[-empyre-] First Theme and Guests - the Thickness of the Screen

[David Chirot]

Dear All:

thank you for including me in your discussion and thank you for this month's
theme
the thickness of the screen--"through a glass, darkly" or Phillip K. Dick's
through a scanner darkly--

the screen as reflector, opacity and image

the screen not only of thickness but also of distances within it --the
illusry, the apparent ones--
and the effects of the screen being stil so closely related to the idea of
the "frame"--

what does the shape itself do to be a manipulator immediately because it's
"screening of the scene" is such a familiar one from paintings fotos tv
cinema--

does this being "already known" to the point of being not only "taken for
granted " but hidden in plain site/sight--does this make the screen become a
site of an alternating current of fear and reward, reassurance, a kind of
Pavlov's dog training method via the "school room chalk board" space of the
screen

is the thickness effective in conveying a heavier meassage
or is the thickness as it is evr thinner an image-operaation itself of a
shrinking from presence, to make visible while becoming ever more invisible

"like the pererfect servant or child--seen but n t heard"

does the screen project as much on the viewer as the viewer doeson the
screen--thickness as a form of resistance or opacity--a black hole--into
which al this disappears--


On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Gabriel Menotti
<gabriel.menotti at gmail.com>wrote:

> The obscured dimension of audiovisual circuits we are going to explore
> this week is the /thickness of the screen/.
>
> The first meaning of this expression is quite literal. We normally
> consider screens to be mere surfaces, composed of only height and
> width. We talk about their area, aspect ratio and resolution, as if
> these characteristics were all that mattered to the structure.
> However, to hold an image, the screen must also have some density –
> and in order to be dense, the screen must be thick. A work that
> illustrate this in a very poetic way is Guy Sherwin’s performance
> /Paper Landscape/.[1]
>
> But the thickness of the screen implies in a metaphor as well: it
> likewise means the space that is produced by or contained within the
> image – for example, the setting of the original recording, in which
> camera, director and crew have once been present. This could also be
> an appropriate paradigm to analyze digital images, which, from a
> trivial structural-materialistic perspective, are just manifestations
> of the computer physical and logical architectures.
>
> In the debate, we are going to give more attention to this latter
> meaning of the expression. To discuss it, our first three guests are
> specialists in computer imagery – either pre-planned and programmed,
> either contingent and accidental. In their works and research, the
> space within the system is revealed in different ways. They are:
>
> Rosa Menkman
>
> Every technology has its own accidents. Rosa Menkman is a Dutch
> visualist who focuses on visual artifacts created by accidents in
> digital media. The visuals she makes are the result of glitches,
> compressions, feedback and noise. Although many people perceive these
> accidents as negative experiences, Rosa emphasizes their positive
> consequences. By combining both her practical as well as an academic
> background, she merges her abstract pieces within a grand theory
> artifacts (a glitch studies), in which she strives for new forms of
> conceptual synesthesia between sound and video. She has have shown my
> work at festivals like Haip (Ljubljana), Cimatics (Brussels), Video
> Vortex (Amsterdam) Pasofest (Ankara) and Isea 2009 (Belfast), and
> collaborated on art projects together with Alexander Galloway,
> Govcom.org, Goto80 and the internet art collective Jodi.org. In 2009
> she finished her master thesis (on digital glitch) under the
> supervision of Geert Lovink, and started a PhD at the KHM (on the
> subject of Artifacts).
>
> Jose Carlos Silvestre
>
> José Carlos Silvestre is an Engineer in the Telecommunications field
> by the University of Brasilia - Brazil and is currently pursuing a
> M.A. degree in the Catholic University of Sao Paulo with a
> dissertation on the aesthetics of error in the digital arts. As an
> artist, he has participated in exhibitions and festivals in Europe and
> Latin America, such as ISEA, the E-Poetry Festival, Vivo Arte.Mov, and
> the Biennals of Seville - Spain and Yucatan - Mexico.
>
> Scott Draves
>
> Scott Draves (Spot) is a software artist and VJ based in New York and
> San Francisco. He holds a PhD in Computer Science by Carnegie Mellon
> University and is involved in the free software community. His
> award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared
> in Wired and Discover magazines, the Prix Ars Electronica, the
> O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and on the main dance-floor
> at the Sonar festival in Barcelona. His last project, the evolving
> painting HiFiDreams, is permanently installed in the lobby of Google's
> headquarters.
>
> Scott might be a little off the discussion until the weekend, because
> right now he is preparing a symphonic live presentation of his Dreams
> in High Fidelity animation – to be held on Thursday, in Brooklyn. You
> can check for more information about it in his blog. [2]
>
> (Other guests are to be announced soon)
>
> Cheers!
> Menotti
>
> [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6RZi_Nzyho
> [2] http://draves.org/blog/archives/000632.html
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
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