Re: [-empyre-] locative city, annotated space a

["Naomi Spellman" <spellman@34n118w.net>]

my soul, which I have not visited since 1996 or so.

> On Thu, 9 Sep 2004 hight@34n118w.net wrote:
>
>>>> To all eyes pointed toward empyre:
>>
>> If you could pick one place in the world to use some form of locative
>> technology to "read" where would you choose and why?  What place
>> fascinates you with architecture, natural forms, layout, decay and/or
>> redevelopment.....etc?
>>
>> It could be paris or a vacant lot.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>> Great. I'm going to check it out.
>>>
>>> The film is an amazing documentary (came out in 89 but still is
>>> fascinating).  The structure that links the sections together is the
>>> narrator (sounds traditional.....but..). He is a man or puppet
>>> connected
>>> to wires heading off in many directions to monitors, each of which
>>> holds
>>> and runs a specific video and audio segmente. The interview with a
>>> former
>>> nasa head who argues that the moment a shuttle astronaut fixed
>>> something
>>> inthe shuttle bay he was a true fusion of man and machine/cyborg as he
>>> had
>>> two lines running essential feeds, one to him and one to the computer
>>> on
>>> his back. He could not have completed the task without the computer and
>>> vice versa. The narrator has his eyes closed and describes a dream, and
>>> this narrative links to the segments. A japanese robotics
>>> designer/engineer  shows the marilyn monroe robot he has been working
>>> with
>>> for years and it crushes him that he can't get it, yet he also says
>>> things
>>> that indicate he has fallen in love with it!
>>>
>>> I love Vertov's "man with a movie camera".  It shows technology as both
>>> advancing and segmenting out aesthetic experience and time, memory,
>>> movement.  The point when the film "breaks" into still photographs is
>>> amazing as it questions the intrusion of the observer as much as an
>>> imposed narrative on singular moments and architectures.  I show it to
>>> my
>>> students with "La Jetee", "Metropolis" and "Fast, Cheap and out of
>>> Control".
>>>
>>> I have long wished to teach a class somewhere that centers on Duchamp's
>>> nude descending a staircase and the female robot in metropolis. The
>>> class
>>> will look at the concepts of technology, form, function, beauty,
>>> movement,
>>> feminism and the way technology references woman and form.  There is a
>>> linguistic component too (how new concepts and tools are called "sexy"
>>> for
>>> example).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Small note - I think you'd find a reference to 'machine dreams' of
>>> interest in Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason - the line goes
>>> something like 'it was the machine in them that did the dreaming' - in
>>> reference to assembly line workers - Alan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> recent http://www.asondheim.org/
>>>> WVU 2004 projects http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/files/
>>>> recent related to WVU http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim
>>> Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
>>> partial
>>> mirror at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> empyre forum
>>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
> recent http://www.asondheim.org/
> WVU 2004 projects http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/files/
> recent related to WVU http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim
> Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
> partial mirror at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>


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