Re: [-empyre-] new delineations

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

The impact effect has me baffled..........

But I would like to add that the "possible critical artistic positions and
strategies in response to this brave new media world" are many from my
limited experience in the last few years. I would argue that appropriation
of technology, either through purchase or other means (Pirate is a great
word) and the "misuse" thereof, either in hacking the hard or the
software, is an active critique of the position the "work occupies in
relation to capital". The products of this activity are often classified
as 'Art'. To use the device contrary to the intended purpose is to subvert
or transgress that desired customer or intended demographic boundary,
which is always part of the pre-production marketing process of any new
piece of mass produced technology. Hacking, detourment, cut-ups, random
narrative combinations and straight out guerrilla media tactics.

Starting with Seattle 1999;
The documentary "This is What Democracy Looks Like"
(http://www.thisisdemocracy.org/) was the product of 100 digital video
cameras being distributed amongst the tens of thousands of activists who
manifest against the WTO agenda in Seattle in 1999.

"Bush in 30 seconds" (http://www.bushin30seconds.org/) was a competition
for amateur video producers which became so popular there are now 150 of
the best entries permanently online.

The Emergency Broadcast Network has been manipulating video since 1990. I
quote:
"Formed during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, E.B.N. created its first
arsenal of counter-psy-ops programming, cleverly disguised as music
videos, inspired by the spectacular media frenzy surrounding the war and
its aftermath. These videos were produced by the core team of Joshua L.
Pearson, Gardner H. Post, and Ronald O'Donnell, with a great deal of
assistance from consultant Brain Kane. After Kane departed the ranks, EBN
recruited legendary software designer/musician Greg Deocampo, formerly of
CoSA, creator of AfterEffects."
An example of their work can be seen here:
http://demandmedia.net/story/2004/1/18/101111/308

Strategies and responses to media hegemony are not restricted to the
resistance to the ideology of the Republican Party of North America
however.
>From the recent Doors of Perception 8 conference in Delhi:

Re-mix as a design process
A personal "Aha!" moment in Delhi was the realisation that re-mix is not
just about new music and vj-ing. Re:mix also signals a broader cultural
shift away from the narcissistic obsession with individual authorship that
have rendered everything from art to management so tiresome in recent
times. (In architecture circles the concept of "recombinant design" has
been doing the rounds, but re-mix is a much better word)
http://www.doorsofperception.com/doors/lightness_frameset.html

Next from the approaching Dot Org Boom at PixelACHE 2005 in Helsinki:

"The main theme for PixelACHE 2005 is Dot Org Boom. Dot Org Boom is the
non-profit version of the Dot Com Boom (RIP). The essential ingredients of
this rapidly growing phenomenon are open source community, open content
initiatives, media activist networks and myriads of NGOs around the world.
PixelACHE Festival will bring together a diverse group of artists,
engineers, activists, architects and designers to discuss and develop the
future of Dot Org Boom.

PixelACHE 2005 also features following program sections:

VJ Culture and Audiovisual Performances
Experimental Interaction and Electronics
Interactive & Participatory Cinema
particle/wave hybrid radio workshop"

Taken from the PixelACHE site: http://www.pixelache.ac/2005/front.php

Web radio is another site of detourment in a vertical rhizomic network of
autonomy. There are thousands to choose from!

The work of Velvet Strike (http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/) and
the C-level collective (http://www.c-level.cc/) are two digital game
interventionist art group which derail many of the gender and power
narratives implicit in mass produced digital games today. I myself
particularly appreciate the work of Brody Condon
(http://www.tmpspace.com/)

The recent video by Randall M. Packer "The Fateful Embrace"
(http://wetheblog.org/archive/000124.html) is simply an authorised
broadcast of the State of the Union Address slowed down with alternate
sound track. In this Burroughsian cut-up the agony of power is revealed
through a simple but effective realignment of technology originally
designed to convince the viewer of its sentiment of reality.

Finally 'Fashion Victims' by Agnelli Davide, Buzzini Dario, Drori Tal
(http://www.fashionvictims.org/) fills the very air around us with the
visualization of technological menace:

"..Electronic objects are not only 'smart', they 'dream' - in the sense
that they leak radiation into the space and objects surrounding them,
including our bodies [...] Hertzian space is three-dimensional and
spatial. It is an environment that needs to be fully understood if it is
to be made habitable. [...] We believe that there is room for a new
category of objects that provide complex aesthetic and psychological
experiences within everyday life..." Raby + Dunne - Design Noir
from the website:http://www.fashionvictims.org/

I hope this applies.

james B

> As there appears to be a gap in the dialogue (a space perhaps) .... seems
> like a good time to jump in with something.
>
> Going back to Ryan's thoughts on the role of IT and so on, re. media
> -based
> artists, I couldn't agree more that there does appear to be a dominant
> tendency to avoid or ignore the problematic position that technology
> driven/referencing work occupies in relation to capital.
>
> It is suprising (to me anyway) that whilst so much is written about the
> development and growth of "information societies", "post
> capitalist/industrial economic models" and "networked societies"... that
> so
> little seems to be being written about possible critical artistic
> positions
> and strategies in response to this brave new media world.
>
> I have been reading around ideas focussed on the "neo dada" and the
> extraction of the political from the core of Dada by the neo's  (sorry
> this
> is so crude, bear with me?) recently and in that light, the
> contextualisation of media art etc seems increasingly depressing. (post
> neo
> dada!)
>
> I am wondering if it is in fact almost essential to somehow contextualise
> works on an individual basis, to bring critical thinking and practice to
> the
> foreground, to somehow sit along side the work, rather than sit
> collectively
> as a kind of default community.
>
> The danger seems to be that increasingly work produced which is
> uncritically
> celebratory of the technology will be writing all of our histories, the
> real
> time overt production of dominant ideology as spectacle.
>
> OR am I just coming across like an old stalinist again?
>
> How this sits with the subtleties and complexity of the discussion so far
> Im
> not sure, hope this doesn't drive a coach and horses (tank?) through it.
>
> best wishes
> Patrick
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> I would like to add that firstly, I think that forms of oppression
>> need to
>> be recognised and articulated.  I think this passage from a recent
>> lecture
>> by Jane Flax at AHRB CentreCATH at the University of Leeds is relevant
>> here.
>> ?Often, however, what is required are ways to delimit
>> the system, so that it appears as a perspective rather than inexorable
>> truth. However, only certain practices of subjectivity are likely to
>> engender a critical skepticism in regard to normalizing processes.¹
>
>> Secondly, I think that the processes of transgressing those oppressive
>> boundaries should not (to borrow a phrase from Bracha Ettinger)
>> ?submit or
>> fold into¹ the oppressive forms themselves.
>
> These two points from Kate are right on, in my estimation. i've been
> thinking about the role of "tactical essentialism" as a form of
> resistance, and its dangers and limitations... on another discussion
> group ( http://www.walkinginplace.org/ ), there have been a couple of
> posts discussing the assimilation/co-optation of notions of "the local"
> - how localization is becoming part of the efficiency of capital and
> read through models of market valuation. with the role that IT is
> playing in this, it seems especially relevant to media-based artists
> concerned with such things, but something that seems to be glossed over
> fairly easily. in what ways should we be considering media/IT as
> functioning within boundaries of oppressive forms? how do we delimit
> that terrain with the knowledge and histories we have access to?
> ryan
>
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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>


-- 
Doctoral Student, Umeå University
Department of Modern Languages/English
+46 (0)90 786 6584
HUMlab.Umeå University.SE-901 87.Umeå.Sweden
Blog: http://www.soulsphincter.blogspot.com
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