[-empyre-] thanks to Christiane Paul with 'scalable relations'

[naxsmash]

dear -empyreans-,

Thanks to everyone who contributed text, ideas, rants, links and  
poesis to a discussion this past month of February 2009 on scalable  
relations, featuring Christiane Paul, adjunct curator of new media
art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.  Christiane  
approaches scalability as " the property of a system that can  
accommodate changes in data volume etc. The system itself always  
implies certain control principles (e.g. how the software filters the  
data, which relations are established ...), however the process can be  
more flexible than checking variables against controls. Potentially  
there can indeed be much more of a 'lateral spread' -- relations can  
be more distributed, data can be added by participants / users, the  
system itself can learn and adapt -- and this can certainly result in  
knowledge production."

Thanks very much, Christiane, for being our special guest and for  
bringing your thoughtful observations on the curating and raison  
d'etre of these exhibitions.

The topic was occasioned by three interrelated exhibitions of research  
based new media art curated by Christiane at several University of  
California venues, currently showing work by UC affiliated artists,  
including  empyre list contributors Ricardo Dominguez, Micha Cárdenas,  
Sheldon Brown, and Antoinette LaFarge.  Thanks also to Carol-Ann  
Braun, Brad Brace, Steve Guynup, Simon Biggs, Anna Munster, Lynn  
Hershman,and John Haber for their provocative explorations of this  
principle of 'scalable relations'  within the politics of aesthetics  
and vice versa.

Thanks for giving me a chance to play with all of you around this  
intriguing portmanteau idea.

The archive for this month's discussion is here :  https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2009-February/date.html


-Christina



N. B.  from Christiane's introduction to the exhibition:

" One of the distinctive features of the digital medium is its  
capacity to establish relations between large quantities of data  
through filtering and processing according to different criteria. These
constantly evolving, scalable relations affect both the production of  
meaning and a traditional understanding of aesthetics, which become  
subject to computational logic-the instructions given by
algorithms-and a constant reconfiguration of contexts. The format of  
the exhibition itself, in its distribution across multiple venues,  
mirrors the relational theme of the exhibition and the inherent
connectivity of the digital medium..,. [I] curated a new series of  
exhibitions in California around projects by artists who do research  
within the University of California DUC Digital Arts Research Network  
(DARnet).
"Scalable Relations" explores relation as algorigthm and production in  
a series of networked exhibitions at UC campuses from now until mid-
March 2009.

  http://www.ucdarnet.org/scalablerelations/scalablerelations.php


----->Christiane Paul is the Whitney Museum of American Art adjunct  
curator of new media art.  She lectures and curates widely and is the  
creator of the online Whitney Artport  http://www.whitney.org/
artport/  Her "Digital Art' in the World of Art Series is in its  
second edition and is in print worldwide.   She is a frequent  
contributor on -empyre-, notably for our discussion on modernism in  
March 2006.
   https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2006-March/ 
date.html   which was created in collaboration with Documenta 12  
Magazine Project  http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/article.php?IdLanguage=1&NrArticle=1310












naxsmash
naxsmash at mac.com


christina mcphee

http://christinamcphee.net
http://naxsmash.net