Re: [-empyre-] location and data

[Pall Thayer <palli@pallit.lhi.is>]

> A GPS sequence has to be presented in a
> manner understandable as a GPS sequence (check out ours here:
> http://blog.humlab.umu.se/~fredrik/gps2blog.php).

I don't agree. Of course, depending on what you do with it, it might
help to let people know that it's GPS data simply by stating it, but the
presentation of it doesn't have to be understandable as a GPS sequence.
This is something I've been examining lately within my own work. Taking
a GPS sequence that I've plotted correctly and then doing another
version where I plot everything in a spiral or two seperate bar graphs
of x and y and the really cool thing about it is that you still retain
quite a bit of information. You can still plot it in a timed sequence to
show the temporal stuff, you can see where there's actual motion or if
the tracked person or whatever is still, whether they're moving fast or
slowly. 


> I wonder about information that
> is 'not true'. Is that fiction as in literature? Can I just attribute
> whatever I want to the sign or sign sequence (al la Duchamp) and it
> remains information?

In my previous post I stated that information could be extracted whether
it's true or not. So obviously I'm talking about fiction. It doesn't
matter to me whether viewers versions of the 'story' are wrong or right.
If it's right to them, it's right to me. As I've stated before, my
background is in painting and although I no longer use canvas, brushes
and paint, I'm still a painter. I just want to make a pretty picture.
Some people need to make up a story to relate to that picture, that's
fine. Some people don't. They have a Kantian aesthetic experience just
looking at it. That's fine too. But making up stories is fun. Usually
more fun than the truth and if there's nothing there to contradict your
truth, well then feel free to call it information.

> But how do you go with the above example of the GPS sequence? Can you
> 'see' where it is? What season it was? How we felt as we drove through
> the
> night?

All I saw was a bunch of mostly meaningless text. But if it were plotted
out on a plane, I would probably try to make some sense of it. Try to
figure out where it was or at least what sort of location it is and
perhaps try to figure out what you were doing there which might bring on
a fictional (mis)understanding of how the parties involved may have
felt. And then let's say we run into each other some day and I tell you
my version of what was going on there and you say, "Oh, that's not it at
all. We weren't riding motorcycles through the desert and that wasn't an
oasis we found in the nick of time, just as we were about to faint from
the heat and thirst. No, we were just taking the bus to my Uncles farm
for Easter dinner and we had to stop on the way because the bus got a
flat tire." Well, you've destroyed my extremely moving experience. I
say, give the people what they want. The more truth the creator leaves
out, the more 'truth' the viewers can provide themselves.

Pall

On sun, 2004-09-19 at 21:54, James Barrett wrote:
> But when you say 'Information can be extracted'I believe information is
> not found or discovered.Truth is articulated or constructed, otherwise
> what happens to old or contradictory information? Is it discarded or is it
> refined and adapted over time? A GPS sequence has to be presented in a
> manner understandable as a GPS sequence (check out ours here:
> http://blog.humlab.umu.se/~fredrik/gps2blog.php). It may not necessarily
> be in a pure narrative form but it is language. When I referred to Bakhtin
> (as he wrote about in 'The Problem of the Text') I was thinking more of
> architecture or even the layered bricolage mentioned earlier in the story
> of the London glass tower and Roman ruin . Any movements through space (as
> progressions of time) result in narrative possibility which can, in turn,
> be represented alternately as a GPS sequence, or as thought or even the
> information shadows of data-mining.
> But how do you go with the above example of the GPS sequence? Can you
> 'see' where it is? What season it was? How we felt as we drove through the
> night? (Dont follow the links!). Or is it just a GPS sequence, as a plot
> outline is to a novel? How does one represent individuals in such a
> sequence without it becoming a narrative? I wonder about information that
> is 'not true'. Is that fiction as in literature? Can I just attribute
> whatever I want to the sign or sign sequence (al la Duchamp) and it
> remains information?
> 
> > Just a reminder of the origin of this thread because I think we're
> > getting to the gist of things:
> >
> >> If you see a city and you see data, how do you see the two in
> >> juxtaposition or integration?  If you were presented with either a
> >> vacant
> >> lot where a historical theater once stood, a stretch of nondescript
> >> desert
> >> in the same length and width as the autobahn, or a city center newly
> >> built, which would you choose to work with?
> >
> > Now that we're talking about Bakhtin, I think what's missing here (at
> > least to make it interesting to me, personally) is the fact that the
> > 'data' being refered to is not the kind of GPS based, chronotopic data
> > that I'm interested in. So the data presented is not going to generate
> > its own narrated chronotope as in a movie or novel. When I talk about
> > 'filling in the blanks' (previous post), I'm not talking about the
> > artist filling in the blanks but the artist presenting the data in such
> > a way that each viewer can fill in the blanks as they see fit, based
> > either on their knowledge or lack of knowledge of the space and
> > individual/s interacting with it. The way certain people interact with a
> > certain point in space on a regular basis, says a lot about that space
> > and you can hint at a lot of particulars just by presenting that
> > interaction along with the time factor. It's really quite shocking how
> > much information you can extract from something like this, regardless of
> > whether that information is true or not. That's not really the point.
> >
> > Pall
> >
> >
> > On sun, 2004-09-19 at 06:03, Teri Rueb wrote:
> >> ..."felt" and "observed" being bound up in each other...re: crary's
> >> 'observer', the notion of reflexivity...
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> > --
> > _________________________________
> > Pall Thayer
> > artist/teacher
> > http://www.this.is/pallit
> > http://130.208.220.190
> > http://130.208.220.190/nuharm
> > http://130.208.220.190/panse
> > -----------------------------
> >
> >
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> >
> 
> 
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-- 
_________________________________
Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
http://130.208.220.190
http://130.208.220.190/nuharm
http://130.208.220.190/panse
-----------------------------