Re: [-empyre-] Words and borders

[Christina McPhee <christinamcphee@yahoo.com>]

dear Nick, Christy et al

what is most interesting to me about The New Media
Reader is its non paradigmatic structure, in the first
place.  indeed, its lack of borders (though no lack of
words!) It may take on 'the whole shebang' but not
with an eye to narrowing towards a definitive field
with discrete edge conditions.  A field, yes, but as I
suggested here recently, more of a marsh or wetlands
than a parking lot behind some barricades.  The book
itself is structurally an example of a playful
game-like structure, nonlinear and witty, a maze
thing.

For me, the new media neologism is useful, more
than'multimedia' when i try to figure out what to call
what i do .  I think it is a process vector rather
than a denotation of a 'thing':  suggesting a dynamic 
rather than a status quo.

I share the view that the ubiquity of code profoundly
and regularly influences the everyday conditions of
life in a way that is 'new' or 'jamais vu'. A small
example: today my home lender online offered me an
equity line of credit based on,,,what?  well, an
automatic 'valuation' without a new  physical
appraisal of the property, based on dynamic statistics
generating in real time.   In a  phone contact, later,
 When i asked the loan salesman, how or what numbers
or formulas generate this value, he could not answer
the question...all he knew was what the software was
coming up with on his screen.  Ok, so which cybernetic
themes do we want to pick from in this vignette? 
Surveillance, control, transparency, loss of privacy,
the panopticon, the idea that everything  can be coded
as a binary relation, etc.  I was impressed both by
the opportunity (which I declined) and by the lack of
boundaries between whatever 'me' is and the voracious
consumption of persons that financial markets presume.


Therefore it is not only precocious but perhaps even 
wise to try to call this phenomenon something new and 
indeed to call it, the new,  into question within
conceptual art practice, to speak from my own
discipline.  My own work is interested in the
cybernetic data landscape as a self expressive field
and also as a ruin or dysfunctional topology. This
interest evolves out of many years of work in drawing
time in landscape (doors in time, archeological ruins
in the north american west, etc).  The ubiquity and
pervasiveness of a digital / computer generated
network that permeates the physical landscape and the
affective world of humans radically alters the
aesthetic, or poetics, of that landscape and that
world.  Art moves in the transport mechanism, the
'metaphor' (Greek for transport) between these various
conditions as an interpretive force adn even as a
process tool.    I wish i were a bit more eloquent in 
describing what seems to be both the great charm and
the dark side of creating in new media.  

Speaking of vr, as below in Christy's post, I would
love to hear from those of you who have worked in
interactive immersive environments, especially some
who have been in on the CAVE stuff.  How do you see
the problem of the pre-paradigmatic in vr as described
below?  Is the history of immersive interactive
environments informed, in your practice and
experience, by computer science theory, cybernetics,
electronic literature...how?  Noah, I am thinking of
your linguistic immersive installation...the one with
the letters zooming around in the dark  :-) that i
have only seen you show videos of and havent been in
yet.  Or others on the list who trained at University
of Illinois where CAVE was invented.

Christina



 Swann and Watts cite the research
> of Dalby (1998) on the factors involved in the
> divergence and convergence of languages. Divergence
> for Dalby is natural but can also be deliberate
> (what we are trying to do here). Convergence of
> language is attributable to trade, travel and
> communications. In our context convergence occurs as
> the result of the contribution of findings between
> researchers ? therefore having, needing shared
> models. 
> 
> My reason for sharing these views is to highlight
> the following observation: New terminology emerges
> and is adopted out of consensus. Neologisms or added
> meanings to existing words are agreed upon not just
> by researchers but also by consumers. Adoption by
> many involves consensus between those that need to
> use the language to identify a product or technology
> and those that want their work understood. However,
> researchers and creators (not necessarily distinct
> individuals of course) will have a further expert
> language. So, when we try to rename a whole field
> that is referenced in the marketplace as well it is
> no wonder we are having difficulty: it is not within
> our power to do so. Therefore, we may have more
> freedom and fewer obligations if we angle the
> approach towards sharing views and offering
> suggestions for a language that relates to specific
> areas of content and research and not the whole
> shebang.
> 
> Christy (yeah, I?m from that field, you know the one
> with the flashing lights and beeps).
> 
> -- 
> School of Creative Arts
> University of Melbourne
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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<http://www.naxsmash.net>

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