Hello again Yasminers,
The image that Jon has called up with 'Variable Media' seems like it resonates with Nake's definition of a collection of artworks that are fluid, ephemeral, and, at a more nuanced level, somewhat critical and political in their resistance to being managed (and classified) as fixed objects. Perhaps these works are artifacts of "wild media" as much as "variable media."
I think it is helpful to define and assert some essential characteristics of ...I'll just say new media... (such as ephemerality, variability, etc.) by way of informing the preservation of artworks made in those media because every seemingly objective preservation approach reflects some political world-view anyway. But - when it comes to practical preservation as much as theory - perhaps we would do well to avoid an overly-essentialist assertion that every artwork made in the same media shares the same social agenda. Every artwork within a shared medium inherits something from that medium, it's true, but within that, there is a lot of room for, well, variety and for intentionality.
Jon and I argue in our book for a variable media approach to preserving new media artworks, but we allow for the fact that - at the level of the individual artwork - some artists will make works that resist or ignore those principles. For instance, we advocated recording and (generally) following the artist's intent for a work, even if that artist asserts that their variable media work may *not* be changed or re-made in any way; that it be fixed like an object. Of course the trade-off to that choice is that their work will live a short life (again, this is also what I read in Nake's post) and will have to live on through documentation alone. That should be made explicit, but it's still a valid artistic choice.
So too I wonder, Jon, about characterizing only wild media as variable media. Television was quickly subsumed under corporate domination, but not at the very start. Farnsworth's experiments in San Franscisco in the '20's held as much promise for subverting social norms as the Internet - for a short while. Farnsworth was even, like an artist, self-conscious about it. When asked when he would "see some money come from this invention", Farnsworth transmitted an image of a dollar bill (!) And some media go back and forth in their mainstream/wild roles - the Internet was the tightly controlled tool of the military and academia (1969-1990ish) for as long as it's been the new wild west of media (1990ish-2014.)
Lastly (since I'm having too much fun here), terms are important because they define communities and and frame what constitutes a subject worthy of study (see related discussion currently on the CRUMB list.) "New media" still has it's role as a widely-understood and broad category (Jon and I use it throughout our book including the cover :) and, in addition to debating whether "new media" should be replaced by computational- or variable media, let me add my concern that all of those will be replaced by "contemporary art" and the whole fascinating history of new media art will be discursively swept under the museum rug.
Richard Rinehart
---------------------
Director
Samek Art Museum
Bucknell University
---------------------
Lewisburg, PA, 17837
570-577-3213
http://galleries.blogs.bucknell.edu
---------------------
Re-Collection: Art, New Media, & Social Media
http://re-collection.net
On Jun 30, 2014, at 1:23 PM, roger malina wrote:
> Yasminers
>
> Just want to pick up Jon Ippplitos email ( hi Jon) and just re
> announce that the context for this discussion
> is the new book Jon and Rick Rinehart have just published
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Re-collection-Social-Memory-Leonardo-Series/dp/0262027003
>
> it is available in ebook for those of you who want to read it during
> this discussion.
>
> Also I want to thank the people who send self introduction emails- let
> me encourage all new subscribers
> to YASMIN to do this, at least if you do plan to send a post. Social
> media can be remarkably inpersonal.
>
> Also want to thank A Michael Noll and Frieder Nake for their posts on
> how they as pioneer artists in
> the new media field they view the issues of conservation and
> restoration of their own art work.
> Let me encourage other pioneers on the list to do the same ( hi ernest).
>
> Jon takes strong issue with my suggestion that the term "computational
> media' might be a better way to discuss
> the new media art that we are talking about- the term computational
> media is advocated by Noah Wladrup
> Fruin in his NEH/NEA/NSF funded report ( https://mediasystems.soe.ucsc.edu/ )
>
> Jon goes on:
>
> For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
> available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
> outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
> application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
> church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
> use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
> originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
> was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
> the reigning media monopolies.
>
> and hammers it in with:
>
> This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
> matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
> de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
> contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
> "computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
> computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
> maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
> Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
> contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
>
> Ok i will beat a retreat on substituting the term computational media
> for new media, but I do think like Jon does that terminologies are
> important
> and that the term 'new media' has become unhelpful ( just as the prior
> terms of electronic art, computer art, interactive art, net art have
> become superceded)
> ( we even have a program on Emerging Media whatever that is here at
> the University of Texas, Dalls -- well social media and cell phones I
> guess which
> is robust theoretical concept)
>
> certainly in our community of practice we now see digital media co
> existing with wetware, bio art, eco art- but not all of them are
> computational-
> hence i am not convince the term computational art is not helpful as
> it identifies a key conservation and restoration issue that relates to
> computation technologies- which are not shared with wet ware and bio
> art, or maybe overal.
>
> of course Johannes Goebel, founding director of EMPAC, in his CRUMB
> post reposted on YASMIN
>
> http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/2014/06/yasmindiscussions-fwd-crumb-post.html
>
> attacks more virulently the idea of situation new media in the domain
> of fine arts and its institutions ( as the Liverpool Declaration
> tends to do http://www.mediaarthistory.org/declaration ) arguing that
> the right frame of reference is time based arts and performing arts
> whose institutions archive and restore in very different ways than do
> fine arts institutions
>
>
> Jon's conclusion is:
>
> . So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term that
> suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media. Here
> the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
> identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
> future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
> "variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
> think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
> and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
> as well.
>
> with the proposal that the term "variable media" bridges not only
> computational media, but wet ware, performance and installation
>
> and in particular a goal of working with the artist to identify what
> is to be conserved and how ( let me encourage again the pioneers on
> this
> list to chime in)
>
> i would think that from the point of view of a conservator or restorer
> of work there needs to be some kind of clear terminology
> that both frames the conceptual approach of conservation ( eg what is
> it that we are trying to conserve the documentation about the work as
> Nake talks about, or the documentation produced by the work as Noll
> says, or the time based experience as Johannes argues ) and that the
> current terminological confusion in our community is unhelpful
>
> death to "new media art" welcome to computational art, variable media.....
>
> roger
> --
>
> Re: [Yasmin_discussions] ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm really looking forward to hearing the perspectives of folks on
> this list about the risk of obsolescence that endangers so many forms
> of contemporary creativity. But first I have to offer a special thanks
> to Roger Malina for inviting Rick and me to this discussion. Roger has
> worked hard to keep this issue on the frontburner of our field for the
> past decade, and the continued pressure he has exerted has made the
> doom of our collective enterprise a bit less inevitable.
>
> And now I'll repay my debt to Roger by taking issue with him (or more
> properly with the report he cites):
>
> Roger wrote:
>> a recent report chaired by Noah Wardrip-Fruin [uses] the term 'computational media' which i think is
>> a much better term than 'new media" !!
> I like "computational media" better than "digital media." As Rick
> Rinehart points out in a chapter of Re-collection called "Variability
> Machines," Babbage's original computer wasn't digital--in fact it
> wasn't even electrical. Yet while they are meant to be more
> future-proof than the apparently relative term "new media," I believe
> these phrases throw the baby out with the bathwater by focusing on the
> gadgets instead of their revolutionary implications.
>
> For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
> available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
> outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
> application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
> church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
> use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
> originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
> was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
> the reigning media monopolies.
>
> It makes no more sense to reduce new media to "computational media" or
> that hideous term "information and communication technologies" than it
> does to reduce the Renaissance to "optical and painterly technologies"
> or Impressionism to "brush art."
>
> Why does this matter? I think the answer is implicit in the
> "Envisioning the Future of Computational Media" report Roger cites.
> Noah and his co-authors identify the proliferation of these media
> across "video games, smartphone apps, ebooks, social media, and more,"
> and rightly tell us we have to interview creators if we want to
> understand the birth and therefore the continuing survival of each
> work:
>
>> Developing industry best practices around archiving current "closing kit" materials with third parties, expanding to include records of the development process....
>
> Importantly, the authors also point to the social context that is so
> critical for the development and sustenance of these works:
>
>> important work has been done by amateur archivists....The field must find ways to address often-ephemeral, but historically key, elements that exist "outside" computational media works, such as the work of fan and modification communities as well as marketing materials and critical reviews and responses....
>
> This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
> matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
> de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
> contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
> "computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
> computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
> maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
> Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
> contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
>
> Of course, the same ephemeral de-centering that makes new media
> revolutionary also makes them prone to obsolescence, as they slip
> through the traditional cultural institutions like water through a
> sieve. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term
> that suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media.
> Here the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
> identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
> future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
> "variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
> think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
> and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
> as well.
>
>> We can imagine a future in which authors can make citations to specific states of computational media works and readers can "follow" those citations to versions of the work, in the same state, running in emulation.
>
> Just as an aside, I recommend a protocol for this in the essay "Death
> by Wall Label" in Christiane Paul's book New Media in the White Cube
> and Beyond, mirrored here:
>
> http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/11.php#variabledates
>
> So do others on the list agree that we need to look beyond software
> and hardware to preserve contemporary creativity, or am I just making
> a fuss over semantics?
>
> jon
>
> ______________________________
> Jon Ippolito
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yasmin_discussions mailing list
> Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
> http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
> Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
> HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
> HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
> HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
_______________________________________________
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Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
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Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
Monday, June 30, 2014
[Yasmin_discussions] ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY
Yasminers
Just want to pick up Jon Ippplitos email ( hi Jon) and just re
announce that the context for this discussion
is the new book Jon and Rick Rinehart have just published
http://www.amazon.com/Re-collection-Social-Memory-Leonardo-Series/dp/0262027003
it is available in ebook for those of you who want to read it during
this discussion.
Also I want to thank the people who send self introduction emails- let
me encourage all new subscribers
to YASMIN to do this, at least if you do plan to send a post. Social
media can be remarkably inpersonal.
Also want to thank A Michael Noll and Frieder Nake for their posts on
how they as pioneer artists in
the new media field they view the issues of conservation and
restoration of their own art work.
Let me encourage other pioneers on the list to do the same ( hi ernest).
Jon takes strong issue with my suggestion that the term "computational
media' might be a better way to discuss
the new media art that we are talking about- the term computational
media is advocated by Noah Wladrup
Fruin in his NEH/NEA/NSF funded report ( https://mediasystems.soe.ucsc.edu/ )
Jon goes on:
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
the reigning media monopolies.
and hammers it in with:
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
"computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Ok i will beat a retreat on substituting the term computational media
for new media, but I do think like Jon does that terminologies are
important
and that the term 'new media' has become unhelpful ( just as the prior
terms of electronic art, computer art, interactive art, net art have
become superceded)
( we even have a program on Emerging Media whatever that is here at
the University of Texas, Dalls -- well social media and cell phones I
guess which
is robust theoretical concept)
certainly in our community of practice we now see digital media co
existing with wetware, bio art, eco art- but not all of them are
computational-
hence i am not convince the term computational art is not helpful as
it identifies a key conservation and restoration issue that relates to
computation technologies- which are not shared with wet ware and bio
art, or maybe overal.
of course Johannes Goebel, founding director of EMPAC, in his CRUMB
post reposted on YASMIN
http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/2014/06/yasmindiscussions-fwd-crumb-post.html
attacks more virulently the idea of situation new media in the domain
of fine arts and its institutions ( as the Liverpool Declaration
tends to do http://www.mediaarthistory.org/declaration ) arguing that
the right frame of reference is time based arts and performing arts
whose institutions archive and restore in very different ways than do
fine arts institutions
Jon's conclusion is:
. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term that
suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media. Here
the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
"variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
as well.
with the proposal that the term "variable media" bridges not only
computational media, but wet ware, performance and installation
and in particular a goal of working with the artist to identify what
is to be conserved and how ( let me encourage again the pioneers on
this
list to chime in)
i would think that from the point of view of a conservator or restorer
of work there needs to be some kind of clear terminology
that both frames the conceptual approach of conservation ( eg what is
it that we are trying to conserve the documentation about the work as
Nake talks about, or the documentation produced by the work as Noll
says, or the time based experience as Johannes argues ) and that the
current terminological confusion in our community is unhelpful
death to "new media art" welcome to computational art, variable media.....
roger
--
Re: [Yasmin_discussions] ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY
Hi everyone,
I'm really looking forward to hearing the perspectives of folks on
this list about the risk of obsolescence that endangers so many forms
of contemporary creativity. But first I have to offer a special thanks
to Roger Malina for inviting Rick and me to this discussion. Roger has
worked hard to keep this issue on the frontburner of our field for the
past decade, and the continued pressure he has exerted has made the
doom of our collective enterprise a bit less inevitable.
And now I'll repay my debt to Roger by taking issue with him (or more
properly with the report he cites):
Roger wrote:
> a recent report chaired by Noah Wardrip-Fruin [uses] the term 'computational media' which i think is
> a much better term than 'new media" !!
I like "computational media" better than "digital media." As Rick
Rinehart points out in a chapter of Re-collection called "Variability
Machines," Babbage's original computer wasn't digital--in fact it
wasn't even electrical. Yet while they are meant to be more
future-proof than the apparently relative term "new media," I believe
these phrases throw the baby out with the bathwater by focusing on the
gadgets instead of their revolutionary implications.
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
the reigning media monopolies.
It makes no more sense to reduce new media to "computational media" or
that hideous term "information and communication technologies" than it
does to reduce the Renaissance to "optical and painterly technologies"
or Impressionism to "brush art."
Why does this matter? I think the answer is implicit in the
"Envisioning the Future of Computational Media" report Roger cites.
Noah and his co-authors identify the proliferation of these media
across "video games, smartphone apps, ebooks, social media, and more,"
and rightly tell us we have to interview creators if we want to
understand the birth and therefore the continuing survival of each
work:
> Developing industry best practices around archiving current "closing kit" materials with third parties, expanding to include records of the development process....
Importantly, the authors also point to the social context that is so
critical for the development and sustenance of these works:
> important work has been done by amateur archivists....The field must find ways to address often-ephemeral, but historically key, elements that exist "outside" computational media works, such as the work of fan and modification communities as well as marketing materials and critical reviews and responses....
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
"computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Of course, the same ephemeral de-centering that makes new media
revolutionary also makes them prone to obsolescence, as they slip
through the traditional cultural institutions like water through a
sieve. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term
that suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media.
Here the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
"variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
as well.
> We can imagine a future in which authors can make citations to specific states of computational media works and readers can "follow" those citations to versions of the work, in the same state, running in emulation.
Just as an aside, I recommend a protocol for this in the essay "Death
by Wall Label" in Christiane Paul's book New Media in the White Cube
and Beyond, mirrored here:
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/11.php#variabledates
So do others on the list agree that we need to look beyond software
and hardware to preserve contemporary creativity, or am I just making
a fuss over semantics?
jon
______________________________
Jon Ippolito
_______________________________________________
Yasmin_discussions mailing list
Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
HOW TO SUBSCRIBE: click on the link to the list you wish to subscribe to. In the page that will appear ("info page"), enter e-mail address, name, and password in the fields found further down the page.
HOW TO UNSUBSCRIBE: on the info page, scroll all the way down and enter your e-mail address in the last field. Enter password if asked. Click on the unsubscribe button on the page that will appear ("options page").
HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
Just want to pick up Jon Ippplitos email ( hi Jon) and just re
announce that the context for this discussion
is the new book Jon and Rick Rinehart have just published
http://www.amazon.com/Re-collection-Social-Memory-Leonardo-Series/dp/0262027003
it is available in ebook for those of you who want to read it during
this discussion.
Also I want to thank the people who send self introduction emails- let
me encourage all new subscribers
to YASMIN to do this, at least if you do plan to send a post. Social
media can be remarkably inpersonal.
Also want to thank A Michael Noll and Frieder Nake for their posts on
how they as pioneer artists in
the new media field they view the issues of conservation and
restoration of their own art work.
Let me encourage other pioneers on the list to do the same ( hi ernest).
Jon takes strong issue with my suggestion that the term "computational
media' might be a better way to discuss
the new media art that we are talking about- the term computational
media is advocated by Noah Wladrup
Fruin in his NEH/NEA/NSF funded report ( https://mediasystems.soe.ucsc.edu/ )
Jon goes on:
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
the reigning media monopolies.
and hammers it in with:
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
"computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Ok i will beat a retreat on substituting the term computational media
for new media, but I do think like Jon does that terminologies are
important
and that the term 'new media' has become unhelpful ( just as the prior
terms of electronic art, computer art, interactive art, net art have
become superceded)
( we even have a program on Emerging Media whatever that is here at
the University of Texas, Dalls -- well social media and cell phones I
guess which
is robust theoretical concept)
certainly in our community of practice we now see digital media co
existing with wetware, bio art, eco art- but not all of them are
computational-
hence i am not convince the term computational art is not helpful as
it identifies a key conservation and restoration issue that relates to
computation technologies- which are not shared with wet ware and bio
art, or maybe overal.
of course Johannes Goebel, founding director of EMPAC, in his CRUMB
post reposted on YASMIN
http://yasminlist.blogspot.com/2014/06/yasmindiscussions-fwd-crumb-post.html
attacks more virulently the idea of situation new media in the domain
of fine arts and its institutions ( as the Liverpool Declaration
tends to do http://www.mediaarthistory.org/declaration ) arguing that
the right frame of reference is time based arts and performing arts
whose institutions archive and restore in very different ways than do
fine arts institutions
Jon's conclusion is:
. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term that
suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media. Here
the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
"variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
as well.
with the proposal that the term "variable media" bridges not only
computational media, but wet ware, performance and installation
and in particular a goal of working with the artist to identify what
is to be conserved and how ( let me encourage again the pioneers on
this
list to chime in)
i would think that from the point of view of a conservator or restorer
of work there needs to be some kind of clear terminology
that both frames the conceptual approach of conservation ( eg what is
it that we are trying to conserve the documentation about the work as
Nake talks about, or the documentation produced by the work as Noll
says, or the time based experience as Johannes argues ) and that the
current terminological confusion in our community is unhelpful
death to "new media art" welcome to computational art, variable media.....
roger
--
Re: [Yasmin_discussions] ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY
Hi everyone,
I'm really looking forward to hearing the perspectives of folks on
this list about the risk of obsolescence that endangers so many forms
of contemporary creativity. But first I have to offer a special thanks
to Roger Malina for inviting Rick and me to this discussion. Roger has
worked hard to keep this issue on the frontburner of our field for the
past decade, and the continued pressure he has exerted has made the
doom of our collective enterprise a bit less inevitable.
And now I'll repay my debt to Roger by taking issue with him (or more
properly with the report he cites):
Roger wrote:
> a recent report chaired by Noah Wardrip-Fruin [uses] the term 'computational media' which i think is
> a much better term than 'new media" !!
I like "computational media" better than "digital media." As Rick
Rinehart points out in a chapter of Re-collection called "Variability
Machines," Babbage's original computer wasn't digital--in fact it
wasn't even electrical. Yet while they are meant to be more
future-proof than the apparently relative term "new media," I believe
these phrases throw the baby out with the bathwater by focusing on the
gadgets instead of their revolutionary implications.
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos
available now but to expressive technologies of any period that
outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic
application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the
church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative
use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network
originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television
was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by
the reigning media monopolies.
It makes no more sense to reduce new media to "computational media" or
that hideous term "information and communication technologies" than it
does to reduce the Renaissance to "optical and painterly technologies"
or Impressionism to "brush art."
Why does this matter? I think the answer is implicit in the
"Envisioning the Future of Computational Media" report Roger cites.
Noah and his co-authors identify the proliferation of these media
across "video games, smartphone apps, ebooks, social media, and more,"
and rightly tell us we have to interview creators if we want to
understand the birth and therefore the continuing survival of each
work:
> Developing industry best practices around archiving current "closing kit" materials with third parties, expanding to include records of the development process....
Importantly, the authors also point to the social context that is so
critical for the development and sustenance of these works:
> important work has been done by amateur archivists....The field must find ways to address often-ephemeral, but historically key, elements that exist "outside" computational media works, such as the work of fan and modification communities as well as marketing materials and critical reviews and responses....
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help
matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the
de-centered social networks that are the most important product of
contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving
"computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of
computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet
maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve
Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user
contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Of course, the same ephemeral de-centering that makes new media
revolutionary also makes them prone to obsolescence, as they slip
through the traditional cultural institutions like water through a
sieve. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term
that suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media.
Here the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to
identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate
future changes in technology and social context. We use the term
"variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we
think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art
and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art
as well.
> We can imagine a future in which authors can make citations to specific states of computational media works and readers can "follow" those citations to versions of the work, in the same state, running in emulation.
Just as an aside, I recommend a protocol for this in the essay "Death
by Wall Label" in Christiane Paul's book New Media in the White Cube
and Beyond, mirrored here:
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/11.php#variabledates
So do others on the list agree that we need to look beyond software
and hardware to preserve contemporary creativity, or am I just making
a fuss over semantics?
jon
______________________________
Jon Ippolito
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[Yasmin_discussions] Introducing myself
Hello List,
My name is Guy Edmonds. I'm a researcher at Plymouth University, looking at the cognitive impact of analogue and digital film projections technologies. My prior experience is as a film maker and professional film restorer. I'm interested in exploring the cognitive science behind much anecdotal evidence that I've heard in the last decade, as film has transitioned to digital, which seeks to differentiate the experience of analogue film projection and digital cinema projection.
I will be travelling to Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna tomorrow. I'd be happy to meet any Yasminers who will also happen to be there.
Guy Edmonds
Marie Curie Fellow of Early Cinema and Cognitive Creativity
CogNovo | Link 3 | University of Plymouth | Drake Circus | Plymouth | Devon | PL4 8AA
http://www.cognovo.eu
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My name is Guy Edmonds. I'm a researcher at Plymouth University, looking at the cognitive impact of analogue and digital film projections technologies. My prior experience is as a film maker and professional film restorer. I'm interested in exploring the cognitive science behind much anecdotal evidence that I've heard in the last decade, as film has transitioned to digital, which seeks to differentiate the experience of analogue film projection and digital cinema projection.
I will be travelling to Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna tomorrow. I'd be happy to meet any Yasminers who will also happen to be there.
Guy Edmonds
Marie Curie Fellow of Early Cinema and Cognitive Creativity
CogNovo | Link 3 | University of Plymouth | Drake Circus | Plymouth | Devon | PL4 8AA
http://www.cognovo.eu
________________________________
[http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/images/email_footer.gif]<http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/worldclass>
This email and any files with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the recipient to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient then copying, distribution or other use of the information contained is strictly prohibited and you should not rely on it. If you have received this email in error please let the sender know immediately and delete it from your system(s). Internet emails are not necessarily secure. While we take every care, Plymouth University accepts no responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan emails and their attachments. Plymouth University does not accept responsibility for any changes made after it was sent. Nothing in this email or its attachments constitutes an order for goods or services unless accompanied by an official order form.
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[Yasmin_discussions] introducing myself
My name is Wim van der Plas. I am a sociologist, specialised in art and
(popular) culture and it's interaction with technological developments.
I am co-founder of the International Symposia on Electronic Art (since
1988) and the association Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts,
respectively the foundation ISEA International.
Currently I am a board member of ISEA International and redeveloping the
ISEA Symposium Archives.
Relevant URLs:
ISEA International: isea-web.org
ISEA Symposium Archives: archives.isea-web.org
Next ISEA symposium (Dubai): isea2014.org
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(popular) culture and it's interaction with technological developments.
I am co-founder of the International Symposia on Electronic Art (since
1988) and the association Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts,
respectively the foundation ISEA International.
Currently I am a board member of ISEA International and redeveloping the
ISEA Symposium Archives.
Relevant URLs:
ISEA International: isea-web.org
ISEA Symposium Archives: archives.isea-web.org
Next ISEA symposium (Dubai): isea2014.org
_______________________________________________
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[Yasmin_discussions] Fwd: FW: Keeping works
yasminers
computer art pioneer Frieder Nake sends these thoughts about the
conservationn and restoration
of his own art works
Roger
From: Frieder Nake [mailto:nake@informatik.uni-bremen.de]
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2014 1:54 AM
Dear Roger,
And this is my short post on conservation and restoration of recent works
I have been involved in some of the earliest computer art work. It was
run off computers that have long disappeared. The oldest pieces,
mainly between 1964 and 1968, were done in Germany in programming
languages like some obscure machine language (not assembler), and
Algol 60 or Fortran (with machine language subroutines). The computers
produced punched paper tapes for the flatbed plotter. These tapes
were, of course, a wonderfully robust storage medium that I often used
repeatedly. But when I emigrated to Canada, I destroyed them all. One
reason for this was that this was a cut in my life. The other was that
it had become clear that the drawing automaton would one day
disappear.
The few pieces I still did in Toronto and Vancouver were run off much
more powerful IBM computers. They sent their encoded graphics directly
to the plotters. I never kept any traces of these works. They were
ugly CalComp perforated transparent paper, or a file that I shipped to
the printer.
My works still exist on paper as original drawings. They are in
various museums (the oldest such collection is at Museum Abteiberg,
Moenchengladbach, Germany. The collection Etzold there has kept about
50 pieces of computer art since 1974!) There are also private
collectors, but I don't know much about them. All I know is that
museums are usually good places for this - however, we are talking
about ink on paper works. And that's simple because it is old
technology.
Since 2004, I have done a number of mostly interactive pieces. Most of
them don't run any more. I occasionally re-design one, by developing
newer, more powerful versions for the new, more powerful equipment.
This takes me to a more general remark. In algorithmic and interactive
(generative) art, there will be no masterpieces any more. The
destruction of this very idea, is the revolution that originated in
early computer art. There may occasionally be nice results that people
like. But this kind of art, by its very nature, is not made nor should
it be meant for any short eternity. This kind of art "lives" with the
equipment it is implemented on. When it disappears, the work
disappears. These works or fluid by nature (if anything in this
artificial world could be called "natural"). Their ontology is that of
processes, not things. If we still want to keep them around for a
while, they must be documented. The documentation then becomes witness
of the work. (It may itself, as a document, be of artistic value.)
Unfortunately, technology is more and more replacing the human memory
by the technical storage. The two are fundamentally different. The
Internet is storage. Therefore, it's so vast, luring us into believing
that we should store everything and that this were, indeed, possible.
A crazy idea. But the normal mind is working on it (NSA, curators). We
should trust our memories much more. With them, we remember what is
important for us. When something gets lost, it's gone. But we
consciously work to replace memory by storage. The question we should
ask, is: What of the enormous production of digitally existing works
is worth being kept? I guess, it's a tiny percentage only.
--
Prof. Dr. Frieder Nake
Informatik, University of Bremen, PO Box 330440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany
or: University of the Arts, Am Speicher XI 8, D-28217 Bremen
(for parcels use: FB 3, University of Bremen, Bibliothekstrasse 1,
D-28359 Bremen, Germany)
fon +49-421-218 64485 fax +49-421-218 64459
nake@informatik.uni-bremen.de | http://compart-bremen.de | @CarlCanary
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Sunday, June 29, 2014
Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Introducing Myself
Ken,
Welcome to the Yasmin list.
Mel
Welcome to the Yasmin list.
Mel
Professor Mel Alexenberg
Author of The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness and Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology, and Culture (both published by Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press) and in Hebrew: Dialogic Art in a Digital World: Judaism and Contemporary Art.
Former art professor, Columbia University, head of the art department, Pratt Institute, research fellow, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and professor at universities and art colleges in Israel
melalexenberg@yahoo.com, http://www.melalexenberg.com
On Sunday, June 29, 2014 11:50 PM, Ken Friedman <ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com> wrote:
>
>
>Friends,
>
>This is my introduction on joining the Yasmin List. I am an artist and designer, and I also work in management and the social sciences. I have just moved from Melbourne, Australia to Kalmar, Sweden. In Melbourne, I was Dean of the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University, and then University Distinguished Professor. I am now Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies at the Tongji University College of Design and Innovation. I work in Shanghai part of the time, and work from home part of the time. I also edit a new journal on design, economics, and innovation published by Elsevier and launching next year.
>
>If you're curious about my research or my work as an artist, I maintain a page at Academia.
>
>http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
>
>The section on design and research is at the top, research training and doctoral education in the middle, and material on Fluxus and intermedia at the bottom. My latest publication is a book chapter titled "Aesthetic Capital: Hermeneutic Speculation, Economic Themes, and the Dismal Science" in the a book from Brill. (This is not available from my Academia page, but I will send a PDF on request.)
>
>Together with Prof. Jack Ox from University of New Mexico, I am editing a special project for Leonardo titled The PhD in Art and Design: A 3-Year Leonardo Symposium.
>
>I will be interested to see the conversation evolve.
>
>Ken Friedman
>
>Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015
>
>Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
>
>Email ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman| D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Yasmin_discussions mailing list
>Yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr
>http://estia.media.uoa.gr/mailman/listinfo/yasmin_discussions
>
>Yasmin URL: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin
>
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>
>
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Re: [Yasmin_discussions] ART, NEW MEDIA, AND SOCIAL MEMORY
Hi everyone,
I'm really looking forward to hearing the perspectives of folks on this list about the risk of obsolescence that endangers so many forms of contemporary creativity. But first I have to offer a special thanks to Roger Malina for inviting Rick and me to this discussion. Roger has worked hard to keep this issue on the frontburner of our field for the past decade, and the continued pressure he has exerted has made the doom of our collective enterprise a bit less inevitable.
And now I'll repay my debt to Roger by taking issue with him (or more properly with the report he cites):
Roger wrote:
> a recent report chaired by Noah Wardrip-Fruin [uses] the term 'computational media' which i think is
> a much better term than 'new media" !!
I like "computational media" better than "digital media." As Rick Rinehart points out in a chapter of Re-collection called "Variability Machines," Babbage's original computer wasn't digital--in fact it wasn't even electrical. Yet while they are meant to be more future-proof than the apparently relative term "new media," I believe these phrases throw the baby out with the bathwater by focusing on the gadgets instead of their revolutionary implications.
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos available now but to expressive technologies of any period that outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by the reigning media monopolies.
It makes no more sense to reduce new media to "computational media" or that hideous term "information and communication technologies" than it does to reduce the Renaissance to "optical and painterly technologies" or Impressionism to "brush art."
Why does this matter? I think the answer is implicit in the "Envisioning the Future of Computational Media" report Roger cites. Noah and his co-authors identify the proliferation of these media across "video games, smartphone apps, ebooks, social media, and more," and rightly tell us we have to interview creators if we want to understand the birth and therefore the continuing survival of each work:
> Developing industry best practices around archiving current "closing kit" materials with third parties, expanding to include records of the development process....
Importantly, the authors also point to the social context that is so critical for the development and sustenance of these works:
> important work has been done by amateur archivists....The field must find ways to address often-ephemeral, but historically key, elements that exist "outside" computational media works, such as the work of fan and modification communities as well as marketing materials and critical reviews and responses....
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the de-centered social networks that are the most important product of contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving "computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Of course, the same ephemeral de-centering that makes new media revolutionary also makes them prone to obsolescence, as they slip through the traditional cultural institutions like water through a sieve. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term that suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media. Here the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate future changes in technology and social context. We use the term "variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art as well.
> We can imagine a future in which authors can make citations to specific states of computational media works and readers can "follow" those citations to versions of the work, in the same state, running in emulation.
Just as an aside, I recommend a protocol for this in the essay "Death by Wall Label" in Christiane Paul's book New Media in the White Cube and Beyond, mirrored here:
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/11.php#variabledates
So do others on the list agree that we need to look beyond software and hardware to preserve contemporary creativity, or am I just making a fuss over semantics?
jon
______________________________
Jon Ippolito
Professor of New Media
Co-director, Still Water
Director, Digital Curation graduate program
The University of Maine
406 Chadbourne
Orono, ME 04469-5713
http://still-water.net
Tel: 207 581-4477
Fax: 207 581-4357
Twitter: @jonippolito
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HOW TO ENABLE / DISABLE DIGEST MODE: in the options page, find the "Set Digest Mode" option and set it to either on or off.
I'm really looking forward to hearing the perspectives of folks on this list about the risk of obsolescence that endangers so many forms of contemporary creativity. But first I have to offer a special thanks to Roger Malina for inviting Rick and me to this discussion. Roger has worked hard to keep this issue on the frontburner of our field for the past decade, and the continued pressure he has exerted has made the doom of our collective enterprise a bit less inevitable.
And now I'll repay my debt to Roger by taking issue with him (or more properly with the report he cites):
Roger wrote:
> a recent report chaired by Noah Wardrip-Fruin [uses] the term 'computational media' which i think is
> a much better term than 'new media" !!
I like "computational media" better than "digital media." As Rick Rinehart points out in a chapter of Re-collection called "Variability Machines," Babbage's original computer wasn't digital--in fact it wasn't even electrical. Yet while they are meant to be more future-proof than the apparently relative term "new media," I believe these phrases throw the baby out with the bathwater by focusing on the gadgets instead of their revolutionary implications.
For me, the "new" in "new media" refers not to the latest gizmos available now but to expressive technologies of any period that outpace their culture's ability to control them. The aesthetic application of optics in the fifteenth century destabilized the church's stranglehold on orthodox representation, just as the creative use of packet switching in the twentieth subverted a network originally intended for command and control. By contrast, television was never "new media" because its rollout was carefully controlled by the reigning media monopolies.
It makes no more sense to reduce new media to "computational media" or that hideous term "information and communication technologies" than it does to reduce the Renaissance to "optical and painterly technologies" or Impressionism to "brush art."
Why does this matter? I think the answer is implicit in the "Envisioning the Future of Computational Media" report Roger cites. Noah and his co-authors identify the proliferation of these media across "video games, smartphone apps, ebooks, social media, and more," and rightly tell us we have to interview creators if we want to understand the birth and therefore the continuing survival of each work:
> Developing industry best practices around archiving current "closing kit" materials with third parties, expanding to include records of the development process....
Importantly, the authors also point to the social context that is so critical for the development and sustenance of these works:
> important work has been done by amateur archivists....The field must find ways to address often-ephemeral, but historically key, elements that exist "outside" computational media works, such as the work of fan and modification communities as well as marketing materials and critical reviews and responses....
This is where I think the term "computational media" doesn't help matters, as to me it implies a mechanistic essence that ignores the de-centered social networks that are the most important product of contemporary media from Snapchat to Second Life. Conserving "computational media" sounds like a matter of getting a bunch of computer science PhDs in a room to create the ultimate emulator. Yet maintaining software and hardware alone would do nothing to preserve Access Grid performances, World of Warcraft guilds, or user contributions to websites like net.flag or PostSecret.
Of course, the same ephemeral de-centering that makes new media revolutionary also makes them prone to obsolescence, as they slip through the traditional cultural institutions like water through a sieve. So in Re-collection Rick and I have chosen a different term that suggests a proactive approach to ephemerality: variable media. Here the idea is to work with those involved in a work's creation to identify possible ways it can successfully transform to accommodate future changes in technology and social context. We use the term "variable media" to apply to more than computational media, because we think the same general preservation strategies that work for net art and iPad apps can apply to performance, wetware, and installation art as well.
> We can imagine a future in which authors can make citations to specific states of computational media works and readers can "follow" those citations to versions of the work, in the same state, running in emulation.
Just as an aside, I recommend a protocol for this in the essay "Death by Wall Label" in Christiane Paul's book New Media in the White Cube and Beyond, mirrored here:
http://vectors.usc.edu/thoughtmesh/publish/11.php#variabledates
So do others on the list agree that we need to look beyond software and hardware to preserve contemporary creativity, or am I just making a fuss over semantics?
jon
______________________________
Jon Ippolito
Professor of New Media
Co-director, Still Water
Director, Digital Curation graduate program
The University of Maine
406 Chadbourne
Orono, ME 04469-5713
http://still-water.net
Tel: 207 581-4477
Fax: 207 581-4357
Twitter: @jonippolito
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