[-empyre-] Farewell and thanks to Teri and Brett: on listening into datascapes

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

Brett Stalbaum and Teri Rueb, thanks for moving through April with Datascape
on >empyre<.  

Brett's remark, in a recent post, invites the active space of the artist
relative to gps, ideologies and ontologies of landscape and data.

"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."
If we have a stake in "how the world is heard" we also make an slice to the
dynamic live core of landscape, like a vector action in Flash that cuts
through multiple instances and is embedded in many scenes and contributes to
a continuous emergence of order. Geri Wittig in a recent noemalab
contribution, describes the speculations  of biologist Stanley Kauffman
relative to this notion of a dynamic emergent system.   Kauffman  "found
that Boolean networks, made up of a multiplicity of interconnected nodes,
display the characteristics of emergent self-organizing systems. Kauffman
found that when random inputs are applied to these networks, they tend to
settle into regular patterns known as ³state cycles² which serve as
attractors in the system. Within certain parameters, Boolean networks
produce emerging webs of self-sustaining patterns. Kauffman describes these
webs within networks as ³order for free.²

<http://www.noemalab.com/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/wittig_landcape_data.
html>


 ==============================
 --------Teri Rueb (Baltimore, MD) has used global positioning satellite
(GPS) technology in her work since 1996 to explore issues of space, mapping,
landscape, memory, the body and cultural identity. Her current research
explores sonic and acoustic constructions of space, spatialized narrative,
human movement and psycho-social geography.

<http://www.umbc.edu/~rueb>

 --------------Brett Stalbaum (San Jose, California) is a C5 research
theorist specializing in theory,database,and software development. The C5
Landscape projects, initiated in 2001, involve mapping, navigation and
search of the landscape using internally produced Geographic Information
Systems. He has recently been involved in code development and
research/theory work on database, the artist's role in the problems of large
data, and landscape art.

 <http://cadre.sjsu.edu/beestal>


=cm