[-empyre-] on feminism and the cyclical nature of tools and technologies

Sat Feb 28 00:13:39 AEDT 2015

Yes, Renate, we will be recording all the Adobe Connect broadcasts of the
Art of the Networked Practice | Online Symposium and posting them on the
Website. I am curious to throw out to the list the question of real-time,
synchronous dialogue, in contrast to the asynchronicity of the mailing
list form (or other distributed forms of discourse). Of course it is
convenient to login and respond on your time, rather than competing with
timezones, etc., but there is something to be said for having a dialogue
with immediate responses. I could imagine a list such as empyre having
occasional real-time chats or webconferencing in order to capture the
immediacy and dynamic of a synchronous conversation. I am curious if this
would resonate with participants here in this list.

On 2/26/15, 10:54 PM, "Renate Terese Ferro" <rferro at cornell.edu> wrote:

>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>Thanks Randall.  I signed up for the web conference and look forward to
>all of your presentations even if they will be in the middle of the night
>here in New York.  Nanyang University is a especially beautiful place but
>one that has invested in cross-displinary ventures between humanities and
>the arts.  Tim and I visited just about a year ago when we gave a joint
>talk.  I premiered my piece ³Suspicious Packages² and spent some time in
>the Humanities building , Arts and Design, and Communications. Hoping the
>Art of the Networked Practice Symposium will be archived.  Randall do you
>know anything about that?  Renate
>
>
>On 2/26/15, 9:59 AM, "Randall Packer" <rpacker at zakros.com> wrote:
>
>>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>Thanks Melinda for mentioning our upcoming Art of the Networked Practice
>>Symposium, and yes, Anne Balsamo will be speaking about the DOCC
>>(distributed open collaborative course) project, and her panel will be
>>debating MOOC alternatives as effective distributed teaching models in
>>the
>>arts and humanities. I want to also mention that Melinda, along with a
>>group of esteemed panelists including Charlotte Frost and McKenzie Wark,
>>who frequent the various lists, will be discussing what McKenzie refers
>>to
>>as the ³silver age² of social media (there being no golden one in his
>>opinion), referring to the mailing lists that emerged in the late 1990s
>>such as Nettime and of course Melinda will be discussing the origins of
>>empyre. Her panel is focused on Collective Research methods and it will
>>be
>>interesting to see how the venerable, now ³classic² email platforms of
>>online discourse may be serving collective research purposes more
>>effectively than the mega, media-rich social platforms of today. It will
>>be an interesting debate and I invite everyone to come because as Melinda
>>mentioned, the symposium is free and accessible via Adobe Connect
>>Webconferencing: my own effort to align today¹s social media and
>>conferencing technologies with serious dialogue and open forums for
>>collective research. http://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/symposium2015
>>
>>Randall
>>
>>On 2/26/15, 2:04 AM, "Melinda Rackham" <melinda at subtle.net> wrote:
>>
>>>----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>hey thanks for your thoughtful responses..
>>>
>>>Randall if you build it they will come  -  Randall is co-chairing Art of
>>>the Networked Practice an Online Symposium NTU are hosting in the
>>>beginning of April using Adobe Connect, with presentations in Powerpoint
>>>(i imagine for its ubiquity after our discussion on better presentation
>>>tools!).  Contributors to the discussions include people we have heard
>>>from so far this month on -empyre- Anne Balsomo and myself as speakers
>>>and Helen Varley Jamieson is performing.  While I think the Keynotes
>>>Steve Dixon, JonCates, Peter Looker and Lev Manovich will be located in
>>>Singapore, most participants are online, which is far more
>>>environmentally sustainable than all that air travel, and its free to
>>>attend. However using those technologies we don't get to do that
>>>incidental stuff which makes geographical meet up such a powerful tool -
>>>like the sensory stimulation of roaming the alleys behind Arab Street
>>>(where my favourite perfumed oil comes from) or hatching projects with
>>>new colleagues while sharing great Singaporean food.
>>>http://oss.adm.ntu.edu.sg/symposium2015
>>>
>>>As I suggested and Murat has responded, we don't see social media
>>>platforms promoting in-depth dialogue especially given the dominance of
>>>the instant response on smaller hand held devices. But will that be
>>>cyclical as well -  and who knows how we will be accessing our
>>>communities and networks in 10 or 20 years time. Despite VR's failure to
>>>materialise as promised and Ben's earlier experience of being totally
>>>underwhelmed in an Oculus Rift demo, the fantasy of VR as a creative,
>>>social, game and educational space still persists. The good old Holodeck
>>>on Starship Enterprise created the benchmark; the avatars of Avatar
>>>afforded hard-world mobility; and the hacked game worlds accessible via
>>>holobanding in Caprica, life and death consequences. Their continued
>>>presence as the imaginative otherworld assures me we want them and as a
>>>consumer society will work towards perfecting Virtual spaces.
>>>
>>>But then again maybe I'm thinking too narrowly. Maybe new technologies
>>>will get less visually/immersively sophisticated and more socially
>>>inclusive than social media suggests. Outside the English speaking
>>>internet and our networked media art world there is a plethora of media
>>>platforms in use for political and social activism. The new phenomenal
>>>Spanish Podemos political party is built from an online member base -
>>>transparently crowdfunded, a Citizens Assembly, Agora voting, utube
>>>broadcasts, online circles disussing policy, and bringing forth the
>>>party
>>>agendas and policies.
>>>http://podemos.info/
>>>http://wire.novaramedia.com/2014/11/8-reflections-on-the-rise-and-rise-o
>>>f
>>>-
>>>podemos/
>>>
>>>And in Argentina the Net Party co-founded in May 2012 by Pia Mancini,
>>>and
>>>run from her laptop on the go, have created DemocracyOS, an open-source
>>>platform for voting and political debate. It works on smart phone,
>>>tablet
>>>and laptop - anyone can download, install and repurpose much like
>>>WordPress blogging software. Its now being used in Tunisia as well.
>>>http://democracyos.org
>>>https://www.ted.com/talks/pia_mancini_how_to_upgrade_democracy_for_the_i
>>>n
>>>t
>>>ernet_era?embed=true
>>>
>>>more later./..
>>>
>>>Melinda
>>>
>>>On 26 Feb 2015, at 10:47 am, B. Bogart <ben at ekran.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>>> Thanks to Renata and Melida for the extra context around empyre's
>>>> history and the motivations behind it. Looking at the archives I've
>>>> kept, it appears I've been lurking on empyre since 2006, which would
>>>> have been the year I started my graduate studies. I see I first
>>>> participated in 2008 and off and on since then. In the spirit of
>>>> vulnerability I admit I've been quite intimidated by the list, largely
>>>> because of the academic language and references I have not read. I was
>>>> at ISEA 2011 but did not have the guts to come out to the empyre
>>>> get-together in person. I can't quite explain my recent and consistent
>>>> burst of activity on here, perhaps my own language has changed and
>>>>I've
>>>> become that which had intimated me so. This certainly involves an
>>>> interesting question of access, not just in terms of tools and
>>>>technical
>>>> requirements, but also in terms of knowledge and language.
>>>> 
>>>> I really appreciate the mailing-list format for a lot of the
>>>>motivations
>>>> that have been mentioned, access and openness outside of a corporate
>>>> context being the most important to me personally. If this was a
>>>> facebook group I would not be involved. While I have been eroded to a
>>>> degree in terms of my participation on social media, but still find it
>>>>a
>>>> problematic space for many different reasons and certainly can't say
>>>>I'm
>>>> committed, let alone addicted or dependent.
>>>> 
>>>> I used to be on the Art and Robotics Group, a listserv hosted at
>>>> Interaccess in Toronto that focused on robotics, but also electronics,
>>>> video and other technically oriented art practises. It seems to have
>>>> started around 1998, and looks to have ended in 2008 or so. Looking at
>>>> the archives
>>>> 
>>>>(https://web.archive.org/web/19980615000000*/http://www.interaccess.org
>>>>/
>>>>a
>>>>rg/arg-list)
>>>> it's quite an assortment of the whose who in electronic media art in
>>>>Canada.
>>>> 
>>>> Randall Packer wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> "That said, the tools available today are far more favorable for
>>>> discussion revolving around new media art and theory, in which
>>>>examples
>>>> of work can be more integrated and woven into the discourse."
>>>> 
>>>> I don't think hyperlinks are a significant barrier to the
>>>>incorporation
>>>> of new media art on a mailing-list. I think they give more control to
>>>> the reader by giving them a choice to follow links or not. At least
>>>>for
>>>> me, who keeps his machines for as long as possible, it's nice not to
>>>> have to deal with an unrequested barrage of images, video and animated
>>>> GIFs. As I have already said, I think we can attain some virtuosity in
>>>> older tools, and perhaps we can only understand their implications
>>>>once
>>>> they are old or "obsolete".
>>>> 
>>>> There is also an interesting question of identity here. We talked
>>>>about
>>>> gender identity in terms of disclosing one's gender online, but then
>>>> there is also the question of naming. Do we use our "real" names? Do
>>>>we
>>>> have to? I wonder about this mailing-list as an outlet for a
>>>>particular
>>>> aspect of identity (e.g. the art scholar persona) that may not exist
>>>>in
>>>> other spaces, online or offline. On the question of anonymity, what
>>>> would a 4chan for media art discussions look like?
>>>> 
>>>> Randall, I do think the proposal for a RSS network of wordpress sites
>>>>is
>>>> a interesting idea and I also think that if empyre did need to
>>>> transition away from a mailing-list, that such an approach would be a
>>>> promising direction. I suppose there is one potential issue with
>>>>empyre
>>>> and that is its hosted somewhere centrally, its not distributed across
>>>> the world the way a network of sites could be. Interaccess no longer
>>>> seems to have any reference to the Art and Robotics Group on its
>>>> website; if it was not for archive.org, that history would be lost
>>>> (except in the the memories of the members). So what is the role and
>>>> importance of the empyre archives, what is the role of centralized
>>>> archives and management?
>>>> 
>>>> Aside: The machine I'm typing on right now is from about 2003, As the
>>>> years go by I forget to update its age in my mind. In fact, it's so
>>>>old
>>>> that others are throwing away (hopefully recycling) computers that are
>>>> faster than this one. The greatest strength of using an old machine as
>>>> your primary computer is that the newer machines always feel new and
>>>> fast. It's like getting a new computer every time I turn one of the
>>>>new
>>>> machines on. I think this keeps me humble. Of course this is feasible
>>>> because I use GNU/Linux and not stuck on the continuous upgrade train
>>>> Microsoft and Apple depend on.
>>>> 
>>>> Ben
>>>> 
>>>> On 15-02-25 01:41 PM, Renate Terese Ferro wrote:
>>>>> Our current moderating team has discussed the possibility of
>>>>>transitioning
>>>>> -empyre- over to a blog based site.  We have collectively decided
>>>>>thus
>>>>>far
>>>>> to keep it as a list serve for the many reasons you list but safety
>>>>>was
>>>>> not one of them. Many of our subscribers are avid readers but choose
>>>>>to be
>>>>> lurkers and do not post because they fear being judged or perhaps
>>>>>they
>>>>> feel that more responsive writing and discussion may be held against
>>>>>them
>>>>> at some point in the future.  Our mission remains though as often as
>>>>> possible to curate a wide-variety of viewpoints and topics and to be
>>>>>as
>>>>> inclusive as is possible. We encourage all of our guests not to post
>>>>> previously published papers or long written conference papers so that
>>>>> discussion is welcomed and anyone who feels up to it will join in the
>>>>> discussion.   The hope for a space that can and will work out new
>>>>> potentials is a utopia but I think most of us do not want to let go
>>>>>of
>>>>> that ideal. Our own list-serve acknowledges that the tension between
>>>>> writing as a performative gesture and one that is conversational,
>>>>>probing,
>>>>> vulnerable or giddy provides an interesting interstitial space. A
>>>>>space
>>>>> that can be informative but also one that is inquisitive and
>>>>>questioning.
>>>>> To manage -empyre- is a tremendous amount of work and we really do
>>>>>hope
>>>>> that younger empyreans will step up to take over some of the
>>>>>logistics of
>>>>> running the list-serv.  Melinda is -empyre- the longest-running
>>>>>list-serve
>>>>> on new media and networked culture?
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> empyre forum
>>>> empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>empyre forum
>>>empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>empyre forum
>>empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
>
>_______________________________________________
>empyre forum
>empyre at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au
>http://empyre.library.cornell.edu