Re: [-empyre-] Introductions and beginnings (October on -empyre-)

[Renee Turner <geuzen@xs4all.nl>]

Hello Ryan (and Empyreans)

Before diving into things, a little preface to everyone: Although I  
am writing to Empyre, De Geuzen is three people, myself, Riek  
Sijbring and Femke Snelting.   For some reason this month, many  
projects converged, and we are having to divide to get everything  
done.  While, I’ll be writing most of the time, everything I say,  
should always be seen in the context of the three.  If Empyre’s  
technical system didn’t have problems with html, I would hyperlink  
every “I” with this image: http://geuzen.org/current/DIY/paperdoll/ 
paperdoll.html

And btw: Riek and Femke may pop in when time permits...

Okay Ryan... back to your post,

I 'll break things down into bite size chunks in order to digest and  
address the challenges you raise, and I'm afraid I won't cover them  
all in this one post.   You’ve definitely given us a months worth of  
grist to chew on.

> Not just a post-Marxist position, the goals of those making the  
> challenge don't seem different from those employing "historical"  
> critical theory, but the question is whether or not the target of  
> critique has shifted and requires new tools and methods to engage  
> it, and might possibly require a form of positivism/pragmatism.
> see:
> http://tloguser.totalcare.nl/tlog_projective.pl? 
> owner=projectivelandsc&filter=39
> http://www.ensmp.fr/%7Elatour/articles/article/089.html

Thanks for this reference to Latour.  I have not read the article  
before, but from what you've pulled here, I do agree both old and new  
tools need to be continually tested/invented... maybe through this  
discussion we can talk about how we've tried to do that, as well as  
point to other practices outside of our own.

> Challenge two: the continued analysis of Brian Holmes, regarding  
> practice and theory in our current realities. To quote the end of a  
> recent post by Holmes' to the iDC list:
> "The moment of believing you could "get there first" and determine  
> the destiny of a new technological phylum by sheer force of  
> enthusiasm has been gone since the tech bubble burst and the corps  
> started demanding hard returns on their investment.

In our case, I don't think any of us ever believed we would be  
getting there first.   As three women, we are used to working with  
borrowed languages and tools.   This isn't resignation or compromise,  
but it's about understanding yourself as always being embedded and  
implicated in a larger social fabric and history.

One of the things that interested me in your post was the connection  
made to people like Rosler and Sekula.  Next to them, there are also  
others which are inspiring at least to our practice, and they may  
hint at other forms of criticality... like General Idea who mixed the  
language of pop with politics (http://www.aabronson.com/art/gi.org/ 
index.htm), Irwin who's antics with the NSK Embassy bring together  
notions of nationalism and parody (http://www.ljudmila.org/embassy/),  
the Situationists  and Ne Pas Plier, a French group who produce  
graphics of resistance in unconventional and frequently poetic ways.

> So, to get to the context of the Under Fire exhibition in Chicago,  
> and deGeuzen's contribution to it:
> deGeuzen's (with Tsila Hassine) "Global Anxiety Monitor" and  
> "Historiographic Tracer" ( http://www.geuzen.org/underfire.html )  
> both represent an instance of research (in the general sense of  
> collecting/analyzing data) and symbolic framing. In this sense, it  
> contributes to the project of "tactical media" (if anyone's still  
> using that term) by assuming the role of a "tool" for engaging/ 
> studying a given situation as well as consciously politicizing the  
> data and its means of collection (the tool itself).

The Image Tracer V1.7 (http://www.geuzen.org/tracer/ ) is definitely  
in a beta phase... we are testing and tweaking.  Some parts of the  
operation work well but other's are still bulky.  Since the images  
are stored on our server, the tracing takes a long time, and if there  
is a break in the connection, the file is corrupted.  So it's  
important to stress that the "tool" is still very much under  
construction, but we (De Geuzen and Tsila Hassine) are forging on  
with our trials in public  ;-)

Also, for those on Empyre not familiar with our work,  both the  
Tracer and The Global Anxiety Monitor are a part of an ongoing  
research thread, looking at how media images and their meanings  
fluctuate in the ecology of the world wide web.   To get feedback  
from different perspectives, we hosted a lab in Belgium with  
programmers, theorists and filmmakers.   Following-up, we made manual  
tests ranging from collecting links, to printing out screenshots over  
a period of months.   You can see some of that process here : http:// 
geuzen.blogs.com/historiography/

And most recently, moving parallel to these experiments, we performed  
The Global Anxiety Monitor before a live audience.  Using the same  
set of words that appear in the screen-based version, live (human)  
translators fed the information into a computer which was then viewed  
on large screens .  It was interesting to see what happens when image  
browsing is performed as a social act, rather than a private one.   
Audiences started talking to each other about the differences  
appearing between languages, when for example the word "war" or  
"terrorism" were Googled.

Thinking about our own "sprawling" way of working, and knowing  
Crandall's practice which is even more comprehensive in nature, I am  
curious how visitors received the Chicago edition of the project.   
Many different bodies of research were represented there... was it an  
information overload or were there narrative overlaps?  (writing this  
question, somehow, I feel we can add negotiating varying speeds of  
information processing to your list of challenges)

> i would also like to point people to a short essay written for the  
> exhibition by Dan S. Wang, which presents perhaps, a third  
> challenge regarding notions of "commitment."

Can you talk a little more about this idea of commitment and how you  
saw it operating in Under Fire amongst the contributions?  Or  
potentially operating  :-)
>

all the best to everyone... and I hope I have not been too long-winded,

Renee
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