September 2011
10 posts
The Definition of Context Collapse
“…an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording. The images, actions, and words captured by the lens at any moment can be transported to anywhere on the planet and preserved (the performer must assume) for all time. The little glass lens becomes the gateway to a blackhole sucking all of time and space – virtually all possible contexts – in upon itself.”
Via: Mediated Cultures
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a new website. →
metmuseum.org
Not as sexy and dynamic as MOMA’s, but it’s simple, straightforward and worth checking out.
And since I can’t ever find what I need on MoMA, that’s a good thing.
Play
The idea of an aesthetics of process draws from the consideration of technology as a social practice. It sees artistic creativity, particularly an art practice that thoughtfully and self-consciously engages advanced technologies, as a form of social praxis enmeshed in an ever morphing web of human social relations. It sees technology not as finished products to be used, but as works in progress to be adapted and transformed. Art practices that embrace such an aesthetic, not to mention the specific artworks that result from them, must also be considered works in progress. David Rokeby’s Very Nervous System8 is an excellent case in point. It is an installation that grew out of two earlier projects, Body Language (1984) and Reflections (1981), both of which were based on software written for the Apple II computer. It has evolved into a software package, softVNS, intended for the most up to date personal computers.
The aesthetics of inevitable failure: process and contingency in the presentation of electronic media art - Lewis Kaye.
Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2010
[T]he rush to stuff content into interactive media has drawn our attention away from the profound and subtle ways that the interface itself, by defining how we perceive and navigate content, shapes our experience of that content. If culture, in the context of interactive media, becomes something we “do,” it’s the interface that defines how we do it and how the “doing” feels. Word processors change the experience of writing, regardless of the content; they affect the manner in which that content is expressed. Hypermedia provide multiple trajectories through content, but the nature of the links, branches and interconnections influences our path, and inevitably changes our sense of the content.
(David Rokeby, 1998)
The apparently neutral space of the gallery is in reality a highly produced space. Control of environmental factors such as heat, humidity and natural lighting, that of artificial lighting, security and observation features, exhibition barriers, display cases and crowd flow management systems are all important considerations in the control and management of gallery space. Clearly, it takes a great deal of human activity to make such neutrality invisible.
The aesthetics of inevitable failure: process and contingency in the presentation of electronic media art - Lewis Kaye.
Int. J. Arts and Technology, Vol. 3, No. 4, 2010
