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

"Brett Stalbaum" <stalbaum@ucsd.edu> · Tue, 6 Jan 2004 15:59:00 -0800

Thanks Anna. Your point is well taken. We could talk about design
patterns such as model-view-controller, around which IT systems are
developed such that the presentation layer (the 'realm' of hci) is kept
separate from application logic and database access. This is a real
effort. In the real world (Ok, that's too strong a claim - let's say in
my own code work;-), the distinction is none so pure. But no matter, the
presentation layer is the presentation layer and most often work will be
read (in a cultural sense) at that level. Visualization is so implied.
(In another collab I am involved with Paula Poole, and we have taken to
documentation strategies and more traditional forms of output to
characterize the work hoping to avoid the baggage of hci to the degree
possible.) The challenge is in working very diligently to allow the data
to co-participate more powerfully in art works, (rather that just
processing it into something), much as it does in the real world. Our
'financial health', or the freshness of our carrot juice are connected
to tangible 'facts' (or at least reasons) - the actual is inflected via
data and this implies a ripe space for artists to work. I like your
examples. Do you think it is possible extract a more complete thread of
identity in the history of practice for such work?

-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Anna Munster
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 9:42 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] old discussion, new discussion

Brett - thanks for that abstract and now it makes me want to read the
whole
essay. I'm wondering here about the distinction that you draw between
implementation and representation...isn't part of the problem that in
fact
these two are separated and by a particularly interfacial (in the D&G
sense
here) aspect of computational science's history ie HCI.  Hence the
repsonse
to 1:1 as visualisation. I agree that alot of art has tended towards
working at the user interface level in terms of re-arranging
representational components.  But this is also sometimes because the
interface is conceived not as encounters between nonhumans(data,
machines
etc) and humans(bodies) but as some kind of middle ground where the two
can
exchange communicationally through a mutually understood language of
visual
representation ...what I liked so much about 1:1 was the way it
frustrated
the intelligibility of data to direct translation through its gaps,
lags,
nonreturns of queries and hence at the very point of contact, the
interface, made the data in some ways unmappable in conventional
cartographic terms.

I think there is a whole history of new media art that challenges this
interfaciality of the interface from David Rokeby through to Simon
Penny...and I think this occurs because it refuses the representational
status of the interface.  It's perhaps less obvious how this happens in
GUI
environments but I'm sure there are instances of these and perhaps c5's
work is part of this,

cheers anna

>
>Finally, new abstract for Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art...
>
>"The aesthetic consequences of database can be viewed at different
>layers as implemented in IT systems such as geographic information
>systems. The most general of these layers are implementation (data and
>processing tiers) and representation (interfacial tier). It is at the
>implementation level(s) that GIS data may be allowed to express itself
>and operate as a co-participant with artists. Because such data is
>typically 'big data', (data sets that test contemporary processing
>capabilities), artists need to take an explorative approach to practice
>with such data; a practice that may not find its primary nexus of
>expression or activity at the user interface. The questions to be
>answered regarding landscape and database are provisional; landscape
>data is a space ripe for exploration in part because the questions are
>not yet well formed. The tact that I take to begin to map the problem
>space is an analysis including semiology, precession, and abstract
>machines; all as they relate to models that instantiate the actual,
>including database modeling techniques such as entity relationship
>modeling. Data lies in a conversational relationship between the
>political/cultural realm and the actual landscape itself. Data is real
>and capable of actualization due to its virtual form, where virtuality
>is not considered as an artifact of computational machinery, but rather
>in Deleuzian terms as abstract machines, or general processes of
>instantiation of the actual. Because data can be considered as an
>actualizing agent (through its virtual nature) whose network of
>relations is not contained entirely within discrete state systems (IT),
>artists working with database might seek to explore/reveal subject-less
>and autopoietic relations of data in addition to those constrained by
>relational algebra. The methodologies for such explorations are not
>entirely clear at this time, but C5 suspects that systems emphasizing
>the paradigmatic axis foregrounded by database as cultural form should
>become the primary concern for any consideration of expression in art
>performance. This is the key for contemporary exploration of the actual
>territories that stubbornly remain even after their supposed
>disappearance behind their model or their map, and may provide a
>platform for developing general insights into emerging datascapes."
>
>-----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 2:37 PM
>To: soft_skinned_space
>Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, new discussion
>
>
>Hi again -- I just got back from a weekend of writing out on Brigantine
>Island in New Jersey. I haven't had time to reply, but have enjoyed
>reading people's comments.
>
>First, regarding some of the "new" (or actually, earlier) discussion,
it
>seems strange that many of the emails have seemed to view new media
>exclusively through the arts and solely as an artistic practice. The
>work
>of computer scientists such as Ivan Sutherland, Joseph Wiezenbaum,
>Douglas
>Engelbart, and Alan Kay seems quite relevant to the creative and
>artistic
>uses of the computer. I'd hate to reduce new media to just being
>computer
>science, however, just as I think it shouldn't be reduced to only what
>artists have done or to the artistic perspective alone.
>
>Regarding Jill Scott's opening statement, I'm very interested in how
>exactly science is important today in new media art.
>
>In recently reading Jill Walker's thesis, I learned how Dream Kitchen
>has
>a segment that riffs on Stanley Milgram's famous "obedience to
>authority"
>experiment, presenting a "obedience to interface" report card that
>describes how cruel the interactor has been with the tools provided
>on-screen. This seems to play on HCI methodologies and behavioral
>psychology methodologies, but perhaps doesn't critique the principles
of
>psychology or the results of Milgram's experiment. (Or maybe it does?)
>
>So, I wonder if new media art will be able to enlighten the scientific
>mainly by dealing with the tools and techniques of the sciences, or
>whether it will tend to focus more on science as a world-view and on
the
>ideas of natural order that science offers?
>
>-Nick Montfort
> http://nickm.com  nickm@nickm.com
> My new book, Twisty Little Passages: http://nickm.com/twisty
>
>
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all bodies are in a perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are entering
into
them and passing out of them continuously.
Leibniz

Anna Munster
Lecturer in Digital Media Theory/
Postgraduate Coordinator
School of Art History and Theory
College of Fine Arts
University of New South Wales
PO Box 259
Paddington 2021

Phone: 612 9385 0741
Fax: 612 9385 0615

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