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
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