Re: [-empyre-] cultural, organizational and technological performance

[Helen Thorington <newradio@turbulence.org>]

Hi Pall:

I do think of the computer as a performer in your work, in the same way that
an automatic coffee maker performs if you set it to prepare your morning
coffee ? and see, it (your computer) is already teaching you ways of
sketching freeway traffic. In writing this, I too ³am attributing criteria
of performance to an object, technology, or system. I transfer affect to an
object.² (Riel)  

The issue of consciousness is one I¹d love to see someone address? I think
immediately about degrees of ³consciousness²? people walk through life
sometimes totally unaware of others   (you should try driving in Boston!);
animals, do we know about their level of consciousness? How about bugs and
worms? amoebas, paramecia? And yet we think of them as alive.

Have a safe trip. And may all the automated processes that carry you perform
well!

-- Helen





on 7/21/05 12:51 PM, Pall Thayer at palli@pallit.lhi.is wrote:

> I'm going to try to jump back in to this (I'm moving between continents
> in a few days so I haven't been able to participate as much as I would
> have liked). To tell the truth, I never really saw the computer as the
> performer in Autodrawn. It may sound far-fetched, but I saw the drivers
> of the cars as the performers. They are what affects the image, not the
> computer (along with a few other factors like daylight, camera positions
> and their functionality). Eventually, the drawings being generated
> become predictable and it's relatively easy to see by the way cars are
> drawn that the computer shows total disregard for the subject matter
> (which in itself tends to produce rather interesting effects). The thing
> that I really think matters with work like this, in regards to
> "performance" is the live factor and the only factor involved that is
> really, conciously thinking about this work in terms of "art" is the
> viewer. The program can't be conciously trying to make art, the drivers
> have no idea that they're involved in a work of art and so on. I see it
> as a way of automating experimentation. I could spend years trying out
> various different scenes for drawing traffic on a freeway, or I can
> automate the process of trying "them all". Of course, it's going to take
> forever, but my server's not in any hurry :-) For instance, Autodrawn
> has already shown me a way of sketching freeway traffic that I probably
> wouldn't have thought of; as a big sign that says, "This camera is
> temporarily offline."
> 
> best r.
> Pall
> 
> Michelle Riel wrote:
>> To clarify, I don't  necessarily see them as new or additional categories,
>> but to be mindful that we already have an understanding of performance as
>> operating in these ways  - culturally, organizationally, and technologically.
>> For example, to think
>> of technological  performance can be to rate an object's utility by some
>> criteria. When I say "How is my computer performing? It seems a little
>> sluggish, I may have too many images open and the vram is maxed out." We
>> understand this to mean that I
>> am discussing the utilitarian aspect of the computer's functionality. When I
>> say the "freeway performs" in Pall Thayer's Autodrawn work in which he has
>> created a software framework through which to capture the random activities
>> of cars passing along
>> the freeway and conceptualizes it in relation to the artists sketch exercise,
>> I am attributing criteria of performance to an object, technology, or system.
>> I transfer affect to an object; I see the computationally embedded and
>> technologized world in
>> which I live as alive, able to engage and enact. The "what" of the engagement
>> / enactment is that  tenuous realm that we are currently pondering:
>> performance without a body, responsiveness, or performance, of once inanimate
>> objects that now sense
>> and communicate.
>> 
>> Since we may not usually consider performance beyond the cultural referent,
>> my intention was to propose thinking more expansively about performance as
>> more than a sited event, perhaps a condition or state, since I often also use
>> performance and
>> performativity interchangeably (which is probably a sloppy practice and I
>> should be more rigorous). As far as examples, this broader perspective of
>> performance is reflected in many of the examples and artists referenced thus
>> far (Pall Thayer as
>> mentioned, Chris Salter, Diller + Scofidio, Teran and Mann, Usman Haque) in
>> which objects, environments, and systems perform.
>> 
>> Michelle -
>> 
>> 
>> soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> writes:
>> 
>>> Michelle R. --
>>> 
>>> "Perhaps the multivalent concept of performance as cultural, organizational
>>> and technological can inform a typology of current networked practice."
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Can you give us an idea of what this means?  A new way of categorizing types
>>> of networked practice...  what would you put in each of the above
>>> categories?  And wouldn't one spend hours arguing what work belongs where?
>>> 
>>> -- Helen
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> on 7/14/05 6:28 PM, Michelle Riel at michelle_riel@csumb.edu wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> In Jon McKenzie¹s book Perform or Else he presents a case study approach
>>>> demonstrating the current cultural use and understanding of ³performance².
>>>> He
>>>> cites the parallel developments emergent from the 50¹s and 60¹s of
>>>> Marcuse¹s
>>>> claim that
>>>> post-industrial societies are ruled by the ³performance principle²
>>>> (oppressive
>>>> / repressive sublimation, or conformance to social acceptance), concurrent
>>>> with the rise of both a theatrical concept of performance from ritual and
>>>> social interaction
>>>> and the development in art that would become performance art.
>>>> 
>>>> Specifically, he looks at three facets of performance: the efficacy of
>>>> ³cultural performance² as in the performance of dancers, singers, musicians
>>>> and actors in the traditional performing arts and experimental art; the
>>>> efficiency of ³organizational
>>>> performance² such as workplace productivity of companies, business
>>>> management,
>>>> economic power; and the effectiveness of ³technological performance² such
>>>> as
>>>> the technological functionality of objects or systems.
>>>> 
>>>> While seemingly disparate, and certainly broad, expanding performance to be
>>>> inclusive of these cultural uses enables us to understand as ³performance²
>>>> buildings made of fog and tables that follow you, tools that are sociable
>>>> and
>>>> engage you to become
>>>> performative through their use and, the more familiar notion of
>>>> performance,
>>>> interactions by artists with technology in an event presented to others who
>>>> observe.  
>>>> 
>>>> But unlike Schwitters¹ imagined Merz conception, the blog is chronicling
>>>> _current practice_ which, like the openness of its premise (any live event
>>>> that is network enabled), means that there is a really broad range of
>>>> realized
>>>> work. From lo-fi to
>>>> DIY art to academic and commercial institutionally funded research to
>>>> commercial tools and experiences. And an equally broad range of
>>>> practitioners
>>>> from artists and performers, of course, to engineers, computer scientists,
>>>> social scientists,
>>>> humanities researchers, architects, and undoubtedly others.
>>>> 
>>>> One aspect of the blog as a database of works is to note patterns of
>>>> practice
>>>> as a means to understand the expanding definition of performance. The
>>>> breadth
>>>> of this scope points out that both definitions of terms (performance,
>>>> liveness, embodiment,
>>>> presence, agency, etc.) as well as a typology are needed.  We began with
>>>> the
>>>> categories Telematic, Locative, Wearable, and Environments. Perhaps the
>>>> multivalent concept of performance as cultural, organizational and
>>>> technological can inform a
>>>> typology of current networked practice.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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