Forward from Ben Bogart Re: [-empyre-] technology as material

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

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From: "B. Bogart" <ben@ekran.org>
Date: March 6, 2006 8:31:22 AM PST
To: sostrow@gate.cia.edu, soft_skinned_space  
<empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Cc: soft_skinned_space <empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] technology as material


Hello all,

I don't mean to derail the discussion here but saw an opportunity to ask
and listen based on a recent experience. This message from Saul reminded
me of it.

First to introduce myself, my name is Ben Bogart and I'm a practising
installation and improvisation artist working in Toronto, Canada. I was
invited by Kenneth Newby to the list, as I'll be studying for my Masters
at SFU this coming fall.

I've recently received a Council grant to produce an artwork in
collaboration with an architecture student. The grant application was
initially titled "Responsive Architecture" and was initially
conceptualized as:

1. Method of tactile interface to alter a virtual architecture.
2. As an installation version of my graphic improvisation work.

As the collaboration ensued my interest in the idea of a purely
aesthetic virtual architecture waned, mostly due to my lack of
understanding of the discipline of architecture, and also due to the
lack of some meaningful tactile way of altering it (short of pressing of
the hands to mold a/the shape).

So we went off in many different directions of process, which are
available as a text if anyone is interested, a lot of thinking,
rethinking and unthinking.

So a wonderful opportunity came about, a festival conference on the
theme of "Architecture and Responsiveness". Unfortunately we were
quickly rejected to show the work at the festival due to the fact that
our proposal showed that "we spend a lot of time and energy on the
technology and very little on the concept." I've been struggling with
this idea of technology vs concept since. It seems there is a huge
disconnect between by own artistic interests/ideals and that of
institutions that present themselves as the most ideal venues for the
exhibition of electronic media.

For me technology is any (tool) that makes any (opaque) process
transparent (to someone). I think technology is the material of creative
process. The way a painter would mix pigments is a technological
process. It is made transparent because once the paint is mixed then the
painter is able to use it without needing to consider the process of
making it. The complex technology that defines the shapes of musical
instruments, whose whole need not be understood in order to make sound
using it.

Technology is nothing but the manifestation of concepts.

If a concept is not realized (made manifest) through text
(words/symbols), through a machine (computer) or through physical action
how can it have any value? How can it have meaning without technology to
make it part of the world?

Would a critic deem a painting as poor because the artist spend too much
time developing the colours on the canvas? Or say a piece of music is
not valid because it depended too much on the physical playing of an
instrument?

Can creative process even happen if there is not tangible form that the
evolving concepts take?

So is the "Concept" the remnants of Modernity, replaced by the
"Technology" of the postmodern? Or is the "Concept" simply a method of
sorting those artists that *do* from those that "create" and leave the
implementation to others?

B. Bogart
www.ekran.org/ben





saul ostrow wrote:

>  let us try  the triads
>
> Under what conditions are the folowingpropositions true/ not true
>
> Technology an extension of the body (technology is human)
> Technology as the standardization of human knowledge (technology is  
> control)
> Technology as subject  (technology is source )
>
> Technology is  human / not human
> Technology is source/ not source
> Technology is control/ not control
>
> The human is source/ not source
> The human is control/ not control
> The human is  technology/  not  technology
>
> The human is source/ not source
> The human is control/ not control
> Technology is  human / not human
>
> Technology is source/ not source
> Technology is control/ not control
> Technology is  human / not human
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre