[-empyre-] materiality as a dynamic process / the autonomy of the artist / augmented reality

[Gabriel Menotti]

Dear all:

Thanks for all the contributions! I think we had some very nice
developments of the initial idea, and will try to sum them up, trying
not to stray to far from the screens. =)


>  A medium device, in layman's
> terms, means a device which produces, stores, transmits, or provides access
> to content of some kind; and this content is informational, or immaterial. [José Carlos]

store/transmit/provide access: these are precisely the terms in which
devices seems to behave more like spaces than objects - or better,
more like architectures than mechanisms. what does that implies to
their materiality?

if the informational content has a different nature than that of the
medium device - one as a presence, the other as a kind of openness
(for lack of a better term) -, what hinders us from appealing to
dichotomies such as channel/message, background/figure, etc?

through other perspective: thinking of materiality as a dynamic
process, in what is it different from information itself?


> Assuming the premise that one of the things that artists possess is a
> special autonomy to probe new media for their underexplored possibilities,
> and potentially catalyzing their quasi-independent agency as media (again,
> Deleuze), then aren't we severely delimiting the range of this autonomy by
> situating it in a discourse that takes place at the momment of audience
> reception? [Brett Stalbaum]

but don't you think that there really is some preponderance of
reception over production in defining the limits of mediation? and it
seems to me that preponderance is not only dependent  of errors, but
also of the particular uses the public makes of media. that is harder
to exemplify when talking about screens, but just think about people
that go to the movies to sleep or make out. they are approaching this
complex viewing apparatus in a lower level of its materiality: just as
a dark, quiet room. why can't that be considered a radical exploration
of hidden possibilities?

besides, do artist really have any special autonomy over other users
in exploring media? or is it that anyone who assumes such autonomy
becomes an artist? aren't the process of production themselves
restricted to dynamics of mediation as constrained and elusive as
reception?


> The Artvertiser positions any advertisement
> in a video feed as a public 'screen', treated and considered as such, for the
> purposes of exhibiting video or still images. [Julian Oliver]

very nice work. =) reminds me of a short video from Graffiti Research
Lab, in which they project some images over an animated billboard -
I've been looking for similar stuff ever since! I was planning to talk
more about this division of public/private (as well as
production/consumption) from the third week on, but since you come up
with it, why not? =)

it is interesting how the artvertiser highlights screens as places of
activity, which can be occupied and affected (just like chat
windows?). having quoted Plato, I wonder if you consider the activity
allowed by the work's dispositif similar to the one involved in the
gaze (the plane visual cognition) - i.e. are AR goggles a kind of
instrumentalization of the eye, a movable part of a complex visual
device, or both?

another thing that I think is pertinent to our discussion is how the
image in that situation is formed by the articulation of two different
screens, and the distance between them is also relevant - if they are
too near or too far from each other, the AR system may not work
properly.

it always strikes me how the user is tolerant to errors in this
process - what can shed some light in the matter of new media and
glitches: sometimes, the user assumes that he is the one doing it
wrong (it also makes me think of people doing the "mobile phone dance"
while looking for signal)

Best!
Menotti