[-empyre-] Process as paradigm: Time/Tools/Agency

Tue May 25 14:38:23 EST 2010

kick me off this group if you like, but I cannot believe that in a world 
full of hunger, politics, love, sex, children, moose, you name it,
that so many people think that Data, machines, are content.

Eilean is making a valid comparison. At least I hope you realize that those
using image and sound as generative content, are not just behind the times, we
work differently than you, and to much success.
  As a teacher I have told graduate students that I could not work with them,
three times. one wanted to make fashionable purses, one was a color field
painter (I sent them to fine color field enthusiasts) and one animator who said
they where not interested in what there work was about. But in twenty years I
have run into nothing but people who look at there medium as a tool. I much
beloved tool, but a tool, a skill set, a craft, to be reckoned with
historically,
but not the content of there work..

   this is not about age, (I am 49) my 20 year old students are as bored by
glitches, chance operations, and algorithms as I am. a computer IS a tool. If
you have a relationship with it, that is fine, but many complex thinkers,(I
will call myself one) does look at my cameras, sound recorders, computers, as
tools.
We make our work about other things, like most filmmakers, writers, painters,
play writes, have been doing forever.
      Why are so many New Media artists and academics, embracing modernism at
this moment in history. do we really have so little faith in having a
meaningful dialogue with the world at large! where is your blood?

from the Love, hate, sex, birth, death guy, Chris.

Quoting Erika Jean Lincoln <fur_princess at yahoo.ca>:

> Hi Eileen,
> 
> I am going to have to disagree on your comparison. 
> You stated that
> > The image as output seems to me the most active agent
> > because it is out in the world
> > communicating.
> 
> I don't think it is the image that communicates in the example we are looking
> at if that was the case then why have any process at all. the software
> communicates through the image.
> 
> > However, if one is more
> > interested in the the data set being "algorithmically"
> > processed through a computer, then why waste the paper to
> > create an image that is non active at the end?
> 
> I think the image can still be a part of the work, I feel that the way the
> work is described misplaces the location of the agency within the work. On
> the larger question of agency and images and tools, I think to describe a
> work as we are discussing by not talking about the software/hardware we do
> just create an impression of "computer as tool".
> 
> Your illustration of a painting on the wall in a museum painted centuries ago
> cannot be used as an example. Time is not accounted for in the same way.
> Leonardo and/or his helpers painted an image where time is not considered.
> Yes it took time to make the work but that time was singular not to be
> addressed again. The desire of the artist was to create the work as a
> singular piece that exists in time the process stops when the artist puts
> down the brush an says "Yep its done". Conservators exist to halt time on
> such paintings, museums spend money to halt time on works.
> 
> Where as a work that exists in space and is intended to change over time is
> very different. Process denotes actions over time. I happened to be in
> Toronto a couple of weeks ago and Hans Haacke's work Ice Stick was on
> display, (someone mentioned Haacke's work in relation to this topic earlier).
> It consists of a refrigeration unit, and condensed water vapor that is in the
> form of a stick, for lack of a better description. the work exists in its
> environment and changes over time. People may look at it and call it a giant
> popsicle sculpture. But it cant be reduced to only one element, the popsicle
> cant exist without its refrigeration unit which has to be plugged in to work,
> and the gallery's environment. these elements are integral to the work, and
> cannot be seen as tools displayed on a pedestal separate from the work. 
> 
> It is like the difference between the terms complicated and complexity that
> N. Katherine Hayles describes in her book "My Mother was a Computer: Digital
> Subjects and Literary Texts" 
> 
> Complicated: (within machines) parts interact with each other in defined and
> predictable ways. reducible
> 
> Complex: (computation) many parts interacting with one another to create
> something different and unpredictable. non-reducible
> 
> 
> Erika Lincoln
> Electronic Media Artist
> Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
> http://www.lincolnlab.net
> 
> 
> --- On Fri, 5/21/10, Eileen Reynolds (Asst Prof) <EReynolds at ntu.edu.sg>
> wrote:
> 
> > From: Eileen Reynolds (Asst Prof) <EReynolds at ntu.edu.sg>
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > Received: Friday, May 21, 2010, 11:18 PM
> > Hi Erika,
> > 
> > The image as output seems to me the most active agent
> > because it is out in the world
> > communicating.   However, if one is more
> > interested in the the data set being "algorithmicly"
> > processed through a computer, then why waste the paper to
> > create an image that is non active at the end?  If the
> > production of the image is just a remnant and record of the
> > computer's processing, then no, it is not an active agent,
> > and only proof of the actively processing computer and its
> > ability to do something.
> > 
> > My other thought is the old classic - "the computer is just
> > a tool".   And since we place these tools on
> > such a high pedestal, perhaps the Louvre should instead
> > display the paint brush that Leonardo used to paint the Mona
> > Lisa rather than just the 30 × 20 inch remnant of the
> > pigmented data set that he "algorithmicly" processed through
> > the bristles. But I'm not too certain that would interest
> > very many.
> > 
> > -Eileen
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ________________________________________
> > From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au]
> > On Behalf Of Erika Jean Lincoln [fur_princess at yahoo.ca]
> > Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 11:38 PM
> > To: soft_skinned_space
> > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > 
> > Hi Maria, Yann,
> > Isn't it more precise to say that the data set of the
> > digital image is "algorithmicly" processed through an
> > computer which leads to a different data set which is then
> > represented as an image?
> > 
> > To me the image is not the active agent.
> > Thoughts?
> > 
> > Erika Lincoln
> > Electronic Media Artist
> > Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
> > http://www.lincolnlab.net
> > 
> > 
> > --- On Thu, 5/20/10, Maria Verstappen <notnot at xs4all.nl>
> > wrote:
> > 
> > > From: Maria Verstappen <notnot at xs4all.nl>
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Process as paradigm
> > > To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>,
> > "Yann Le Guennec" <y at x-arn.org>
> > > Received: Thursday, May 20, 2010, 11:37 AM
> > > Dear Yann,
> > > In the context of this exhibition the notion of
> > "generative
> > > image" can be taken quite literal as a still image
> > that
> > > generates the next image in real time. Subsequently
> > this new
> > > image forms the basis for the next image, etcetera. In
> > case
> > > of a screen based work, the viewer experiences this
> > ongoing
> > > sequence as a dynamic animation.
> > > Maria
> > >
> > > On May 19, 2010, at 10:09 PM, Yann Le Guennec wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hello dear Empyreans,
> > > >
> > > > systems are open;
> > > > entropy is a mistake;
> > > > boundaries are in the mind (of the 'modelizer'=
> > > someone making a model);
> > > > every process is part of n systems;
> > > > quantum physics is a biface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biface);
> > > > we build tools we need, to prove what we think;
> > > > we use tools someone built (some day), to prove
> > what
> > > we thought (some day);
> > > >
> > > > but ... i would still like to know what is this:
> > a
> > > 'generative image';
> > > >
> > > > http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/en/714-catalogue
> > > (PDF p: 55)
> > > >
> > > > Do you mean a picture can generate something, or,
> > an
> > > image is necessarily a mind projection ? in the
> > future
> > > (unforeseen) ?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > best,
> > > > yann
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > empyre forum
> > > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > empyre forum
> > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > >
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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> 
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Christopher Sullivan
Dept. of Film/Video/New Media
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
112 so michigan
Chicago Ill 60603
csulli at saic.edu
312-345-3802