rheo: 5 Horizons by Ryoichi Kurokawa

This video audiovisual installation is composed of 5 flat-panel displays and five multi-channel speakers, each panel connected to a mono channel sound, audio is synchronizing the video, while each panel acts independently, together the 5 panels create a sort of an ensemble. I was intending to use this work as an example in my research paper, in the paper that speaks about the fluidity of the New Media Object, then again, It was going to be hard to explain both process and the details and then place this work within the context of the paper. Kurokawa's piece is brilliant and the implementations it suggests, the independent yet self-contained units could be hard to imagine otherwise. check out the video, the quality is much better on the DVD, yet, it is an OK option for now.

Celluloïd-E by André Décosterd, Michel Décosterd / Cod.Act

While researching for the paper, I was watching the Prix Ars Electronica DVD (2010), and I saw the piece entitled "Celluloïd-E" by André Décosterd, Michel Décosterd / Cod.Act. Later from the description I realized that they have been searching mechanisms that capture and produce visible undulatory movements and try to link this movement with sound. Their resulted piece was a motorized pendulum that generates sounds while rotating and shifting in space. A sound sculpture that works.

Watch the video on the following link:

http://www.codact.ch/videos/cycloid/cycloid_video.html

Below are stills from the sculpture in motion.

ideas to film: grandmother's library

Reading about the museum and database > take pictures the different compartments of my grandmother's library > stitch the pictures > import to after effects > use slow camera movement to move closely between different compartments > the edge between different compartments could become an abstract canvas in motion.

DJ Spooky - on information - instrumental reason

DJ Spooky At TATE Modern London 2010 from Nonlineari.nteractive on Vimeo.

london futures: 1 Oct 2010 - 6 March 2011

A month ago, while at the Museum of London to see the light surgeons' video and and installation, I got into a room behind the Sackler café showing an exhibition called 'London Futures', mainly manipulated landscapes in London describing what the city will look in the future under the global warming context. The exhibition is lasting until next March, it's a good opportunity to see it. There's an ironical sense of humor in the images!
Below is a section copied from the Museum of London's website:

A display of 14 arresting images will be on display at the Museum of London from 1 October 2010 to 6 March 2011.

Like postcards from the future, familiar views of the capital have been digitally transformed by GMJ (external link) illustrators Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones.

The display brings home the full impact of global warming, food scarcity, rising sea levels and how all Londoners will need to innovate and adapt to survive.

Examples of the striking images that will be on show include Parliament Square put to work as a rice paddy, ice skating down the Thames, Buckingham Palace surrounded by a sea of shanty housing and the Gherkin occupied by thousands of eco-refugees highlight the shocking realities we could face.

Listen to our soundtrack inspired by this display

We have created a playlist on Spotify (external link) to accompany this display which takes its inspiration from the images and possible outcomes of climate change on London. Click here (external link) to listen and post reviews and additional suggestions via our Facebook and twitter pages.

feedback on research question and abstract version 4

Tuesday's session was a tutorial, I got feedback and approval on the last version of the research question and abstract.
So to recap, it sounds very good and Andy's advice is simple: keep the boundaries as defined in the abstract and just write
expand definitions etc. 'fluidity' should be defined early on for example.
me: I did include a little paragraph about objects and museum
"The ‘physical’ object in the creative industry was criticized in the museum environment. Museum and objects is a vast topic, the paper’s restriction will not allow giving it justice. However, within the context approached here, and to back up Mark Leckey’s vision of the physicality dissolving, Theodore W. Adorno in his ‘Valéry Proust Museum’ declares the death of the object in the museum when he brings in the German word ‘museal’ and connects it to the word ‘museum’."
so mainly just one example and am skipping the rest of the topic to stay focused
feedback: it sounds like I have worked hard over the past week to really get your idea defined and this is a huge transformation
me: I think i started the whole paper in reverse, that is I read a lot before coming up with the question, should have been the other way around, I would have saved a lot of time
feedback: there is no right way to be honest - sometimes you need to read alot to get inspiration / focus
it offers you poosibilities beyond the immediate imagination
me: is it normal to feel that it's actually combining material to fit the main question? i am barely writing, it's more collecting the notes in a logical way, like introducing what is going to be cited and then leading the way to the next point
feedback: thats the way to do it then you re-write ensuring there is a flow
just make sure your collection of data is following a pattern that will allow for the development fo the argument and discourse
me: I had hard time figuring who worked on the "wholistic" idea, then one day i was able to chase 3 good references that I have read earlier but didn't spot them since i was focusing on the bigger topic. I am happy with this finally
feedback: you sound in good spirits on this, my advice is keep writing while it lasts and enjoy the process, the other issue is really to suggets you just get this going, get it finished asap so you can focus on your practice
do you think this essay will inform your practice much?
me: sure it will, i even have 'notes to self' file on the side
every other note is generating visuals for the practice
like the idea of filming my grandmother's library, with books in the background and all the frames of the whole family (like 3 generations) in the foreground
and the idea of having the show (maybe, if it does fit within the budget), mapped on a building
like a live show on a building, but this requires huge budget for the projector and the structure
so am not thinking about these logistics, but it's definitely paper generated ideas
feedback: ok yes that could be complex and expensive - however a digital recreration of a space could be a very interesting development
it would allow you to be inventive with the recording and recreation of the space
me: but things are making sense out of this, autobiography was not coined earlier, and the idea of trying to get a whole narrative is now rejected in my head, but with a back up argument

Revisiting the research paper - Version 4

Transitional digital objects: Fluidity in compositing an autobiography or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper explores the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott coined the term ‘transitional objects’; it travels around the theme object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, “a new media object” could be “variable, mutable, liquid” as per Manovich’s definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper questions whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual writing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part is dedicated to look at the fluidity of digital objects through observing and relating theories and artworks of practitioners who have investigated the theme object (1970s onward); Hollis Frampton doubts the object’s third dimensionality on the screen, Sherry Tuckle emphasizes the emotional in objects, the Cult of Less upload their material lives on external hard drives and online services platforms, and Michael Craig-Martin challenges belief through a glass of water, a shelf and a printed text in his sculpture “An Oak Tree”.

The second part is focused on autobiography in the digital realm. Different autobiographical manifestations come together to reach the final conclusion later; Mark Amerika speaks of the “technomadic” and the “hyperimprovisational narrative artist” in Meta/Data, and Marcel Proust gives a lesson in generative autobiographical storytelling and involuntary memory in his book “In Search of Lost Time”, specifically the episode of the Madeleine.

The conclusion is preceded by notes on ‘recollection’ (Mark Freeman) and the ‘wholistic fictionalization of the past’ (Michel Foucault) as well as Nietsche’s statement of ‘the whole’ that ‘no longer lives at all: it is composed, calculated, artificial, a fictitious thing’.

The findings of the paper affirm the fluidity of autobiographical visual writing through transitional digital objects as well as the failure of creating the portrait of the whole but do not judge the latter conclusion as necessarily inconvenient.

Revisiting the research paper - Version 3

Revisiting the research paper:

The research question:

Transitional digital objects:

Fluidity in compositing an autobiography

or a failure to create a portrait of the whole?

Abstract:

The paper should explore the transitional aspect of digital objects in relation to autobiography. D.W. Winnicott coined the term ‘transitional objects’, it travels around the theme object and fantasy. The paper assumes the fluid nature of digital objects, “a new media object” could be “variable, mutable, liquid” as per Manovich’s definition. Placing autobiography as the aim from transitional digital objects manipulation, the paper will question whether the fluidity will act as a facilitator to autobiographical visual writing or will it fail to create a portrait of the whole?

The first part will be dedicated to look at the fluidity of the digital objects through the work of theoreticians and practitioners who have worked on the object theme; doubting the third dimensionality on screen by Hollis Frampton, “emotional objects” of Sherry Tuckle, the Cult of Less’s initiative to upload their lives on external hard drives and online services platforms, and challenging belief in Michael Craig-Martin’s “An Oak Tree”.

The second part will be focused on autobiography in the digital realm. Exploring the “technomadic” and the “hyperimprovisational narrative artist” of Mark Amerika, Nietsche’s concept of “the whole no longer lives at all: it is composed, calculated, artificial, a fictitious thing”, Marcel Proust’s autobiography triggered by the “Madeleine”…

Mark Freeman in “Rewriting the Self: History, Memory, and Narrative” suggests linking autobiography to recollection and development:

“'re' makes reference to the past, 'collection' makes reference to a present act, an act, as we put it earlier, of gathering together what might have been dispersed or lost. Framed another way, the word recollection holds within it reference to the two distinct ways we often speak about history: as the trail of past events or 'past presents' that have culminated in now and as the act of writing, the act of gathering them together, selectively and imaginatively, into a followable story…”

Whereas Foucault considers “a great deal more that is accidental in both history in general and in our own life histories in particular than we might wish to avow. Perhaps we have reverted too often to a kind of wholistic fictionalization of the past, imposing unity and continuity on that which doesn't deserve it.”

hollis frampton's nostalgia (1971)

Hollis Frampton, USA 1971, 36’

Excerpt taken from the tate modern website.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/hollisframptonnostalgia5254.htm

"American artist and writer Hollis Frampton's film overturned the conventional narrative roles of words and images. In his account of an artist’s transformation from photographer to filmmaker, Frampton burns photographs that he has taken and selected from his past, along with one found photograph. A calm voice-over tells a story about each image, but it’s about the next image that the audience will see, not the one shown. Confounding comprehension still further, the narration begins and ends during the photograph’s combustion so that smoke and ashes busy your eye while you are trying to make sense of the image and the narration, trying to remember the story to fit the next image, trying to remember the image to fit the story you are hearing."

And form the artist's website:

"In (nostalgia), Frampton is clearly working with the experience of cinematic temporality. The major structural strategy is a disjunction between sound and image. We see a series of still photographs, most of them taken by Frampton, slowly burning one at a time on a hotplate. On the soundtrack, we hear Frampton's comments and reminiscences about the photographs. As we watch each photograph burn, we hear the reminiscence pertaining to the following photograph. The sound and image are on two different time schedules. At any moment, we are listening to a commentary about a photograph that we shall be seeing in the future and looking at a photograph that we have just heard about. We are pulled between anticipation and memory. The nature of the commentary reinforces the complexity; it arouses our sense of anticipation by referring to the future; it also reminisces about the past, about the time and conditions under which the photographs were made. The double time sense results in a complex, rich experience." - Bill Simon

"In (nostalgia) the time it takes for a photograph to burn (and thus confirm its two-dimensionality) becomes the clock within the film, while Frampton plays the critic, asynchronously glossing, explicating, narrating, mythologizing his earlier art, and his earlier life, as he commits them both to the fire of a labyrinthine structure; for Borges too was one of his earlier masters, and he grins behind the facades of logic, mathematics, and physical demonstration which are the formal metaphors for most of Frampton's films." - P. Adams Sitney

"(nostalgia) is mostly about words and the kind of relationship words can have to images. I began probably as a kind of non-poet, as a kid, and my first interest in images probably had something to do with what clouds of words could rise out of them... I think there is kind of a shift between what is now memory and what was once conjecture and prophecy and so forth." - Hollis Frampton

"(nostalgia) is a film to look at and think about, not a film that seizes your mind and forces its sensations on you. It liberates the imagination rather than entrapping it. It raises questions about the nature of film, the tension between fact and illusion, between now and then. It advances our understanding of film magic, and for this I am grateful." - Standish Lawder

"(nostalgia), beginning as an ironic look upon a personal past, creates its own filmic time, a past and future generated by the expectations elicited by its basic disjunctive strategy." - Annette Michelson

hollis frampton's lemon

Frampton on Lemon:
"As a voluptuous lemon is devoured by the same light that reveals it, its image passes from the spatial rhetoric of illusion into the spatial grammar of the graphic arts."



For more about this project, check out the excerpt in the abstract for the research paper, taken out from the book "Kinomuseum - Towards an artists' cinema" edited by Mike Sperlinger & Ian White, a 2008 publication:
http://mayachamidigitalarts.blogspot.com/2010/11/abstract-v-2-to-be-revisited.html

tutorial - feedback on abstract

For the research paper, the abstract was followed by a tutorial session with andy, i need to reconsider and clarify many points, to recap:
- I am aiming to look at different artistic practices that shifted the object from its physical state to a narrative dimension, viewing artworks (in history, but stressing more on contemporary digital art related practicionners) who have worked on the object theme in narration and what are the implications?
- key example would be:
- the video lemon by Hollis Frampton: "Hollis Frampton worked on a video entitled "Lemon" where "a light moves slowly around the fruit describing it as defiantly three dimensional, touchable almost, until the light is entirely behind it, the fruit made into a perfect silhouette, three dimensions irreducibly made two, a flat shape that is nothing but a shadow of itself, a space of no light on the screen."
- and "The Cult of Less" who would sell everything they own except for anything that could store data and be used to digitally interact
- and the Tsunami collective who work on physicality of the connectivity
The relevance:
- Kelly Sutton from from "The Cult of Less" "cherishes online services" while Sherry Tuckle "cherishes objects" and describes them as "philosophy down to earth"
- My first attempt for this research paper is trying to understand or build a certain relationship between inanimate physical objects and objects that become data
- Andy suggests that this needs to be more prominant in the title
- is it about the dematerialisation of objects
- and how this process extends out knowledge of the the object
- and how narrative is affected by that
- seeing a physical object could generate narrative, seeing the same object as a photograph on facebook would generate different type of narrative
- I should define narrative in this context
- narrative for an object is about the relationship between it and its context: if you see a lemon on chopping board you can assume what the narrative is
- if the narrative is something from a individuals past it will not work as a straight narrative
- because the memories that trigger it are specific to you
- Function of the paper - its to discuss a specific issue within my practice
- as a paper it needs clarity and there is no room of interpretation
- I need to be specific and use citations to support my assertions
- I should read journaled articles, a good idea to familiarize myself with some as they are very different form books, they have a specific format, not just to emulate a style, but in the way information is ordered and imparted, it would help focus my idea
- Check out book called "Public Intimacy" by Guiliana Bruno, it discusses how museums build a narrative around objects
- Search for journaled articles within the terms used in my paper
- I need to understand them as this is what I need to produce
- The content of these papers is current and [assuming they are written now]
- In general, it's a nice idea you have a nice idea but it needs alot more ework to make this a objective assesment of the object and narrative
- stick with it - but make it objective - its an explanation/observation of a current state of affairs.

abstract v. 2 - to be revisited

Subjective Narrating of Objects

In my project an object (a football) triggers a whole narrative about economy, war, and entertainment.

In the research paper I will be looking at different artistic practices that shifted the object from its physical state to a narrative dimension.

Hollis Frampton worked on a video entitled "Lemon" where "a light moves slowly around the fruit describing it as defiantly three dimensional, touchable almost, until the light is entirely behind it, the fruit made into a perfect silhouette, three dimensions irreducibly made two, a flat shape that is nothing but a shadow of itself, a space of no light on the screen."

On a narrative note, Marcel Proust's Madeleine cookie triggers almost 180 pages of describing childhood memories in his autobiographical book "A la recherche du temps perdu" (Remembrance of Things Past): "And as soon as I had recognised the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents ... the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along

which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine."

Michael Craig-Martin's "An Oak Tree" is a glass of water standing on a shelf attached to the gallery wall next to which is a text arguing that it is an actual oak tree. In an interview with myartspace.com the artist says that "on one occasion when it (the oak tree artwork) was barred by Australian Customs officials from entering the country as vegetation, I was forced to explain it was really a glass of water ... an incident that ... extended into 'real life' the discussion about belief and doubt, and fact and fiction I was addressing in the work."

I will be exploring how different art practitioners have worked on narrating objects in different eras, thus examining the relationship between inanimate physical objects in everyday life and in museums and objects as data.

I have been reading about the cult of less, an initiative by a young software engineer, Kelly Sutton, to get rid of everything he owns by digitizing all his possessions, and then keeping the few cherished objects, selling the ones that could benefit other people and ship the rest of the goods he owns but don’t interest him.

In a BBC interview, Kelly is described as the '21st-Century minimalist’; he says he “got rid of much of his clutter because he felt the ever-increasing number of available digital goods have provided adequate replacements for his former physical possessions.” He got rid of most of his assets, apart from his iPad, Kindle, laptop and a few other items, replacing his actual records with mp3s, his photographs are now digitized and uploaded on Flickr, he credits his external hard drives and online services like Hulu, Facebook, Skype and Google Maps for allowing him to lead a minimalist life.

I will be stressing more on the today's digitized data of objects and looking on how narrative is affected by that matter.