[-empyre-] Fwd: comments on Pacific Parables, forward from Sean Cubitt

The following is sent from Sean Cubitt (AU) with permission to reprint from his posts on the ADA network blog, http:// www.aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/list/by/ISEA?page=2

Sean wrote on August 11, at ISEA about the Pacific Rim New Media Summit sumarie, about Raqs Media Collective's presentation, Pacific Parables, and a report on the ensuing discussion.

-cm


after captain nemo - a/c jules verne a renegade indian mutineer - to
navigate the pacific/indian oceans ina leaky canoe - a little voyage
with ten questions. Pacific parables - like Keats' Cortez, "with a
wild surmise" - nourished by encouters at cultural futures conference
in manukau

   1.

pacific rim fiction about a place, more or less arbitrary -
"greater asia", "wild blue frontier", fremch polynesian artists and
bombs; ASAN tiger economies; meanwhile indentured labour from china
and india, the whalers, nurses . . . traversing the world, migrants,
from napa valley to silicon valley - endless and bottomless, like the
internet - pacific highest density of internet traffic? how can this
fiction of location not reproduce the boundaries of all mapmaking
exercises? or mastery over the landscape
2.

Prior to GPS, dead-reckoning by long/latitude by taking fixes and
calculating against variables. Moving objects of the ship and fixed
objects in the ocean/sky -- except polynesian navigators. Against
the inert world, a relational dynamic between distance, person and
world ie "live-reckoning'. Tupaya the navigator who joined Cook and
resolved latitudinal problems of dead-reckoning, perfecting +
hybridising it. knowledge practices and ethoi -- one backed by
gunpowder. what safegurads ensure that encountters with different
knowledge systems either kill or turn into relics.
3.

The long wait: of cargo cults. replica airplanes to attract cargo
form the sky . . . Why do we wait for things to come to us? If we
replicate structures from elsewhere, do we receive the bounty that
they attracted elsewhere?
4.

Obsolescence: Easter Island (Jared Diamond's new book collapse):
necessary to check ecological footprints of our devices - toxic
materials, prison labour . . . how reconcile utopian promises with
dystopian actualities of their production
5.

      adrift in the ocean - how to stop worrying about becoming dated
   6.

weather systems el nino / la nina off coats of Peru with
perplexing complexity of results. Mike Davis Late Victorian
Holocausts: immiseration of the third world; fixing of commodity
prices a/c rhythms of the Southern Oscillations in integrated markets
integrated with meteorology in futures markets: data <-> disaster:
How can we get a hand/handle on this invaluable information
7.

Nauru: ecomomy based on phoshate mining - birdshit into gold, a
metaphor for goldrush (metaphor: 1902 first guano shipment - now
destroyed socially and economically). Now outsopurcing base for
australian detention centre. 1856 Guano Islands act of US Congress
empowered us citizens taking possession of "uninhabited" guano
islands - used in explosives as well as farming - acquisition that
inhibits growth and creativity. How can we immersed in property
ensure that there is space left for cultivation of the commons - eg
even opensource / creative commons anchored in property.
8.

      gifts acrue value in exchange (unlike commodities). age does not
      add value in digital media, but that usage will add value. not
      altruism: informal sociality does not depreciate, but brings some
      property. Who shares more gathers prestige. New pirates desire
      stopries of their derring do. how can the pacific tradition of
      liberality in gift giving inhibit end-user economics:
   9.

      dark matter of information - how to integrate the deep and the
      dark in our work
  10.

from mariana trench, in earch of lost continent of lemuria.
originally a question about distrubution of lemurs - whence an
intermediate landmass in gondwanaland drift - used to explain the
missing link and gaps in language family histories - distribution of
a lifeform leading to the imagination of a continent. We hug the
shorelines, harbours and ports - a plea for a plurality of histories
of new media. If we are to create cultural futures, place, ground and
practice on the base of this submerged continent.

discussion -- harwood: is it a complete invention that easter
Islanders trashed their ecology - or that the real disaster was the
diseases brought by first european contatc.

Shupta -- that these aren't true stories but stories.. Amanda: fact
or fiction are element sof a fantasy, connection of the disparate can
make us revision the taken-for-granted. Sally-jane norman --
traditional knowledges at least as valuable as new media histories -
to include the counterfactual - -histories of the mdia arts in asia -
eg in lithography going back to 1920s eg linking canton and madras in
technqieues and motifs. we often devalue networks which don't want to
be seen as collaborating; Harwood - anecdote of chinese films shown
without dialogue in Alexandra township with people making up their
own dialogue and cheering 'their' side in the fights: trans-culture

some discussion here as to whether a poetic discourse can have
outcomes in hard terms eg wipo (I said cargo cult is a great account
of ICT for development discourse) shupta replies: does ideal-typical
notion of 'realworld' outcomes amount to more than aspirational
realism of develoment discourse. New media in california can be
poetics; new media in indonesia must be progmnatic - an indefensible
dualism. Tamiko Thiell - non-western asians achieveing highly
sophistic\ated media, not judaeo-christian weltanschauung. Zheng ga -
are western inlfuences always imperial, do east have to develop own
identity??? Tired discussion! (note to self - don't use 'western' as
a synonym for capitalist transnatonal corporate media and their
institutionalisations!). Guna - more media art history -- see
mediarthistory.org, and links to interoperable arcghives / databases

    * replace conference berlin 2007 call will be out soon, to open the
      'canon' to cultures outside of the big metropolitan centres

Sean Cubitt scubitt at unimelb.edu.au Director Media and Communications Program Faculty of Arts Room 127 John Medley East The University of Melbourne Parkville VIC 3010 Australia

Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667 Mob: 0448 304 004 Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494 Skype: seancubitt Web: www.mediacomm.unimelb.edu.au

Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series http://lbs.mit.edu/


Begin forwarded message:

From: Sean Cubitt <scubitt@unimelb.edu.au>
Date: August 17, 2006 5:32:32 PM PDT
To: Christina McPhee <christina@christinamcphee.net>
Subject: Re: pacific downslope from summit (splash)? into empyre

sorry christina

missed tis one

i'll have to get them out of Pages -- unless you have a mac with pages / iWorks - but i have a coffee appointment right now --

but do feel free to recycle the ada posts - please credit aotearoa digital arts and give the homepage

cheers


sean



www.christinamcphee.net
www.strikeslip.tv
www.naxsmash.net



PO Box 7063 Los Osos, CA USA 93412
 001 805 459 4939

christina@christinamcphee.net
skype:  naxsmash






Sean Cubitt
scubitt@unimelb.edu.au
Director
Media and Communications Program
Faculty of Arts
Room 127 John Medley East
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3010
Australia

Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
M: 0448 304 004
Skype: seancubitt
Web: www.mediacomm.unimelb.edu.au

Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
http://lbs.mit.edu/





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