[-empyre-] real vs. unreal

Mon May 2 05:02:40 EST 2011

I guess we're asking for it widening the AR discussion this broad. But I think it's worthwhile to continue to consider a technology, in this case AR, in all its ramifications and associations.

About objects, the objects of AR, or maybe the development of all networked objects: I think you can look at objects as impoverished or impoverishing, or you can look at them as extraordinary sites of social relations, psychic projection, etc. A McDonald's cup goes from oppressive icon to a complex sign of a network of desires and repetitions embedded in daily living. The submit button or the progress bar in digital life presents both a closing down and opening up of modes of social interaction or the experience of time. 

I'm a fan of object relations theory.

As artists, making objects, physical or digital, I guess we try to make it our business to make objects that set situations and relationships in motion. (We are more early successful perhaps depending on the quality of the work.) DuChamp's urinal is just a urinal, but put in a certain context, presented in a certain way, it sets the whole art world or the world of categories into an upheaval. 

AR gives us a chance to place objects out of context, in excess, call up unwanted histories in public space. The right choice or modification or can resonate or conflict with a situation in such a way to loosen the conventional or institutional hold that space or place.

What is nice about this moment in the public technology of AR, is that the objects can't really compete with "real" backdrop. They are not seamless, but more about rupture. They suggest the limitations of the technology at the same time as opening them up to a sweeping possibilities. Their appeal is in their simplicity, their lack. (This is part of an aesthetic that I find very few people in the fine art world understand yet.)

I agree that, what is probably coming, if public AR is catches on, will be a tide of advertising and entertainment infestations. Hopefully, in various ways human response and artistic response find means of resistance or nuanced incorporation.

Will Pappenheimer
698 Hart St
Brooklyn  NY 11221
Cell: 347-526-5302
Email: willpap at gmail.com
www.willpap-projects.com

On Apr 30, 2011, at 12:32 PM, Pawel Oczkowski wrote:

> 
> Hi there, 
> 
> I tried not to join this discussion for a while, but probably it the last moment to jump in. 
> 
> I do really love all those sophisticated arguments, ranging from technological remarks, your manifesto and epistemological threads mixed with some ontological questions. However, what make AR really creepy to me is sth what has nothing in common with technological, nor with philosophical issues. Last but not least artist - as most of you, play incredibly important role in exploration and spreading AR among users. I wouldn't perceive it problematic at all, if most of AR object/interventions hadn't deal with public space and my imagery space at the same time. Recently, just to keep the track of discussion, I red intro to this year conflux festival and its flag ship 'We AR in MoMA'. Being honest, I was puzzled down when I discovered that: "Developments in the field of psychogeography advance rapidly and radically. In former times the discipline required mental capabilities such as concentration and imagination, nowadays mobile phones provide us with easy-to-use viewing tools to perceive multitude of fictive realities, anywhere we are, instantly." (http://confluxfestival.org/projects/conflux-festival-2010/we-ar-in-moma/). 
> 
> I thought, its far more probably, that artist won't play 'Marco Polo' role, as stated few posts ago, but rather, as many times before, will be impersonating next generation of 'useful idiots', opening the space for all but not psychogeographic experiments within this field. 
> 
> 
> 
> Why?
> 
> 
> Maybe rather old-school notion of gentrification provide some deeper insight into this discussion. Until gentrification "happened" to dwellers of rather abandoned spaces, beloved by artist and 'creative community', I was quite cool with it. Worst case scenario: you just have to move along, there are always places where rents are lower. But AR involves not only my physical spaces, it deals with, as in Manovich notion on modes of perception of new media object, with my mental space in very radical way: 
> 
> "In short, we are asked to follow pre-programmed, objectively existing associations. Put
> diffidently, in what can be read as a new updated version of French philosopher
> Louis Althusser's concept of "interpellation," we are asked to mistake the structure of somebody's else mind for our own. 
> 
> 
> 
> This is a new kind of identification appropriate for the information age of
> cognitive labor. The cultural technologies of an industrial society -- cinema and
> fashion -- asked us to identify with somebody's bodily image. The interactive
> media asks us to identify with somebody's else mental structure. If a cinema
> viewer, both male and female was lasting after and trying to emulate the body of
> movie star, a computer user is asked to follow the mental trajectory of a new
> media designer." Manovich, L. Language of New Media, pp. 74, (http://andreknoerig.de/portfolio/03/bin/resources/manovich-langofnewmedia.pdf)
> 
> Sorry for undigested quote. Anyway, what makes me feel that things might go wrong faster than anybody could expect, arise from notion of AR occupying or subversive to my physical space but foremost 'gentrifying' my imagery space without ability to overcome its influence. Once perceived, AR objects become embedded not in my physical space but in my imagery space. It's exaggerated, but this dual presence of AR object, its epistemological or rather phenomenological status, might be incredibly close to Freud's remarks about origins of hallucinations: when cathexis doesn't connect memory trace and perceived object but the object is completely charged with it. And as far I'm hallucinating about Tamiko Thiel objects, I can cope with it, but when I start to hallucinate AT&T commercial or ARvertising, well...maybe at the beginning it would funny somehow. 
> 
> On top of that, I was quite surprised, that nobody has picked up the idea from Gibson's 'Virtual Light', where AR becomes a business sensitive technology with all its consequences. From my perspective, if AR brought Thomasons with, I would be totally in it. Otherwise probably I will focus on deviant use of AR. 
> 
> Best 
> 
> p.
> 
>              
>                         
> 
> --- On Sat, 30/4/11, John Craig Freeman <John_Craig_Freeman at emerson.edu> wrote:
> 
> From: John Craig Freeman <John_Craig_Freeman at emerson.edu>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] real vs. unreal
> To: "empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Date: Saturday, 30 April, 2011, 3:07
> 
> 
> > From: Will Pappenheimer <willpap at gmail.com>
> > 
> > I think we are in need of a new definition of existence, one that includes the digital or networked object.
> 
> Call it a consensual, collective hallucination.
> 
> 
> 
> John Craig Freeman
> Associate Professor of New Media
> 
> Emerson College
> Department of Visual and Media Arts
> 120 Boylston Street
> Boston, MA 02116-4624
> (617) 824-8862
> john_craig_freeman at emerson.edu
> http://JohnCraigFreeman.net
> 
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