Final Project -- Dupont Circle

A popular stop off the metro, Maggie and I went to Dupont circle to take in the sights and try and capture the many different facets of this site.

Embracing technology

The essay "Is there love in the Telematic embrace?" by Roy Ascott discusses quite poetically the importance of messaging in the development of new telematic art. When armed with tools that allow for the wide ranging connectivity such as networks and the internet, it is easy to lose vision of what this tool can create. Any man with strong arms, a hammer and a chisel can carve marble, it is only the Greats like Michelangelo that can sculpt a David. Telematic technology has redefined such stalwart arts such as cinema, music and writing. This is undeniably true, what seems a bit hazy is what new things has this technology created. How can innovators use technology to "support a whole new field of creative endeavor that is as radically unlike each of those established artistic genres as they are unlike each other." How can we use telematics to create a new object d'art. Once an established genre is created it seems like it would be going against the very thing that constitutes a telematic work of art a telematic work of art. To create an establishment would be eliminating the very anarchic beauty of telematics.

With the emerging field of study being dedicated to web development, design, communications and literacy it is easy to lose sight of what is truly important about these fields. The internet allows us the ability to have a font of information readily accessible. It is simply not enough to just understand one thing. It is as Roy Ascott says in this essay "the further development of this field will clearly mean . . . the formulation of a transdisciplinary education." Every nuance learned about this field is always enhanced by the additional knowledge provided by another unseemingly related field of study. Throughout the essay Ascott dances around the question of the relevance and the actual of content of telematic artwork. He names the mode of content and even gives a lot of context. What seems by far the most important parallel that he draws is that even in this seemingly new and unheard of technology artists, scientists, users and developers alike use this medium like any other medium as a way to search for an understanding of how this world works. Philosophy is inextricably linked with multimedia. It is from philosophy an inextinguishable study for truth and meaning that we derive most other subjects. The developments of technology forces us to redefine they way we see and order the world. How will our new definitions of the world impact the artistic commentary that always seems to be fueled by this discourse?

Moti/on "artists Exploring Interactive Media" Review

The exhibit at the Flashpoint Gallery in Washington, DC featured the show Moti/on "artists exploring interactive media." The show featured works that explored the different ways we use and can use technology to interact. In the Exhibit there were different works that toyed with the concepts of remote control, amplification of sound, and internet searches. One of the pieces that I found to be extremely interesting was "The Sent Project," By Benjamin Domiminica, Samuel Ortiz, et al.

picture of an art work that uses the parts of a bathroom with additional piping to create an instrument quite like a drumset. The piece also includes a hookup to a computer.

The Sent Project is a musical composition that Uses synthesizers and other traditionally non-musical sounds. Unlike most compositions of this sort, The Sent Project was not just a collaboration between one or two composers, but by many different composers in a lot of different locations. The premise was that each of the composers was sent a part of the composition by email, it was up to them to build upon the concept to create this work of art.

The music itself starts off with a quasi exposition, detailing the type of sounds that are used throughout the piece. As the piece continues o play it seems to resemble a Jazz recording, but instead of a traditional quintet, the sounds of chairs being dragged against the floor, keyboards, a scratchy record player and pulses all mix and collide to create at times an incredible ambient atmosphere one minute an in the next moment the piece becomes alarmingly tense. It is the interaction between the tension and the eventually resolution that truly gives this piece it's compelling cohesiveness despite the many different inputs.

Electronic Cafe

It is not the technology that they outline in the essay, "Welcome to the Electronic Cafe International" by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz, that is all that remarkable. It is the depth of insight of the importance of the arts/humanities in shaping a collaborative space which "spans distance, language, values and culture."

The arts need to "take a role in shaping, humanizing emerging technologies." In doing so they allow the public to experience a unique phenomenon that might have be reserved only for the rich. Technology can be developed, it is the arts that shape how society not only integrates technology but creates a demand for new technologies. As Charles Dickens point out in his novel, Hard Times, the arts are needed to ensure that mankind is not just motivated by monotonous efficiency but is driven by the praise for original thought, individuality and the development of paternalistic/alturistc collaborative relationships. Electronic Cafe's are in large part a modern crusade to make a vehicle whose obvious role is economic prosperity into a means for a more humane society.

Through the experience of the electronic Cafe's there was evidence of the arts fostering new ideas and attitudes about technology. Instead of the linear focus, of faster and more efficient, these collaborative cyber workspaces explore the "intangibles" of human experience thought the use of technology.