[-empyre-] Week 2 of the April 2018 discussion: New Media Documentary Practice

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Hi Garrett,

"... Document in new media is simply an agreed dumbed down term for the
benefit of communicating - similar to desktop as I mentioned and one of my
own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'..."

Your description has the kind of naivety that often plagued the thinking
around digital technology. A code is not a neutral term denoting merely
convenience ("simply... a dumbed down term for the benefit of
communicating..." ) but a structure of knowledge (and potentially of power)
with epistemological, social, political consequences. "Convenience" has
often turned out to be a bait, a Trojan horse.

Ciao,
Murat

On Mon, Apr 16, 2018 at 11:12 AM, Dale Hudson <dmh2018 at nyu.edu> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Excellent point, Garrett.
>
> I’m interested in this shift from analogue to digital when document no
> longer become as significant as code. I’m wondering whether it help move
> discussion on documentary away from representation towards operation.
>
>
> On Apr 16, 2018, at 13:07, Garrett Lynch <garrett at asquare.org> wrote:
>
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> For us, code is not a document.  Document suggests a singular 'thing' or
> at least a group of things in proximity and closely held together.  The
> nature of code is that it can't be thought of as a document, physical or
> 'real' analogies don't work well.  Even the simplest type of code, say for
> example HTML (which is technically not code but has some of the same
> qualities) incorporates whole other 'documents' (e.g. images), parts of
> other documents (e.g. classes and functions) and those can be distributed
> anywhere when you factor in a network.  Document in new media is simply an
> agreed dumbed down term for the benefit of communicating - similar to
> desktop as I mentioned and one of my own best loved/most hated, 'virtual'.
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 6:34 PM, Dale Hudson <dmh2018 at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Thanks, Luke and Garrett, for this discussion.
>
> I agree about the shortcomings in reducing operational to optical. If
> anything, the foregrounding of the operation of coding and transcoding
> should heighten our awareness of the mechanical and chemical operations to
> capture and render analogue images.
>
> I’ve been interested in new media (for lack of a better term)
> documentaries (also for lack of a better term) that instruct users in how
> data is tagged, sorted, and rendered into information, as well as the
> structural limitations to the kinds of information that can be rendered.
>
> I’ve also been interested in documentaries that emerge in different
> iterations, conforming to the limitations of a particular venue but then
> morphing for other venues. This variation also seems important as a mode of
> instruction that teaches critical practices of “interacting” with digital
> media.
>
> In terms of documentary’s relationship with the visual, I have colleagues
> who work in documentary poetry and theater. For them written or audio
> testimony is a document.
>
> I am interested to know what people think (or whether people think) of
> code as a “document.”
>
> Best,
> Dale
>
>
>
> --
> regards
> Garrett
> _________________
> Garrett at asquare.org
> http://www.asquare.org/
>
> Current events and soon:
>
> Real Virtuality The Networked Art of Garrett Lynch:
> http://realvirtuality.peripheralforms.com/
>
> A network of people who attended an exhibition and contributed to the
> creation of this work
> http://asquare.org/work/peoplenetwork/
>
> Pick up a postcard and participate at any of the following galleries:
> Aksioma Institute for Contemporary Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Bannister
> Gallery (Rhode Island, USA), Centro ADM (Mexico City, Mexico), Centro de
> Cultura Digital (Mexico City, Mexico), Gallery XY (Olomouc, Czech
> Republic), Gedok (Stuttgart, Germany), Guest Room (North Carolina, USA),
> Human Ecosystems (Rome, Italy), Kunst Museum (Stuttgart, Germany),
> Laboratorio Arte Alameda (Mexico City, Mexico), Le Wonder (Bagnolet,
> France), MUTE (Lisbon, Portugal), NYU Art Gallery (Abu Dhabi, United Arab
> Emirates), Open Signal (Portland, USA), Plymouth Arts Centre (Plymouth,
> England), The Gallery at Plymouth College of Art (Plymouth, England),
> Transfer Gallery (New York, USA), Upfor Gallery (Portland, USA), Watermans
> (London, England), Wilhelmspalais (Stuttgart, Germany), WOWA (Riccione,
> Italy), ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany)
>
> Best of Luck with the Wall (variant) @ European Media Art Festival, Report
> - notes from reality (Osnabrueck, Germany) 18/04 - 21/05/2018
> https://www.emaf.de/en/index.html
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20180416/a1a659a3/attachment.html>