Re: [-empyre-] Re: empyre digest, Vol 1 #130 - 7 msgs

["Damien Everett" <damien.everett@rmit.edu.au>]

Hmmm, Patrick thanks for your contributrions, this certainly raises some
interesting issues...


>in the case of verbotenbilden, all of the sites recorded are, at
least in  the US, 'verboten' (forbidden).  This is ether by law, by
corporate policy, by intellectual property rights, museum conservation
issues, personal privacy rights, or other taboos.  The increased level
of
control legislation is brought into question by wearable recording
technology that runs 'stealth' within stores, security checkpoints, and
so
on. 

>Some questions that come to mind are whether this series of images
represents a violation of human rights, or possibly the exercise of
media
democracy through the cooptation of surveillance techniques for personal
use
so that individuals can punch through the unilateral surveillance
culture to
lay bare the issues of control that such spaces engender.  In addition,
as
these devices are getting much, much cheaper ($50 on ebay), could they
be
used as a form of activist tool?

Hmmm, yep naturally, and it already is... I guess 3rd+ gen PDA's will
soon  have cameras as a standard option, intended mainly for video
conferencing... this will help revolutionise our experience of "news"
and media. 

What suprises me is that when we talk of surveillance, we generally
assume this refers to images + video (the active (masculine?) eye)...
perhaps hearing, being a more passive / receptive process often escapes
our conscious awareness. What about the issues of broadcasting peoples
conversations and life / body sounds with/out their
knowledge/permission? 

>In addition, what is the role of perception, the need for extreme
attention
to form and composition due to the lack of resolution?  Is this getting
back
to a form of 'minimalist' digital art, 'antideterminist' gestures, and
does
limitation truly breed innovation?  Does much of the most interesting
art
come from the least funded?  What is the possibility of retrotech for
creative exploration, and do devices like the wristcam and the PDA
resemble
the days of the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 (the Timex Sinclair for my
britannic friends).

I feel this parallels the evolution of the web (funny that ;)... I
remember when browsers first started supporting images and colour, now
many new generation webdesigners would be rolling around on the floor
laughing if they saw some of these early sites (heh, my first home page
would be near the top of this list :)

The low-res aesthetic of the web was based mainly on necessity...
(interesting how this "style" began to crossbreed with traditional media
forms...) 

I liked this article on a 1936 Perspective on Television, its pretty
amusing:
http://newyorker.com/archive/content/?020527fr_archive01

The writer first saw faces which appeared as though painted on "watered
down silk", which appealled aesthetically to the viewer, tho this was
actually a miscalibration problem which was soon fixed to provide a more
"realistic" image... to the disappointment of this individual. When he
asked RCA about TV, he was told that the real problem was not the
technical issues, but actually (the production of quality) content
issues... I guess not much has changed.

Until our pdas are actually levitating holocams which  orbit around our
heads and feed us grapes I think we still have some way to go...
although the US military are already working with this kind of
technology.


>Lastly, I urge you to read a recent Atlantic article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/interviews/int2002-04-04.htm
Although it's by a traditionalist, he brings up many interesting ideas.

Interesting article... I do feel that some digital art has lost the
magic of a direct and intimate relationships with the material... how
much more meaningful can art be with an intrinsic connection with all
(required) aspects of the process? Is there a difference between a river
audio sample off a CD and one recorded at a remote tibetan temple during
sunrise at the spring equniox? Or is this difference illusary and we are
simply fooling ourselves?

I guess not everyone wants to code their own "photoshop", though they do
surrender some of their artistic control to the algorithmic processes
writen by others. Instead of using the supposedly "random" function, why
not use a 4 dimensional chaotic attracter? 

We are bound by the availability of possibilities, working within the
constraints of the system... 
at least until we upgrade to OS infinity (although its still in an
pre-alpha release state ;)

some reflections,
Damien