On narrative, abstract and location

Pall,

Sorry to come back on your post after so long –

Just thinking about this piece on GPS narrative – and I do realise
that I don't know your work in detail – this "backbone" or "abstract
narrative" as you call it — the problem I see is in the openness of
the situation. The audience doesn't know if the backbone is TRUE and
actually couldn't care less, unless there is some driving force or
motivation behind the narrative. If the narrative where to be authored,
now, that would be a different matter.

Traditional fictional narrative is authored. Which doesn't mean that it
couldn't be based on a GPS narrative. (probably already done,
somewhere, sometime). Also, it doesn't mean that the narrative should
be as fleshed out as most fictional narrative is. It could be just as
basic as the example you gave in your piece. But it would be fiction.
And it would be an authored, intentional narrative (line) leading
somewhere (to redemption, in circles). There is a huge difference
between my wanderings through the city on a given day in July and an
authored narrative of the same, tracing the Odyssey.

Cheers
Geert
(http://nznl.com)

On 11-okt-04, at 0:59, Pall Thayer wrote:

> On narrative, abstract and location
> A few words on location-based data in art
>
> http://pallit.lhi.is/~palli/NarAbsLoc.pdf
>
>
> –
> _______________________________
> Pall Thayer
> artist/teacher
> http://www.this.is/pallit
> http://pallit.lhi.is/panse
> _______________________________
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

> Pall,
>
> Sorry to come back on your post after so long –
>
> Just thinking about this piece on GPS narrative – and I do realise
> that I don't know your work in detail – this "backbone" or "abstract
> narrative" as you call it — the problem I see is in the openness of
> the situation. The audience doesn't know if the backbone is TRUE and
> actually couldn't care less, unless there is some driving force or
> motivation behind the narrative. If the narrative where to be authored,
> now, that would be a different matter.
>
> Traditional fictional narrative is authored. Which doesn't mean that it
> couldn't be based on a GPS narrative. (probably already done,
> somewhere, sometime). Also, it doesn't mean that the narrative should
> be as fleshed out as most fictional narrative is. It could be just as
> basic as the example you gave in your piece. But it would be fiction.
> And it would be an authored, intentional narrative (line) leading
> somewhere (to redemption, in circles). There is a huge difference
> between my wanderings through the city on a given day in July and an
> authored narrative of the same, tracing the Odyssey.

One evening many years ago during a time in my life when I was producing a
radio show, I decided to take my tape recorder with me on a walk through the
city and leave it on through the whole walk. I didn't think much of it
during the walk. The next day, I popped the cassette into the tape player to
listen to it. I wasn't sure what to expect. Nothing much, really, was what I
expected.

What I found was that there was all sorts of stuff going on that I hadn't
really understood. Having been, as usual, mesmerized by the visual during
the walk, I hadn't noticed the relation of the sounds in the video arcade to
the sounds of the cars outside. I hadn't noticed the one liners that you
hear as you walk down the street and pass people who are talking with a
friend or on the cell phone. Usually you get one line from them and often it
is telling. I hadn't noticed the way the teenagers shouting from the car
were part of the sound of the car passing and how violent the sound was. All
sorts of things like that. Just listening to the audio posed relations that
I had not considered during the walk. I had not previously heard the mix of
natural, 'machine', and crafted sounds in most everything we hear.

I learned that I had not been listening. I learned to hear.

The world talks to us, or maybe just talks, and few are listening.

Someone called radio 'the soundtrack of our lives'. But actually the
soundtrack, the natural, the machined, and the crafted, is all around
whether radio is part of it or not. Radio is just part of the crafted part
of it, when it's audible at all.

So then I took that recording and added audio pieces to it and made a piece
I called Victorium (I live in Victoria). Audio pieces coming out of
mufflers, drifting out of windows, etc. A different sound scape than the one
I heard, but related. An odd thing, don't know whether it's a narrative or
not. But it is telling.

So maybe some sort of similar things can happen with Pall's GPS stuff. A
sense of the bigger picture we don't normally get.

When I was producing radio, I had occassion a few times to record people who
hadn't heard their own voice recorded before. Invariably their response was
"that doesn't sound like me." And they meant it. Hearing ourselves via
recorded sound gives us an objectivity about the sound of our own voice that
we don't have without recorded sound. I got a similar sense of objectivity
about the sounds of the city when I did my walk. The GPS stuff could
possibly give us a related objectivity about the geographic space that we
don't normally have.

And then use that newly discovered objectivity to more fully explore the
subjective.

ja

It is very true that there is raw material to be discovered in GPS
tracking, just as there is in other auditing. (I was doing my books at
the time I wrote my post, thinking about the paper trail we leave.)

However, that's not my point – the point I hope to make is that the
"abstract narrative" might not be true representation of measured
points in space-time, but could be, and in a work of art, should be, at
the same time a representation of some other, should trace that other.
I don't think that "could possibly give us a related objectivity" is
good enough – the author of the abstract narrative should have a clear
idea of what that narrative is copying – and should then adjust the
narrative to match.

The dictionary entry on the word "story" Pall gave us in his piece is
misleading – yes, a series of events will indeed inevitably be a
narrative by definition – but will it be a MEANINGFUL narrative?

Geert
(http://nznl.com)

On 17-okt-04, at 13:34, Jim Andrews wrote:

>> Pall,
>>
>> Sorry to come back on your post after so long –
>>
>> Just thinking about this piece on GPS narrative – and I do realise
>> that I don't know your work in detail – this "backbone" or "abstract
>> narrative" as you call it — the problem I see is in the openness of
>> the situation. The audience doesn't know if the backbone is TRUE and
>> actually couldn't care less, unless there is some driving force or
>> motivation behind the narrative. If the narrative where to be
>> authored,
>> now, that would be a different matter.
>>
>> Traditional fictional narrative is authored. Which doesn't mean that
>> it
>> couldn't be based on a GPS narrative. (probably already done,
>> somewhere, sometime). Also, it doesn't mean that the narrative should
>> be as fleshed out as most fictional narrative is. It could be just as
>> basic as the example you gave in your piece. But it would be fiction.
>> And it would be an authored, intentional narrative (line) leading
>> somewhere (to redemption, in circles). There is a huge difference
>> between my wanderings through the city on a given day in July and an
>> authored narrative of the same, tracing the Odyssey.
>
> One evening many years ago during a time in my life when I was
> producing a
> radio show, I decided to take my tape recorder with me on a walk
> through the
> city and leave it on through the whole walk. I didn't think much of it
> during the walk. The next day, I popped the cassette into the tape
> player to
> listen to it. I wasn't sure what to expect. Nothing much, really, was
> what I
> expected.
>
> What I found was that there was all sorts of stuff going on that I
> hadn't
> really understood. Having been, as usual, mesmerized by the visual
> during
> the walk, I hadn't noticed the relation of the sounds in the video
> arcade to
> the sounds of the cars outside. I hadn't noticed the one liners that
> you
> hear as you walk down the street and pass people who are talking with a
> friend or on the cell phone. Usually you get one line from them and
> often it
> is telling. I hadn't noticed the way the teenagers shouting from the
> car
> were part of the sound of the car passing and how violent the sound
> was. All
> sorts of things like that. Just listening to the audio posed relations
> that
> I had not considered during the walk. I had not previously heard the
> mix of
> natural, 'machine', and crafted sounds in most everything we hear.
>
> I learned that I had not been listening. I learned to hear.
>
> The world talks to us, or maybe just talks, and few are listening.
>
> Someone called radio 'the soundtrack of our lives'. But actually the
> soundtrack, the natural, the machined, and the crafted, is all around
> whether radio is part of it or not. Radio is just part of the crafted
> part
> of it, when it's audible at all.
>
> So then I took that recording and added audio pieces to it and made a
> piece
> I called Victorium (I live in Victoria). Audio pieces coming out of
> mufflers, drifting out of windows, etc. A different sound scape than
> the one
> I heard, but related. An odd thing, don't know whether it's a
> narrative or
> not. But it is telling.
>
> So maybe some sort of similar things can happen with Pall's GPS stuff.
> A
> sense of the bigger picture we don't normally get.
>
> When I was producing radio, I had occassion a few times to record
> people who
> hadn't heard their own voice recorded before. Invariably their
> response was
> "that doesn't sound like me." And they meant it. Hearing ourselves via
> recorded sound gives us an objectivity about the sound of our own
> voice that
> we don't have without recorded sound. I got a similar sense of
> objectivity
> about the sounds of the city when I did my walk. The GPS stuff could
> possibly give us a related objectivity about the geographic space that
> we
> don't normally have.
>
> And then use that newly discovered objectivity to more fully explore
> the
> subjective.
>
> ja
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

>> The dictionary entry on the word "story" Pall gave us in his piece is
>> misleading – yes, a series of events will indeed inevitably be a
>> narrative by definition – but will it be a MEANINGFUL narrative?

But this is my point. OK, so calling it a narrative as such might be
stretching things a bit, but it lays the groundwork for a narrative.
What's missing is the meaning of the narrative and that's done on
purpose to give the audience the freedom to provide their own. I began
thinking about this after doing Hlemmur in C
(http://pallit.lhi.is/hlemmC). Two taxis that share a rest station at a
place called Hlemmur. It's a Saturday evening and their travels are
traced from 5pm till the end of their shift. The traces are then
represented as a visual in simulated real-time. It's on a plain black
background so it provides no other data except that one taxi is red, the
other is blue. The trace is also represented as a dynamic audio-stream
based on their position relative to Hlemmur. The idea when I created the
project was to make a piece that was somehow related to Hlemmur. That
was it. However, when it was complete and began to watch it, I was
really curious about what exactly might be going on at certain points
but since the data wasn't there I had to make up stories to satisfy my
own curiosity. For instance, at one point one of the taxi's goes to a
strip-joint, stops there for a couple of minutes and then goes directly
from there to a night club frequented by drunk 40-somethings. So when
you figure out that that's what those locations are, you can build a
hell of a story around it but whether or not it's true doesn't matter
because we'll never know better. We don't have a record of it. At
another point, one of the taxi's is driving slowly around a strictly
industrial area. What on earth could he be doing in an industrial area
on a Saturday night? All the factories, offices, everthing is closed.
But yet he seems to be driving at a leisurely pace around the whole
area. Again, I was able to fabricate a lot of stories to satisfy my
curiosity.

So no, it's not meaningfull narrative and it's not meant to be. That's
the whole point and I just think it would be interesting to see what
could come out if people create work that has this specifically in mind.
Examine the whole idea of leaving out information rather than to add
information to the trace, which is what has been the trend in
locative-media works.

Pall

Geert Dekkers wrote:
> It is very true that there is raw material to be discovered in GPS
> tracking, just as there is in other auditing. (I was doing my books at
> the time I wrote my post, thinking about the paper trail we leave.)
>
> However, that's not my point – the point I hope to make is that the
> "abstract narrative" might not be true representation of measured
> points in space-time, but could be, and in a work of art, should be, at
> the same time a representation of some other, should trace that other. I
> don't think that "could possibly give us a related objectivity" is good
> enough – the author of the abstract narrative should have a clear idea
> of what that narrative is copying – and should then adjust the
> narrative to match.
>
> The dictionary entry on the word "story" Pall gave us in his piece is
> misleading – yes, a series of events will indeed inevitably be a
> narrative by definition – but will it be a MEANINGFUL narrative?
>
> Geert
> (http://nznl.com)
>
> On 17-okt-04, at 13:34, Jim Andrews wrote:
>
>>> Pall,
>>>
>>> Sorry to come back on your post after so long –
>>>
>>> Just thinking about this piece on GPS narrative – and I do realise
>>> that I don't know your work in detail – this "backbone" or "abstract
>>> narrative" as you call it — the problem I see is in the openness of
>>> the situation. The audience doesn't know if the backbone is TRUE and
>>> actually couldn't care less, unless there is some driving force or
>>> motivation behind the narrative. If the narrative where to be authored,
>>> now, that would be a different matter.
>>>
>>> Traditional fictional narrative is authored. Which doesn't mean that it
>>> couldn't be based on a GPS narrative. (probably already done,
>>> somewhere, sometime). Also, it doesn't mean that the narrative should
>>> be as fleshed out as most fictional narrative is. It could be just as
>>> basic as the example you gave in your piece. But it would be fiction.
>>> And it would be an authored, intentional narrative (line) leading
>>> somewhere (to redemption, in circles). There is a huge difference
>>> between my wanderings through the city on a given day in July and an
>>> authored narrative of the same, tracing the Odyssey.
>>
>>
>> One evening many years ago during a time in my life when I was
>> producing a
>> radio show, I decided to take my tape recorder with me on a walk
>> through the
>> city and leave it on through the whole walk. I didn't think much of it
>> during the walk. The next day, I popped the cassette into the tape
>> player to
>> listen to it. I wasn't sure what to expect. Nothing much, really, was
>> what I
>> expected.
>>
>> What I found was that there was all sorts of stuff going on that I hadn't
>> really understood. Having been, as usual, mesmerized by the visual during
>> the walk, I hadn't noticed the relation of the sounds in the video
>> arcade to
>> the sounds of the cars outside. I hadn't noticed the one liners that you
>> hear as you walk down the street and pass people who are talking with a
>> friend or on the cell phone. Usually you get one line from them and
>> often it
>> is telling. I hadn't noticed the way the teenagers shouting from the car
>> were part of the sound of the car passing and how violent the sound
>> was. All
>> sorts of things like that. Just listening to the audio posed relations
>> that
>> I had not considered during the walk. I had not previously heard the
>> mix of
>> natural, 'machine', and crafted sounds in most everything we hear.
>>
>> I learned that I had not been listening. I learned to hear.
>>
>> The world talks to us, or maybe just talks, and few are listening.
>>
>> Someone called radio 'the soundtrack of our lives'. But actually the
>> soundtrack, the natural, the machined, and the crafted, is all around
>> whether radio is part of it or not. Radio is just part of the crafted
>> part
>> of it, when it's audible at all.
>>
>> So then I took that recording and added audio pieces to it and made a
>> piece
>> I called Victorium (I live in Victoria). Audio pieces coming out of
>> mufflers, drifting out of windows, etc. A different sound scape than
>> the one
>> I heard, but related. An odd thing, don't know whether it's a
>> narrative or
>> not. But it is telling.
>>
>> So maybe some sort of similar things can happen with Pall's GPS stuff. A
>> sense of the bigger picture we don't normally get.
>>
>> When I was producing radio, I had occassion a few times to record
>> people who
>> hadn't heard their own voice recorded before. Invariably their
>> response was
>> "that doesn't sound like me." And they meant it. Hearing ourselves via
>> recorded sound gives us an objectivity about the sound of our own
>> voice that
>> we don't have without recorded sound. I got a similar sense of
>> objectivity
>> about the sounds of the city when I did my walk. The GPS stuff could
>> possibly give us a related objectivity about the geographic space that we
>> don't normally have.
>>
>> And then use that newly discovered objectivity to more fully explore the
>> subjective.
>>
>> ja
>>
>>
>> +
>> -> post: [email protected]
>> -> questions: [email protected]
>> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
>> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
>> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
>> +
>> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
>> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
>

–
_______________________________
Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
http://pallit.lhi.is/panse
_______________________________