The Temporary Travel Office produces a variety of services relating to tourism and technology aimed at exploring the non-rational connections existing between public and private spaces. The Travel Office has operated in a variety of locations, including Missouri, Chicago, Southern California and Norway.
Is MySpace a Place?
Networked Performance pointed me toward an interview (download in PDF)with Networked Publics speaker Henry Jenkins and Networked Publics friend danah boyd about Myspace. The site, popular with teenagers, has become increasingly controversial as parents and the press raise concerns about the openness of information on the site and the vulnerability this supposedly poses to predators (Henry points out that only .1% of abductions are by strangers) and the behavior of teens towards each other (certainly nothing new, only now in persistent form). In another essay on Identity Production in Networked Culture, danah suggests that Myspace is popular not only because the technology makes new forms of interaction possible, but because older hang-outs such as the mall and the convenience store are prohibiting teens from congregating and roller rinks and burger joints are disappearing.
This begs the question, is Myspace media or is it space? Architecture theorists have long had this thorn in their side. "This will kill that," wrote Victor Hugo with respect to the book and the building. In the early 1990s, concern about a dwindling public culture and the character of late twentieth century urban space led us to investigate Jürgen Habermas's idea of the public sphere. But the public sphere, for Habermas is a forum, something that, for the most part, emerges in media and in the institutions of the state:
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of this political confrontation was peculiar and without historical precedent: people's ...
SWITCH: Issue 22
HI everyone. Just wanted to announce the new issue of SWITCH:
SWITCH : The online New Media Art Journal of the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media at San Jose State University
http://switch.sjsu.edu switch@cadre.sjsu.edu
SWITCH Journal is proud to announce the launch of Issue 22: A Special
Preview Edition to ISEA 2006/ ZeroOne San Jose.
As San Jose State University and the CADRE Laboratory are serving as
the academic host for the ZeroOne San Jose /ISEA 2006 Symposium,
SWITCH has dedicated itself to serving as an official media
correspondent of the Festival and Symposium. SWITCH has focused the
past three issues of publication prior to ZeroOne San Jose/ISEA2006
on publishing content reflecting on the themes of the symposium. Our
editorial staff has interviewed and reported on artists, theorists,
and practitioners interested in the intersections of Art & Technology
as related to the themes of ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. While some
of those featured in SWITCH are part of the festival and symposium,
others provide a complimentary perspective.
Issue 22 focuses on the intersections of CADRE and ZeroOne San Jose/
ISEA 2006. Over the past year, students at the CADRE Laboratory for
New Media have been working intensely with artists on two different
residency projects for the festival – “Social Networking” with Antoni
Muntadas and the City as Interface Residency, “Karaoke Ice” with
Nancy Nowacek, Marina Zurkow & Katie Salen. Carlos Castellanos,
James Morgan, Aaron Siegel, all give us a sneak preview of their
projects which will be featured at the ISEA 2006 exhibition. Alumni
Sheila Malone introduces ex_XX:: post position, an exhibition
celebrating the 20th anniversary of the CADRE Institute that will run
as a parallel exhibition to ZeroOne San Jose/ ISEA 2006. LeE
Montgomery provides a preview of NPR (Neighborhood Public Radio)
presence at ...
Art & Mapping
The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) has released a special issue of their journal, Cartographic Perspectives:
Art and Mapping
Issue 53, Winter 2006
Edited by Denis Wood and and John Krygier
Price: $25
The issue includes articles by kanarinka, Denis Wood, Dalia Varanka and John Krygier, and an extensive catalogue of map artists compiled by Denis Wood.
[-empyre-] Liquid Narrative for June 2006
Christina McPhee:
hi all, I am not sure we got this message out to Rhizome!
Please join our guests this month, Dene Grigar (US), Jim Barrett
(AU/SE), Lucio Santaella (BR), and Sergio Basbaum (BR) , with
moderator Marcus Bastos (BR), for a spirited discussion of "Liquid
Narratives" ----- digital media story telling with a dash, perhaps,
of 'aura' .
Here's the intro from Marcus:
The topic of June at the - empyre - mailing list will be Liquid Narratives. The concept of 'liquid narrative' is interesting in that it allows to think about the unfoldings of contemporary languages beyond tech achievements, by relating user controlled applications with formats such as the essay (as described by Adorno in "Der Essay als Form", The essay as a form) and procedures related to the figure of the narrator (as described by Benjamin in his writings about Nikolai Leskov). Both authors are accute critics of modern culture, but a lot of his ideas can be expanded towards contemporary culture. As a matter of fact, one of the main concerns in Benjamin's essay is a description of how the rise of modernism happens on account of an increasing nprivilege of information over knowledge, which is even more intense nowadays. To understand this proposal, it is important to remember how Benjamin distinguishes between an oral oriented knowledge, that results from 'an experience that goes from person to person' and is sometimes anonymous, from the information and authoritative oriented print culture. One of the aspects of this discussion is how contemporary networked culture rescues this 'person to person' dimension, given the distributed and non-authoritative procedures that technologies such as the GPS, mobile phones and others stimulate.state of the planet infographics
a small collection of beautiful information graphics documenting the current state of the planet.
see also gapminder & 3d data globe.
[seedmagazine.com]
Re: terrorism / deconstruction of the body
you've probably already got chris burden and vito acconci for older examples...
subRosa's work on gendered bodies and reproductive tech may be useful http://www.cyberfeminism.net
and julia scher's "securityland"
http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/secure/corridor/sec1.html
the experimental interaction unit
http://www.eiu.org/
that's all i have, hope it helps... good luck.
ryan
> Hi
> I am doing some research for an essay about the artist' search of the
> body and I have a whole section on the deconstruction of the body by
> artist.
> I am trying to find as many examples as possible to illustrate this
> idea and am looking for examples of artists / body artists /
> performance artists whose work deals with terrorism and the
> deconstruction of the body.
> It would be great if you could help me out.
> thanks a million
> Julien
Re: Learning To Love You More: A Discussion
anyway, the exploitation question is a good one that has been argued a lot in the 90s, though i haven't seen it much in the context of new media. the whole "art in action" model (artists like suzanne lacy, daniel martinez, clegg and gutmann, andrea fraser) was critiqued by hal foster ("artist as ethnographer") and miwon kwon. these criticisms would apply aptly to a lot of harrell fletcher's ("softer"community-based art) work as well, i would think. and the project with july specifically, even though it is done as part of the DIY community that they are a part of.
i think the difference with Cologne's project is that those are consciously curatorial invitations to artists, whereas "learning to love you more" seems to target the "outsider" as producer. in a sense, it seems to replay the conventions of an ethnographic documentary, only it asks those being documented to perform a script.
in that respect, it's not unlike a lot of the new media projects based on communication networks (like all the SMS and wireless projects being developed, and sites like Rhizome that are meant to be projects of interaction within a frame) that require participation. are july/fletcher receiving credit for the work being done by participants? or for the creation of a "participatory" forum that looks at an "Other" through its participation? i would say the latter. i'm not sure if this makes it exploitive in a negative sense though. how they should be held accountable... that would be up to those that came to that conclusion, but using the project itself as a site of critique sounds promising.
either way, i would hesitate to label "learning..." collaborative in the large sense (other than the 2 person relationship + web support). the outside participants are not collaborators like the members of rtmark, CAE, or fluxus, or even the anonymous sabateurs of the ELF.
best,
ryan
> Patrick Lichty
> Two topics I'll cover here, likely in the same sentance. I ask what is
> the difference between Agrica De Cologne's curatorial work and Mitanda
> July? I think that Cologne is not claiming the 'piece' as his, but as
> a curatorial project. July seems to be claiming it as her own work,
> built from 'social clay'...
>
> Another question and this comes back to the interloper question (which
> I still hold quite circumspect) is that if Miranda and her partner are
> exploiting people, then how can they be held accountable? This is a
> very thorny question.
Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn
> I feel like I agree with both of them. My own art has taken a sidestep
> for
> politics, and I wonder about beautiful political art. I think there is
> some-
> Godspeed You Black Emperor is beautiful political music (but probably
> because it has no words), or Stereolab... But I can't think of many
> beautiful political artists- most political artists are
> agitpropagandists.
hi eryk,
i think i can relate to your thoughts... and i would think many artists interested in social consciousness would be. i'm slightly less interested in the philosophical, but here are some of my thoughts, for whatever they're worth.
looking for "beauty" in visual art has become based on tension and previously unconsidered relationships for me(as i mentioned in the earlier response to curt), but that's pretty broad. i immediately think of Todd Solandz's films as something doing this (for an entertainment/film example), and also the video/installation work of Stan Douglas. I think that even the most interesting tactical media projects do this (CAE's "cult of the new eve" for example). i think there is a lot to learn from "feminist" artists and others working from positions where the line between subjectivity and socio-political realities is difficult. i know that for myself, working as an artist that is part of the historically dominant group, it's easy to project the political as something exterior and not deal with my own subjectivity. that's one reason why i think pleasure is something political to explore - it happens in the subjective, with all the problems that come along with that, yet manifests in socially prescribed and highly visible ways.
take care,
ryan
Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn
> I would be curious to have Ryan pick up the thread here:
> http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread256&text!640#21655
hi curt,
just got busy and away from the tether for a few days... hope everyone that does the thanksgiving thing had a good one, and those that don't had a good weekend.
anyway, i don't really have much of a response...
curt: "Zinn is not dismissing the value of the circus altogether, but he is definitely belittling its value as an agent of social change, and in a sort of condescending, patronizing way. As if there's mere entertainment on the one hand, and then there's powerful, serious art. (The more self-conscious and boring it is, the more important it must be.)"
maybe... but i actually came across the zinn/yorke discussion in print a couple of days ago and read through it more carefully, and i would disagree with your conclusion. it seemed to me that there was a high value placed on the poetic and pleasurable, and further i'm not sure that "socially conscious" art necessarily was argued to equal "serious" or didactic art. he never actually talked about specific art as being "good" or not, so it's still kind of vague and based on the loose premise of their discussion - "politics and art." could have been more interesting if they were to talk about specific examples maybe?
curt:"So aspiring artists check out the critical scene, pick up on the 25% that's valued, and they learn to make art that's 100% quantifiable. The critics are happy, because now they don't have to deal with that sticky unquantifiable 75%. But art that's 100% quantifiable sucks. It's using a paintbrush as an oven mitt. Every other discipline seeks to be 100% quantifiable, and now we want our art to be that way too? Corrosive folly."
i don't disagree with the criticism of prescriptive theory/work... but i don't know that any art (or anything for that matter) is 100% quantifiable. lots of work can be read "against the grain" so to speak. that doesn't mean that some work won't be boring, but lots of "intuitive" work can be just as boring. certainly, i desire something different from "art" than "theory," but "good" examples of both will create tension and previously unconsidered relationships for me. in a sense, they are just different ways of practicing life to me, defined by the context/syntax available (i guess we do disagree there).
best,
ryan
Re: Thom Yorke / Howard Zinn
(i didn't mean to singal out you out curt, i just thought some more concrete examination could help the discussion)
anyway, i think we should re-examine Zinn's statements as i think they have been misinterpreted, or maybe not, but it seems that way to me.
Zinn: "You can look upon entertainment as something useful, as we don't want to eliminate art which is only entertaining, and insist that all art must be political, must be revolutionary, must be transforming.
...there's a place for comedy and music and the circus and things that
don't really have an awful effect on society except to entertain people - to
make people feel good.
In order to change that you need to have artists who will be conscious of that, who will
use their art in such a way that it helps to transform society. It may not
be a blunt instrument, but it will have a kind of poetic effect."
that doesn't sound like a programmatic dismissal of the poetic to me.
(i also wouldn't expect anyone to criticize art or even Radiohead as the "opiate of the masses", maybe all the Fox "reality" shows and internet porn...)
and what was it marx said... something about composing music at night after working during the day...
anyway, it seems like we're all in agreement that thoughtful, well-produced, complex work is better than what isn't (and for the record, i would never, never slam the circus - except for the ones that brutalize animals of course), but it doesn't mean one can't talk about the cultural and political meaning and implications of the non-verbal. i mean, what does it mean to say Radiohead has influenced more of the world than Zinn in a more profound way? (they are obviously engaged in different projects first of all) how and who and why? is this measured in records sales vs book sales? what are the different results of their impact? i don't think these are trivial questions. is it really "in" the music itself? am i a better person for listening to Radiohead rather than Matchbox Twenty (can i have fugazi please)? this doesn't mean i'm looking for didactic answers to the meaning of "Art," (please, no). i'd like to say that i enjoy something outside of a social context, but come on, what the hell would that mean? my enjoyment of anything is always grounded in many things - some people subscribe to different dogmatic theories to explain it, but there are ways of dealing with context in more complex and thoughtful ways, it's just not easy. especially when "Art" is given some kind of magic power to shield itself from everything around it.
to compare someone talking about art as a non specialist to a surgeon or car mechanic is ludicrous though. when's the last time you wanted to hear a surgeon/mechanic tell you that a surgical procedure/car repair was "beyond words" and intuitive? if art wants to have the kind of cultural impact everyone seems to want it to, it should be open to discussion from non-specialists. especially if all us specialists can say is we like something or don't, but can't say why because it's non-verbal.
well, that's way to much for me to have written without saying all that much.
(+ eduardo - thanx for bring up Lygia Clark - i hadn't thought about her and Oiticica's work for a while, which i really like)
take care,
ryan