[iDC] interesting article on new media scene in LA

[Brooke Singer]

I have forward this email to Beatriz, because I don't think Mark quite  
captured her sentiments. This conflict for artists and engineers  
working in the realm of emerging technologies is not anything new nor  
location specific. This dialogue was hot (and I am sure still is...) at  
Carnegie Mellon when I was getting my graduate degree in the late 90s  
and had been ongoing for sometime. If you want a certain level of  
access and money for tech research/experimentation, it seems like you  
either play the game and hope to come out on top. Or you try and play  
outside the system, which of course may be impossible both in terms of  
getting things done and as a concept in itself.

Brooke

On Oct 30, 2005, at 11:51 PM, Mark Shepard wrote:

> Look...
>
> No reason to categorically disparage the SoCal expats. The LA Times  
> article was written by Holly Willis,"a regular contributor to the  
> Weekly, who currently teaches video art, new media and digital culture  
> at USC, Art Center and CalArts". So of course she's referencing the  
> people she knows and the context within which she is operating. I  
> don't see anything problematic with regional reportage of this nature.  
> It gives us a glimpse (however biased) of what is happening there.
>
> Beatrice da Costa commented at Trebor's conference last spring that  
> SoCal had this wonderful confluence of academic and industrial  
> interests - almost as if she were speaking about cocktail recipe. Now,  
> it's not news that the post-critical is the parole du jour there - and  
> perhaps something valuable will come from it - but the limits are  
> already being articulated by people like Julian Bleeker in his  
> response to Mike Liebhold's talk at USC's Annenberg Center for  
> Communication  (  
> http://netpublics.annenberg.edu/about_netpublics/ 
> mike_liebhold_lecture_the_geospatial_web_and_mobile_service_ecologies_1 
> 0_27_2pm#comment-25 )
>
> I'd be interested in hearing more about the opportunities and dilemmas  
> of research funding schemes based on tight couplings between academic,  
> industrial, and military interests in new media in southern  
> California... And particularly what, if anything, this has to do with  
> art.
>
> Mark