[-empyre-] The archive

[Cynthia Beth Rubin]

Melinda and all:

In my previous post I used the term "fake" to describe recreated elements in the documentation of an inter-active work.  I was referring to compensating for poor documentation which is the result of the quality of video recordings. 

In a very few years we will have video cameras which easily capture intense color in dim light, which simulate the instant adjustment that our eyes make as we shift our focus from one kind of light to another.  We will have sound recorders that can replicate the complexity of stereo sound bouncing against walls and back again and mixing subtlety in the space (of course by then stereo will be distant memory).  We will have 3D cameras which capture the spatial relationship of audience to installation, or performer to projection (if those distinctions exist then).

Are distortions which are the result of the technological limitations of our time acceptable as the standard of documentation?  Is there something more pure about misrepresentation by machine?

best wishes,

Cynthia B Rubin
http://CBRubin.net



On Oct 3, 2010, at 2:20 PM, Melinda Rackham wrote:

> 
> Faking documentation is an art in itself - quiet acceptable when presented as practice, but it gets slippery when, for example, one is assessing a PhD, and the process documentation has obviously been constructed to prove a point after the fact.