Re: [-empyre-] still in shock and awe at media representations of the war...

["ben .w" <b121@eudoramail.com>]

 It is impossible to get away from seeing ourselves and other humans represented as targets or objects, for example everyone is  very used to seeing the planet from that famous outside spatial perspective. You can not get away from it unless you have been living in the Amazon jungle for the last 50 years, although TV seems to reach nearly every inch of the earth.  We are always looking back at ourselves, evolving into a sort of meta-self, one  that is  multiperspectival. 
However  there is a lot of alternate spatial perspective that goes on in preindustrial and pre-computer cultures that is  far more advanced than any data visualization system can reproduce.  I was reading somewhere recently that south American cultures developed language and categorization systems which consisted of knotted string rather than written letters and numbers. So data bases of knowledge were tactile and useful objects. 

Ben
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On Tue, 8 Apr 2003 20:25:29   
 Teri Rueb wrote:
>While I was busy obsessing over a post I intended to make over the 
>weekend, my friend Brett laid the groundwork for me - thank you, 
>Brett!
>
>The clarification I made in my opening statement was that explicit 
>critiques of the military origins and uses of GPS have remained at 
>the margins of my practice - acknowledged, yet unexplored.  This has 
>been a conscious decision for me as an artist.  I am absolutely 
>committed to acknowledging and critiquing the military-industrial 
>origins of the tools I use, and do so in the classroom and beyond all 
>the time, but it is not the focus of my work in making installations 
>and location-aware environments.  With this forum I tread eagerly, 
>yet gingerly, in this discursive territory - especially in the 
>current moment.
>
>I firmly believe that "artists have a stake in the use, 
>development,...[and] cultural manifestations of military derived 
>technologies." (Brett)  Furthermore, I think artists working with 
>technology have the unique potential to engage these discourses and 
>practices as they extend beyond the immediate domain of art and 
>cultural theory (through inter/trans disciplinary collaboration with 
>scientists and engineers, interventions in the ubiquitous digitized 
>spaces of the everyday, taking their work to market either ironically 
>or otherwise, etc.).
>
>In fact, I actually believe that delivering our work, or by-products 
>of it, to market is an interesting and important way for artists to 
>participate in shaping the future of 
>technology/culture/consciousness.  If tools and consciousness are 
>mutually constructed then I'd rather have tools made by critical 
>thinkers than corporations.  Notable design practices have always 
>done this, of course, but I find it interesting to see artists 
>spilling over into this territory more and more as their work 
>suggests broader applications.
>
>Re: the neutrality of data, I am reminded of N. Katherine Hayles and 
>am grateful for the many posts (especially Melinda's) that have 
>forcefully acknowledged that information is, in fact, always embodied 
>- despite Western history's undying fantasies of disembodied 
>information.
>
>In moving forward, I would like to reply to Brett's question, "What 
>is it like to live with these technologies and our embedded-ness in 
>them?"  Issues of landscape, narrative, and the aesthetic 
>implications of GIS are deeply intertwined in the compelling and 
>disturbing image of a CNN feed at the gas pump, offered by and 
>adeptly un-packed by Brett.  The "battlefield weather reports" 
>continue to offer illusions of mastery, control and omniscience.  The 
>ultimate video game "fly-through".  As regular injections of the 
>mytho-poeic, these images recall Icarus, the opening sequence of 
>"Brazil"...others?
>
>I can't help but return to the Crandall quote from Brett's prior post,
>
>"Where the terrestrial image has an object, the aerial image has a 
>target." (Anything that Moves: Armed Vision) "[T] he projectile-gaze 
>captures its object, freezes it, holds it in a tracking mode, 
>intercourses it, obliterates it, couches it in a mechanism of 
>protection."
>
>I wonder about the aerial image.  I wonder about the difference 
>between the still aerial image and the moving aerial image.  The 
>classic image of the earth as seen from the moon is one of 
>narcissistic contemplation.  In beholding it, the viewer is suspended 
>in limbo, unable to resolve the conflation of self and other evoked 
>by the image.  The appearance of this image can be thought of as a 
>sort of mirror stage in our geo-spatial awareness of our place in the 
>cosmos as represented through camera vision.
>
>In the case of the battlefield weather report, the "fly-through" 
>perspective presents a moving aerial image where the viewer is 
>ostensibly cast in the role of pilot.  If "the terrestrial image has 
>an object, and the aerial image has a target," then the moving aerial 
>image in the "battlefield fly through" would seem to have a second 
>target - the moving target of the pilot as tracked by the subject of 
>her gaze.   The disturbing overtone in watching these images is felt 
>in the simultaneous sense of mastery, control and omniscience even 
>while the viewer has the sense of being watched back - the gaze is 
>returned.  The other is made present as a reflection of the self.
>
>I know nothing about battlefield experiences, and mean no disrespect 
>in attempting to theorize them here, but this new mode of "bringing 
>the war home" (thanks, Martha Rosler) through the intersection of 
>televisual media and GIS, strikes me as an especially chilling form 
>of war as entertainment.
>
>...would greatly appreciate any re-calibrations or fine tunings of 
>this tentatively offered riff...
>
>-Teri
>-- 
>
>.....http://www.research.umbc.edu/~rueb......
>
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>


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