Teaching

The new year, another after last before the next

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And yes, another year begins in earnest.

     I am hoping to explore new territory as well as show paths that go from one land to the other. I know that I am getting known as the “time guy” but in the end, it is in the use of duration, speed, wave or undulation that seems to be what is being brought forward in acute ways within the complex of activity of the human/computer~interface.
     And what of the new landscape created by data pathways? Has it been represented? Should it be? Much is made of the use of affect in New Media, it is articulated as a “fait accompli” of the medium. Brian Massumi, whose writing I very much appreciate, seems to be looking very closely at what is the coming-to-being of sensation and experience. Though the potential is obviously out there, it seems like the artwork that stays at the forefront is the work that uses clever sensorial hooks and technologies that seem to be reviewed in the journals. The look towards them is always fairly similar, using what I perceive to be the Whiteadian position. I still wonder how exact Einstein was in his calculations; much of this thinking seems to build from the concept of relativity and tends to use it as a given, a proof, a theorem. All well and good, but what if it is wrong and instead of the apple falling on Newton’s head, it was rather Newton who fell upward into the apple?

 

Response… kind of

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Just read an interesting post at ArtWords (http://xplsv.blogspot.com/2011/12/rafael-lozano-hemmers-recorders.html?showComment=1324513212403#c5997972311010712949) which got me thinking about participatory media and the convergence of life and culture (they might be the same thing but let us assume for the moment they are not).

Though the following video does not necessarily present an “art piece” is it not, to a certain extent, a cultural expression that takes its cue from present society and the Long Now? And is this not art?

L(ook)istening, find(oud)ing

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As we search, we see things, things that need to stay in the back of our minds and either fester or evolve into the perfect kind of mutation.


The concept of using the body to move electrons is not new, but one can continue to wonder what effect those electrons have on the surfaces and connections they caress and provoke. And what of those electrons pushed into motion by “foreign”bodies. Are we witnessing a new form of parasitism, or is it rather symbiosis? And exactly when do we come up for air?

I am constantly going back to “Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice)” by Siegfried Zielinski. In this great look at the history of the electronic-human relationship the reader visits with searchers who, for one reason or another, were not pushed to the front pages of the history books. It is the confluence of showmanship, electricity and affect.

Making works ::: Working makes

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At the studio tonight, just being here and looking at the stuff that I have been puking out for the last little while. Sometimes it really feels like that… You get a wonky feeling in the gut, it feels like a beast from “Alien” trying to pop out of you. You hold it back, it hurts but there is work to be done; work is an overstatement, it is more like continuing to jump through the hoops hoping that you will wake up to a job in the morning… anyway

Back to making work, kinda. I am here, trying to get a sense of the overall picture. I know that I am fascinated with ideas around scale and measurement. Firstly because it can fit absolutely any imagery or concept a person can think up. This makes things easy in a way. But the idea of measurement is more prominently linked to the idea of convention. A convention is something that everybody seems to agree on so it becomes true by default. The best example of this is 1+1=2, believe it or not, this has never been truly proven; it has been showed that defining the term 1 is impossible.
Historically, measurements were established quite arbitrarily. The architect Louis Etienne Boulée established a measurement called a boulée. A boulée was the distance between the tip of his extended index finger to his elbow, everyone of his buildings (there were only six) were built with this dimension as its basis.

This was a planned monument to Isaac Newton. It was never built.

With this in mind; what the heck is an inch or a centimeter? They are nothing but something a whole bunch of people called experts agree on. Everything we do, everything we make is based on the ideas of so-called experts. This is what I am getting at in the big picture. How do we decide who the experts are and why is what they say able to become the default of how we describe the world?

I have this job, it is called being a “professor”. What am I professing? As far as I am concerned, if I can teach people to doubt, to question, to refute in an intelligent and researched way, I have been successful. But at the same time, this means that I am asking my students to understand that I am a pro at B.S. and this means that I have to be ready to defend and discuss every single word that I say. THAT is work, that is me doing my job.