[-empyre-] Re: [Blur ... and pieces of history
I'd like to follow up to clarify ( not that I have had coffee rather than
sake) some points raised
in my post last night.
By way of reference, I engage with a cross disciplinary practice -
film-video-visual art-critical
theory-having received my MFA in 1989 ( to help establish a generational
positioning) from
CalArts( to establish an institutional frame.) Currently, I am a practicing
artist and scholar.
However, I began working in video - in digital video ( using digital tools
of post-production
and special effects ) - in 1980 in the SF Bay Area- an area rich in the
histories and legacies of
the different trajectories of digital practices, ranging from moving image
production to
database research and aesthetics +.
What we have witnessed in recent history is, in part, a narrative of
intersections with other
disciplines: philosophy, cultural theory, identity politics, visual art,
media, entertainment, or
ethnography, sociology, among others. There is nothing new about these
hybrid interstial
practices. Vitruvius' treatise on architecture includes sections on war
machines and clocks,
and Alberti counted a knowledge of astrology among the artist's necessary
qualifications... and
there are numerous other examples which could be easily cited through the
last 500 years.
With the wild surge of digital technologies it has become easier than ever
to cross from one
field to another as the specificity of individual media dissolves in a flow
of binary code. Indeed,
one could posit this as a subtext addressed in the work of Laurie Anderson
- who was defined
in the '80's as the first "cross over artist" ( referencing an unabashed
techno-fetishist who was
critically deemed to be producing "art." - not by her producers at Warner
Brothers but by
ArtForum.
We have all, no doubt, benefited from this dynamic push-pull across
boundaries; the exchange
with other fields has opened up and expanded conventionally bound
practices, has spoken to a
sense of promise, and realized certain possibilities. Certainly this was
true for the period of
the '90's with its' excitement and energy due to a certain level of the
democratization of
technologies ( through wide spread use of PC's and the introduction of
internet browser)
collided with market forces.
The points raised thus far in the on-line discussion are interesting,
important and speak to a
genuine and sophisticated engagement with the essentialism of technology
itself. However,
the question that gnaws at me is - is this substantive enough ... and then,
of course, one asks,
enough for what? Many of us practice today in a dispersed economy of
globalization. We work
in fields dominated by mobility, and the expeditious movement of liminal
quantities across
increasingly porous borders. Is this fluidity enabled by virtuality what
we are defining as a
field of New Media? Or is is the essence of code and interface? Now that
we have, in one
"almost real" sense, become one within the flow of binary code ... where is
this field on New
Media when it is everywhere ...insinuating itself ubiquitously into the
material conditions of
our lives.
What I sense is a growing insularity and, perhaps, insulation by the
attempts to construct a
definition such as "New Media". Perhaps our challenge is devise alternative
definitions of
potentials that do not simply oppose the essesentialism of technologies to
its effects? To me
what becomes more interesting is what new operative processes and
possibilities which are
emerging from these hybrid cross disciplinary affiliations and practices.
In this "search for
meaning" I find myself returning once and again to the notion of a filter
... a sense of filtration
through which one finds movement, passage and possibility rather then an
end point.
©
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Alan Sondheim sondheim@panix.com
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 23:30:17 -0500 (EST)
To: nickm@nickm.com, empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
When did their work become new media? You'd have to establish
discontinuities, borders...
I'm fascinated more by the diversity of art practices than anything else
here -
Alan
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Nick Montfort wrote:
>
> Alan,
>
> > Just want to add here that all of this discussion of works and histories
> > only points to the problematic of new media as a category once again -
>
> Really? Does that fact that people have diverse backgrounds and influences
> mean that the field or category of new media doesn't exist?
>
> -Nick Montfort
> http://nickm.com nickm@nickm.com
> My new book, Twisty Little Passages: http://nickm.com/twisty>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Alan Sondheim sondheim@panix.com
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 23:30:17 -0500 (EST)
To: nickm@nickm.com, empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
When did their work become new media? You'd have to establish
discontinuities, borders...
I'm fascinated more by the diversity of art practices than anything else
here -
Alan
On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Nick Montfort wrote:
>
> Alan,
>
> > Just want to add here that all of this discussion of works and histories
> > only points to the problematic of new media as a category once again -
>
> Really? Does that fact that people have diverse backgrounds and influences
> mean that the field or category of new media doesn't exist?
>
> -Nick Montfort
> http://nickm.com nickm@nickm.com
> My new book, Twisty Little Passages: http://nickm.com/twisty>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
http://www.asondheim.org/ http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko
http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
finger sondheim@panix.com
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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