[-empyre-] RE: old discussion, and pieces of history
Nick,
Perhaps you can clarify...
I am really not sure where you are coming from in regard to the difference
between "diverse backgrounds and influences" and the existence or not of the
"field or category of new media", but this does bring me back to some issues
mentioned at the outset:
>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>
Enjoy reading the various responses, and was curious about the definition of
a communicational event that Chris provided earlier-- particularly the
difference between a 'claim to coercive power' and 'a work of fine art.'
Is there a need to separate out the slippages between these contexts? I am
trying to visually imagine these interrelationships, and, find locating the
community and audience within the communicational event both coalesces and
atomizes depending where one 'looks'.
Would the infrastructure necessary to create new media communicational
events- for instance, the conditions of workers who make the equipment that
makes the event possible, conditions that admittedly bear some promise of
violence-- be factored into this schema?
If so, isn't this a new vocabulary for an old aesthetic problem artists
have been tackling for quite some time in painting, photography,
installation and net art (such as works on turbulence.org, or some of the
web based cuadernos (notebooks) of the Hemispheric Institute)? from Courbet
to Virilio to some of the artists on turbulence.org, as it were?
I guess I am revisiting some of Alan's comments here, and would like to
know more about the potential of the terminology, especially in light of the
critical interrogation of place, space, power & the visibility of whom
decides or identifies events and their standards in new media.
Ellen
Dr. Ellen Fernandez-Sacco
TESC, Olympia, WA
Message: 3
Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 10:41:37 -0800
From: noah wardrip-fruin <noah@queeg.com>
Subject: [-empyre-] pieces of history
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <a06020403bc20a4df9307@[10.0.1.3]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
If I might pose a question, I'd be interested to know what work from
the history of new media (however we define the term) empyre folks
have found particularly important - perhaps as you came into the
field, or in a later stage of your work.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 00:43:58 +0100
From: Aliette Guibert <guibertc@criticalsecret.com>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <BC22584E.7637%guibertc@criticalsecret.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Dear Alan, just to answer on a possible misunderstanding.
If the multiculturalism that you have noticed was on my disconnected/
connected way to take place in the list, I understand that so far it
could
appear in a zoom of a local content, same time it could be a problem for
all
< and specially you who help for the best communication on the list. So
I
apologize.
This way was not an aggressive nor a stupid one, but a risk coming from
a
poetic rupture, to design any enigmatic realities on which we cannot
decide
anything in the global world ; the part of strange, the part of the fool
in
a strange percept from the mail.
In any case, it is my own way of course... I could not do in another
mode in
the global and unified consensual universe or in a phenomenological
approach
telling from my own experience, direct and indirect experience, a
proposition to reflect another image of the questions online. As a
research
on difference and singular multitude as tribute to relative decisions.
I remember that telling multitudes with "s" one mean plural as masses of
classes, while telling multitude without "s" one mean singular in
several
occurrences of the largest mass, a global move of differences with a
sensitive and cognitive consensus but not rationalist nor an adhesion to
a
special theory or cause. I mean on feelings that can appear and
disappear so
fast than a critical mass effects in physics or epidemics.
Or it would be impossible to imagine that contradictory masses walking
in
unity against the Iraqi war through the world, while they stay from
several
positions that could not be consensual on religions, nor politics for
there.
That is cultural or multicultural in fact appears far from the question
of
decision. It is an event happening or not happening and then we have to
memory as a crib.
Here I re-approach the thematic in discussion that I have infiltrated.
And I
apologize again front of the interlocutors of this curse if they would
take
shade of my last mail.
Aliette G.
> De : Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
> Repondre a : soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date : Wed, 7 Jan 2004 15:18:49 -0500 (EST)
> A : soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Objet : Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
>
>
>
> 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 -
> people come from avant-garde or experimental music, electronics,
> electrics, performance, film, video, writing, and so forth - and these
> elements may or may not be combined, programmed, etc.
>
> We're not even considering multiculturalisms here - which are often
> content- and not media-driven.
>
> - Alan
>
> 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
>
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 04:15:27 -0500
From: "cpr@mindspring.com" <cpr@mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au,
Message-ID: <30350-2200414891527409@M2W057.mail2web.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
My apologies as I must be quick here but want to post this response in
the
hopes of keeping
this rather lively discussion going .... as per Christine's request -
somewhat!
_____
What I am beginning to sense from some participating in this on-line
discussion is a subtle
posture of covert defensiveness in regard to the construction ( if
necessary at all ) of this term:
New Media. Maybe its' just me and the fact that it is late here in the
Pacific wetlands of the US.
In direct answer to Nick's ? of Alan - Not at all.
What it does point to is rather a rehashing of cultural and
techno-cultural
histories and
discourses which have been bandied about since the '60's in a number of
various
disciplines and communities, ranging from the visual arts, experimental
media, to identity
politics/representations ( hush that one up, quickly!) and the newly
re-inscribed ( and, of
course, funded) science-art collaborative partnerships.
When Murphy mentions ...maybe language is a virus after all ... his
allusion to Laurie
Anderson's allusion to Wm. Burroughs' strikes me as alluding to
practices
far more expansive
than what is currently being categorized as a good deal of new media
production.
This artificial and somewhat myopic, insistent bifurcation of art and
technology ( especially in
the last half of the 20th c and early 21st century) in the service of
categorization and
modernist tenents easily lends itself to the machinations of political
and
economic
underpinnings - as well as to questionable ambitions. There are some
core
power dynamics
being played out here ... on this list as well as elsewhere in this
nascent
field. I just find it
fascinating that this discussion is happening right now - almost to the
disregard of the past 30
years of incisive media, cultural and theoretical histories prevalent in
North America, Western
Europe and Australia, New Zealand. I realize that we ( an
intergenerational WE ) must respect
the delicate ecology of our delusions, but, hey, everything has its'
limit,
no?
It is imperative for the field itself ( however defined) to ask what is
really going on here ...I fully
realize that this is the goal of defining what some refer to as the
field
of NEW MEDIA .... my
question is ... is this individuated media specificity being discussed
is
what really is crucial
about our work ... or is it simply just another mechanism? And aren't
these mechanisims
simply systemic to the institutional frames in which we find ourselves
operative?
I'm not at all certain as to why I am bringing this next point into the
discussion right now
except to say that the amped-up interest evidenced in this month's
discussion lies in stark
contrast to the discussion surrounding last month's topic on women, art
and
technology. Different issues, I know, I know but, then again, are they
reallly?
have to run -
ciao,
(c)
Original Message:
-----------------
From: Nick Montfort nickm@linc.cis.upenn.edu
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 23:15:39 -0500 (EST)
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
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
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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:34:38 -0000
From: "Southworth, Kate" <KateS@falmouth.ac.uk>
Subject: RE: [-empyre-] pieces of history
To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID:
<D05227C531D2CC4497932C8434AAB2262C480A@woodictsemail.cuc.ac.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
As one of the lurkers on the list, perhaps I should very briefly
introduce myself. I work with Patrick Simons as Glorious Ninth, making
net art. I run the MA Interactive Art & Design programme at Falmouth
College of Arts in Cornwall, UK, where I am also the research cluster
leader in Interactive Art and Design.
I would say that I am most interested in and influenced by work, in
whatever discipline, that explores all sorts of systems and networks. I
am also interested in devices, machines, artefacts, processes etc. that
facilitate my exploration of systems and networks.
A list of my influences today includes dada; Peter Burger's 'Theory of
the Avant Garde'; punk, alternative spaces for exhibiting art; club
visuals; community arts, audience participation, user interaction;
interactivity and change; Meredith Monk, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg,
Jean Michel Basquiat; Griselda Pollock, Fred Orton, 'New Art History';
Marx, Bertell Ollman, dialectical method; methodologies used in
information systems design; different ways of 'knowing', feminist
researchers in social science, such as Anne Oakley; Bill Livant's very
short article 'The Hole in Hegel's Bagel'; Richard Levin's 'Dialectics
and Systems Theory'; the 1996 Visual Culture questionnaire from the
journal October; networks, Manuel Castells; feminist and Marxist
critiques of creativity, studies of creativity within psychology.
theories of the 'information society', Frank Webster, Kevin Robins,
Paschal Preston, Ellen Meiksins Wood, Herbert I.Schiller;
Kate Southworth
------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 13:47:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Nick Montfort <nickm@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] old discussion, and pieces of history
To: cpr@mindspring.com, soft_skinned_space
<empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0401081326170.26897@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, cpr@mindspring.com wrote:
> What I am beginning to sense from some participating in this on-line
> discussion is a subtle posture of covert defensiveness in regard to
the
> construction ( if necessary at all ) of this term: New Media.
I think the term is being explicitly attacked and defended, so perhaps
I'm
missing the subtleties.
The term isn't necessary for everyone: if the computer is just a tool,
platform, or means of delivery to you ("or is it simply just another
mechanism?") rather than a new way of thinking, presenting simulated
worlds, and connecting and computing upon media in radically different
ways, you may be more interested in the fruits of the new media field
than
in participating directly in the investigations, explorations, and
discussions that are taking place.
But the work being done in new media today certainly does seek to remedy
the bifurcation of art and technology that you mention, drawing on many
different traditions but focusing on what they mean in light of the
computer.
> There are some core power dynamics being played out here ... on this
> list as well as elsewhere in this nascent field.
Hopefully some of that play of power dynamics is a genuine attempt to
understand what the interesting aspects of new media work are (whether
we
like the term or not). People are doing different sorts of work and have
different interests, so of course there will be different answers, with
some people thinking that transitions in media, or the avant-garde, or
particular directions in critical theory are more important than the new
capabilities afforded by the computer.
-Nick Montfort
http://nickm.com nickm@nickm.com
My new book, Twisty Little Passages: http://nickm.com/twisty
------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:24:41 -0500
From: "cpr@mindspring.com" <cpr@mindspring.com>
Subject: [-empyre-] Re: [Blur ... and pieces of history
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Message-ID: <244640-22004148192441894@M2W042.mail2web.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
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.
(c)
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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