[-empyre-] Julian Oliver: Resolution for Digital Futures

[Julian Oliver]

..on Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 10:26:50AM -0800, B. Bogart wrote:
> 
> Computers, computation and the digital are simply extensions of (a
> subset of) our cognitive abilities. (Cognitive in relation to mind-body,
> not some aspect non-physical cognitive space.)

very much so. 

(to these ends some friends and i are planning a workshop on object-oriented
programming for artists without a single computer in the room..)

> 
> I'm generally a proponent of the title "Electronic Media Art", this is
> in relation to the other dominate labels (new media, information art,
> digital art). The main reason of doing so by locating my work in the
> tradition of electronics and engineering in art, which was inspired (at
> least in part) by the mechanical media arts of kinetic sculpture.

yes exactly! this is precisely where it all began. with engineering. over time
the parts have got smaller - the mechanisms less transparent - and so the
ability to 'read' the processes at work in an example of Electronic Media Art
became more difficult. at a certain point it was all just generalised into the
"digital" whereas in fact a huge amount of engineered physical activity is at
work just to plot and colour a single pixel.

> 
> What I realized why reading Julian's deconstruction of the physicality
> of digital art is that all these terms are stuck in the realm of
> representation. Something being digital or information does not mean
> that it is dynamic and changeable. For me, it seems this is the aspect
> that is most important, the conversion, the change, the shifting of the
> representations, not the representations themselves.
> 

good words.

cheers,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain 
about: http://julianoliver.com