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: PDPal and the continual nature of digital art
Is there a form of criticism that is not normative, not based on some form of rationalized set of desires? Is the problem making the desires conscious, on the "surface" that is problematic? Is it the stripping of "mystery," the "evocative," (at least on a surface level) that is bothersome?
Is it because "socially engaged" art has become institutionalized, or at least more visible, especially in an arena as tight knit as "new media"? Does this make it seem more conventional, expected? Is it the search for the new, the "art thing" that doesn't look like art that creates the dissappointment with "socially engaged" new media art.
Isn't this just old-fashioned avant garde-ism? Once an aesthetic becomes "conventional" (even though it all must be in some respect to be recognized - if it gets called "Art" in the first place) it's no longer self-critical, expansive, progressive, pioneering (take your pick)?
but i don't get the pomo argument. despite douglas crimp's assertion that institutional critique represents the apex of pomo rationality, i would say the evidence points the other way. institutional critique (and most "socially engaged" art), seems to engage some pretty modernist ideals (even if it tries to be cynical about it). This is not a negative criticism of the practice, which i find extremely useful and needed. but i would root the debate in "committment" (adorno/brecht/lukacs) rather than mod/pomo. the postmodern turn, in my opinion is better represented in the anti-social, or superficially social, surface orientation of a lot of new design and 'old school' art (painting and scultpture), not the theories of social construction (as laid-on as they often are) in new media. socially concerned art seems more akin to what adorno called "committed" art, relegating it's autonomy to a particular ideology, even though he knew all art represented an ideology. but i do see some cause for concern in the fetishization of "service" being (unfortunately) played out by many on the work of artists like Tiravanija. and the old arguments of "community" exploitation are still valid, but these are socially concerned aesthetics questions.
while i agree with the assertion that too well defined objectives leads to stale expressions, what does it mean to desire something that's not social? (i find ambivalence works its way in no matter the intention anyway.) this seems more a symptom of pomo (as a cultural-economic condition) than "committed" art. it's also highly utopic - what's not social? raising a child? surely you didn't mean to define that as asocial. I know Lacan is dead, but Mary Kelly did have a point (as well as some interesting ambiguity).
anyway, i liked PDPAl too.
sorry for all the stupid parenthetical remarks.
ryan
High School Tells Student to Remove Antiwar Shirt
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/26/education/26SHIR.html
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Lovink interview with Wolfgang Ernst
From: "geert lovink" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: <nettime> Interview with German media
archeologist Wolfgang
Ernst
Archive Rumblings
Interview with German media archeologist Wolfgang
Ernst
By Geert Lovink
German media theorist Wolfgang Ernst (1959) is a
member of the Berlin
circle
inspired by Friedrich Kittler and currently fouding
the Seminar for
Media
Studies at Humboldt University. He is contributing to
the'media
archeology'
school in which new media are traced back to earlier
concepts.
Following
this methodology one reads traces of digital
technologies into history,
not
the other way round. The idea is that there is no
teleology in which
media
unfold themselves in time. Against the usual
chronological reading of
media,
from photo and radio to television and the Internet,
Wolfgang Ernst
utilizes
the Foucaultian 'archeological' approach that aims to
unveil active
power
relationships. But whereas Foucault looked into social
formations,
today's
media archeologists are primarily interested in the
(hidden) programs
of
storage media. Following McLuhan Ernst poses that
"cyberspace is not
about
content, but rather a transversive performance of
communication.
Without the
permanent re-cycling of information, there is no need
for emphatic
memory."
In his 2002 book 'Das Rumoren der Archive' (Archive
Rumblings) Wolfgang
Ernst points out that archives are no longer
forgotten, dusty places.
The archive as a concept has gained universal
attention and reached metaphorical glance. In this era
of storagemania everything is on record. Repositories
are no longer final destinations but turn into to
frequently accessed, vital sites. For instance,
East-German secret police archives, opened after
1989 and frequently visited, show how contested data
collections can become.
Wolfgang Ernst signals a shift from the
political-military (secret) meaning
of (national) archives towards a broader cultural
understanding in which the archive stands for
'collective memory'. For Ernst archives are defined
by their 'holes' and 'silent' documents. Ernst's
annals look like crashing operating systems that
should not be taken by face value. In short: archives
are cybernetic entities. These days everyone is
painfully aware that archiving equals careful
selection. Chronicles are anything but neutral
collections. Instead they reflect the priorities and
blind spots of the archivists and the Zeitgeist they
operate in. By now that's common sense.
What can we expect from 21st century archive theory,
beyond digitization and database architectures? Will
the elites establish safeguarded 'islands in
the Net' where essential knowledge is stored, leaving
the wired billions floating in their own data trash?
Has tactical silence and the aesthetics of
forgetfulness got to be all-too-obvious responses to
storagemania? The following email interview took place
in February 2003.
GL: One would associate the theoretical interest in
archives with Foucault, Derrida and other French
authors. You make many references to them. Is that
the destiny of our generation, to get stuck in the
postmodern canon? Or is there another, more personal
reason for your interest in archives and the
'French' approach? Do you keep an archive yourself and
which archive is your favorite one?
WE: When Peter Gente and Heidi Paris from the
Berlin-based Merwe
publishing
house asked me to write an essay on archives with
special regards to
French
theories, I took that chance since it gave me a
possibility to work
through
my own intellectual past. Having been extremely
affected by French
post-structuralist theories in the 80s and actually
trying to
de-construct
the notion of text-based history myself, my research
year at the German
Historical Insitute in Rome then made me "convert" not
to Catholicism,
but
to the acknowledgement of real archives. I then
discovered that no
place can
be more deconstructive than archives themselves, with
their relational,
but
not coherent topology of documents which wait to be
reconfigurated,
again
and again. The archival subject thus is a way out of
the one-way
postmodern
aesthetics of arbitrary "anything goes" - without
having to return to
authoritarean hermeneutics (a point made as well by
the "new
historicists"
in literary studies, f. e. Stephen Greenblatt). The
simple fact is that
archives do not only exist in metaphorical ways as
described by
Foucault and
Derrida, but as part of a very real, very material
network of power
over
memory.
Do I keep an archive myself? Have a look at my
homepage
(www.verzetteln.de/ernst) ...In fact, I keep nothing
but an archive at
home:
no book-shelves, no library, but a modular system of
textural,
pictorial or
even auditory information in movable boxes. That is,
among others,
fragments
of books, distributed according to diverse
subjects-liberated from the
restrictive book-covers.
GL: How would you describe the methodology of media
archeologists? Is
it
useful to speak of a school in this context? Media
archeologists can be
found in places such as Cologne (KHM), Berlin
(Humboldt University) and
Paris. Then there is for instance Lev Manovich who
'reads' film history
as
an episode in the coming into being of new media
story. How to look at
the
field and what interesting approaches have you come
across lately?
WE: I owe the term to Siegfried Zielinski, who-as the
former director
of the
Academy of Media Arts in Cologne-once hired me for a
research and
teaching
job called "Theory and Archaeology of Media in the
Context of the Arts"
(a
world-wide premiere as an academic field?). Zielinski
himself, of
course,
owes the term to Michel Foucaults "Archaeology of
Knowledge", but has
given
it a technological turn in cultural anlaysis, with his
brilliant work
on the
video recorder (Berlin 1986). In his most recent work,
literally called
"Media Archaeology" (2002), Zielinski advocates an
an-archical history
of
forgotten or neglected media approaches. Different
from that
liberitarean
approach, my version of media archaeology tries to
carry further
Foucault
Re: Re: Linking vs. Plagiarizing (Re: Turbulence.org)
sorry for misreading your comments, i didn't really
think you were trying to standardize ethics... i guess
i'm just weary of using terms like "ethics" anymore,
as the language can mask the politics. and i would
agree with your "case by case" methodology, as long as
the criteria used was open for debate and
politicized/contextualized.
anyway, thanks for calling me on that.
best,
ryan
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Re: Linking vs. Plagiarizing (Re: Turbulence.org)
it seems to me that this all comes down to politics (and i don't mean that in the derogatory sense) and all the subtle variations of practice. copyright and fair use were never created out of ethical concern - they engender a specific way of life through an ideology based on private property and darwinian competition. i say "ideology" because "private property" and "competition" are really regulated and controlled by everyone agreeing on the rules of the game - even if they're losing. but the rules are still arbitrary when it comes down to it, not natural.
if you agree with the politics (or see yourself represented in them) that Turbulence represents, you would "respect" their claims to controlling (though not limiting) access to the work. and the politics are important here... if someone wants to argue Turbulence isn't allowing re-contextualizing of work, that's exactly right. but saying that that is more an exercise of privatistic ideology is another matter. the person who wants to re(de)contextualize the work bears as much responsibility here to be open (if there's even an agreement on openness). the key for me is the transparency of the process. otherwise ethics and respect can become code for naturalized censorship (this is why the right celebrates the term "political correctness" isn't it, to make the issue about censorship rather than politics - and giving them back the power to control speach?).
and regarding "punk" and subversion... i don't know how these ideas got crossed. "punk" isn't subversion for me (though it's aesthetic HAS often been subverted by fashion and the right), just as DIY culture isn't about subversion. it's about operating in the current while trying to create living alternatives that hopefully won't remain alternative. the ongoing process of trying to create living politics is "punk". as one art history professor used to tell me, "it's not in the object, stupid."
good discussions going on...
best,
ryan