[iDC] Re: iDC Digest, Vol 22, Issue 12
Kevin Hamilton
kham at uiuc.edu
Tue Aug 15 20:42:39 EDT 2006
Hi Daniel and all,
Just to elaborate - I agree that it's crucial to consider our
technologies' role in commerce, but I think it's also important to
examine the world-views on which our uses of these technologies depend.
(Also to note - I'm picking up on Kanarinka's examples that mention
locative media, but she raised other concerns that this sub-thread
doesn't yet address.)
The reason why Constant's designs put me off is related to Sarah's short
post about hope for a less individualistic approach to
mapping/walking/mobility -
I may be mis-reading the work, but though Constant's Utopia appears to
be egalitarian and "free," it seems to retain a modernist
self-sufficiency equal to the "sandbox" phenomenon in its capacity for
abuse. Where is conflict in his cities? Has it been abolished? Sure, I'd
love to live in a conflict-free world, but I don't really think it's
possible. Those who believe in such a world seem to be the ones who
already won the struggle.
I admit though, I'm calling to mind a few of Constant's drawings and
models from books, and a lecture or two I've seen about them. It would
be better to stand in front of the designs together and talk. I simply
referred to them as an example from Situationist thought in which an
uncritical belief in autonomy of the individual seems to be live and
kicking. There's a lot of that floating around in Situationist works. I
recognize that in the face of oppression, individual freedom and rights
are a world of good, but I don't want to end there.
Streets are well-documented sites for constructing subjecthood through
looking, legislating, desiring, taking - some persons emerge more
powerful, others less at the other end of the block. If the space is
already that complex without the influence of surveillance or GPS
technologies, shouldn't our work with those technologies reflect the
contested nature of the sites? Some works do, I know. But the fact that
so many do not make me wonder whether the technology itself isn't
setting us up to ignore those things.
There seems to be a "telos" or end-goal in many locative media projects
of a total map, constructed by individuals, equally contributed by
individuals, and stable. Does such a motivation replace the politically
instrumental objectivity of colonial maps with the politically
irrelevant subjectivity of an uncontested wiki-world? Maybe these
projects are just too new - they haven't had time to encounter the sorts
of conflicts that have occurred on Wikipedia. But there are plenty of
things to map that would require long and difficult discussions,
collaborations.
This thread also relates to Trebor's paper from ISEA (available as a
download at Intelligent Agent) - I'm thinking of his discussion of
motivations for contribution to participatory forms - can we talk about
a wiki and a map in the same way, or do more spatialized forms of
collective effort require other terms? What do we expect from
participation in collective mapping, compared to a listserv or a writely
document?
What do psychogeography and collective, subjective or vernacular mapping
practices have in common?
I didn't attend the American Association of Geography(ers) conference in
Chicago last Winter, but I'd guess some on this list did. The lecture
titles made it look like geographers are all over this discussion.
Anyone have any relevant observations, examples, or good references from
there to report?
Happy to see Catherine's questions touched so many nerves,
Kevin
Daniel A Perlin wrote:
> Hi all,
> I have been a reader of iDC for awhile, and many threads have tempted
> me, but this one seems to have touched and articulated so many of my
> exact sentiments regarding locative media in general, so I thought I
> might add my 2.0 cents.
>
> In my opinion, the following points raised by kanarinka are so critical
> that they should be asked of each incoming project deemed locative.
>
>
>> So, my questions to the artists, the organizers, the attendees and
>> everyone else is - is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D
>> for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are we
>> actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who
>> gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and
>> Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,
>> militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary
>> interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a
>> sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly irrelevant
>> and irresponsible.
>>
>
>
> Somehow, the evasive nature of Debord's psycheogeographic models have
> lent themeselves to the most abusive forms of appropriation (or perhaps,
> as with anything that is powerful, it is a multi-edged sword).
>
> Clearly the sandbox idea is a diversion from Debord's concept of the
> detournement. I quote:
>
> If détournement were extended to urbanistic realizations, not many
> people would remain unaffected by an exact reconstruction in one city of
> an entire neighborhood of another. Life can never be too disorienting:
> détournement on this level would really make it beautiful.
> ---Guy Debord, Gil J Wolman, A User’s Guide to Détournement Belgian
> surrealist journal Les Lèvres Nues #8 (May 1956).
>
> (Translator’s Note: The French word détournement means deflection,
> diversion, rerouting, distortion, misuse, misappropriation, hijacking,
> or otherwise turning aside from the normal course or purpose.)
>
> It seems to me that the sandbox is not point here for Debord. In fact,
> what might be being begged by Debord, and perhaps some of these new
> works, are new approaches to mapping itself.
>
> Although we should not privelege cartography as a mapping strategy per
> se, some new ways to make some mess or sense out of our everyday lives
> can be offered by these new technologies. Looking to Frederic Jameson,
> as opposed to simple game theory may be a strategy.
>
> Jameson states,
> An aesthetic of cognitive mapping – a pedagogical political culture
> which seeks to endow the individual subject with some new heightened
> sense of its place in the global system – will necessarily have to
> respect this now enormously complex representational dialectic and
> invent radically new forms in order to do it justice. –Frederic Jameson,
> Postmodernism or the Cultural logic of Late Capitalism Verso 1991
>
> I was and am not at ISEA as I have a residency in Barcelona now where I
> am working on a psychogeographic sound project, but it seems to me that
> much of the work in the field of locative media is blatant
> technofetishization of the latest gadgets masked as art. Is abject
> depoliticization of work needed to make it fun or marketable (I ask this
> of the new york chelsea art gallery system as well)?
>
> I for one would gladly go to "existentialist hells" to try to uncover
> some spaces which have not been overcommodified by the priveleged zones
> of bourgois play...
> (Kevin Hamilton:)
>
>> I'm also suspect of permission
>> granted or grabbed through mobility, for the same reasons that the
>> cities and buildings of Constant look to me like an existentialist hell),
>>
>
> Here Kevin, while I do love the link-up to Beckett, I feel that
> Constant's New Babylon is anything but existentialist hell. What we
> uncover and unfold from his new bablylon city is the always-already
> existent individual psychogeographies present in the polis. His utopian
> project, of relinking these sites through material and structure are
> only physical manifestations of many of the ideals found in the earliest
> utopian maps: one only need think of Moore's Utopia map from 1517, the
> island where each city represents each other on the island of utopia. Is
> this nota possible goal for the nonheirarchical approach designed by
> Constant?
>
> Is there play in this utopia? Perhaps, but not necessarily "fun".
> Interplay, dialogues, push and pull. Quite the opposite of the simple
> misreadings of may '68 by the current bourgoise technorati. Sure, play
> can be fun. But just becuase its fun doesn't make it play. And just
> because you track it on GPS doesn't make it play or fun for that matter.
> Every missile fired from and to iraq is tracked too. And for some in
> power-plays, this "iraq thing" is just a playground as well.
>
> (am I alone in begging my fellow makers of things to please ask:)
>
> "Who controls what and why?"
>
> Why are these questions always so taboo at these conventions masked as
> conferences...? I probably sound bitter, but I get frustrated when i see
> so much potential energy just feeding the beasts.
>
> best,
> daniel perlin
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: idc-request at bbs.thing.net
> Date: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:24 am
> Subject: iDC Digest, Vol 22, Issue 12
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> iDC Digest, Vol 22, Issue 12
> From:
> idc-request at bbs.thing.net
> Date:
> Mon, 14 Aug 2006 21:24:54 -0400 (EDT)
> To:
> idc at bbs.thing.net
>
> To:
> idc at bbs.thing.net
>
>
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> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment? (Brad Borevitz)
> 2. irrelevant mobile entertainment as play post
> (mollybh at netspace.net.au)
> 3. Re: Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> (Kevin Hamilton)
> 4. Re: Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> (Sarah Kanouse)
> 5. Re: Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> (tobias c. van Veen)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:49:27 -0700
> From: Brad Borevitz <brad at onetwothree.net>
> Subject: [iDC] Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> To: "idc at bbs.thing.net" <idc at bbs.thing.net>
> Message-ID: <C10605B7.14486%brad at onetwothree.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
> i quite agree with kanarinka. my experience of isea was similarly
> disappointing.
>
> i would want to add to her impression of techno-spectacular play devoid of
> serious or political content, a critique of the conferences "architecture,"
> structure, and style: there was a definitive air of corperatist aesthetics
> on display in the main exhibition and symposium hall ... gratuitous
> televisuals, power-points-a-plenty, office furnishings, branded everything,
> overpriced concessions, overpriced separately ticketed events, product
> placements, product demos ... the exhibition looked like a trade show and
> functioned like one as well - with artist/promoters present with their wares
> and making a pitch to jaded passersby, stuffing their tote bags with
> take-aways and business cards and flyers and brochures ... infotainment,
> techno-phantastic, technophilic ... crap
>
> remember, that the O1 part of the show was dreamed up by SJ chamber of
> commerce (or the like) as a SJ promotional biennial ... putting a high
> culture gleam on silicon valley's usual corporate production ...
>
> saskia sassen's keynote was one of the only things i saw which focused
> attention meaningfully on political perspectives on technology. the changes
> in social/political/economic formations she outlined are frightening. but
> their relationship to the technosphere is complicated. clearly not all the
> changes are technologically determined, nor can they be addressed
> technologically(e.g. changes in citizenship and democracy). and those that
> are (finance) seem so far away from what most artists are concerning
> themselves with, we risk irrelevance, or worse, distraction.
>
> brad borevitz
>
> On 8/14/06 9:03 AM, "idc-request at bbs.thing.net" <idc-request at bbs.thing.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>> is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D
>> for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are we
>> actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who
>> gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and
>> Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,
>> militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary
>> interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a
>> sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly
>> irrelevant and irresponsible.
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 03:52:17 +1000
> From: mollybh at netspace.net.au
> Subject: [iDC] irrelevant mobile entertainment as play post
> To: idc at bbs.thing.net
> Message-ID: <1155577937.44e0b8518b4a4 at webmail.netspace.net.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> dear list,
> i'm introducing myself after lurking a long time, as well...
> i'm a student of media and communications writing a phd on
> mobile communications and cities. i'm an artist and presenter on ideas
> having to do with architecture and media through the research collaboration
> - archimedia - http://archimedia.sytes.net -
>
> i just wanted to repond to this very important comment of katarinka's.
> it's very apt. my own personal feeling about the theme of the interactive city
> is that it was a curatorial misfire. many artists produced work about pollution,
> a political problem in san jose of notorious proportions. with all the green
> stuff happening and health data, also an interactive technology area, maybe the
> festival should have put the art on the ground so to speak, with an idea like
> 'city as enviroment' to which the artists were already attuned. this would
> certainly have been of interest to the communities of san jose across many
> lines, and would have sparked a lot of meaningful crossovers and
> interstices...instead the interactive city concept led to a lot of corporatized
> "play" which wasn't accessible in its futurism and athleticism. i think this
> question about militarism and terrorism is very good, and its unfortunate that
> instead of taking on the problem of the city, its location, etc, it seemed to be
> avoided and, even, denied for sensibilities which could just as well have taken
> place in any suburb.
>
> thanks for such a slicing through of the gimmicky side of R&D!
>
> molly hankwitz
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 13:25:30 -0500
> From: Kevin Hamilton <kham at uiuc.edu>
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> To: idc at bbs.thing.net
> Message-ID: <44E0C01A.4020302 at uiuc.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> kanarinka -
>
> From our own recent correspondence you can probably guess where I would
> come out on your excellent questions, but for the sake of discussion
> I'll jump in anyway.
>
> I saw very few of the actual exhibits you mentioned, but read about more
> of them on the ISEA website, and share your doubts. The ISEA Interactive
> City projects seemed to follow either the problematic "community through
> collecting story" route or the also problematic "liberation/activation
> through mobility and play" route, to which you allude.
>
> I understand in your questions some doubt about the ways in which the
> work of de Certeau and the Situationist project have formed a
> significant platform for "interventionist" work today. Perhaps you're
> more interested in questioning the application of these ideas in the
> context of a New Media event, but I think it's worth examining the whole
> contemporary project of critique through mis-use.
>
> It's a question Sarah Kanouse first asked me years ago - who really gets
> to walk like de Certeau's walker/reader in the city? Certainly his
> theory is useful in making sure we don't grant TOO much power to
> Foucault-Bentham's panoptic eye on the other end. But what exactly is
> produced in these infinitesimal acts of mis-reading? I think we can
> answer this question on two levels - first, at the level of
> self-perception and second, at the level of the public/symbolic.
>
> On the personal level, certainly some of the actions you mention produce
> awareness in the mis-walker of the ways in which one self-regulates in
> space. As someone who's participated in similar projects, I recall
> enjoying the ways in which such actions manifest on a bodily scale how
> the world "could be other." It's as simple as how jumping a fence
> instead of going around it connects a specific bodily exertion with an
> extension (or negation) of permission. At their most effective, such
> actions are the spatial equivalent of Schwitters' spoken language
> experiments, liberating the speaker through action outside of social
> bounds but well within the body's capabilities.
>
> But don't they also often re-iterate an understanding of public space
> that revolves around permission and regulation, instead of around
> freedom, accountability, or justice? I'm also suspect of permission
> granted or grabbed through mobility, for the same reasons that the
> cities and buildings of Constant look to me like an existentialist hell.
> Many of Beckett's characters have all the agency they could want, pacing
> around endlessly, but there's "nothing to do be done" with it because
> this agency is bestowed in an asocial world.
>
> On the symbolic level, we can examine the different ways in which acts
> like the ones you describe are then re-presented to others, reinforcing
> or re-creating power structures. Especially in the context of art
> careers, few carry out such actions without then showing someone else
> later, and these images/videos perform a separate function. Compare,
> say, footage of parkour runners on a Nike ad to video of Alex Villar
> climbing a wall in Manhattan, screened for an exhibition. These
> representations function differently for their different audiences,
> dependent upon complex intersections of race or perceived race, class,
> status, place, history, athleticism and agency.
>
> For each of the examples you mention, or for those of our(my) own work
> about mobile play, I think we just have to look carefully and ask
> questions about where permission is granted as opposed to power, whose
> vision and view such imparting depends on. We have to ask these
> questions at the levels of experience and representation. (For an
> example of the latter, I recommend Martin Berger's excellent and helpful
> analysis of the old American painting, "Fair Exchange, No Robbery" by
> William Sidney Mount. The picture depicts a walker engaged in an
> apparently harmless but covert act of landscape alteration, and Berger
> does a great analysis in terms of race, form, context, representation.
> See the first chapter of "Sight Unseen," on U of California press.)
>
> I'm still confident in the potential for protest or effective
> empowerment through play, but not as a rule, and not without a great
> deal of positioning and fore-thought and analyses on-the-go.
> Anthropology tells us about how ritualized forms of play, even socially
> or politically liberatory play, are carefully contained and located
> through tradition and hierarchy. Inventing new play, ostensibly outside
> proscribed boundaries and toward liberatory ends, would probably require
> a kind of surrogate cultural context, invented and carefully deployed.
> I'm not sure if I think this is possible or not.
>
> For a discussion like this, it would also be useful to distinguish
> between the two frequently-asked questions of "Is this action
> politically effective?" and "What is the political effect of this
> action?" Both questions are useful, but the first requires some
> knowledge of a project's goals and methodology, and may not be always
> appropriate. For example, some explicitly political projects eschew the
> vocabulary of "effectiveness", and other projects/artifacts have no
> stated political function but have plenty of negative/positive political
> effects. (I admit that I'm getting a little out of my league here,
> through my lack of experience in activism.)
>
> I would love to see this discussion continue in the context of analysis
> of a specific work or two together - maybe at the Conflux next month? I
> hadn't planned on attending this time, but the promise of such a
> discussion would certainly motivate my involvement. I recall Trebor
> calling for more specific analyses of projects here on the list, as
> well, so maybe it can happen online.
>
> Thanks for bringing it up, Catherine.
>
> Kevin Hamilton
>
> PS - Sorry I missed the IDC gathering, I had to leave after my panel,
> and just barely made my next appt. in San Francisco.
>
>
>
> kanarinka wrote:
>
>> Hello All -
>>
>> A pleasure to meet some of you at ISEA. A brief introduction - my name
>> is kanarinka/Catherine D'Ignazio. I am an artist, software developer,
>> co-founder of iKatun and the Institute for Infinitely Small Things,
>> former Co-Director of Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA, and part-time
>> faculty in the Digital+Media dept at RISD. I have been lurking on the
>> list for some time now but have not posted.
>>
>> I wanted to post a nagging doubt I have in light of the title of the
>> ISEA conference theme "Interactive City" in conjunction with the
>> ZeroOne "Global Festival of Art on the Edge" and the artwork showcased
>> there. This is not a condemnation, more of a call to reflection for
>> myself (who participated in a project there) and possibly for others.
>> I would be interested to hear from others as to their thoughts on this.
>>
>> The festival's imagination of the "Interactive City" seemed to be
>> characterized by a spirit of play which feels increasingly oriented
>> towards middle-class consumer spectacle and the experience economy. To
>> give you an example of some art experiences that were possible at ISEA:
>>
>> - eating ice cream and singing karaoke
>> - calling an old person in San Jose to talk about whatever you might
>> have in common with them
>> - pressing a button on a machine and getting an artsy plane ticket
>> with your photo on it
>> - drifting through the city as if it were a sports field via applying
>> sports plays in urban space
>> - visualizing your social network via bluetooth as you go around the
>> conference and talk to your friends
>> - watching/listening to noise music made by people riding skateboards
>> around the conference
>> - listening to an erotic sci-fi narrative about san jose on your cell
>> phone while riding the train
>> - flipping light switches to make a one-word message in public space
>> - viewing colorful 3D representations of wireless digital data
>>
>> So, my questions to the artists, the organizers, the attendees and
>> everyone else is - is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D
>> for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are we
>> actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who
>> gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and
>> Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,
>> militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary
>> interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a
>> sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly irrelevant
>> and irresponsible.
>>
>> A gentleman invited to drift with us summed it up nicely "Sorry, I
>> can't go with you. I have to work here until 8PM and then I have to go
>> to my other job."
>>
>> What are your thoughts?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> kanarinka
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
>> (distributedcreativity.org)
>> iDC at bbs.thing.net
>> http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc
>>
>> List Archive:
>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 14:22:50 -0500
> From: Sarah Kanouse <sarahk at readysubjects.org>
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> To: Kevin Hamilton <kham at uiuc.edu>
> Cc: idc at bbs.thing.net
> Message-ID: <4D74AA60-79EB-470F-8549-C5B1EEC2FD45 at readysubjects.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
> Since Kevin threw in the gauntlet on my behalf (thanks Kevin!), I
> thought I'd try to compose a response on 15 minutes of battery power
> on a borrowed connection in the parking lot of some hotel in the
> North Woods (Minnesota)...
>
> In addition to everyone's excellent questions and concerns today I'd
> like to briefly raise the question of what kind of political actor is
> assumed by positioning mobile play as politically transgressive. The
> ideal "urban player/city writer" seems substantively similar to the
> prosumer figure sought for Adobe's ever-expanding market. This
> politics of enlightened consumption can be seen everywhere--the green
> consumer movement, for instance--and I think we need to attend to
> also attend to more structural and collective possibilities for
> action, not just in the new media sphere.
>
> Also terribly disappointed to miss Sassen's talk, but the terror
> alert sent me to the airport early--a potent reminder of the
> apparatuses that shape our inter-urban mobility!
>
> More later,
>
> Sarah
>
>
> On Aug 14, 2006, at 1:25 PM, Kevin Hamilton wrote:
>
>
>> kanarinka -
>>
>> From our own recent correspondence you can probably guess where I
>> would come out on your excellent questions, but for the sake of
>> discussion I'll jump in anyway.
>>
>> I saw very few of the actual exhibits you mentioned, but read about
>> more of them on the ISEA website, and share your doubts. The ISEA
>> Interactive City projects seemed to follow either the problematic
>> "community through collecting story" route or the also problematic
>> "liberation/activation through mobility and play" route, to which
>> you allude.
>>
>> I understand in your questions some doubt about the ways in which
>> the work of de Certeau and the Situationist project have formed a
>> significant platform for "interventionist" work today. Perhaps
>> you're more interested in questioning the application of these
>> ideas in the context of a New Media event, but I think it's worth
>> examining the whole contemporary project of critique through mis-use.
>>
>> It's a question Sarah Kanouse first asked me years ago - who really
>> gets to walk like de Certeau's walker/reader in the city? Certainly
>> his theory is useful in making sure we don't grant TOO much power
>> to Foucault-Bentham's panoptic eye on the other end. But what
>> exactly is produced in these infinitesimal acts of mis-reading? I
>> think we can answer this question on two levels - first, at the
>> level of self-perception and second, at the level of the public/
>> symbolic.
>>
>> On the personal level, certainly some of the actions you mention
>> produce awareness in the mis-walker of the ways in which one self-
>> regulates in space. As someone who's participated in similar
>> projects, I recall enjoying the ways in which such actions manifest
>> on a bodily scale how the world "could be other." It's as simple as
>> how jumping a fence instead of going around it connects a specific
>> bodily exertion with an extension (or negation) of permission. At
>> their most effective, such actions are the spatial equivalent of
>> Schwitters' spoken language experiments, liberating the speaker
>> through action outside of social bounds but well within the body's
>> capabilities.
>>
>> But don't they also often re-iterate an understanding of public
>> space that revolves around permission and regulation, instead of
>> around freedom, accountability, or justice? I'm also suspect of
>> permission granted or grabbed through mobility, for the same
>> reasons that the cities and buildings of Constant look to me like
>> an existentialist hell. Many of Beckett's characters have all the
>> agency they could want, pacing around endlessly, but there's
>> "nothing to do be done" with it because this agency is bestowed in
>> an asocial world.
>>
>> On the symbolic level, we can examine the different ways in which
>> acts like the ones you describe are then re-presented to others,
>> reinforcing or re-creating power structures. Especially in the
>> context of art careers, few carry out such actions without then
>> showing someone else later, and these images/videos perform a
>> separate function. Compare, say, footage of parkour runners on a
>> Nike ad to video of Alex Villar climbing a wall in Manhattan,
>> screened for an exhibition. These representations function
>> differently for their different audiences, dependent upon complex
>> intersections of race or perceived race, class, status, place,
>> history, athleticism and agency.
>>
>> For each of the examples you mention, or for those of our(my) own
>> work about mobile play, I think we just have to look carefully and
>> ask questions about where permission is granted as opposed to
>> power, whose vision and view such imparting depends on. We have to
>> ask these questions at the levels of experience and representation.
>> (For an example of the latter, I recommend Martin Berger's
>> excellent and helpful analysis of the old American painting, "Fair
>> Exchange, No Robbery" by William Sidney Mount. The picture depicts
>> a walker engaged in an apparently harmless but covert act of
>> landscape alteration, and Berger does a great analysis in terms of
>> race, form, context, representation. See the first chapter of
>> "Sight Unseen," on U of California press.)
>>
>> I'm still confident in the potential for protest or effective
>> empowerment through play, but not as a rule, and not without a
>> great deal of positioning and fore-thought and analyses on-the-go.
>> Anthropology tells us about how ritualized forms of play, even
>> socially or politically liberatory play, are carefully contained
>> and located through tradition and hierarchy. Inventing new play,
>> ostensibly outside proscribed boundaries and toward liberatory
>> ends, would probably require a kind of surrogate cultural context,
>> invented and carefully deployed. I'm not sure if I think this is
>> possible or not.
>>
>> For a discussion like this, it would also be useful to distinguish
>> between the two frequently-asked questions of "Is this action
>> politically effective?" and "What is the political effect of this
>> action?" Both questions are useful, but the first requires some
>> knowledge of a project's goals and methodology, and may not be
>> always appropriate. For example, some explicitly political projects
>> eschew the vocabulary of "effectiveness", and other projects/
>> artifacts have no stated political function but have plenty of
>> negative/positive political effects. (I admit that I'm getting a
>> little out of my league here, through my lack of experience in
>> activism.)
>>
>> I would love to see this discussion continue in the context of
>> analysis of a specific work or two together - maybe at the Conflux
>> next month? I hadn't planned on attending this time, but the
>> promise of such a discussion would certainly motivate my
>> involvement. I recall Trebor calling for more specific analyses of
>> projects here on the list, as well, so maybe it can happen online.
>>
>> Thanks for bringing it up, Catherine.
>>
>> Kevin Hamilton
>>
>> PS - Sorry I missed the IDC gathering, I had to leave after my
>> panel, and just barely made my next appt. in San Francisco.
>>
>>
>>
>> kanarinka wrote:
>>
>>> Hello All -
>>>
>>> A pleasure to meet some of you at ISEA. A brief introduction - my
>>> name is kanarinka/Catherine D'Ignazio. I am an artist, software
>>> developer, co-founder of iKatun and the Institute for Infinitely
>>> Small Things, former Co-Director of Art Interactive in Cambridge,
>>> MA, and part-time faculty in the Digital+Media dept at RISD. I
>>> have been lurking on the list for some time now but have not posted.
>>>
>>> I wanted to post a nagging doubt I have in light of the title of
>>> the ISEA conference theme "Interactive City" in conjunction with
>>> the ZeroOne "Global Festival of Art on the Edge" and the artwork
>>> showcased there. This is not a condemnation, more of a call to
>>> reflection for myself (who participated in a project there) and
>>> possibly for others. I would be interested to hear from others as
>>> to their thoughts on this.
>>>
>>> The festival's imagination of the "Interactive City" seemed to be
>>> characterized by a spirit of play which feels increasingly
>>> oriented towards middle-class consumer spectacle and the
>>> experience economy. To give you an example of some art experiences
>>> that were possible at ISEA:
>>>
>>> - eating ice cream and singing karaoke
>>> - calling an old person in San Jose to talk about whatever you
>>> might have in common with them
>>> - pressing a button on a machine and getting an artsy plane ticket
>>> with your photo on it
>>> - drifting through the city as if it were a sports field via
>>> applying sports plays in urban space
>>> - visualizing your social network via bluetooth as you go around
>>> the conference and talk to your friends
>>> - watching/listening to noise music made by people riding
>>> skateboards around the conference
>>> - listening to an erotic sci-fi narrative about san jose on your
>>> cell phone while riding the train
>>> - flipping light switches to make a one-word message in public space
>>> - viewing colorful 3D representations of wireless digital data
>>>
>>> So, my questions to the artists, the organizers, the attendees and
>>> everyone else is - is psychogeography/locative media work simply
>>> R&D for a new generation of entertainment spectacle? Or, what are
>>> we actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban
>>> space? Who gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in
>>> Iraq and Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war,
>>> security, militarization and terrorism as aspects of the
>>> contemporary interactive city? For me, running around making the
>>> city into a sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels
>>> increasingly irrelevant and irresponsible.
>>>
>>> A gentleman invited to drift with us summed it up nicely "Sorry, I
>>> can't go with you. I have to work here until 8PM and then I have
>>> to go to my other job."
>>>
>>> What are your thoughts?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> kanarinka
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
>>> (distributedcreativity.org)
>>> iDC at bbs.thing.net
>>> http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc
>>>
>>> List Archive:
>>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> (distributedcreativity.org)
>> iDC at bbs.thing.net
>> http://mailman.thing.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/idc
>>
>> List Archive:
>> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 15:53:53 -0400
> From: "tobias c. van Veen" <tobias at techno.ca>
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Interactive City: irrelevant mobile entertainment?
> To: iDC <idc at bbs.thing.net>
> Message-ID: <C1064D11.B1CE%tobias at techno.ca>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"
>
>
>
>
> hi iDC,
>
> Thanks to Kanarinka I have been lulled out of lurking & to post something a
> little wordy. It's a little stilted. It's email. Please don't take it as
> authoritative as its brevity shapes it to be. As I've been thinking about
> this for awhile.. I included some footnoted links.
>
>
>>> So, my questions to the artists, the organizers, the attendees and
>>> everyone else is - is psychogeography/locative media work simply R&D
>>> for a new generation of entertainment spectacle?
>>>
>
> Kanarinka raises the frustration that is everywhere and yet nowhere
> manifests in a curatorial mandate.[1] We all know that locative, mobile or
> in-situ media is R&D for the nextgen. And it was already R&D test marketing
> for the lastgen. The debate between Holmes & Fusco a few years ago at least
> appears to agree on these points [2]. Yet, like Holmes I'm always a little
> weary of any implied purity in this artistic endeavour. No technology arts
> production is pure from commodity production, entertainment and spectacle.
> Stiegler & Derrida write that at a fundamental level prosthesis or the
> relation to the technics of the other is the figure of contamination
> productive of subjectivity. So at some philosophical level here, we are not
> going to be able to simply produce non-appropriable art -- i.e. technics.
> But...
>
> But... we could be doing much better in terms of strategizing current
> technology arts explorations. The technological givens of corporate research
> tend to structure the work, rather than our dreams -- or whatever else.
> Thus, at least today, I find the general tendency of psycho-loco projects to
> be short-term with few breakthroughs.
>
> I define "breakthrough" either artistically-conceptually (the entertainment
> industry is far ahead of artists here) or via hacker means (hackers are
> ahead of artists here in repurposing and exploiting the technology). What is
> it that keeps artists at the back of the pack?
>
> What IS an "artist" in this nexus.. ?
>
> Many have commented on the disposable aspect of locative media. And not by
> choice -- not in the manner in which affectless Pop Art or the repetition of
> Minimalism drew attention to itself. The somewhat forgotten history of
> Experiments in Art and Technology (EAT) and even of Jean Tinguely has more
> to do with the current predicament -- at least from the art world's
> historical genealogy. After WWII, the twentieth century seemed much more
> ready to assert or grasp the inevitable failure of technology art.[3]
> Electronic music appears much more ready to embrace an aesthetics of failure
> and since its inception to defer the artist-identity tag entirely (remixes,
> variations, filters, recombinance). By contrast locative media seems to
> gloss over its essential failures and demand, like the corporate tech it
> depends upon, a myth of futurist perfection. We are led to believe all kinds
> of underlying presuppositions:The future will be better as we will have more
> digital friends! Art will be better because talking all the time and knowing
> where people we like and don't like are and when we can talk to them or not
> is better! Having a map of the world is better! Knowing all information and
> where it comes from all the time is better! [4]
>
> I've read here and elsewhere how many projects are forgettable,
> unchallenging, emotionally lacking. Often, such projects are short-term
> festival entrants without long-term impact.They resemble the dot-com
> entrepreneurs of the '90s: seeking a buy-out. "Short-term," because few
> fundamental steps have been taken to undermine top-down corporate control of
> these technologies. While the SI may have been delusional and romantic,
> pining for a world absent from the spectacular sign, it doesn't mean that
> the flow of entertainment today can't be rechannelled away from control by
> corporate entities.[5] The SI, of course, gave up on art entirely and
> relatively early in their development (1962 or so). One must admire the
> strict discipline of the SI even if its end result was alcholism and
> suicide. But don't forget -- as almost all artists do -- that the SI even in
> the beginning had very little to do with "art."
>
>
>
>>> Or, what are we
>>> actually trying to do with these ideas of "play" in urban space? Who
>>> gets to play? And what about the interactive cities in Iraq and
>>> Lebanon and elsewhere? Why didn't we address war, security,
>>> militarization and terrorism as aspects of the contemporary
>>> interactive city? For me, running around making the city into a
>>> sandbox, a playground or a playing field feels increasingly irrelevant
>>> and irresponsible.
>>>
>
> While I fully share Kanarinka's feeling and concern, there are all kinds of
> tendencies to embrace -- yet always for the best reasons -- a threatening
> and restricting moralism which would inhibit what play and freedoms we
> currently enjoy. How quickly to lose site of play. In thinking that because
> the world is in the sh*ts, we have to lose sight of the strange autonomy of
> artistic play encounters all kinds of purges and new Stalinisms. And one
> never knows how and where "art" might bring about change. Those
> skateboarders broadcasting noise interested me... I like skateboarding... I
> like noise...
>
> ... that said, addressing militarization, terrorism, security and war would
> appear to be the place in which artistic exploration should be forefront or
> at least addressed in an exhibition such as ISEA. The military-techno
> connection is the place where artistic exploration should be converging with
> the kind of security debugging I saw at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) in
> NYC (http://www.hope.net). Artists need to know more about vulnerabilities
> and exploits in technology -- especially security. The tactical media model
> from the 90s in which hackers and artists converged in long-term projects
> (think Critical Art Ensemble) has returned to haunt locative and mobile
> media that believes itself strangely distinct from these tensions.
>
> But we all want to play. Everywhere in the world we will always need those
> sandboxes -- without them, the world is a mere "sandbox" for the military's
> rather vicious and destructive toys.
>
> best,
>
> tobias
>
>
> [1] The way in which Kanarinka and others have described ISEA remind me of
> the disappointment in working on the Mobile Digital Commons Network in
> Montreal, Canada --
> [ http://www.mdcn.ca / http://mdcn.ca/tiki-index.php?page=SonicScene].
>
> I tried to work through the current appropriations of SI strategies in two
> locations --
>
> http://www.horizonzero.ca/textsite/flow.php?is=15&file=6&tlang=0
>
> http://readingo.readingcities.com/index.php/montreal/comments/ghosts_of_geog
> raphy_and_the_montreal_wireless/
>
>
> [2] Brian Holmes brought up the critique of locative media as "naive" quite
> a few years ago:
>
> http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1523&lang=en
>
> Also Coco Fusco:
> http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/questioning_the_frame
>
> And Holmes replying to Fusco:
> http://distributedcreativity.typepad.com/submap/2005/03/a_reply_to_coco.html
>
>
> [3] http://www.propheticdesire.us/microsound/html/2005/2005-05/msg00302.html
>
> [4] http://www.cut-up.com/news/detail.php?sid=330
>
> [5] http://www.grconsortium.org/pdf/V.3-1PDF/V31_Van%20Veen.pdf
>
>
>
> tobias c. van Veen -----------++++
> http://www.quadrantcrossing.org --
> http://www.thisistheonlyart.com --
> McGill Communication + Philosophy
> ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot +++
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
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> _______________________________________________
> The research of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> (iDC) focuses on collaboration in media art, technology,
> and theory with an emphasis on social contexts.
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> End of iDC Digest, Vol 22, Issue 12
> ***********************************
>
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