Re: [-empyre-] location and data

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

I had mentioned Roberto Matta in a posting -
I saw some paintings of Roberto Matta , father of Gordon Matta Clark, here
in LA about 2 1/2 years ago.

http://www.matta-art.com/

He was a Chilean surrealist painter or cubist painter, depending on how
you look at it. Special was: the connection between his approach to the
representation of time and space, and the deconstruction of time and space
as practiced by son matta clark, architect and installation artist. It
struck me that the activities of both the father and the son involved the
unraveling of time and space, as well as the simultaneous perception of
multiple points in time and space. But one practice is about
representation and an intellectual questioning, the other an engagement of
the body in space and time. Matta?s paintings ? impossible
compressions/explosions of time, space, and form ? seem to foretell the
physical de- or re- construction of architectural forms practiced by his
son Gordon years later.

http://freespace.virgin.net/robert.holloway/gordon.html

This comparison points out how art practice evolves over time,
specifically radical movements in art. The cubist perspective was possible
only then, as photography took over the function of realistic depiction,
and time and space were examined by artists in literal (photographic or
scientific) terms. Site specific installation art works were possible only
then, when critical and intellectual engagement became a medium for
artists and lead them outside the gallery. Although I don?t think most
would describe locative media as a radical movement in art, the practice
is possible only now, when wireless telecom and automated navigation
become accessible. I think interest in the latter also relates to a
post-media, and possibly even post-art social engagement on the part of
artists. Curators, critics, galleries, and museums inhabit another realm ?
 the physical realm. Mobile media inhabits the realm of the common and
pragmatic. it is low art in its engagement of mundane communication and
navigation functions. Location sensitive media are deployed in the realms
of performance, architecture, urban studies, historiography, storytelling,
personal narratives, geography, navigeering, tourism to mention a few
overlaps. it doesn?t ask to be considered under the criteria applied to
art, and it functions in ways not associated with art.


> Dear empyreans,
> I know I'm off-centre with regard to this discussion - if not off-key -
> but
>
> "re-inscribing the body in information seems always to emerge as the
> pressing issue"
>
> isn't the body already at stake in 'information', at risk even? isn't it
> incumbent on an artistic employment of the tech to come to terms with,
> explore and clarify - if only by subversion/blurring - how, in what way,
> by
> what means, the body/bodies of us and others is/are at stake and at risk?
> so
> finding the risk and risking it in order not to be replicating or simply
> doing the work of the patent-holding corporation's marketing department?
>
> and doesn't the shift in emphasis in 'convergence' strategems - from the
> localisable static 'smart-house' or 'infotainment-home' to the new
> generation cells - point to a technology that converges exactly on the
> mobile individual? the successful fetishisation of mobile-phones relative
> to
> PC's - expecially in the Japanese market - has surely been an indicator in
> this shift in thinking about where info-techs converge.
>
> lying about placing, dissimulating locative information, making a fiction
> -
> or a history - of where one is and is not might mean a reversal of
> positivist intentions behind the tech but surely cannot be considered
> subversion...?
>
> and don't info-techs constitute a single medium regardless of
> linearity/non-linearity, narrativity or non-narrativity (the latter is
> usually gestural if not apocryphal) in that specific arena of attempting
> to
> articulate their own (its own) reflexivity? (at which no more than a
> sporting chance?)
>
> yours
> simon taylor
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>


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