RHIZOME DIGEST: 1.10.03

discussion

Posted Jan. 9 2003 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 1.10.03

RHIZOME DIGEST: January 10, 2003 Content: +editor's note+ 1. Rachel Greene: Reminder from Rhizome +opportunity+ 2. Ryan Griffis : new media job opp. @ stanford 3. Annette Weintraub: two faculty positions +announcement+ 4. The Irish Museum of Modern Art: Irish Museum of Modern Art Net Art Open 2003 call for submission +work+ 5. turbulence.org: New Commission – xurban_collective's "Knit++" 6. Etienne Cliquet: hiddenCam +scene report+ 7. valerie lamontagne: Biennale de Montréal 2002 -> Review +comment+ 8. Tom Sherman: Artificial Perception as Reality Check +feature+ 9. Brett Stalbaum: Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art [2/5] + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 1.10.03 From: Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org) Subject: Reminder from Rhizome A reminder that Rhizome's new membership policy takes effect next Wednesday, January 15, 2003. We hope all Rhizomers can make contributions of $5 or more. Paypal and Secure credit card transactions can be made online, and we accept checks, money orders or cash mailed to Rhizome.org, 180 Varick Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10014. What's in store for Rhizome members? A sketch of planned enhancements to the Rhizome web site can be found here: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.rhizome.org/object.rhiz?13928">http://www.rhizome.org/object.rhiz?13928</a> Thanks in advance for your support, and beat the lineup for rhizome.org email addresses (for those who give $10 or more) by making your contribtion sooner rather than later: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support/">http://rhizome.org/support/</a> – Rachel + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 1.7.03 From: Ryan Griffis (grifray@yahoo.com) Subject: new media job opp. @ stanford Media Artist STANFORD UNIVERSITY The Department of Art and Art History intends to make an appointment at the level of Assistant Professor with the start date of September, 2003. We seek a media artist working in video, web, or interactive installation. Interdisciplinary artists whose theoretical and research focus will serve as a bridge between our program and other areas within the university are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate must clearly articulate a broad knowledge of the historical and theoretical issues of contemporary visual art and culture, including the issues and problems particular to new media. This faculty member will teach a core group of undergraduate courses reflective of his/her expertise, act as critic and seminar leader in the MFA Program, and work with faculty colleagues in integrating all studio practices. MFA plus substantial exhibition record and proven teaching ability required. A/D February 1, 2003. Send letter of application with a statement on the development and direction of your work and a description of your approach to teaching, CV, portfolio with SASE for its return, and the names, addresses and email address of 3 referees to support your candidacy to: Studio Search Committee, Department of Art and Art History, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-2018. Stanford is committed to equal opportunity and affirmative action employment and encourages women and minorities to apply. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 1.7.03 From: Annette Weintraub <weintraub@ccny.cuny.edu> Subject: two faculty positions Assistant/Associate Professor, Tenure Track Digital Photography and Photography, The City College of New York, Department of Art PVN #:fy1608 Closing Date: 02/10/03 Duties and Responsibilities: Tenure track position in Art at the Assistant or Associate professor level, subject to budgetary approval. The successful candidate will be expected to help integrate traditional dark room photography and digital imaging disciplines in Art Department offering BA degree with area specializations in studio art and BFA in Electronic Design and Multimedia. He or she will also expand the undergraduate curriculum in digital imaging as well as teach foundation photography; and participate in development of digital imaging facilities. Consultation on BFA thesis presentations and participation in the publishing and design activities of the Robinson Center for Graphic Arts and Communication Design, as well as substantial student advisement, are also required. Requirements: M.F.A. required, M.F.A in Digital Photography preferred; strong record of professional achievement with active exhibition record/commercial practice; familiarity with contemporary theory and new media criticism; a minimum of one year of college teaching beyond graduate assistantships; and strong organizational and administrative skills, also required. Salary range: $35,031-$77,529 commensurate with qualifications and experience To apply: Send CV, a statement of teaching/design philosophy; visual documentation of your own work and twenty samples of student work in slides or on CD or disk, and the names, addresses and phone numbers of three (3) professional references postmarked by the closing date to: Professor Ellen Handy, Chair (include PVN#) Art Department The City College, CUNY Convent Avenue at 138th St. New York, NY 10031 The City College of New York has a strong institutional commitment to the principle of diversity. In that spirit, we are particularly interested in receiving applications from a broad spectrum of people, including women and under-represented groups. Upon request, reasonable accommodations will be provided for individuals with disabilities. All candidates must meet IRCA employment eligibility requirements for appointment. AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/IRCA/AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT EMPLOYER ________________ Assistant/Associate Professor, Tenure Track 3D Modeling and Digital Media The City College of New York, Department of Art PVN #: fy1610 Closing Date: 02/10/03 Duties and Responsibilities: Tenure track position in Art in three-dimensional modeling, rendering and animation at the Assistant or Associate Professor level, subject to budgetary approval. Develop and expand undergraduate courses in 3D imaging in Art Department offering BA degree with area specializations in studio art and BFA in Electronic Design and Multimedia; with knowledge of Maya (Macintosh platform). The successful candidate may also teach courses in other aspects of digital media. Consultation on BFA thesis presentations and participation in the publishing and design activities of the Robinson Center for Graphic Arts and Communication Design; substantial student advisement and program development, also required. Requirements: M.F.A. in 3D Design/3D Animation; a strong record of professional achievement with active exhibition record/commercial practice; familiarity with contemporary theory and new media criticism; a minimum of one year of college teaching beyond graduate assistantships; and strong organizational and administrative skills. Salary range: $35,031-$77,529 commensurate with qualifications and experience. To apply: Send CV, a statement of teaching/design philosophy; visual documentation of your own work and twenty samples of student work on CD or disk or other digital media; and he names, addresses and phone numbers of three (3) professional references postmarked by the closing date to: Professor Ellen Handy, Chair (include PVN#) Art Department The City College, CUNY Convent Avenue at 138th St. New York, NY 10031 The City College of New York has a strong institutional commitment to the principle of diversity. In that spirit, we are particularly interested in receiving applications from a broad spectrum of people, including women and under-represented groups. Upon request, reasonable accommodations will be provided for individuals with disabilities. All candidates must meet IRCA employment eligibility requirements for appointment. AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY/AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/IRCA/AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT EMPLOYER + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 1.6.03 From: The Irish Museum of Modern Art (info@irishmuseumofmodernart.com) Subject: Irish Museum of Modern Art Net Art Open 2003 call for submission ANNOUNCING THE IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART NET ART OPEN 2003 CALL FOR ENTRIES Following the success of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's Net.Art open 2002 we are pleased to announce the call for entries for the IMMA Net.Art open 2003. I would like to take this opportunity to invite net artists to participate in this imitative. As it was last year this year's exhibition will be uncurated, or rather, curated by the net.art community. In other words all entries will be included in the exhibition. To participate in this exhibition please mail your name (this should be the name you want to appear on the exhibition website) and url to info@irishmuseumofmodernart.com . As a new feature this year all artists who wish to participate MUST also recommend a work of net.art by another artist. This will be included in the exhibition as their recommendation. We would prefer that the recommendation be for a piece that is relatively unknown in the net.art world rather then an old favourite that we've all seen before and it is certainly not a call for your favourite net art work. REMEMBER Please do not submit portfolio sites for painting or graphic/ web design. The URL you submit should link as directly as possible to the work submitted. Works included in the Net.Art Open 2002 are not eligible. Only one work per person/group may be submitted. Every entry must include a recommendation for a work by another artist. Last Day for Submission is the 20th January 2003. Thank you for your time Arthur X Doyle Director of Virtual Curating The Irish Museum of Modern Art ——————————————————- The Irish Museum of Modern Art info@irishmuseumofmodernart.com <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.irishmuseumofmodernart.com">http://www.irishmuseumofmodernart.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 1.6.03 From: turbulence.org@verizon.net Subject: New Commissioned Work on Turbulence: xurban_collective's "Knit++" For Immediate Release January 6, 2003 New Commissioned Work on Turbulence xurban_collective's "Knit++" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/Works/Knit%2B%2B/index.htm">http://turbulence.org/Works/Knit%2B%2B/index.htm</a> xurban_collective's "Knit++" draws an analogy between home workers of the 18th century (knitters) and 'net workers' of the 21st century. Despite the fact that knitters labored with the material, and networkers with the immaterial, their struggles within the capitalistic production framework are comparable. The knitting analogy is multi-layered: the project allows the user to literally knit each of the collective's individual works together. Each of its members (currently ten) brings a different skill to the project, for example, photography, video, VRML, and sound. The layers are knit together with a pattern generator in an ongoing and interactive process. Knit++ is based on the concept of interlocking loops that form non-hierarchical distribution patterns of people and places. Knit++ is a work in process: the collective will continue to add new pieces over a period of time. The project was recently exhibited as an installation-knit ++//off the book spaces//-@ Istanbul Tuyap Conference Center (pope&imam), November 2002. xurban_collective bio: xurban is an online/offline collective dedicated to art and politics. xurban attempts to motivate/provoke theoretical/political discussions and online art works. Since its founding xurban has transformed the data flow between its terminal points-New York, Istanbul, Ankara, Amsterdam-and fed it back to the decentralized circulation of the world wide web. At the same time it has tackled the problems of transferring these expressions to the physical exhibition space. xurban have realized numerous site-specific installations with online components, including: "Catastrophe/On the Outside Same As Inside," (pope&imam), Kasa gallery, Istanbul, October 2000. "Confessions: Strong From East-EastWest, "(pope&imam): -Turkish Pavilion @ Venice Biennial, Venice, Italy, June 2001 -Borusan Art Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey, December 2001 -Bonn KunstMuseum, Bonn, Germany, December 2001 "Central Intelligence," (pope&imam), Bonn KunstMuseum, Bonn, Germany, December 2001. For more information about Turbulence's commissioning program, please visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://turbulence.org/guidelines.html">http://turbulence.org/guidelines.html</a> or write turbulence.org@verizon.net + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Mute, issue 25, is out this week. Conceptually and volumetrically expanded, (involves more cartographic & artists' projects & has doubled the pages), this new bi-annual volume is phat. Articles on: WarChalking, the Artists' Placement Group and Ambient Culture and more. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com">http://www.metamute.com</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 1.6.03 From: Etienne Cliquet (teleferique@wanadoo.fr) Subject: hiddenCam HiddenCam (Mouse movies) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.teleferique.org/equipment/hiddenCam/">http://www.teleferique.org/equipment/hiddenCam/</a> ————————————————— HiddenCam is recording the mouse action of visitors on the homepage of our server and save it to little sequence in database. ————————————————— At the beginning, i wanted to find a realistic title close to early installations by Dan Graham like : "Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay", or the first name of the mouse given by Douglas Engelbart: "X-Y position indicator for a display system " (1970). Finally i've chosen hiddenCam because it refers to erotic webcam, the desire of control (internet stats). ————————————————— Etienne Cliquet <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.teleferique.org">http://www.teleferique.org</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 7. Date: 12.21.02 From: valerie lamontagne (valerie@mobilegaze.com) Subject: Biennale de Montréal 2002 -> Review —> Biennale de Montréal 2002 <—- The Centre International d'Art Contemporain de Montréal's (CIAC) recently held its third edition of the Biennale de Montréal (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2002/index.htm">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2002/index.htm</a>) featuring a selection of web art works. The CIAC, a Montreal-based arts institution, has been active in promoting web art since 1997. The Electronic Magazine of the CIAC (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/magazine">http://www.ciac.ca/magazine</a>), founded by Sylvie Parent who was its editor from 1997 to 2001 and curator of the first two Biennales (1998 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale/index.html">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale/index.html</a> + 2000 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2000/">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2000/</a>), has been a major force in promoting and presenting web art in Montréal and to the French and English communities of Canada as well as internationally. Over the years the magazine has featured interviews with, and works by, many of the most important Canadian and international web artists of the recent years. This third Biennale de Montréal continues in the CIAC's commitment to including web art in an event which predominantly features traditional forms of art making such as painting, drawing, photo, and installation. The web component of the Biennale was unfortunately only featured online and not in Quartier Éphèmere's "Foundry Darling" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.quartierephemere.org/fonderie/index.html">http://www.quartierephemere.org/fonderie/index.html</a>) located in Old Montréal where the exhibition was held. This former factory was recently beautifully renovated by the Montréal-based architectural collective Atelier In Situ (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.insitu.qc.ca/">http://www.insitu.qc.ca/</a>), whose practice is focused on the integration of digital technology into historical architectural sites. Although this was a missed opportunity to display the works of the selected web artists in a more visually expanded installation format, the selection of the web works in "Aesthetics = Ethics" curated by Anne-Marie Boivert, the CIAC's current web art curator and editor of the Electronic Magazine were noteworthy for their colourful playfulness. The ten works selected for the show stem from conventions of play and identity politics. The first set of web works investigate the relationships forged online through the means of self-expression, communication and collectivity as displayed through the aegis of mediated identities. Many of the works are in fact developed from the notion of the self-portrait - expanding on the possibilities of reflexivity and self discovery. Stemming from the Biennale's main overarching theme "Life is life!…Pleasures, passions, emotions" the second set of web works are articulated around concepts of pleasure, escape and artifice. Self / Mediated Identities Anonymous' (Nino Rodriguez) "Portrait of the Artist as a Home Page" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/">http://www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/</a>) (USA, 2001) displays an endless series of home pages featuring quotes and photographs of "Ninos" on the internet. Like the endless interest groups online, the artist has created an association of commonalities which is based on name as identity, creating an endless stream of home page portraits. The "Ninos," linked by their mutual name, are here also index through their differences and particularities as we note each one's specificity. When Michael Danes' "The Body of Michael Danes" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mdaines.com/body/">http://www.mdaines.com/body/</a>) (Canada, 2000) was first launched it was immediately canonized within the history of web art as one of the first conceptual performance pieces done with the conventions of eBay. By placing "his body" on sale via the web, Danes' problematizes identity and ownership through a proposition that, though absurd on some levels, echoes a Blade Runner-esque intervention into e-commerce. In "Selbst-los/Self-less" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wolf-kahlen.de/">http://www.wolf-kahlen.de/</a>) (Germany, 1999) by Wolf Kahlen we are invited to collectively de-materialize the artist's portrait through our presence on his site. Every visit causing the pixilated destruction of his image is re-composed by the public's intervention. In a time where documents and memories are evanescent - the act of erasure/creation references a death through the digital apparatus, and hence the death of the "portrait" as a historical record. "Self-Portrait version 2.0" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.spv2.net/">http://www.spv2.net/</a>) (USA, 2001) by Brooke Singer was created as a data-mining-based portrait of the artist where we access personal and web-derived information about the artist. In a similar vein, "Electronic Soul Mirroring" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.e-sm.org/">http://www.e-sm.org/</a>) (USA/Italy, 2000) by Carlo Zanni (AKA Beta) equally accurately reflects our online identities by mirroring the contents of our personal computer hard drives to stand in as our virtual representation on the WWW. In a continuation of Beta's interest in identity construction - the self is the computer and vice versa. Pleasure / Artifice The second set of works, as mentioned, is more playful and colourful… Frédéric Durieu's "Experimental Zoo" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm">http://www.lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm</a>) (Belgium / France, 2001) permits us to intervene on a fabricated natural landscape with significant visual impact. Playfully offering up a Darwinian take on bio-manipulation, our actions in this psychedelic fauna and foe environment permits us to animate and play god with the featured puppet-like creatures, such as giraffes, penguins, mosquitoes +. Lia's "Re-Move" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.re-move.org/index.php">http://www.re-move.org/index.php</a>) (Austria, 2000-2) is focused on the drawing gesture in reference to the overriding presence of drawings in the Biennale. Here we are beckoned to compose from modernist-influence graphic animations such as lines, squares, dots etc. At once simply designed and effectively engaging, the results conjure up memories of lyrical etch-a-sketches and telephone doodles. "Nomad Lingo" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.year01.com/nomadlingo/door.html">http://www.year01.com/nomadlingo/door.html</a>) (Canada, 2000-1) developed over the course of one year by jJhave features poetic word animations; Jillian Mcdonald "Home Like No Place" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/projets/homelikenoplace/welcome.html">http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/projets/homelikenoplace/welcome.html</a>) (Canada, 2002) evokes Dorothy's journey in the land of Oz; and Tara Bethune-Leamen's "Virus Corp" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.studioxx.org/coprods/tara/index.html">http://www.studioxx.org/coprods/tara/index.html</a>) (Canada, 2001) features a anime-type animal based on a character from "Princess Mononoke" who imprints its benign traces a website of your choice. The two main themes of the exhibition - ethics and aesthetics (or identity and artifice) - are complementary in different ways. With the one set of works offering an escape from "reality" and the other from "self" the web remains a forum where identity is diverted, place is artifice and exchanges are hued in the nebulous light of the computer screen. Valerie Lamontagne – <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2002/index.htm">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2002/index.htm</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/magazine">http://www.ciac.ca/magazine</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale/index.html">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale/index.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2000/">http://www.ciac.ca/biennale2000/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.quartierephemere.org/fonderie/index.html">http://www.quartierephemere.org/fonderie/index.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.insitu.qc.ca/">http://www.insitu.qc.ca/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/">http://www.geocities.com/portraitoftheartistasahomepage/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mdaines.com/body/">http://www.mdaines.com/body/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.wolf-kahlen.de/">http://www.wolf-kahlen.de/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.spv2.net/">http://www.spv2.net/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.e-sm.org/">http://www.e-sm.org/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm">http://www.lecielestbleu.com/html/main_zoo2.htm</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.re-move.org/index.php">http://www.re-move.org/index.php</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.year01.com/nomadlingo/door.html">http://www.year01.com/nomadlingo/door.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/projets/homelikenoplace/welcome.html">http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/projets/homelikenoplace/welcome.html</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.studioxx.org/coprods/tara/index.html">http://www.studioxx.org/coprods/tara/index.html</a>) – —–> Ellipse. Art on the Web <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mdq.org/ellipse">http://www.mdq.org/ellipse</a> —–> MobileGaze: on-line culture. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mobilegaze.com">http://www.mobilegaze.com</a> —–> Matter + Memory: net.art exhibition <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mobilegaze.com/m+m">http://www.mobilegaze.com/m+m</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ 10-10-10! It's the 10th Anniversary New York Digital Salon issue of LEONARDO. 10 curators pick 10 works each for a top 100 survey of digital art. Order your copy of LEONARDO Volume 35 Number 5 @ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 8. Date: 1.9.03 From: (twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu) Subject: Artificial Perception as Reality Check Artificial Perception as Reality Check Thinking About MIT's Tangible Bits By Tom Sherman [this text was commissioned for and previously published in Horizon Zero, the webzine of the Banff Centre: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.horizonzero.ca">http://www.horizonzero.ca</a>] "Tangible Bits is an attempt to bridge the gap between cyberspace and the physical environment by making digital information (bits) tangible." –Hiroshi Ishii, from his Website: [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Tangible_Bts/projects.htm">http://www.tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Tangible_Bts/projects.htm</a>] Tangible Media Hiroshi Ishii started the Tangible Media research group and their ongoing Tangible Bits project in 1995, when he joined MIT's Media Laboratory [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.media.mit.edu/">http://www.media.mit.edu/</a>] as a professor of Media Arts and Sciences. Ishii relocated from Japan's NTT Human Interface Laboratories [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.ntt.co.jp/index_e.html">http://www.ntt.co.jp/index_e.html</a>] in Kyoto, where he had made his mark in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) in the early 1990s. I met Ishii when I visited his lab in 1997 while conducting research for Ars Electronica's FleshFactor [www.aec.at/fleshfactor/index.html] symposia and exhibitions. At the time, there was (as there still is) a lot of new renaissance hype coming out of MIT. But despite what anyone may have heard to the contrary, engineering still rules at MIT. To Ishii's credit, he doesn't pretend to be an artist. His research focus has always been on the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment. Ishii is an engineer interested in perception. That said, his use of written language to over-state the creative dimensions of Tangible Bits research sometimes verges on poetic hyperbole. [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Tangible_Bits/projects.htm">http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Tangible_Bits/projects.htm</a>] Seamless Surfaces By 1997 there was a steady stream of rhetorically sophisticated "literature" pouring out of the Tangible Media lab. The story begins with the shortcomings of computer interfaces to date. Graphic user interfaces (GUIs) - screens and keyboards and mice - prohibit people from using their higher, natural skills for sensing and interacting with their physical environments. Computers are currently anti-body. You can't touch the data you are working with, or use your body to move around it. But some day computing will be more accommodating to multiple intelligences [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.accelerated-learning.net/multiple.htm">http://www.accelerated-learning.net/multiple.htm</a>] - including bodily/kinesthetic and musical/rhythmic intelligences. Tangible Bits seeks "to build upon these skills by giving physical form to digital information, seamlessly coupling the dual worlds of bits and atoms." The idea of a "seamless" integration of digital language and devices into the physical domain is a central theme. One strategy for eliminating the "frame" separating computing from the rest of world is to spread digital information into the background. Ideally, hands-on, foreground interactions with computers will be informed by information lingering at the periphery of the user's senses. The Tangible Bits philosophy is anchored on the gestalt theory of Max Wertheimer. [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.enabling.org/ia/gestalt/gerhards/wert1.html">http://www.enabling.org/ia/gestalt/gerhards/wert1.html</a>] In all learning environments, context is important. According to the pervasive-computing scenario of Tangible Bits, in the near future we will live surrounded by things such as "interactive surfaces, whereby walls, desktops, ceilings, doors, windows, etc. become an active interface between the physical and virtual worlds." The rooms we live and work in, the cars we drive, the terrain, vegetation, and water we encounter, will all eventually yield digital information. Ishii's group "is seeking ways to turn each state of physical matter - not only solid matter, but also liquids and gases within everyday architectural spaces - into interfaces between people and digital information." Pervasive Prototypes These lofty goals have been substantiated in the somewhat primitive technical achievements of the Tangible Media Group to date. Throughout the 1990s and into the present, Ishii and his research associates (mostly MIT graduate students) have typically demonstrated half-a-dozen "tangible interface" prototypes a year. Their projects have resulted in curiosities like Audiopad, a real-time musical instrument comprised of movable pucks on a flat display surface. [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Audiopad/Audiopad.htm">http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Audiopad/Audiopad.htm</a>] Also, see Illuminating Clay, [www.tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/IlluminatingClay/Illuminating Clay] a computational landscape-modeling system featuring digital graphics projected over malleable putty. Without diminishing the difficulties of trying to close the great divide between atoms and bits, these devices are clearly master's thesis-sized projects in terms of achievement, and appear to be baby-steps in a rather gimmicky research field. My personal favourites include musicBottles, [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/musicBottles/musicBottles.htm">http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/musicBottles/musicBottles.htm</a>] wherein different parts in a musical arrangement are "played" by removing the caps from three transparent containers - this project is said to exploit "the emotional aspects of glass bottles." Also, LumiTouch, [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/LumiTouch/lumitouch.htm">http://tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/LumiTouch/lumitouch.htm</a>] a pair of picture frames networked so that they light up when long-distance lovers hold photographs of each other. The shallowness of these touchy-feely attempts to communicate emotional content only serve to undermine the Tangible rhetoric. The vulnerability of this research is its extreme literalness, its nuts and bolts lack of poetics. It is ironic that these hardware-based prototypes serve to deconstruct and demystify, rather than to strengthen, some of the group's best claims. Tangible Bits research is conducted by computer scientists and students in interdisciplinary teams (different species of engineers, cognitive psychologists, and so on). The profiles of these researchers generally reveal parallel, hobby-like interests in music and the visual arts, plus lots of hiking, camping, wind-surfing, and yoga. It's clear that being creative and pragmatic, killing two birds with one stone, is an art form in Ishii's lab. With the above criticism levied, it is hard to argue against the wisdom of developing dual, or multiple-purpose systems. And all these modest, thesis-level projects will eventually accrue into a significant engineering domain. MIT attracts brilliant scientists and students, and I have no doubt that there is more behind the Tangible Bits initiative than meets the eye. Just look at the wonderful promises. Perceptive Engineering Max Wertheimer said that we should seek to discover the underlying nature of things (the relationships between elements, both figure and ground). Ishii is a gestaltist, and he learned a great deal from the late Mark Weiser, [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser</a>] the brilliant former chief technologist at Xerox PARC. Weiser launched the idea of ubiquitous, or pervasive, computing. Mainframes gave way to personal computing, and computing will now move out into the physical environment, in what Weiser said would be an era of "calm technology" [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/Ubiqforum.html">http://www-sul.stanford.edu/weiser/Ubiqforum.html</a>] In other words, technology will recede into the background. Hiroshi Ishii has distilled Wertheimer and Weiser's thinking into the key research goals of Tangible Bits: develop interactive surfaces, couple atoms and bits (so that the surface of physical objects will reveal digital information), and move digital information into ambient media. (Background interfaces at the periphery of sense perception are absolutely key: again, context matters.) The extreme literalness which typifies the way engineers apply perceptual theory leads me to predict the next twist in Ishii's rhetorical narrative: If human perception depends entirely upon information in the environment (the Tangible Bits vision is a literal projection of the act of perception onto the environment), then the way we colour or distort the world in our internal cognitive processes can be over-written and ignored. Advertising agencies will love the idea of living rooms where every single surface reinforces a pitch! Perception in Ishii's model will end up being a direct consequence of the properties of the environment. The imagination, and our "memory" of prior learning, will actually be composed by the environment. We will slip into a sub-symbolic reality: a childlike state of sensual reverie. Rhetorical substantiation for such a vision may be obtained from two texts by J. J. Gibson: The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966), and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979). Gibson, in his theories of ecological psychology, stressed the importance of interaction: give and take between the organism and the environment. Active, physical learning, where major information is picked up by moving around and finding out what happens, is the guiding principle of Gibson's thinking. There's no question that today's GUIs pin us down, immobilizing our bodies, restricting our computing environment to a symbolic, physically inactive space. But what will happen to our internal, cognitive processes when we start slipping in and out of cyberspace by physically moving around: walking, running, jumping, bumping, and caressing? This is where the passion of engineers who love to hike and bike, windsurf and practice yoga, comes into play. —– Tom Sherman [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://ams.syr.edu/video/sher.html">http://ams.syr.edu/video/sher.html</a>] is an artist and theorist who splits his time between Port Mouton, Nova Scotia, and Syracuse, New York, where he teaches media art history, theory, and practice at Syracuse University's Department of Art Media Studies. [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://ams.syr.edu/">http://ams.syr.edu/</a>] His latest book, Before and After the I-Bomb: An Artist in the Information Environment, [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.banffcentre.ca/press/publications/ibomb.asp">http://www.banffcentre.ca/press/publications/ibomb.asp</a>] was published by the Banff Centre Press in 2002. Notes: 1. James Jerome Gibson's The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (1979) were both published by Boston's Houghton Mifflin. An extensive bibliography [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/bu/people/astros/gibson.htm">http://www.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de/bu/people/astros/gibson.htm</a>] of Gibson's work, as well as explanations of his Information Pickup Theory, [<a rel="nofollow" href="http://tip.psychology.org/gibson.html">http://tip.psychology.org/gibson.html</a>] are available online. 2. The artifacts and goals of the Tangible Media Group have been made even more graspable in the 1997 paper [www.tangible.media.mit.edu/papers/Tangible_Bits_CHI97/Tangible_Bits_CHI97.h tml] Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms by Hiroshi Ishii and Brygg Ullmer. A complete list of Tangible Bits interfaces is viewable on Tangible Media's projects page. 3. Unless otherwise noted, quotes from Hiroshi Ishii concerning Tangible Media and Tangible Bits have been taken directly from Ishii's Web site. [www.tangible.media.mit.edu/projects/Tangible_Bits/projects.htm] + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 9. Date: 12.23.02 From: Brett Stalbaum (beestal@cadre.sjsu.edu) Subject: Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art [2/5] Database Logic(s) and Landscape Art Brett Stalbaum, C5 corporation Surveyor: Precession of models and landscape [2/5] The participation of the landscape in human culture is increasingly understood through Global Information Systems. For example, the emerging discipline of archeological geophysics uses GIS data to explore the influence of geology on human political and economic history. [7] But the operational inversion of this statement is also true: political and economic history inflects (and often inflicts) itself on the landscape. For example geologists and civil engineers enlist geo-data to help physically reorganize the landscape; construction, mining, oil drilling, landfill, agriculture, railroads, urban planning, waterworks, dams and transportation are all endeavors that now prehend the landscape through the use of geo-data. The landscape's own data is a player in the systemization of our decision making. [8] Global information systems, including the C5 Landscape Database [9] and related tools, demonstrate precession of the model through processing data via semantically stable data models, over which processing yields information that allows the revelation of knowledge about the landscape which predicts our relation toward it. [image: Map of Mt. Diablo, California, UTM imager module, C5 Landscape database (2002)] (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.c5corp.com/raw_images/diablo.gif">http://www.c5corp.com/raw_images/diablo.gif</a>) The practical outcomes of this knowledge indicate that the landscape prehends to some degree its own modification by humanity. This concept seems counter-intuitive, but an example makes it straightforward. Dams, for example will be constructed in topographies and geologies that allow them to function as dams. [10] Data models lie in some position between a two way conversation between the cultural and the topographical that lead to actual modifications of the landscape. In autopoietic terms, the exploration of relations between topography and culture through informational interchange is beginning to reveal examples of structural coupling-like [11] behavior between them. To grasp this, it is important to understand that data has simultaneously become a catalyzing factor in the conversation, not merely an analytical tool for exploitation. This feedback loop alters the character of the human relationship to landscape from that of relatively unplanned domination to a somewhat more sensitive symbiosis. [12] Data and control systems provide a channel through which eco-systems are able to express an influence in favor of their own protection. [13] In addition, the landscape occasionally demands (or acquiesces to) a new bridge, water diversion, nuclear waste site or freeway interchange. Thus one of the problems that artists (and possibly scientists) working with landscape as data must deal with is the embeddedness of the precession of models in-between the political and the immanence of data as it is processed into information. This political dimension to the inquiry deals with mapping as a cultural production embedded within a set of scientific descriptors which drive our cultural relationship with the land. How can we begin to describe the complexities that emerge from this relationship? [image: Evidence of the cultural in landscape data, Memphis, TN.] (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.c5corp.com/raw_images/MEMP1.gif">http://www.c5corp.com/raw_images/MEMP1.gif</a>) Data, which is non-controversially real in an ontological sense, is now a formative influence on the actualization of the landscape through virtualization in information technology systems. The notion of virtual in this description is drawn from Deleuze's schema for describing multiplicities, as discussed by Delanda. [14] It does not refer to the interfacial notion of 'virtual reality', but rather to the actualization of reality through velocity vector fields (or tendencies to behave) that manifest themselves as actual (measurable) trajectories of physical systems as expressed in relational constraints between its vectors. The trajectories resulting from relative constraints tend to settle into consistent patterns of interaction with one another. Observations of velocity vectors and trajectories in actual systems allow phase portraits describing such systems to be embedded in simulated manifolds consisting of descriptors of the vectors and their trajectories. The phase portrait simply describes the interactions inherent in the actual system. Applied science utilizes this schema to model physical systems; analyzing behavior through repeated observations of actual physical systems, and then using computer models developed through the informatization of such observations into manifolds to animate vector descriptors into phase portraits. Through simulated manipulation of descriptors describing velocity vectors, scientists are able to model natural systems and predict complex behavior. The United States, for example, has ceased to physically test nuclear weapons, because these can be tested virtually with super-computer simulations. For Delanda and before him Deleuze, virtuality is not merely a contemporary artifact of computation, but rather identifies the proximity of concrete attractors, realities which attract the actualization of systems, and which for Delanda replaces essences in philosophy. It is specifically because the virtual is real (or more real than real) that it can be explored computationally, where for example Plato's ideal forms simply can not be computed. In other words, virtuality implies a relationship to the actualization of systems in concrete terms, not transcendental terms. The concreteness of attractors are demonstrated in "various long term tendencies of a system… which are recurrent topological features, which means that different sets of equations, representing quite different physical systems, may possess a similar distribution of attractors and hence, similar long-term behavior." [15] In more common Deleuzeian terms, attractors are abstract machines: general abstract processes (such as stratification, meshworks, blind replicators) that play an embedded role in the instantiation of a concrete actual. Simulations really help us study actual systems, including geology, watershed, landcover, and topography. Thus the virtual is defined in terms of attractors or actuators of the real, not the imaginary virtual reality worlds that have been the subject of so many art projects. Data is thus not unreal; it is a virtual reality that participates in instantiation. The mechanisms of data that participate in actualization can be discovered through modes of experimental exploration in virtual space. We might be tempted to infer that it is the information, knowledge, (and related opportunity) that can be mined from modeled data (in relation to the virtual), which play the catalytic role in the generation of the real landscape where humanity is involved, and to a large degree, this has been the case historically. In this view, the techniques of virtual science allow us to search for predictive scientific truths that can be rationally manipulated. But of course, there are perspectives that potentially make this inference problematic. We could, for example, pose a Marxist-semiotic analysis; positing that there exists parasitic cultural assumptions that cleave to (or are expressed in) data models (and thus the data collected), which are otherwise sincerely generated for scientific purposes. In other words, do notions of progress, development, land use, extraction of natural resources and other cultural or economic desires dictate the manifold, perhaps through omission of descriptors, based on the 'purpose' that the data is intentionally collected for? This could explain the subtle and perhaps even unintentional manipulation of science to either deny or confirm humanity's influence on global warming, to site just one well known example. Alternatively, data's role in the instantiation of the actual may be a matter of virtual informatic interrelations (or external relations between data sets), forming their own consensual domains [16] that heretofore have not yet been observed as such, but which potentially inflect the operation of actual systems via informational transfer between neighboring systems of interrelations. In other words, data interrelations may themselves be vectors that influence the trajectory of actual systems. This theory depends on the idea that data is not only real, but actual, and capable of actualization. Although it is likely that all of these issues are all interoperable to some degree, Joel Slayton hints at C5's orientation by posing the following: "These are factors of economic and political assessment which infer that database logic necessarily has to surpass… intentionalities. Are artists just going to do economic, rainfall and surveillance models, or does the question shift to other subject-less concerns of mere informatic relations? If so, what is the semiotic context?" [17] Subject-less (or non-semantic) informatic relations must express some form of semiotic-like behavior if actual (because actual systems can ultimately be signified, such as imaginary numbers), but would be difficult to penetrate from either the examination of their semiosis, (how do we observe a system when we don't know what questions to ask), and from the perspective of a language to express that which is after all non-semantic. "Clarity endlessly plunges into obscurity" [18] under such analytical circumstances. This is obviously a highly speculative territory, but if tactics to reveal such relations of data can be developed, and if they can be generalized, then we have a new understanding of database [19] that may account for the two way conversation between the cultural and the topographical, (or the genetic, the chemical, the quantum, etc.) C5 enters this terrain in explorative fashion though the semiotic context of our discipline (as artists), with landscape and its data as the object of study. [next installment: Mountainous: Semiotics, and the precession of semantic models] [7] For a good example, see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/projects/salem/">http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/projects/salem/</a> The GIS of "Salem Village in 1692" is part of an electronic Research Archive of primary source materials related to the Salem witch trials of 1692. [8] This is one aspect of C5's research into geo-data and technology in the landscape: allowing or encouraging alternative examples of potentially healthy and interesting 'revelation' on the part of the landscape to be fulfilled. [9] <a rel="nofollow" href="http://spike.sjsu.edu/~gis">http://spike.sjsu.edu/~gis</a> (Alpha) [10] This is even known to happen "naturally": <a rel="nofollow" href="http://perso.wanadoo.fr/nyos/dam/hazard.htm">http://perso.wanadoo.fr/nyos/dam/hazard.htm</a> [11] Maturana, Humberto R., and Varela, Francisco J., The Tree of Knowledge - The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, 1987 Shambhala Publications, Boston Massachusetts. Pg 75. "[A] history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems." [12] For example, data plays a significant role in decision making in the nascent movement to remove unneeded dams in the United States. [13] A good example can be found in accomplishments of the Mono Lake Committee founded by scientist David Gains in 1978, who used scientific data as the basis of the Committee's work to save the lake. It was the data that convinced the justice system that the lake needed to be better managed. [14] Delanda, Manuel Intensive Science & Virtual Philosophy, Continuum, 370 Lexington Ave, NY NY 2002, pg 36 [15] ibid 15 [16] Wittig, Geri, Expansive Order: Situated and Distributed Knowledge Production in Network Space, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.c5corp.com/research/situated_distributed.shtml">http://www.c5corp.com/research/situated_distributed.shtml</a> [17] Quoted from a personal conversation, with permission. [18] Slayton, Joel and Wittig, Geri Ontology of Organization as System, Switch - the new media journal of the CADRE digital media laboratory, Fall 1999, Vol 5 Num 3, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n3/F-1.html">http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v5n3/F-1.html</a> [19] Stalbaum. Brett, Toward Autopoietic Database, a research paper for C5. (2001) <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.c5corp.com/research/autopoieticdatabase.shtml">http://www.c5corp.com/research/autopoieticdatabase.shtml</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome.org is a 501©(3) nonprofit organization. If you value this free publication, please consider making a contribution within your means at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/support">http://rhizome.org/support</a>. Checks and money orders may be sent to Rhizome.org, 115 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. 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