RE: [-empyre-] old discussion, new discussion

["Kanarinka" <kanarinka@ikatun.com>]

Hello all,

"interfacial" sounds a little, well, uh, pornographic --
pornographically futuristic, perhaps.

anyways, brett - i am very much interested in your abstract --
particularly:

>>>
artists working with database might seek to explore/reveal subject-less
and autopoietic relations of data in addition to those constrained by
relational algebra
>>>

Do you have an example of this? I ask because so much "data
visualization" artwork that i see is based on the relations of data at
the "relational algebra" level, as you call it. As a phenomenon, the
artistic visualization of data isn't anywhere near where the scientific
visualization of data is simply because (I believe) artists are confused
as to whether they are artists or scientists and end up in neither
realm, representing visually compelling but arbitrary relationships. 

the question is not about the data. there's enough data for everyone
everywhere everytime. the good beginning question is simply: what
question do you want to ask of your data? i walk out my door and am
confronted by a database (boston, massachusetts, usa, earth) every
single day. the hard thing is ask it an interesting and specific
question, to carve a path through it, to have a reason to ask. 

best,
kanarinka

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.ikatun.com/k/publicalley818/



-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Nick
Montfort
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 10:01 PM
To: 'soft_skinned_space'
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] old discussion, new discussion



Brett, thanks very much for the abstract and your comments, both of
which are helpful to me as I think about art and science. I just wanted
to pull out one minor point to particularly agree with and expand upon
--

> The abstract touches on the HCI level (interfacial is the term I used 
> here), vs. processing and data access levels (which deserve more 
> attention, imho).

Indeed, the interface is very important, and we should certainly deal
with where and how people and computers come together. But, as you point
out, the interface is not the only interesting thing about an
interactive computer system. The comptuer also does computation, even in
new media systems, and that aspect seems often neglected. It's pretty
hard to understand even a popular and not terribly complex phenomenon
like SimCity without looking under the interface and considering the
rules of the system and algorithms that make the simulated city go.

-Nick Montfort
 http://nickm.com  nickm@nickm.com
 My new book, Twisty Little Passages: http://nickm.com/twisty

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