Re: [-empyre-] location and data

["James Barrett" <jim.barrett@humlab.umu.se>]

Yes....I haven't written anymore on this for a few days as Pall's last
mail was rather thought provoking (thanks for that). A couple of things
remain as residue:
I feel to be actually getting a handle on what you are proposing Pall, and
it is rather interesting. However after so much indoctrination as
education I cannot just believe in "pretty pictures" anymore. There is
always beauty, but is this a granted or are we taught to love the starving
princesses on the H&M advertisements and so forth? Why is form understood
with certain values attached?
To take up some strands from Pall?s mail:

?So the data presented is not going to generate its own narrated
chronotope as in a movie or novel.?
Chronotope exists outside narrative but it is a way of understanding
narrative. It is a methodology, not a feature. It is a way of
understanding the way time engages with space and vice versa. I believe it
can be applied to any representative medium, be it sculptural, written,
architectural (narratorial, ludological, or descriptive) painting,
photography and so on.

?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.?
Thinking about it I suppose this is what you mean by the particulars: Are
they interacting with the space or because of the space? Does this include
what happens in the subverting of the space? Skateboarders use shopping
center car parks and sculpture parks in a way contrary to design
intentions. Has the space changed as a result of their interaction? Same
space different story? A good example is Public Alley 818 by kanarinka
(http://www.ikatun.com/k/publicalley818/) where the space is completely
reinvented through language systems. It never actually changes the space
or contradicts the fact that it is a dirty alleyway.

?..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.?
Dialogue has existed in Art for a long time as means of understanding the
visual language employed, although it perhaps has not been so viewed as
language and in such settings as medieval religious art it was called
"Divine Truth".

As to fiction/non-fiction/information from Ilich, I was reading today
about the dangers perceived by some to History from popular consumption
and interpretation of such films as Troy, King Arthur, Gladiator etc. etc.
It occurred to me that History was once stories (Homer, Herodotus,
Plutarch etc) and perhaps many of us have returned to this with the teeth
of New Historicism beginning to bite.  As for fiction as literature I was
just trying to provide a context for the word Fiction as something that is
not true. Information that is not true is Fiction which is a popular part
of Literature. But when we see 'Ceci n?est pas une pipe' written on a pipe
is it fiction or:
"...the base of affirmative discourse on which resemblance calmly reposes,
..[bringing]...similitudes and nonaffirmative verbal statements into play
within the instability of a disoriented volume and an unmapped space."
                                       Foucault; This is not a Pipe (1968)


> aló james, pall,
>
>>> 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?
>
> but still fiction is much more than information. we also have to keep
> in mind that a scenario (or even scenography) is not narrative at all.
>
> for sure information which is not true it's 'fictitious', but i don't
> think something ficticious qualifies by itself  'as fiction in
> literature'.
>
> take care.
>
> f.
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