakers. Reverse engineering those implements of social control, the dissonant spaces she creates uncover how such systems regulate human subjectivity, mobility, and perception.

Commissioned by YBCA, Gordon’s new installation—part of her solo exhibition It Only Happens All of the Time—is an immersive sonic experience that emphasizes the primacy of the embodied experience; one that encourages the visitor to navigate the space through a mode of listening that is both felt and heard. Gordon explores sound’s ability to establish different levels of intimacy, and the exhibition’s title points towards the ubiquitous presence of sound in that process, whether it exists at the periphery or center of our awareness. The installation’s sound-absorbing walls reference the design of anechoic chambers found in military and scientific testing facilities, which insulate and absorb sound reflections. In contrast to the walls of the installation, which gestures towards a calculated experience, the sculpture Love Seat situated within this contained environment suggests another, more emancipated, arrangement. Surrounded by a multichannel speaker system distributed throughout the gallery, Love Seat encourages visitors to sit and share in a listening experience with others, while maintaining a physical separation. Fostering an exchange between visitors that wavers between proximity and distance, Love Seat parallels how we listen together.

Gordon’s other works for the exhibition echo a similar concept—sound as experienced within the body becomes a way to feel with others, and to experience the mechanisms of built space through non-visual means. Her film Everyone Will Be Here Now But Me documents a site-specific sound environment created within the empty offices of the Los Angeles Food Center. It follows visitors as they explore sound installations distributed throughout the building, with the option to listen through binaural microphones that captured the 3D stereo sound of the space. The suspended figures in Gordon’s new series of drawings and watercolors Filter Resonance B more subtly signal the body; wire-like lines protrude and drift through these organ-like forms, a reference to the potential for connectivity. Gordon imagines that the drawings represent actual filters, which isolate information, and their presentation is meant to evoke the interfaces of audio filters in music software, which allow the user to directly regulate reverb, equalization, and so on by manipulating graphic elements. Much like the show itself, these strange configurations invite reflection on the many ways the body is instrumentalized through technology.

About Control: Technology in Culture

Control: Technology in Culture, curated by Ceci Moss, Assistant Curator of Visual Arts, is YBCA’s new series of exhibitions showcasing work by emerging and mid-career artists who examine the social, cultural, and experiential implications of technology. The series seeks to prompt timely questions about the profound and far-reaching influence of technology in our daily lives by focusing on artists whose work spans a multitude of disciplines and relates to a diverse set of issues, including architecture, acoustics, psychology, labor, consumerism, the environment, and the military.

The term “control” refers to philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory that, as a result of the ever-increasing role of information technology, Michel Foucault’s “disciplinary society” of the 20th century has given way to a “control society” in the 21st century. In contrast to discipline, which molds the individual through confinement in factories, prisons, and schools, control is diffuse, adaptable, and ubiquitous, modulating rather than molding the individual.

Fri Jul 19, 2013 18:30 - Sun Sep 08, 2013

San Francisco, California
United States of America

Working in sculpture, game design, installation, performance, sound and the internet, Portland-based artist Brenna Murphy is interested in digital technology’s capacity to connect and expand human consciousness. For Murphy, digital tools act as an electronic prosthesis that deepens awareness and cognition, rather than as an alien entity outside human experience. The labyrinth is an ongoing theme in Murphy’s practice. Her installations, websites, and virtual environments are set up as a series of interlocking spaces that encourage wandering, displacement and discovery. Like the naturally occurring geometric forms referenced in her work, they organically branch out from each other as a dense array of unfolding structures. The title for her exhibition at YBCA, Liquid Vehicle Transmitter, alludes to the fluid property found in much of Murphy’s output.

For her new installation, emergent entity chant array, Murphy has designed a type of fractal involving self-similar patterns at varying scales. Constructed out of a precisely configured assemblage of 3D printed sculptures, LED lights, light boxes, and wood cut forms, the installation resembles a real life version of her complex and dizzying internet-based works. Like Murphy’s virtual video game environments, emergent entity chant array plays upon the visitor’s perception of both space and dimension, encouraging the exploration of elevated states of consciousness.

Deeply post-humanist in her approach, Murphy views her creative process as a form of meditation in which she seeks an intuitive, harmonious relation with the tools used to produce her work. Her intricate arrangement of forms focuses her own energy and that of the viewer, drawing them in. This sense of an attuned connection with an audience is also an active element in the art collectives of which she is a member, MSHR and Oregon Painting Society.

Fri Nov 09, 2012 18:00 - Fri Nov 09, 2012

New York, New York
United States of America

Join us on November 9th at 6PM for "Architecture and Computation" with speakers Keller Easterling (Architecture, Yale) and Erica Robles (MCC, NYU). This will be the first event in this year's PROGRAM: Media and Literature lecture series.

Architecture and Computation

19 University Place, Great Room
New York, NY 10003
Map: http://goo.gl/maps/f2ad3

http://www.programseries.com

Free and Open to the Public

"PROGRAM" is an interdisciplinary event series organized by graduate students within New York University’s Media, Culture and Communication, English, and Comparative Literature Departments. Intentionally broad in scope, the series will present talks that explore the cultural, historical, aesthetic and political impact of software and programming logic.

This first event in our year-long lecture series explores the intersection of architecture and the logic of computation. How does computation structure our physical world, and in what ways has the function of computational media been applied to the spaces we inhabit?



Keller Easterling (Yale University, Architecture)

Extrastatecraft: Global Infrastructure and Political Arts
Repeatable formulas and spatial products make most of the space in the world. Now, not only buildings but also entire cities have become spatial products that typically reproduce free zone world cities like Shenzhen or Dubai. Space has become a mobile, monetized, almost infrastructural, technology, where infrastructure is not only the urban substructure, but also the urban structure itself. Some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of this matrix space. Massive global infrastructure systems, administered by mixtures of public and private cohorts and driven by profound irrationalities, generate de facto, undeclared forms of polity faster than any even quasi-official forms of governance can legislate them—a wilder mongrel than any storied Leviathan for which we have studied political response. Infrastructure space is one crucible within which multiple fields of analysis encounter ample complexity, and it tutors special approaches to both form making and political arts.


Keller Easterling is is an architect, urbanist, writer, and Professor of Architecture at Yale University. Her latest project is titled Extrastatecraft.

Erica Robles (New York University, MCC)

Mediated Congregation: The Crystal Cathedral and God’s Place in a Networked WorldThis talk focuses on an often-overlooked institution that has helped produce and legitimate transformations in 20th century social life: the church. Through an analysis of the Crystal Cathedral Robles situates Protestant spatial production within a broader project of cultural re-formation whereby collective life became conducted via increasingly mediated, mobile, and distributed arrangements. For more than half a century, this influential Southern California ministry helped reshape the style and material conditions for worship. At its height, the Crystal Cathedral was perhaps the most visible Protestant church in the world.

Robles will render three distinctive and successive portraits of the church as a drive-in theater (1955-1957), an indoor-outdoor/television church (1962-1970), and then a globally-broadcast, glass and steel cathedral (1980 – 2012). Each site was a re-imagining of the socio-technical conditions for communion. Together, these portraits will trace a trajectory from the post-war to the present whereby the church helped determine technological and architectural meanings. By designing for mediated congregation, ministries like the Crystal Cathedral inscribed the production of broadcast and then networked geographies with spiritual significance. In so doing, they also translated Christian cosmology into a new technological regime.

Erica Robles is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University.


Upcoming 2012-2013 PROGRAM events

Media Archaeology with Matthew Kirschenbaum and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, March 1st, 2013

Values in Technological Design with Geoffrey Bowker and Sara Hendren, April 12th, 2013

http://www.programseries.com/

The series is sponsored by NYU's Information Futures, the Humanities Initiative, and the Departments of Media Culture, and Communication, English, and Comparative Literature.

Fri Dec 10, 2010 00:00 - Wed Dec 08, 2010

Music, Language, Thought V

Friday, December 10th 2010 / 3:00 - 7:00pm

Myles Jackson (History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, NYU): “The Role of Physicists in Measuring and Defining Nineteenth-Century Musical Aesthetics”

Kevin Bell (English, SUNY Albany): “Non-Cognitive Aspects of the City: Sound as Break in Christopher Harris’s “Still/Here"”

Ana María Ochoa (Music, Columbia University): “Orality and Orthography in Nineteenth-Century Colombia”"

Gary Tomlinson (Music, University of Pennsylvania): “Paleolithic Formalism”

Reception to follow

http://musiclanguagethought.wordpress.com

New York University / Silver Center for Arts and Science / 100 Washington Square East / Department of Music, Rm 220, 2nd floor

Sponsored by the departments of Music and Comparative Literature; with support from the NYU Humanities Initiative

Music, Language, Thought” is an interdisciplinary event series organized by graduate students within New York University’s Music and Comparative Literature Departments. Broadly speaking, the series focuses on the relationship between music and language, and our speakers will examine its theoretical ramifications for politics, aesthetics and historiography. The project stems from ongoing conversation and collaboration between graduate students within these two departments, and will continue on an annual basis.