RHIZOME DIGEST: 11.29.02

discussion

Posted Nov. 28 2002 19:00

RHIZOME DIGEST: 11.29.02

RHIZOME DIGEST: November 29, 2002 Content: +opportunity+ 1. Lev Manovich: COMPUTER ARTIST position | University of California, San Diego +announcement+ 2. Melinda Rackham: www.ggg.cc - games/gender/girls 3. G a r r e t t: bannerart.org "buy nothing day" contest winner +work+ 4. Jim Andrews: "Blue Hyacinth" by Pauline Masurel +comment+ 5. "t.whid": when Google has achieved the net art masterpiece, what are the artists to do? +feature+ 6. Are Flagan: Sign of the net.art times + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 11.26.02 From: Lev Manovich (manovich@jupiter.ucsd.edu) Subject: COMPUTER ARTIST position | University of California, San Diego COMPUTER ARTIST UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO - Visual Arts Department visarts.ucsd.edu www.ucsd.edu Assistant Professor, tenure-track, beginning July 1, 2003. Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience and based upon UC pay scales. We seek an artist with a proven exhibition record whose work exhibits an in-depth understanding of computing and its relationship to contemporary art and its discourses. UCSD is a research university that actively promotes and supports creative work and advanced research in computing within a broadly interdisciplinary arts department that includes studio, media, and art history, theory and criticism. Opportunities for developing research include grants, state-of-the-art facilities including CRCA (Center for Research in Computing and the Arts), the Supercomputer Center, and the new California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and cross-campus collaborations. Teaching will include both graduate seminars and undergraduate courses, including courses in an Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major with the department of Music. Candidates must demonstrate in their work and teaching a substantial engagement with the computing arts and their relationship to broader discourses of contemporary art and culture. Candidate will actively participate in the ongoing development of curriculum and facilities. Teaching will draw upon knowledge of networked cross-platform (Linux, Macintosh, NT/Windows PC) environments. Areas of expertise might include any of the following: net.art; digital imaging; multimedia authoring and publishing; graphics or sound programming; virtual environments; computer based installation; electronics and robotics; history and theory of new media. MFA or equivalency and teaching experience required. Send letter of application, curriculum vitae, names and addresses of three references (do not send letters of recommendation and/or placement files) and evidence of work in the field. This evidence may be in the form of slides, tapes, discs, publications and/or public lectures and should be accompanied by return mailer and postage. Susan Smith, Chair (Position #AC03-S) University of California San Diego Visual Arts Department (0327) 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0327 All applications received by January 10, 2003, or thereafter until position is filled, will receive thorough consideration. Please reference position #AC03-S on all correspondence. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 11.29.02 From: Melinda Rackham (melinda@subtle.net) Subject: www.ggg.cc - games/gender/girls Join -empyre- in December (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.subtle.net/empyre">http://www.subtle.net/empyre</a>) for our final 02 session featuring cyber chicks Julianne Pierce and Mary Flanagan, both of whom have investigated the game genres in relation to issues of media, gender and power. Currently through their individual artistic, textual, production and critical interventions, Flanagan and Pierce are players in the construction of theory and culture of our shared online networks. —>Julianne Pierce, artist, new media producer and co-founder of pioneering Australian cyberfeminist group VNS Matrix and current Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), will discuss shifts in the cyberfeminist movement since its inception in the early 1990's. Has cyberfeminism emerged as an empowering 'tool' for engagement with technology, or has it become a factionalised theoretical movement with little practical outcome? She will also look at new media art within this context and more generally take a look at the current concerns and issues of new media artists. ANAT <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.anat.org.au">http://www.anat.org.au</a> VNS Matrix <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aec.at/www-ars/matrix.html">http://www.aec.at/www-ars/matrix.html</a> –> Media practitioner and theorist Mary Flanagan investigates the intersection of art, technology, and gender study through critical writing, artwork, and activism. She is also the creator of "The Adventures of Josie True," the first web-based adventure game for girls. Mary has recently show in All Star Data Mappers at Artspace, Sydney and in the Whitney Biennial,and edited, with Austin Booth, "_reload: rethinking women + cyberculture" which views cyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities, relationships, and cultures. Mary Flanagan <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.maryflanagan.com/">http://www.maryflanagan.com/</a> reload: rethinking women + cyberculture <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.maryflanagan.com/reload.htm">http://www.maryflanagan.com/reload.htm</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ David Byrne on northern european Blip Hop music and others in LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL special issue no 12. on PLEASURE. Orders from journals-orders@mit.edu for Table of Contents see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.leonardo.info/lmj">http://www.leonardo.info/lmj</a>. CD features experimental music from EASTERN EUROPE curated by Christian Scheib and Susanna Niedermayr. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 11.29.02 From: - G a r r e t t - (garrett@asquare.org) Subject: bannerart.org "buy nothing day" contest winner +———————————————————–+ Hello everyone The Banner Art Collective announces winner of Buy Nothing Day contest. The Banner Art Collective's Buy Nothing Day contest received 15 banners from artists in France, the UK, and the US. Thanks to all artists for a great and varied group of entries. Many entries were strong, so contest officials almost decided to split the grand prize of $0 (USD) between several entries. Ultimately, though, the grand prize was awarded to Zebra3's "buy-sell(f) nothing," a banner which subverts the textuality of corporate logos to good effect. Zebra3's banner will be featured on the Banner Art Collective's front page (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bannerart.org/">http://www.bannerart.org/</a>) through the holiday buying season. Buy Nothing Day (November 29th in the US and Canada, November 30th in Europe and elsewhere) is an annual international event held to protest the unoffical opening day of holiday shopping. It is organized by the Adbusters Media Foundation (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adbusters.com/">http://www.adbusters.com/</a>). Now in its eleventh year, Buy Nothing Day is a 24-hour consumer fast and celebration of sustainable living. Over one million people around the world are expected to participate. As always, the Banner Art Collective (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bannerart.org/">http://www.bannerart.org/</a>) continues to collect new entries for its ongoing banner art collection. From November 29 through February 4, the site will be included in the Edith-Russ Site for Media Art exhibition "Total Ã?berzogen" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.oldenburg.de/edith-russ-haus/">http://www.oldenburg.de/edith-russ-haus/</a>) in Oldenburg, Germany. The group plans to stage several banner art "happenings" within commercial advertising space in early 2003. +———————————————————–+ Salut tous Le Banner Art Collective announce le gagnant de le "Buy Nothing Day" concours. Le "Buy Nothing Day" (achete rien jour) concours de le "Banner Art Collective" a recu 15 banniere's de artistes en France, Angleterre et Etais Unis. On remerci tout qui a participe au concours. Le qualite de banniere's entre dans le concours etait forte et on a presque decide a diviser le grand prix de $0 (USD) soit 0â?¬ entre plusiers artistes. Finalemant on a decide le gagnant est Zebra3 avec son banniere "buy-sell(f) nothing," un bannier qui manipule le utilisation de plusiers logo commercial avec de results interessant. Le banniere de Zebra3 va ete heberge sur le page d'acceuil de le Banner Art Collective (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bannerart.org/">http://www.bannerart.org/</a>) juste au fin de Decembre. "Buy Nothing Day" (Novembre 29 en Etais Unis et Canada, Novembre 30 en Europe et ailleurs) est un fete international contre cette saison de Noel qui est de plus en plus un vacances commercialise. Il est organise par le "Adbusters Media Foundation" (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.adbusters.com/">http://www.adbusters.com/</a>). En existence depuis 11 ans, "Buy Nothing Day" est un abstinence de toute qui est commercialise qui duree 24 heures. Plus de un million gens sont estime a participe cette an. Le Banner Art Collective (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bannerart.org/">http://www.bannerart.org/</a>) continue a herberge de bannieres pour notre exposition de banner art. Jusqu'a fevrier 4, le site va participe dans le exposition "Total Ã?berzogen" au Musee de Edith-Russ site pour Media Art (<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.oldenburg.de/edith-russ-haus/">http://www.oldenburg.de/edith-russ-haus/</a>) en Oldenburg, Allemagne. Nous commence a organise de banner art "evenements" qui reprend de espace commercial en 2003. +———————————————————–+ Garrett@asquare.org <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.asquare.org/">http://www.asquare.org/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.bannerart.org/">http://www.bannerart.org/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.zendco.com/">http://www.zendco.com/</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/artbase/2855/index.html">http://rhizome.org/artbase/2855/index.html</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 11.26.02 From: Jim Andrews (jim@vispo.com) Subject: "Blue Hyacinth" by Pauline Masurel It's a pleasure to publish Pauline Masurel's piece "Blue Hyacinth" at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/bluehyacinth3.html">http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/bluehyacinth3.html</a> (requires IE 4+). There's discussion between Pauline and me concerning "Blue Hyacinth" and the stir frys at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/mazconv.htm">http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts/mazconv.htm</a> . "The story has already been written…her blue hyacinth voice. The story has already been written another in the corner is smoking. The story has already been written in colour. The story has already been written and he's just here now to watch it played out." In one of the four texts, we read of a night club owner's remote reaction to his blowing up a rival night club called The Blue Hyacinth. In another, a woman describes the actions of someone who broke into her house and left voice recordings on all her tapes, leaves voice messages on her phone, "it goes on for months, her blue hyacinth voice." In another of the texts, a woman relates of having won money bet on Blue Hyacinth at the track, and her own inexplicable giving up of the winnings. Masurel has used the mechanism of the stir fry to transform fictive stories/vignettes into a vortex of poetry…and back again to fiction, as you please. Many thanks to Pauline for "Blue Hyacinth" and its transformations through the shapes of fiction and poetry. There are now five stir fry texts involving various participants: Pauline, Brian Lennon, Leo Marx, Jerome McGann, Talan Memmott, Mary Phillips, Joseph Weizenbaum, Lee Worden, and translation into Chinese of one of them by Shuen-shing Lee. They have been published in the Iowa Review Web, ubu.com, DOC(K)S from France, Taiwan, and offline in Denmark. The project was started in 1999 and may or may not be finished according to whether the form inspires others to do something different with it, as Pauline has. The stir fry form keys on the DHTML innerHTML method which allows you to change the HTML code inside a (SPAN) or (DIV). Pauline's "Blue Hyacinth" can transform into 4^30=1,152,921,504,606,846,976 different texts as you mouse over it. So the 'whole thing' will never be read. But neither need all 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 different texts be read to grasp what we would call 'the meaning' of the piece. As we move into combinatorially complex works, we realize that what it means to read a combinatorium with subtlety and comprehension does not involve the necessarily impossible task of reading all the possibilities of a combinatorium but, rather, getting a sense of the directions in which the possibilities tend by sampling them until they begin to diminish in significant difference. In the end, we see that the mind ranges very quickly through 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 despite its seeming insuperability. A text of 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 possibilities is still amenable to the creation of meaning on a human scale not simply by disregarding most of the possibilities, but by virtue of the way the underlying 4 texts guide the reader through primary (spanning set) spaces of meaning. ja + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +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> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 11.29.02 From: "t.whid" (twhid@mteww.com) Subject: when Google has achieved the net art masterpiece, what are the artists to do? preface: this little text started out very casually, then grew a bit organically. i attempted to polish, but i'm not a great writer. it now seems to be uncomfortably sitting somewhere btw tossed off email and a serious attempt at commentary. Subject: when Google has achieved the net art masterpiece, what are the artists to do? ++ reading this story in the nytimes recently: "Postcards From Planet Google" <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/circuits/28goog.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/28/technology/circuits/28goog.html</a> from the article: "AT Google's squat headquarters off Route 101, visitors sit in the lobby, transfixed by the words scrolling by on the wall behind the receptionist's desk: animaciÃ?Ã?n japonese Harry Potter pensÃ?zes et poÃ?ymes associaÃ?xÃ?so brasileira de normas tÃ?zcnicas. The projected display, called Live Query, shows updated samples of what people around the world are typing into Google's search engine. The terms scroll by in English, Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Japanese, Korean, French, Dutch, Italian - any of the 86 languages that Google tracks. Stare at Live Query long enough, and you feel that you are watching the collective consciousness of the world stream by. " this article, like many tech-related articles i read, got me thinking about the two worlds in which many of us on this list exist: the worlds of art and technology. how they're different. how they're the same. how are their functions evolving? in a world where a technology company can display 'the collective consciousness of the world'(1) as a backdrop to their reception desk, essentially a marketing ploy for their services; when they can collect this data, sit on it and ruminate on how to 'monetize' it; when it takes a fully capitalized, profit-driven corporation employing some of the brightest engineers around to achieve such fascinating data then what is left for the artist to do? it used to be that it was the artist's job to capture the 'collective consciousness' either through intuition, genius, or dumb-luck. the artists were the ones who told humans what humans were thinking about, obsessing over, loving, hating. we no longer need intuition, genius or even dumb-luck. we've got hard data and more is coming in every millisecond. thinking about google's Live QueryË? (check out google's zeitgeist for a taste: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html">http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html</a> (2)) i start to imagine what an artist might do with the information. especially if the artist could get the info in a realtime stream. but, then, i think about most of the data visualization projects i've seen (Carnivore clients as an example) and they don't do all that much for me. they are simply formal exercises which, though are interesting in their random-seeming behavior, don't have a visual richness to command my awe (a limitation of screens and projectors) and don't possess a depth conceptually to make me go, 'aaahh'. what could an artist add to the GoogleË? Live QueryË?? How could one make it any more sublime than it is? the artist could add nothing. when the data-set ITSELF is so conceptually fascinating there is no more to do. any sort of visualization would simply be distraction. simply KNOWING that the data is flowing in and stored on some magnetic media somewhere is enough for me. it's fun to see it stream-in i suppose, but the knowledge of it's creation and archival is much more than fun; it's sublime. Google has achieved the net art masterpiece. there has not been anything created in net art that comes close to it and i don't foresee anything coming from the arts that could rival it. the arts are underfunded. the arts don't have access to the same resources. the technologists will always win in this game of art and tech. i feel that we've strayed to far into their world in some areas; we can't compete when it comes to the 'awe' factor. sure, we can 'comment', 'criticize', and 'tweak,' but it mostly comes out thin compared to our market cousins: the Googles, the Ids, the Pixars, the Rockstar Games. we simply don't have the tech that they play with and will always be behind in that area; we can't compete FORMALLY with the commercial side. though our projects my be much deeper conceptually, the form or aesthetic allows people to step into the work, if it doesn't stack up against the commercial counterpart, it's easy for the audience to ignore it. To be precise, there are a few areas where artists are going to be hard-pressed to compete. Those areas are 3D gaming, 'virtual' worlds and 3D animation; and realtime data visualization and manipulation. The worlds created in the Sims, Grand Theft Auto, Toy Story, Quake and etc are complex and exciting in ways which their artworld counterparts can't match up. They are larger, easier to navigate, more exciting to interact with, have more sophisticated visuals, are more entertaining, and are surprising in their level of freedom to interact (the audience has more options). And why shouldn't they be more interesting? They've got large teams of developers working on them, they can test the interaction in focus groups and have almost unlimited pools of capital to draw from. What individual artist could compete with that? in realtime data collection and manipulation, IMO, the strength of the work comes from the intriguing data. the visual representations of this data should help us comprehend interesting data. if the data isn't interesting, neither is the piece no matter how interesting the visuals may be. Research firms, search engines, polling companies create interesting and therefor very valuable data to the market. There will always be a technological advantage fueled by capital to the market technologists as opposed to the artists. They have the capital to put together interesting data in ways that artists can't compete with. One area where the artists and the industry can compete head-to-head is in *web art*(3), this is an area where artists are ahead of industry, IMO. Web *presentation* technologies (CSS, XHTML, DHTML Flash, Director, etc) are more readily available so this makes sense. It's an area where artists are able to achieve technological parity. It's also the area that is the most similar to traditional art practice; it lends itself to the individual creator working with limited means. So what should be done? More funding for the arts is one answer. Collectives of pooled technology and economic resources would be a great way to go. Korean immigrants in NYC join credit clubs where everyone pays into a central pool and they can then receive loans to start businesses. This model could work for artists working in technology. it will be very hard to compete it some of these areas however. if there is no pay-off in the end, capitalists won't put money behind projects. public funding is almost non-existent, subject to it's own opaque rules, and wouldn't be enough to achieve technological parity in any case. +++ (1) i know, i know, it's not the entire world, but it seems to me that the sample is large enough that searches wouldn't change much if you added EVERYONE to the mix. (2 ) Looking over the google zeitgeist makes one a bit sick by it's heavy tilt toward USAian pop cultural obsessions. They may be filtering the data for this page to suit western viewers. Or perhaps lots more USAians use Google. (3) I make this distinction btw net art and web art: net art needs to use a network as an integral part of the medium. if one takes the network out of the piece, the piece ceases to function either literally or conceptually. web art simply uses the web for distribution (ie one can run it without a network connection and it works fine), is presented through a browser (most of the time), and/or uses web technologies (HTML, Flash etc). – t.whid www.mteww.com + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ David Byrne on northern european Blip Hop music and others in LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL special issue no 12. on PLEASURE. Orders from journals-orders@mit.edu for Table of Contents see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.leonardo.info/lmj">http://www.leonardo.info/lmj</a>. CD features experimental music from EASTERN EUROPE curated by Christian Scheib and Susanna Niedermayr. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 11.28.02 From: Are Flagan (areflagan@artpanorama.com) Subject: Sign of the net.art times Sign of the net.art times by Are Flagan In his influential book The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich prominently listed "transcoding" among the founding principles of new media. Discussing the digital practices and operations arising to merit the debated shift into "new," he singled out the ability of numerically encoded media objects to translate or transform themselves, with unprecedented ease and according to hitherto unfamiliar properties and coordinates. Coupled with the widespread computerization of all media (still and moving images, sounds, texts, etc.), this technology-driven metamorphosis moreover influences attendant cultural categories and concepts, as Manovich succinctly notes: "Because new media is created on computers, distributed via computers, and stored and archived on computers, the logic of a computer can be expected to significantly influence the traditional cultural logic of media; that is, we may expect that the computer layer will affect the cultural layer." [1] Although the transcoding concept has received its due share of attention since the book's publication last year, frequently being quoted as the prime example of "old" cataclysms, the associated grammar of principles has largely ignored many common, more pragmatic, uses and applications of the term. At its computing root, transcoding obviously regulates and facilitates the play of presence and absence through math and logic; thereby making its operations active across a vast yet proprietary field, ranging from the foundations of western metaphysics to the latest electronic switches. So considered broadly along with its profound dispersal, which significantly returns to the consolidating principles deployed, the impending gravity of computer transcoding is consequently, and not only epistemologically speaking, immense. To avoid the neighboring black hole of sweeping generalizations compiled in rounded nutshells, this brief essay will attempt to theorize some aspects of this pervasive impact through specific and prominent trends in contemporary net.art. To once more narrow the focus on these preoccupations, one can in retrospect appreciate that even the earliest net.art controversies of unauthorized mirroring were less about repeating the simulacra of postmodernism, which had already been exhaustively explored through the medium of photography in the preceding decade, than it was about revisiting questions of authenticity and authority through the added momentum of transcoding. The act of mirroring, seen here as always in a differentiated yet fulfilling presence, in the 1999 actions of 0100101110101101.org did not only clone the destined-for-stardom site jodi.org byte by byte under another domain name, it also downloaded and offered a subversively altered version of Art.Teleportacia, the first art gallery for the Web. Negotiating these mirror(ing) phases obviously cast a long backward glance at postmodern questions of replication and reproduction, but it also recognized that the cumulative ability to transfer, transport, translate and transform, all subsumed and made available under transcoding, had leveled the playing field for a rather predictable set of artistic games to begin anew in a pioneering context. If we leap three giant net years ahead to the present, an attentive look at some recent entries to the net.art catalog will garner attention to a subsequent and related strategy that has become increasingly popular among dedicated practitioners. A striking number of current works literally employ and repeat what one may term an expansive approach to the transcoding principle: they collect and/or generate structured data through various, often rather novel, forms of input and then output this in a scrambled appearance, regularly on rather abstract terms and generally according to very simple rules. To better illustrate this rapidly overflowing genre, three projects may suffice: Taxi Art, [2] produced by SAS Design in London, uses the GPS tracking of London taxis, which is already done for booking reasons, to offer visitors to the site a series of choices for an online artwork drawn by the humdrum path of taxis on the streets. First pick your minimalist and formalist preference for aesthetics that largely resemble pie charts or graphs in the form of lines or circles, then watch the drivers negotiate the traffic to render your masterpiece. The result: a GPS doodle of urban corridors that, from a cartographic point of view, would probably require that you immediately hailed a cab to get around without getting lost. Another recent example is Goodworld by Lew Baldwin, which can be found on the Whitney Museum's lofty artport site. [3] Here you pick any URL and let the site transform your location into colorful blobs for images, where the color field is an aggregate of dominant RGB values in the original, and emotive smiley faces for text. An almost analogous gig for music is the developing WebPlayer [4] by Pete Everett, which currently prepares the stage for a filtering of an URL into soft, luscious sounds transcoded from the ASCII values of the hypertext, sans recurring code brackets. Somewhat unexpectedly (unless you first read the process notes that pays homage to how mathematically inspired composers turned repetitive numbers–base note sequences–into sweet music), the result resonates more like naturalistic jingles from the oceans than past sounds sampled from data and voiced by tinny 386 processors to strike a distinctive digital note. This net can easily be cast much broader and wider in all directions to catch numerous projects that indulge in the type of transcoding alluded to. But to save the impressions formulated thus far, we can discern the repeated predilection toward taking ordered stacks of data and reshuffling the packets: GPS traces in longitude and latitude turns to coordinated strokes, graphical RGB values coalesce in bland color fields and HTTP rocks on through the speakers, all according to Radio Taxis, Goodworld and WebPlayer respectively. The reason all this reverse-engineered data mining and logical-mathematical magic can unfold is of course due to the common binary denominators of all data: 0 and 1. Translated into the bitplane through binary notation a decimal value of, let's say 97, will read as a series of 0s and 1s. But this string of 97 reinterpreted through ASCII code is in fact the "a" in the fact just presented and represented (given that this essay does indeed appear as ASCII). And the 97 may of course also be attributed, and reassigned, to a medium dark pixel value in an image or the pitch of a programmed tone. Consider, then, that this 97 already circulates around the Internet in many wrappings, from the corner of a company logo via the central "a" in every wording of Mac to a frequency in an embedded sound object, and you get the basic picture (or word or sound) of the Esperanto-styled computing these projects are practicing and pointing to. Within this mind-blowing conundrum of the computer medium lies the rationale why these types of projects are both incessantly compelling and instantly mundane: on one hand, since we are indeed talking binaries here, their claims to isolate the multifarious behavior of data bits to their own limited operations subdues the potential madness of an arbitrary bit architecture and thereby grounds protocols in an oppositional, highly reasonable context. But, on the other hand, the projects themselves reveal these operations to always already be active and working away within this selfsame structure. It is not insignificant in this regard that most net.art transcoding endeavors appear to indulge in rather semantically poor output at the front end. In the three works discussed, we get abstract shapes and patterns along with base sensory information scattered in HTML grids and mellow MP3 music submerged in atmospheric harmonies. This choice, and it is crucially a choice on the scripters/programmers behalf, basically attempts to move away from the widely conversant computer literacy promoted by transcoding, which implies the successive application of established protocols, toward the linguistic plight of translation as transformation. The flexible exchange rate of bits remains the modus operandi, but the currency of the data outlet fluctuates in value–from ordered to scattered, meaningful to meaningless and so on. Given the identically encoded binary origin here, this treatment signals a distinctly asymmetrical rupture in prevailing systems of representation and signification, making interconnected expressions appear equal despite very obvious differences. To better appreciate this fascinating move, a tangential and cursory shift into semiology is desirable to avoid sidelining the fact that computing has, or even is, a cultural history. Traditionally posited as a science of signs, which are defined broadly without substance or limits, semiology operates with a tripartite structure of sign, signifier and signified to systematically elucidate the processes whereby any form of representation appears meaningful. Although this premise originally looked at all sights and sounds that may, in some form, solicit or elicit communication, it gradually turned toward the primary intelligibility of language to study the enunciating relations. At its core, however, and this is the crucial reference to our present concerns, semiology was conceived as a system that, as Roland Barthes has tellingly remarked, pursued a euphoric dream of scientificity. By first positing a model that hypothetically supersedes language through signification, this operative system is able to predict and precede the moment of enunciation, rendering its inevitable emergence, in semiological jargon, a transcendental signified. In very simple terms, one could say that the system reveals something through the operations of the model, and it appears natural when it successfully hides this fact. A short, chronological list covering how this science has developed, and implying how semiology is more broadly understood in this context, may include Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand Saussure, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, but this narrow trail of contributions to the discipline branches out just about everywhere, for example into the psychologism furthered by Jacques Lacan, or, for those more familiar with photographic theory, the psychosemiology of Victor Burgin. Only roughly sketching this particular context serves to drastically shorthand the above scenarios for how the sign, signifier and signified interact, what roles they respectively serve within the prescribed signifying chains, and even how or by what each entity and each link is constituted (every author mentioned gradually gets entangled in solving questions raised by their own arguments). But the contested point of acquiring a locus for logos, attached to these conjectural contortions, is of course far from trivial and essentially perpetuates the debate. The important legacy of immediate use here is that the presupposed division of sign, signifier and signified has prevailed along with a preponderance toward scientificity; it is of direct relevance to how the concept of transcoding is built into computer logic, and accordingly understood and practiced within new media theory and net.art. Having acknowledged, in a roundabout yet very economical way, that the distinction between signifier and signified is problematic at the root (as it relies on the unity of the sign to make the concept present in and of itself through, and despite of, this opposition), let us turn briefly to a quote from an interview with Jacques Derrida conducted by Julia Kristeva before returning to a more comprehensive discussion of computer transcoding. Speaking of the opposition between signifier and signified, Derrida notes: That this opposition of difference cannot be radical or absolute does not prevent it from functioning, and even from being indispensable within certain limits–very wide limits. For example, no translation would be possible without it. In effect, the theme of a transcendental signified took shape within the horizon of an absolutely pure, transparent and unequivocal translatability. In the limits to which it is possible, or at least appears possible, translation practices the difference between signifier and signified. But if this difference is never pure, no more so is translation, and for the notion of translation we would have to substitute a notion of transformation: a regulated transformation of one language by another, one text by another. [5] Translation, to playfully paraphrase the same again in other words, implies the seamless movement of pure signifieds across languages and texts (platforms and formats) that the signifying apparatus itself supposedly leaves untouched. It denies any precarious intertextuality, invoking a chain of substitutions, in favor of an original that effectively surpasses any and all transformation. The popular new media concept of transcoding does indeed speak of a limitless and highly effective translatability. Coupled with the associated premise of numerical representation, it proposes that the application of protocols to numbers has conjured up a science that programs closure into every transaction, every translation, and every transposition of what presents itself, in each transmuted instance, as the transcendental identity of the signifier/signified in a sign. There is an unprecedented equivocality at play here, one that operates in the dark passages of hardware and comes to light through software, and which is consequently instrumental in separating itself (and its objects) from the elucidating passage of the signifying operations. Translation, practiced as the aforementioned difference between signifier and signified, consequently succumbs to a science of logical-mathematical notation. As such, it signals the practical apotheosis of semiology, which has precisely been conceived of as a systematized science of signs to break the metaphysical bounds. Hence the longstanding semiotic project–founded and resolved upon the tripartite sign, signifier, signified–reaches a certain "organic" totality through computerized transcoding, bringing the necessary presupposition of a priori, an innocent and independent writing before the letter, to communication. What is not yet accounted for in this view (although it is of course there through the founding signifier/signified opposition) is the move that previously brought out the psycho prefix and applied it to semiology. The signified, although attributed to the signifying chain that revolves around the elusive conglomerate of a sign, may instead be part of a general psychology, a scenario of mind over matter seeking a uniform social body with a cohesive psychology to ground the sign in a detached collectivity. This position, explored indirectly by Barthes through the gathering concept of myth and more directly by Burgin in his reliance on Freudian psychoanalysis, should of course not be discounted with regards to affective, as a counterpoint to effective, data. The very human back and front end–the self-fulfilling cycle–of transcoding will of course always be subject to the same semantic mysteries as any pre-digital entity when it comes to these instructive semiotic structures. The key point, however, is that the appearance, the coming into being, of the signifier/signified opposition through transcoding hinges on the murky fusion of zeroes and ones: the base metaphysical counterpoints that now crucially couple through a machine and not mental conjunction. Although this latter digression is ripe with the usual analogies of mind and machine, the link between semiology and psychology when it comes to computer operations essentially broadens the usual turns of the logical circuit by further implicating a range of associated discourses in the central transcoding principle. Effectively, this is where the user figure comes into play, but that's an interesting biography that remains to be written. Despite the documented and discussed ability of transcoding to transform, witnessed in the listed net.art works and noted via Derrida, it appears that the representational claims to metonymy rather than analogy actually conjure up directly translatable aspects that perceptively and conceptually manage to fully survive this revolution. In Taxi Art, does the work not indicate a blinking orange, signaling left or right, at every turn of the colorful geometric drafts? Does Baldwin's Goodworld not bring an inebriated textual smile to blurry color vision only through comparison with the clearly aliased input URL? Do you not descend into soundscapes of corresponding hypertext when WebPlayer embarks on its heavily transmuted aural voyage? Isolating such experiences, sensory as well as conceptually, makes for a far more complicated analysis of transcoding. The effect produced and described is doubly stunning: on one hand logical-mathematical notation denies to confirm the, in lack of a better word, theology of transcoding as the virgin passage of translation; on the other, it retains an empirical contingency of unprecedented representational and signifying power. It may very well contest the formalism of equivalence by logically and mathematically scrambling the bits beyond recognition (in a classical representational sense), but the overriding yet obscure science of this operation, the alchemic feat of numbers and logic, brings an overwhelming empirical closure to the experience, a strangely distorted yet comforting sense of deja vu. What sunders then ultimately unites; numbers break apart but finally add up. The checksum of all this is that each and every one of these projects, and they only comprise three exemplary instances of an overwhelming trend, believe in the divine translatability of transcoding to the extent that complex semantic devices are readily and purposefully sacrificed for an applied metaphysics of the excruciatingly simple, reflected in Euclidean cartography (Taxi Art), typographic emoticons that recall Platonic pure form (Goodworld) and the omnipresent Muzak of the deep network (WebPlayer). This reductive approach to the semiotic question obviously echoes the overwhelming progress of logical-mathematical notation, and it does not in actuality query the unity of the signifying division, or rather the universal scientifcity of the process that now brings it to bear so fancifully and persuasively. On the contrary, the troublesome collaboration between applied science and metaphysics that always promotes an omniscient empiricism has reached its apotheosis in transcoding, and this is indeed the sign of our net.art times. NOTES: [1] Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, p. 46. [2] <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.radiotaxis.net">http://www.radiotaxis.net</a> [3] <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artport.whitney.org/gatepages/artists/baldwin/index.html">http://www.artport.whitney.org/gatepages/artists/baldwin/index.html</a> [4] <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.twofivesix.co.uk/snd/index.html">http://www.twofivesix.co.uk/snd/index.html</a> [5] Jacques Derrida, Positions, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 20. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law and are gratefully acknowledged at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/10.php">http://rhizome.org/info/10.php</a>. Our financial statement is available upon request. Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Charles Engelhard Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Rhizome Digest is filtered by Rachel Greene (rachel@rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 48. Article submissions to list@rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info@rhizome.org. To unsubscribe from this list, visit <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/subscribe">http://rhizome.org/subscribe</a>. Subscribers to Rhizome Digest are subject to the terms set out in the Member Agreement available online at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://rhizome.org/info/29.php">http://rhizome.org/info/29.php</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +