Final Situational Tour

We should always be wary of our narrator. Are they reliable, can you trust their view of things? Pictures and even more so, Pictures that have words attached to them can skew the view of the world drastically. Am I a reliable resource for information, does this adequately describe where you live? Please click here, to view the story. Click on the first picture to get the discriptions that follow along, and have fun.

An Earthly Review

Several things immediately pop into the mind about the piece MORI. The movie Journey into the Center of the Earth, the religion of the Plains Native Americans, John Cage, Personification, Baroque Art and last but never the least of all the Earth, all collide when experiencing this piece. MORI is an installation piece that uses the web to allow participants in Vienna, Virginia to experience not only seismographic information collected at Berkeley, California but also the rest of the world.

A black curtain allows you to take a short journey to the heart of the earth, or at least an interpretation of the movements of the Earth. Oftentimes we neglect to acknowledge that the world actually speaks to us and is a living thing. A majority of the Native American religions used the earth as a focus on the wonderment of life. With our fast paced world of skyscrapers and noise canceling headphones it is easy to forget that a longer more eternal story is constantly being told.

If we gave the earth a symphony what would it play?

MORI concentrates the senses acutely so that sound, vibrations, and the perception of light's movement are all synchronized. The sounds have the same overwhelming presence of seeing and hearing a virtuoso live. Music has the ability to communicate past traditional linguistic languages. John Cage a composer of "experimental" music, often toyed with the rules and expectations of musical forms. MORI plays with our knowledge of traditional music by stretching the meaning of live performance, rhythm, tension and resolution, chance and composition.

Our fascination with the unknown rears its head time and time again in cinema. What would happen if we could? Well MORI allows us to take a "journey" into the earth, to become more acutely aware of movement that is usually undetected by the range of human senses. After you leave, you still for at least a little while, have that sense of being grounded or more in tune with the previously unobserved. You've seen the inside of the earth.

Perhaps the name MORI which can be interpreted as the Japanese word for "Forest Sanctuary" or perhaps an allusion to the beautiful Renaissance and baroque paintings of religious subjects that always included a memento mori. These paintings were commissioned with the purpose to give "glory to god." This piece could also be seen a call to remember the glory and magnificence of the earth. Of what gives life but is almost always mistaken as an unchanging, dead and unfeeling thing. It reminds us to listen closer to what the earth may be telling us.

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.

Midterm Project

Seemingly overnight, Nike has been given permission to rename the historic square of Karlsplatz, Vienna to Nikeplatz. The reaction from people ranges from quiet acceptance to rampant disgust. Has corporate branding finally gone too far?

nikeground.com

Nikeground.com is a part of a fake campaign launch for the Nike Corporation. The marketing campaign has a simple yet disturbing premise:

"You want to wear it, why shouldn't cities too?"

With their latest project nikeground.com the artist's 0100101110101101.org gave a truly subversive performance. By literally tricking the city of Vienna with their flashy website and aesthetically pleasing, gadget-ridden, info box, the artists' displayed the power of multimedia. The project nikeground.com, played with the minds of the citizens of Vienna by employing three of David Ross' "distinctive Qualities of Net.Art" This work of art, this performance piece, is one of the many projects this group has embarked upon to relay an even more important message, than the illusive quality of technology.

The outrage, acceptance, disbelief, all of the reactions received from the supposed renaming of Karlsplatz illustrate the power of multimedia. In David Ross' lecture about net.art, twenty or so qualities were outlined to qualify a work displayed on the web as art. As a form of multimedia, the art does ascribe to most of these qualities, but seems to focus on epitomizing these three; (1) Digital technology affords the possibilities of simulation and construction of truly credible images, (2) the shifting of identities, (3) net.art is anarchic and dangerous (Ross). The artists' 0100101110101101.org, through nikeground.com create a work of art that produces such credible imagery that the user cannot help but accept its validity, even if its message seems erroneous. Vienna would never allow Nike to rename one of its most historic sites, or if the price was right would it? People are bombarded with images of the web everyday. When a website has such an intricate layout and a professional veneer, the tendency is to believe whatever information is given

The entire performance depends upon certain reactions to multimedia. What is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this is that the artists' are trying to create dialogue that puts into question these behaviors. It is because of the Internet that such a project could be embarked upon. Without this medium, it would be hard to create a work that can be experienced by an entire city. The artist then can use this medium to pass the message on the entire world. The Internet allows the artist to spread messages that might have been censored by other popular forms of media. The Internet however has a dark side. Nikeground.com explores the darker side of blurring the lines of reality and fiction. In this, nikeground.com is in the same vein as jodi.org. The Internet has such powers and such capabilities, it is easy to focus on the good and completely ignore some of the inherent dangers of the web. The very qualities that he internet is praised for possessing are the same qualities that can potentially give the most trouble.