[-empyre-] co-evolution

"Melinda Rackham" <melinda@unsw.edu.au> · Fri, 25 Apr 2003 14:38:15 +1000

teri wrote:
> everything returns to the interaction of tools and consciousness...
>
> It's true that we have an altered experience of landscape for the new
> technologies, increasingly portable and ubiquitous, that mediate our
> navigations, merging data, landscape and the body in evermore
> transforming cyborgian mutations....

 yes i agree.. however i think that perhas that cyborg is not the most
appropriate term to apply to this now.. perhaps "symborg" is better.. ( i
think garry zebbington created this term from this work in the late 90's and
i sort of appropriated it afterwards- tho maye it came form somewhere else
as well)
as the cyborg was sort of a fusing of technology and flesh..a sort of
butting bits together.. where as the symborg  is more a mutation or
co-evolution with technology .. which is  why chris's remote viewers post is
interresting..
years of Us and Soviet research showed that we have the ability to
visualise GIS data without the hard techonologial mediation.. we can see an
dknow other locations on the planet without going there or recieving any
data data about them - thats pretty amazing..   and as you were saying about
songlines..we can have the memory of ,  the information of a whole race and
culture in songs and environmental storage.. without extrenal storage
devices like books or memory sticks.. so its about us externalising what we
already have the capacity to do..it s making  evolutionary partners of bits
of technology.. we amputate some of ourselves if we loose our photo album ,
or wipe out hardrive.. so its freeing up internal body/brain processing
space..but whats it freeing it up for?

re mobiles:
yes im just looking for new phone.. some great toy options.. im not sure why
i need a fm radio, video  camera and  voice recording , wap, gprs, blutooth
infared, 300 polyphonic ring tones etc  etc ..  but im sure it will enhance
my communication experience some how..  phones are mostly used in .au for
txt messageing caus [e its cheaper so the visual ie..text  aleady eclipes
aural  without the addiction of pic or video messageing..

then again maybe we need that free space cause the "hot" mobile  radiation
will fry  other bits of the brain..corrupting thier storage retrieval
ability..

m

>
> The various mentions of South American (Incan, I believe) knots and
> corporeal systems of navigation lead me to consider what is being
> lost (as well as gained) as we become increasingly enmeshed with GIS
> technologies.  There is no (pre-GPS navigation) followed by (pre-GPS
> navigation) + (GPS).  The change is ecological, of course, as in Neil
> Postman's analysis.  The entire cultural landscape and consciousness
> is effected by the emergence and proliferation of GIS technologies
> such that a prior state can no longer be accessed or imagined without
> distortion.
>
> I think of Australian aboriginal songlines, a practice that continues
> to capture my imagination as it relates to sound installation,
> narrative, issues of orality/literacy and ocular-centrism.  The
> practice of songlines or walkabout represents a complex interaction
> of landscape, body and narrative in the interests of sacred/mundane
> ritual, history, travel and survival (and surely more, though as an
> outsider I can only imagine).
>
> The interesting contrast of this practice with Western navigation and
> attendant technologies is that it is an entirely corporeally-based
> knowledge (literally embodied).  In wholly oral cultures there is no
> written record that extends beyond the author's place and time - only
> the record which is passed down through oral tradition.  The oral
> mind is nearly impossible for us to experience as our culture and
> consciousness is so deeply steeped in literate modes and secondary
> orality (a moment which emerges from and is only made possible by the
> tools and forms of literate culture).  Apologies if all I needed to
> say were the names Walter Ong and Marshall McLuhan.
>
> Visualizations of songlines are not maps in the sense that we know
> them.  In fact, the visualization of songlines as dreamings, painted
> on canvas, tee-shirts and coasters is mostly a product of tourism as
> these images were traditionally scratched in the sand and left to the
> wind.  Songlines are stories that unfold from memory as they are
> released through walking/singing.  They are passed down through oral
> tradition and invoked through song.  In an interesting inversion,
> they represent sonic records (typically assumed to be highly
> fugitive, though songlines have survived for thousands of years) that
> are believed to preserve what the Western mind views as the most
> lasting external record, the landscape itself.
>
> Our Western understanding of space and navigation is inextricably
> linked to visualizations in the form of maps and signage - now
> increasingly generated and read via database.  I wonder what changes
> are occurring in our consciousness as our sense of space is
> increasingly mediated and punctuated by mobile technologies -
> especially cell phones and portable stereos which are aural-, not
> ocular-centric.  The implications of such ubiquitous technologies as
> they merge landscape and data are fascinating to me.
>
> Yesterday, a young woman showed me her new Nokia phone, popularized
> by it's appearance on American Idol, that contains a 2 x 2 inch
> screen which allows her to capture and send still images and video.
> Sadly, the visual insists on eclipsing the aural again, but the
> implications are nonetheless compelling, especially as such devices
> suggest an experience of landscape as visually and aurally annotated
> space.
>
>
> >
> >especially easy for me to do for some reason. But on the other hand, we
> >are already well into an era when the ability to process data into
> >information, (or dynamically access information at a distance), can be
> >carried by the civilian population in our pockets. (The military and
> >industry have had this capability for some time.) This is forging a
> >compelling connection between our ancient human ability to navigate by
> >landmarks, dead reckoning, and tactics/tactility that lie under foot,
with
> >a complex of data processing that emerges in a more embedded way with the
> >world and that changes our experience of both data and world, and
> >potentially our knowledge of data and place, in a transformative manner.
> >(What if the Spanish Armada and the English Fleet had GPS and weather
> >satellites in 1588? We now know how ultimately unimportant the sandstorms
> >that occurred during Gulf War 2.0 turned out to be, even though they were
> >perhaps the most potent force the "coalition of the willing" faced.)
> >
> >While this new complex certainly includes the image, I view it as only
one
> >of many possible waypoints in processing, and interaction with the body.
> >Data, and processing, are now active participants with us in the
> >landscape, having a great deal to tell those who develop ways of
listening
> >to it. I think there is a lot of room at this time for artists to explore
> >the various ways of listening (or seeing, feeling, acting...), because we
> >too have a stake in how the world is heard. That is where we are, I
think.
> >
> >On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Jordan Crandall wrote:
> >
> >>  I am not sure if I got bumped off the list or if things have settled
down.
> >>  This discussion is fascinating and I've been wanting to jump in and I
hope
> >>  it's not too late. I've been thinking about the way that CNN has
visualized
> >>  the weather during the war, and also that animated EarthViewer
satellite
> >>  imagery that swoops us in from space (in the context of Teri's
description
> >>  of the casting of the viewer as pilot) . We gleefully fly over Iraq as
if on
> >>  a ride, as the weatherpeople sweep their arms about to the tune of
their
> >>  flyovers, orchestrating the animations like conductors. Where are 'we'
> >>  supposed to be in these visions of mastery. It is as if by having ever
more
> >  > sophisticated modes of visualization from the air we can somehow
control
> >>  what happens on the ground; or that since 'precision guiding' works in
terms
> >>  of missiles it would somehow work in terms of mappings .
Bunker-busters
> >>  penetrate into the earth as we try to push more deeply into/through
the
> >>  image itself.  What resists ?  How incredible those sandstorms were
that
> >>  shrouded the landscape in an orange haze and reduced vision to arm's
length.
> >>
> >>  I have also been thinking a lot of Brett's description of the CNN feed
at
> >>  the gas pump. How perfect to get the flow of oil, network,
> >>  and wind all in one place along with the struggles for their control .
> >>
> >>
> >>  _______________________________________________
> >>  empyre forum
> >>  empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >>  http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >empyre forum
> >empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> >http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> --
>
> .....http://www.research.umbc.edu/~rueb......
>
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