[-empyre-] re: Grigar's First Post

["marcus bastos" <bastos.marcus@gmail.com>]

Dear Dene,

thanks for your post, it's great to have you this month. Before
starting, I'd like to make a general suggestion, that we post the URLs
to mentioned projects. Do you have any online documentation of "When
Ghosts Will Die"?

One of the things that interested me in your opening was the following:

<<my interest lies in rhapsodic, ephemeral, multimedia
environments--that is, I have been experimenting with telling stories
"on the fly" in mediums that do not necessarily allow for permanent
access and archiving *and* that include, along with "words,"
light, sound, music, images, animation, and video.>>

I feel that one difference of 'liquid' narratives is that user agency
is a condition to set whatever is being told into movement. One
example would be Bill Seaman's 'ex.Mech'
(http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/werke/TheExquisiteMechanismofShivers). Or
Giselle Beiguelman's 'egoscope'
(http://www.desvirtual.com/egoscopio/english/about.htm).

Both projects have the improvisational dimension you pointed; the
first one deals with word, sound and video; the second one has the
ephemeral quality you pointed. But the main thing about them is how
they compound a set of possibilities which are open and dependant on
user's decision. If no one acts upon the application built by Seaman,
if no one acts upon the interface built by Beiguelman, it could be
said that the work vanishes.

I am trying to think in terms of difference here: what makes the
contemporary narratives that we have in mind different from their
predecesors? Do you think that user agency would be one of the things
that differ them?

Also, ins't it inspiring to think of environments that stimulate the
Other to step in, to learn its logic and become part of it? Probably
showing that alterity is important to communication is as important
(if not more) than the result itself of the recombinant video's in
'ex.Mech' or the resulting data frankenstein in 'egoscope'.

As far as 'archiving' goes, the later project is interesting that it
is, in itself, only the memory of a collective action. There is
nothing to be 'archived', but that (now gone) flow.

---------------------------------------------------
Marcus Bastos
http://pfebril.net
http://www.pucsp.br/~marcusbastos