[-empyre-] Wired sustainability and Ambient Media

[Patricia Zimmermann]

One interesting  nexus we've been mining at FLEFF between the wired, the
sustainable, and the environmental has been ambient media, the idea of
works that involve design, visual experimentation, looping effects, and
algorithms, works that imbed themselves into environments and screens
rather than demanding attention in and of themselves as precious objects.
We're interested in the blurred borders, murky terrains, algorithmic and
repetitive beauties, and refigurations of analog and digital imagery as
migratory that ambient media works provoke.

In another post, we'll share a story about showing some of this work to a
group of curators who asked us to take it down because it gave them a
headache--but first, some conceptual ideas:


Ambient media occupies the forefront of new media practices. Ambient media
migrate as a new meme across formats and platforms. Whether on plasma
screens in high-end hotels and hospitals, on video walls in boutique
stores, on cell phones, or downloaded to iPods, ambient media emerges as
an experimental visual sensibility with disciplined, elegant design.

Ambient media traverses between the analog and the digital, often playing
with the borders between both through hand processing or algorithms.
Filled with visual and mathematical puns and references to analog objects
rendered virtual, ambient media extends avant-garde media practices into
the uncharted realms of design for public environments. Ambient media is
the new frontier of the art of the moving image.

The long takes, slow editing, and repetitive looping of ambient media
contrast with loud, noisy, panic-producing corporate-dominated media. In
our current hyperedited media landscape, ambient media functions as a
visual form of Zen meditation, a pause from the press of daily life.

Ambient media emerges out of the soundscaping ideas of ambient music
advanced by Brian Eno, with the idea of music as background rather than
foreground. Its lineage stems directly from the 60s counterculture where
slide shows, overhead projectors, and film loops provided screenwashes for
happenings. It also has historical antecedents in live video journal
projections at clubs and raves as well as the microcinema movement, which
screens work beyond art cinemas in nontraditional spaces such as churches,
bars, clubs, and museums. Ambient media parallels the slow-food movement:
it brings media into local environments like plasma screens and clubs,
rejects media monoculture, and advocates a variety of forms to be savored.

Patty and  Tom


Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Cinema and Photography
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
Ithaca College
Ithaca New York 14850 USA
Phone: 607 274 3431    FAX  607 274 7078
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff


> "The artists we at FLEFF have been interested in curating,
> whether in analog or digital, reject these conservative visions of
> SUSTAINABILITY, ENVIRONMENTAL and WIRED by conjuring connections,
> networks, dialogues and interfaces open up new ways of thinking and doing,
> collapsing distinctions between the three terms and collapsing differences
> between production, distribution, audience, politics, collaboration.
> Stephanie Rothenberg's projects exemplify this."
>
> Thanks so much, Patty.  We appreciate your picking up on the
> interfaced intensity with which we decided to pair Wired with
> Sustainability as the framework for this month's discussion.  This is
> the broad nexus of artistic production, scientific reflection, and
> curatorial intervention through which we also understand the
> environmental.  In fact, this very much addresses what we emphasized
> last week as the "metaphorical" power of Britta and Rebecca's work.
> We are very interested in hearing from other empyreans about their
> sense of the international breadth of art projects invested in wired
> sustainability.
>
> Renate and Tim
> --
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