[-empyre-] Hello Again

[knowlton@34n118w.net]

I tried posting previously on Sept 2, but alas, my post seems not to have
gone thru. So heres my intro again, though the discussion has moved on.





I'm sitting in a library in Huddersfield UK, surrounded by books,
information with spines. The books are all arranged on shelves in a
complicated system that at 38 I still don't comprehend.

What is important, is that it is navigable, that there are intersections
and dead ends, that I can move through the information. At the moment I am
sitting at the intersection of the art section and the mechanical
engineering section. "Making Art Pay" and "Design and Analysis of Control
Systems" sit across from me. They are on two perpendicular shelves 20 feet
apart and baring some radical change in the book population, tied to a
specific shelf location. While I somewhat randomly picked this spot (the
stairway only went down to this floor and then I looked for an empty
table), it seems an apt choice.

My route to computer based work was through conceptual art and for me
there is a strong connection between digital art and conceptual art. I
often think of myself as a recovering photographer. Once in a while I fall
off the wagon and take some pretty pictures, but mostly I work with
concept, computer code and structure and don't pick up the camera.

I do have this nagging question as to whether that book I mentioned,
"Making Art Pay" is about becoming a profitable artist or a plan to take
revenge on the Art world.

My collaborative work with Naomi and Jeremy has often been referred to as
a historical tour, but this over simplification misses the mark. Though
each of us has some aspect of the work that we are individually interested
in, more and more, it is structure that I am drawn to.

With location aware technology we are able to layer one structure over
another or alternately reveal the layers that are already in existence.
Multiple cities may exist in a single space, the city of today, of 50
years ago, or even 200 years ago, just as the city of brick and mortar
coexists with glass and steel, or the city electrical grid resides along
side fiber optic telecommunications and rail infrastructures. Each of
these layers represents a power structure of some sort. Each of these
infrastructures has a story, just as the people that inhabit these spaces
have stories.

Information in space has already been with us. We have information booths
at the train station, signs on the road, shopping mall kiosks and people
in the streets just as there are books on the shelf. Narrative linked to
space, or triggered by place is simply a computational adaptation.