To Johannes et al,
I too followed the Russian incident with some astonishment. Johannes makes a
good point re: the confusion, misinformation, etc. around that tragedy, all
made possible by telematics. In this case the technology was willfully used to
obfuscate. I must comment that obfuscation is not limited to a governments use
of technology.
Johannes said:
Or at least, it would be necessary to ask, for example, whether new
technology-oriented arts programs in universities, or digital art shows
in
the galleries or at SIGGRAPH, are subject to pressures that we see in
liberal arts and science parks that are no longer interested in the
humanities or critical theory but invested in research and development
(applied science), in efficient, profitable applications of new
knowledge
("technology transfer").
This is a particular concern of mine. As new technology becomes
institutionalized in the academy, the humanistic potential and
critical/theoretical components are stripped away, often leaving behind a
vocational approach to new media and technology. This is very dangerous and
moves us toward a technocrocy in which distance learning, job skills training
and the like are privledged. We all know it is much easier to get money for
technological expenditures than for teachers salaries or support staff for our
new machines.
I am very happy with the level of discourse around these recent issues.
Perhaps we should think about organizing a symposium where we could explore
these ides face to face. Anyone interested?
Doug
Johannes Birringer wrote:
> Doug's latest comments address a much wider cultural and political arena
> in
> which, as Scott suggested, we could honestly examine our artistic
> practices
> "to interrogate the assumptions derived from existing institutionalized
> tele-communications?"
>
> Referring to the Democratic Convention, Doug wrote
>
> > We in the US witness these media spectacles regularly in both sports
> and
> > politics. They are performances in every sense of the word, telematic,
> live
> > and mediated. Yet while Scott makes the point that in the early days of
> the
> > telephone, there was bewilderment, etc, no such confusion or
> disorientation
> > exists in today's media shows.
> > I find that much of contemporary dance tech performance work suffers
> from
> > the same thing that contact improv suffered from (and still does). Namely
> > that it generally feels better to do it than to watch it, especially if
> the
> > improv is faltering or the partners are not well matched, etc.
>
> I'm glad you picked up on the issue of contact improvisation, I think
> it's
> very useful to look at it as a form or practice (not a training or
> technique
> per se) that is very releavnt to contemporary "contact improvisations"
> with
> sensors, wired motion capturing, interactive and nervous systems,
> telematic
> scenarios and telecommunications generally, except of course that the
> one-to-one physical interaction has changed or been displaced onto the
> one-to-camera/sensor or one-to-computer interface interaction, and I am
> not
> sure whether we have yet seen a concise new training vocabulary or
> technique
> (as in, say, Forsythe's 'Improvisation Technologies' which clearly
> involve a
> kind of post-Laban system of formal architectural and spatial concepts,
> harmonies, and disharmonies). The question of where the audience is and
> what
> they do, I think, is critical in light of the political/global context,
> partners not well matched. Strangely, the Chameleons 3 netcast was just
> announced, and we learn that
>
> >... the audience is 'absent'. Watching via computer, and able to converse
> and interact with the live performers via their keyboards, the audience
> become involved as part of the action, or watch as silent observers.>>>
>
> aha. I want to shift attention, for a moment, from the Democratic
> Convention to the disastrous fatal accident of the Russian nuclear
> submarine
> Kursk. In a way, Doug, we cannot but call the mediatisation of the
> accident
> (not instant, but with brief delay, and then further complications in
> the
> transnational cross links) a political media spectacle, but one that
> disproves the assumption that >>no such confusion or disorientation
> exists in today's media shows.>>
>
> On the contrary, German public television, with all its live satellite
> links
> and experts in various studios in various locations (Hamburg, London,
> Glasgow, Oslo, Murmansk, Moscow, Jalta, Washington, etc) and ships,
> tried to
> get closer (no "real time" images until yesterday, when the Norwegian
> divers
> took their digital cameras down) to the truth of the accident, or the
> possibility of survivors, while getting hopelessly entangled in a
> bizarre
> mesh of rumors, anticipations, deductions, speculations, ideological
> assumptions, arrogant interpretations and various other postcold-war
> antimonies
> that exploited the fact that, on the other side, the Russian populace
> was
> grossly misinformed or misled, and that the Russian media had to deal
> with
> the tactical disinformation strategies of the military command who was
> clearly also improvising, and making lots of mistakes along the way.
> What
> should not get lost in an analysis of the political use of telematics is
> the
> fact that the Russian sailors were considered expendable, and that their
> relatives and families were treated with utter disrespect and
> callousness.
> This net congestion was full of obscenities, and i am not sure, now,
> what it
> means if a group announces a telematic interactive performance and
> invites
> audiences to be silent observers.
>
> I think we may be well served if we were willing to discuss the extent
> to
> which current commercial telecommunications (Big Brother, etc) reinvent
> a
> brutal and cynical "arena mediology" (Peter Sloterdijk), reinventing
> Roman
> gladiator mass spectacles in the colosseum by launching and marketing
> "scandals" as a kind of contact sport, rituals of blood letting and
> daemonization, snuff movies.
>
> The globally linked mass entertainment/information industries are hooked
> together, with their corporations, parliaments, and news agencies (so
> are
> universities and applied sciencies and the knowledge-based economies,
> and,
> let's say, their current business interests in biotechnologies and
> genetics), the consumers buy product as silent, disaffected or no less
> cynical consumers, and the whole "inter-active" dimensions, I think,
> need to
> be subjected to a much harsher analysis than media and
> discourse/communications theories care to produce. Liebe deinen
> Nächsten,
> nein danke! (Slavoy Zizek).
>
> Or at least, it would be necessary to ask, for example, whether new
> technology-oriented arts programs in universities, or digital art shows
> in
> the galleries or at SIGGRAPH, are subject to pressures that we see in
> liberal arts and science parks that are no longer interested in the
> humanities or critical theory but invested in research and development
> (applied science), in efficient, profitable applications of new
> knowledge
> ("technology transfer").
>
> A tiny example from the local level: While working at Hellerau, I found
> out
> that the city of Dresden is cutting (the budget for culture, the arts,
> youth
> culture and sports) and shifting its funding to the economic and
> infrastructural development of the new "Biopolis" in Dresden (the
> construction of a major biotechnology science park, with the relocation
> of
> the Max-Planck Institute to the area, where the life sciences will
> cohabit
> with the already booming information and electronics industries in the
> city).
>
> It would interest me to know, who amongst us, is invited to be a
> consultant
> for interactive media/communications, for movement therapy technologies
> in
> the medical sector; who has considered to become a start-up company in
> biofeedback engineering/robotics, with application programs for
> athletes,
> adventure tourists or entertainers, or stress management, etc?
>
> Secondly, I would encourage members of our group to address the question
> of
> the future role of dance&technology in relation to cuts in arts and
> humanities funding, and to university investments in distance learning
> or in
> concentrating technology-development for the hard sciences. It would
> interest me a lot to learn how you, if you have been invited to develop
> software or work with motion capture or telematic technologies, devise
> artistic, practical research in dance technologies, in the context of
> technology transfers to the life sciences as indicated above (cf.
> Innovation
> Works, Inc., in Pittsburgh, or BioSTAR at Univ. of California). How do
> private industry interests connect to public art? How "efficient" are
> interactive experiments we have to offer?
>
> One may assume that universities or foundations who support
> communications
> technology may not be interested in artistic process? How do independent
> artists produce knowledge and resist institutionalized
> tele-communications
> or the demands of "globalization" understood as corporate take-overs and
> alignments of "artistic freedom of research"?
>
> Johannes Birringer
> AlienNation Co.
> http://www.aliennationcompany.com
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