The presentation itself was done in Keynote, and if you would like a copy, I've uploaded it as zip and gzip'd tar file, depending on your preference. (NOTE: each download is a somewhat large 22.5 MB file, due to the media clips and whatnot.)
See you all next year, if not sooner!
Meng asked about the software system called Processing and I promised to post something to this blog about it. It's pretty easy to remember the website for Processing is processing.org - also there are books and plenty of online materials about learning and using this system. You might try going here first.
]]>For my material, I have drawn from several sources, in particular articles from the book Database Aesthetics, Art in the Age of Information Overflow, Victoria Vesna, ed. Two of these articles were the focus of my research: (1) Database as Symbolic Form, by Lev Manovich, and (2) The Database: An Aesthetics of Dignity, by Sharon Daniel.
I hope the discussion will traverse the following levels:
Inherent in this last point is the critical question that I am asking:
Is the concept of Database a new construct, or could it simply be a new way of looking at the world? (and then reinterpret our past in terms of Database?)
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Some of her work focuses on the body and subtle fields of electromagnetic energy, including her explorations of unplugged in what she refers to as a "total immersion in a wireless circuit."
Artwork related to these explorations:
She discusses her work and relates some of her thinking about the the human body, media environments and technological fields in this excerpt:
"In the cyberspace of contemporary new technologies the theme of self-determination is being replayed in the image of the autonomous cyborg.
Much of this attempt to reconstruct self determination in new media environments focuses on the meeting of body and machine: a cyborg state of half metal and half flesh. In the main stream technological, scientific and pop narratives the cyborg simply appropriates more machine power for the autonomous self.
In contrast I see these electronic computer environments as irrevocably blurring the boundaries between body and machine and multiples of bodies and machines, thereby profoundly shifting any notion of the autonomous self. There are immense implications for our material bodies and our virtual, physic selves in these ambiguous environments. Not only do these states undermine our construction of autonomy but we have not developed any other notion of subjectivity to take its place.
Other works of mine explored this permeable boundary in new technological environments. These pieces used interactive computer technologies to hold up this slippage of the self as we have known it."
]]>Cheryl
As far as recommended readings, some of the most interesting sources I've found so far are...
For machine/memory, check out...
5:45 p.m. in 100 Rapson Hall
to hear:
Eric Rodenbeck
founder and creative director, Stamen Design, San Francisco
Visualizing Urban Data Streams
Spring 2008 College of Design lecture
]]>This is currently included as a chapter of the book Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
You can find the Cyborg Manifesto text here
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