RHIZOME DIGEST: 9.6.02

Sept. 5, 2002

Type: discussion

RHIZOME DIGEST: September 6, 2002 Content: +announcement+ 1. yukiko shikata: Kingdom of Piracy (KOP) 2. Joseph Nechvatal:Space - Villette Numerique +opportunity+ 3. Francis Hwang: Design & Production Intern +thread+ 4. [email protected] and Lee Wells: looking for a studioxx like organization in the states +report+ 5. Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Space- The New Frontier for Art? +feature+ 6. Lev Manovich: Spatial Montage, Spatial Imaging, and the Archeology of Windows - a Response to Marc Lafia + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 1. Date: 9.3.2 From: yukiko shikata ([email protected]) Subject: Kingdom of Piracy (KOP) =========================================== http:// 211.73.224.150 Kingdom of Piracy (KOP) Online Project Premiere: Ars Electronica, September 7-12,2002. <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.aec.at/kop">http://www.aec.at/kop</a> Joint Curation: Shu Lea Cheang, Armin Medosch, Yukiko Shikata –>to Kingdom of Piracy (KOP)is an online, open work space to explore the free sharing of digital content - often condemned as piracy - as the net's ultimate art form. Commissioned by the Acer Digital Art Center [ADAC] in Taiwan for ArtFuture 2002, <KOP> was designed to include links, objects, ideas, software, commissioned artists' projects, critical writing and online streaming media events. Hailed as the first international online exhibition sponsored by Taiwan's computer giant Acer Group, a pilot website <kop.adac.com.tw> was launched in December 2001 and presented with a press conference at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipai, Taiwan. In April 2002 the leadership and direction of ADAC changed. At about the same time a major anti-piracy initiative was launched in Taiwan. <KOP> became a politically sensitive issue in Taiwan and by May, the curatorial and artists' FTP access to the (KOP) server was denied. By mid-June, <kop.adac.com.tw> was taken offline. ADAC demanded editorial rights to artists' links and requested a change of the title, Kingdom of Piracy. The joint curatorial team rejected this demand and sought ways of preserving the project as both a Taiwanese initiative and an International online art project. Through the efforts of ADAC's former director Ray Wang, (KOP) server access at ADAC was resumed. However, an IP address 211.73.224.150 was assigned, the use of the domain name is denied. (KOP) will now be premiered at Ars Electronica, September 7-12,2002. [Artists' projects] -Low Level_All_Stars (BEIGE vs. RSG) -Global Village Health Manual v.1 (Raqs Media Collective + Joy Chatterjee), -Stealth Waltz (Mukul Patel & Manu Luksch) -injunction generator(ubermorgen.com) -The File That Wouldn't Leave(0100101110101101.org) -ResourceHanger+ (doubleNegatives) -I love you, world (Vladimir Radisic) -Explorer 98 game (EASTWOOD - Real Time Strategy Group) -HIGH BALL (exonemo) -Warriors of Perception: Search and Manifest (Agnese Trocchi) -i_Biology Patent Engine: (i-BPE)(Diane Ludin) -All Universe for heike, dragan and internet explorer (Olia Lialina) -Top 100 Net Blockers (Dragan Espenschied, Alvar Freude). [Writers' projects] -The Right to Copy: Local study on piracy as an art form (Whiteg weng) -Distributed Media -> Digital Abundance: Property Decay in C21? (J.J. King) -Culture Without Commodities:From Dada to Open Source and Beyond (Felix Stalder). + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ Cover the realm of art, science and technology by subscribing to Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA). Published by LEONARDO, LEA is the leading monthly on-line peer-reviewed journal and web archive in its field. Subscribe now for $35 per year at <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/INFORMATION/subscribe.html</a>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2. Date: 9.1.02 From: Joseph Nechvatal ([email protected]) Subject: Space: Villette Numerique www.villette-numerique.com " Villette Numerique " is the first biennial festival devoted to digital creation. Installations, shows, concerts, cinema, games, clubbing, workshops, lectures, La Villette hosts artists from all over the world and invites the audience to share multiple experiences between discoveries and sensations. Grande Halle de la Villette - Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie - Cité de la Musique - Paris + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 3. Date: 9.5.02 From: Francis Hwang ([email protected]) Subject: Design & Production Intern Rhizome is looking for a Design and Production Intern for the Fall 2002 session. The intern will assist the Director of Technology with production tasks, including editing HTML pages and graphics production. In addition, there will also be opportunities to do self-directed work in fields such as website design, information architecture, and usability. We are looking for a responsible individual who can handle large independent projects. She/he will have a strong interest in new media and new media art, and an eagerness to learn about cutting-edge technologies and ideas by putting them into practice. Experience with the basics of web production (HTML, FTP, Photoshop) required. To apply, email your detailed cover letter and resume to Francis Hwang at [email protected]. Hours: 10 hours per week, scheduling flexible Dates: September 15 - December 15, 2002 Notes: On-site, unpaid + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +ad+ **MUTE MAGAZINE NO. 24 OUT NOW** 'Knocking Holes in Fortress Europe', Florian Schneider on no-border activism in the EU; Brian Holmes on resistance to networked individualism; Alvaro de los Angeles on e-Valencia.org and Andrew Goffey on the politics of immunology. More @ <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.metamute.com/">http://www.metamute.com/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 4. Date: 9.5.02 From: [email protected] and Lee Wells ([email protected]) Subject: looking for a studioxx like organization in the states [email protected] asked: Hi all, I was looking for a media arts and multimedia center for women, but in the States. If anyone knows of an organization pls fwd. the link. Lee Wells replied: Two orgs out of Chicago I dont have the URLS Women in the Directors Chair and WebGurls Collective You should be able to find them online Cheers Lee + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 5. Date: 8.29.02 From: Jonah Brucker-Cohen ([email protected]) Subject: Space: The New Frontier for Art? As technology speeds into the 21st century, it's inevitable new spaces to experience art will materialize. From the virtual Guggenheim to the Whitney's Artport, major institutions are taking notice and creating hybrid physical / online worlds where artists can exhibit their work. These new platforms for both artist and audience allow for mainstream access to commissioned work and a global avenue for audience interaction in the art making process through online participation. But what lies beyond the terrestrial and digital horizon for art? What new territories are left for exploration? Joining the venue-pioneering mission, London's Tate Gallery is taking one "giant leap" into a new frontier for the art world: Space. Tate in Space (www.tate.org.uk) has commissioned artist Susan Collins to create a fictional venture by the museum meant to provoke dialog about the possibilities of intergalactic art. "Tate in Space is really more involved with examining the (primarily western) cultural ambitions of an institution and cultural production rather than space art per se," explains Collins who worked with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London on the feasibility of launching a Tate Satellite "[Tate in Space] seeks to provide a thorough examination, history and discussion into issues surrounding space art and is intended to raise questions, provoke thought and encourage discourse in relation to ourselves and our own ambitions." The online gallery includes pictures of earth from the orbiting satellite, programs for audience participation, and a submission form to send designs of your own model for the orbiting gallery. Although anti-gravity museum gift-shops might be a world away, artists are beginning to embrace the potential of this new landscape. Arthur Wood's "Cosmic Dancer" (1993) (www.cosmicdancer.com), an aluminum snake-like sculpture that inhabited the MIR space station was built specifically for a weightless environment as an art piece that would enliven the drab conditions inside the vessel. His focus in creating the work was to exploit the physiological, philosophical and new sensory experiences of space travel. Similarly, artist Richard Clar's (www.arttechnologies.com) project "Earth Star" (1997) features a ceramic artwork created in space and comprised of rock samples that react to heat generated by the spacecraft's re-entry. Other past space projects including Frank Pietronigro's "Research Project Number 33" focus on performance in weightless environments such as dancing, "action painting", and video documentation. Recently, Dublin-based artist Anna Hill's (www.annahill.net) project, "Space Synapse" highlights the interactive possibilities between space-based art and earth-based installation. The work is an autonomous communications device developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency that will blast into orbit and be deployed inside the International Space Station (ISS). Despite Tate in Space's emphasis on space functioning as a separate entity for art experience, Hill, a graduate of RCA's Interaction Design program, asks how connections between the two realms can augment new forms of creative expression. In her case, Space Synapse will interact with art projects in gallery and site-specific locations across the planet. For instance, her earth-based work "An Eye Open to the Night" reacts to Space Synapse's orbit and consists of a beehive-like structure visitors can enter. "Copper windpipes directed at the sea will utilize solar energy to power an interactive device triggered by frequencies from the ISS and Space Synapse during hours of daylight," Hill explains. "An antenna will pick up broadcast frequencies (when the ISS orbit appears on the horizon) that will open the pipes allowing wind music to play within the shelter." As we explore new areas of artistic expression beyond earthly realms, possibilities seem limitless. Projects like Tate in Space, Space Synapse, and Earth Star are merely starting points for interpreting not only the physical and psychological impacts of space travel, but also the interactive relationship between planet and space. "Twentieth century culture with all its specialist knowledge and material concerns is, I think, in crisis, " Hill admits. "Yet we rely on the natural world and need a sense of the spiritual implicit within it." If that's the case, the answers might actually be in the stars. Related Space Art Links: Tate in Space <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.tate.org.uk">http://www.tate.org.uk</a> Anna Hill - Space Synapse - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.annahill.net">http://www.annahill.net</a> Ars Astronautica - Space Art Web Project - <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.spaceart.net/">http://www.spaceart.net/</a> Arthur Woods - Cosmic Dancer on Mir -<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.cosmicdancer.com/">http://www.cosmicdancer.com/</a> Arts Catalyst - the science-art agency <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.artscatalyst.org/">http://www.artscatalyst.org/</a> International Association of Astronomical Art <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.iaaa.org/">http://www.iaaa.org/</a> KEO <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.keo.org/">http://www.keo.org/</a> Leonardo On-Line Space Art Special Project <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/space.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/space.html</a> Leonardo Space Art Working Group <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/spaceartproject.html">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/spaceartproject.html</a> Richard Clar - Art Techologies ® <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.arttechnologies.com/">http://www.arttechnologies.com/</a> Space Art: Research Project Number 33 <a rel="nofollow" href="http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/NASAproj33/">http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/spaceart/NASAproj33/</a> + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 6. Date: 9.2.02 From: Lev Manovich ([email protected]) Subject: Spatial Montage, Spatial Imaging, and the Archeology of Windows: a Response to Marc Lafia Spatial Montage, Spatial Imaging, and the Arheology of Windows: a Responce to Marc Lafia 1. Montage vs. Co-Presence. My apologies for responding to Marc's exellent text so late - however, now that some of you had a chance to visit Documeta 11 and to see the works he discusses, this maybe a good moment to pick up the thread. (For those who will not be going to Documenta, note that the Documenta installations of Isaac Julian and Eija-Lisa Ahtila would be also included in ZKM's Cinema Future exhibition which opens on November 15.) I think that Marc's observations arevery perceptive and that his overall paradigm of "the spatialization of the image" is a productive way to start thinking about various recent practices of a time-based (and now, "space-based" as well) moving image. I agree with Marc that "new spatial cinema or spatial imaging" often bypasses the logic of montage (i.e., juxtaposition as the source of meaning and effect) in favor of other logics - which Marc started to map out. Yet I also think that Marc's proposal that "the whole concept and project of montage or cinema as the place from which to speak of these new forms, new regimes of image is wholly inadequate and a looking at the moment in a backwards fashion" is being underminded by his own examples. He does admit that some of the key practioners of "spatial cinema" - Sherin Neshat, Eija-Lisa Ahtila, and Isaac Julian - all rely on the cinematic montage. And while I agree with Marc that a number of other "spatial imaging" installations included in the Documenta 11, or show elsewhere, do not operate within the cinematic montage paradigm (works by Chantal Ackerman, Lorna Simpson, Fiona Tan, Bruce Nauman at DIA), I still think that the montage paradigm can be a useful starting point to understand how these works function diffirently. Eloborating what the new paradigms of spatial image are would require at least a few articles but let me very briefly comment on one of these paradigms. Marc writes: "the distribution of images spatially complicates the intensity of such [montage] strategies and grammars as they are deployed in parallel. A parallel that at times is not necessarily juxtaposition, and may be even be thought of as a-parallel." I have the same feeling that many "spatial imaging" works also do not rely on juxtaposition. The terms I would use to talk about their logic is "co-existience," and "simultaneity." Documenta installations of Lorna Simpson and Chantal Ackerman, as well as Doug Aitkens's "Electric Earth," work not by juxtaposing images but by adding them next to each other. In contrast to montage, where juxtaposition of images is used to built one single whole narrative world, in these works diffirent times and/or spaces presented in diffirent images simply co-exist. They do not "talk" to each other as in cinematic montage - instead they simply ignore each other. There is no single space and time they add up to. In rhetorical terms, this is the logic of metonomy. In "The Language of New Media" I used the quote from Foucault' lecture "?Of Other Spaces" as a justification for the approprietness of spatial montage today - but I now think that this quote better describes this new sense of "co-existence" (or ³co-presence) where co-existing elements simply ignore each other, and a considerable mental and emotional effort is needed to connect them to each other at all. Here is the quote: "We are now in the epoch of simultaneity: we are in epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of near and far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed…" Of course, since Foucault (or rather, his translator), places "simulaneity" next to "juxtaposition," which may suggest that we keep trying to "montage" together whatever "dispersed" and "simultaneous" elements we encounter. ((think of driving through Los Angeles's neighboorhoods and trying to find some common denominator between them - a futuile exercise I engage in periodically since I moved to Southern California seven years ago.) I am looking forward to part 3 of Marc's text. Meanwhile, I would like to clarify some of my earlier statements about "spatial montage" in relation to Marc's discussion of them. 2. Montage and GUI Windows. Marc writes: " Lev describes windows as a collection of various kinds of data that form a block that graphic designers are accustomed to arranging or seeing as elements that make up a page. In other words, as described by Lev, these windows don¹t represent coexisting events happening in different durations of time, the varied windows form the semblance of a whole." While visually windows of GUI can be be connected to film montage, it may appear at first that, ultimately, GUI and cinema obey two diffirent logics. Cinema indeed often presents us with the juxtaposition of times and/or spaces belonging to the same fictional world; in GUI the "signifieds" of diffirent windows typically have no connection to each other (for instance, a document opened in a Word, the spreadsheet opened in Exel, music tracks shown in a MP3 player, etc.) However, it actually turns out that the two logics are much closer to each other than we may expect. According to Alan Kay (the lecture at UCSB, April 2002), when in the late 1960s he conceived of twindows as general interface technique, he was thinking of Ivan Sutheralnd¹s Sketchpad (1962) which itself followed the standard convention of engineering and architectural drawings to present multiple views of the same 3D object / 3Dspace in diffirent windows. Sutherland's used this convention for his computer CAD program; Kay and others generalised this technique, extending it from VISUAL domain to other domains. In GUI, multiple windows not only show diffirent views of a 3D object / space but of ANY data (for instance multiple views of the same document in Word). And while an engineer or an architect were typically working with one object / space at a time (i.e., dealing with 4 views of one object/space), GUI allowed a the user to work with a few projects at once, easily switching from windows belonging to one project to windows belonging to another project (within one application), as well as between diffirent "work desks" (i.e., diffirent applications). The fact that windows paradigm was derived from the conventions of using multiple windows to look at the VISIBLE world is very relevant to our discussions of montage. It means the following. While today multiple windows of GUI showing diffirent views of the same data or diffirent data generally do not refer to spatial dimension at all (with the obvious exeption of CAD or 3D animation software), originally (i.e., in the case of Sutherland's Sketchpad) they did. Therefore it becomes possible to think of GUI windows in terms of diffirent SPACES co-existing on the screen - not a "mental space" but the actual physical 3D spaces. Following this argument further we realise that GUI windows are related to film montage in substance, and not just in apperance. Cinema presents us with various windows onto a single physical (and fictional) space. In the case of montage, these multiple views are juxtaposed with each other - think of a chase scene where a film repetedaly switches back and forth between two locations or, the more extreme example of "Kuleshov's Effect" according to which a viewer has a tendency to construct a single coherent physical/fictional from an arbitrary image sequence. But of course cinema often avoids such extreme juxtapositiona in favor of a "peaceful co-existence" of diffirent views of a physical/fictional world of a film (note that this "co-existence" is quite diffirent from "co-existence" as descibed above where diffirent images do not form a single coherent world.) This "peaceful co-existence" is what we also found in GUI: diffirent windows showing one document; diffirent windows showing diffirent documents but still belonging to a single application; finally, diffirent applications each with its own set of windows running on a computer in the same time, some not doing anything and waiting until the user input, others engaged in some computation and/or monitoring. And while today the sense of a single world behind all these windows is gone, recalling the connection between GUI and "Sketchpad" (and the convention of engineering/drafting graphic communication which it followed), helps us to see connection to cinema as well. 3. Montage and Compositing. Marc writes: "Lev puts forward the notion of spatial montage as a way to get a grasp on and understand the new aesthetics of compositing, the procedure that takes us to spatial montage. Spatial montage for him refers to layering, this smooth layering referred to above. … The term spatial does not refer to the spatialization or distribution of image as seen in many art and film works today but a post renaissance deep space of layers and smoothness." Although this point does not have bearings on Marc's subsequent original discussion of spatial imaging, I think he does not correctly represent here. Therefore I would like to clarify the relationship between my concept of spatial montage and compositing, so we can adequately use them in subsequent discussions. I see compositing and spatial montage are two diffirent phenomena. For me "spatial montage" means meaningful juxtaposition of more than one image stream within a single screen. In the book I discuss the works by Boussier and Lialina to develop this concept further. Both works juxtapose multiple images within a single screen, creating both a visual and semantic contrast which for me justifies talking about them as a type of montage: ³In general, spatial montage would involve a number of images, potentially of different sizes and proportions, appearing on the screen at the same time. This by itself of course does not result in montage; it up to the filmmaker to construct a logic which drives which images appear together, when they appear and what kind of relationships they enter with each other.² (section ³Spatial Montage² in The Language of New Media). When I was finishing the book in 1999, I could not find any examples of spatial montage in contemporary cinema, and this is why I use as my examples a net project (Lialiana) and a CD-ROM multimedia project (Boissier). In the next couple of years, the spatial montage gradually become more present in in film and television, from Mike Figgis¹s Timecode (2000) to a TV series "24 hours" and many music videos and commercials. The new layered space achieved through diffirent types of compositing (discussed in the earlier section ³Compositing and New Types of Montage) is a diffirent phenomenon. It refers to the ³technical² or ³material² shifts in the organisation of a moving image. If traditional cinema privelleges the temporal relationship between a particular image and other images which come before and atter, computer cinema brings in a set of new relationships which can be described by terms ³spatial² and ³simultaneous²: the relationships between diffirent layers ina 2D or 3D composite, the relationship between a frame of a movie and other information which can be hyperlinked to this frame, etc. These new ³techniques² of a moving image can be used to achieve ³spatial montage² but as the examples of Boissier, Lialina (and numerous works from the history of art) show, spatial montage can be created without them. —————————————————————————- Dr. Lev Manovich | www.manovich.net | [email protected] Associate Professor of New Media, UCSD 2002-03 Guggenheim Fellow 2002 Digital Culture Fellow, UCSB 2002 Fellow, The Zentrum für Literaturforschung, Berlin Address: University of California San Diego, Visual Arts Department, 0084, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0084, U.S.A + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 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 ([email protected]). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 7, number 36. Article submissions to [email protected] 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 [email protected]. 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>. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +