I am enjoying this discussion a lot and I have several questions
On the question of raw data/objective data raised by Živa and Katerina. this is a thorny issue and, as Živa says, it is difficult to turn impartiality on and off. Craig Dalton and Jim Thatcher have written extensively about this issue. They explain that data can't be neutral, or objective because they "are necessarily situated and partial". According to Turnbull, data only make sense when they are examined in their context. By relying exclusively on quantity and quantification we create a gap between the information collected and its context resulting in a progressive loss of connection, as context becomes superfluous and all the attention becomes focused on data conceived as "pure" and impartial. I am particularly interested in the situatedness of data, as it is very relevant to the question of cultural heritage. here my question/curiosity is: if there is no such thing as impartial and raw data, then would a series of partial, smaller scale, yet very much situated experiments in cultural (emotional, historical, local) cartography seize the spirit of a place's cultural heritage? here I am using "spirit" because I am not sure that focusing on a specific, discrete item would give me a sense of its complexity and its dynamic essence.
a few questions to Salvatore and Oriana (but also to anybody who wants to add to it) related to cultural heritage and archiving, stemming from issues that I have encountered in my own projects. So you establish many alliances and discover many (possible and already existing but imperceptible to you until now) interdisciplinary intersections, layers of narratives etc.. how do you record them and map them? In Suely Rolnik's words, the ideal archive should be able to "..activate sensible experiences in the present, different from those that were originally lived, but nonetheless with an equivalent critical-poetic density." But how? when technologies are not able to do this, what other techniques do we have to reproduce such richness and its affective value - I could perceive from your words an enthusiasm that reminded me so much of my own experience, which then was also accompanied by a bit of frustration when I discovered that I was having a hard time to communicate it to others.
Finally, to respond to Ken. As far as I understand, the conversation so far has been about cultural heritage and its power relations, hierarchies and difficult choices, so when Salvatore says :
"A sincere alliance between arts, sciences and technologies would seem a
great, positive solution to this kind of question. Going beyond current
approaches towards arts and science collaborations and promoting art as a
platform to get sciences out of laboratories and into crowded, narrow
streets"
I don't interpret it as a general and literal: "let's get scientists out of the labs", but an invitation towards a more interdisciplinary, relational and, why not? Humane approach to a variety of issues. This is not an invitation to change practice. It doesn't mean for the scientist to exit the lab and start doing the job of the sociologist, or open the lab to contamination, public interventions etc… or not rely on their tools of trade, but an invitation to practice a form of awareness that science is not made in a silo, but has a context around it, and this context is also made of the people it affects and/or benefits from.
In the context of cultural heritage, I value this approach, because this potential opening can help us understand, preserve and enhance many aspects of a city, a territory or a social domain that we could not seize without the help of the scientific perspective. In this sense, many artists have already exited the lab: at the march for science in Toronto, just to give an example, keynote speakers included, among others, a climate change scientist, a science librarian, a social scientist working on science and human rights, a feminist scientist, an indigenous science advocate and a water protector.
…and speaking of cultural heritage and power, today in canada is an odd day: we "celebrate" Queen Victoria's birthday, whatever that means ….
Roberta
> On May 21, 2017, at 11:03, Ziva Ljubec <ziva.ljubec@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Katerina,
>
> certainly, the concept of innovation is the religion of today's economy.
> Economy is a tricky game. When faced with red numbers and limited resources
> – we tricked ourselves into borrowing from the future. We promised
> unprecedented abundance to repay our debts sometime later and for the
> equations of economy to hold, we must eventually deliver something,
> something "else," something "new." Of course the game is too complex to
> just stop it. But perhaps there are other tricks to get us out of trouble.
> What you propose is very interesting and very close to what I had in mind
> when mentioning interdependency between heritage and innovation. As you
> cleverly noticed it is renovation of ideas rather than innovation that
> technological progress provides. The question is thus: can bringing the
> terms innovation and heritage closer together do the trick?
>
> As goes with innovation, culture is just as over-used and abused term, and
> a dangerous game to play on top of playing economy. A well-established
> cultural heritage of one people, for instance, includes the rules of
> control and domination over another people that managed to overshadow,
> overtake and erase cultural heritage of others. Is human intelligence
> mature enough to face the "cultural issues" or should we ask artificial
> intelligence? Again, as you noticed, we cannot simply switch on the button
> of impartiality. The "raw data" is hard to excavate but perhaps the
> abundance of "big data" might do the trick approximately. Do we have
> another choice?
>
> Živa Ljubec
>
>
> On Sat, May 20, 2017 at 4:40 PM, Katreina Karoussos <kkaroussos@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Ziva,
>>
>> Impartial digital neural sets is actually an excellent way of dealing with
>> cultural assets.
>> In this manner we are taking culture as an animated organism. To be
>> animated though we shall look at its appetite, that is, the primary force
>> of its dynamics. In any other case, i think that the neural sets will still
>> behave in the common hierarchical organizational structure.
>> I don't think that we should take it as "raw data" because the appetite is
>> something inherent to us and all of the data are available to us evenly,
>> the important thing is what we are choosing to project.
>>
>> Katerina Karoussos
>>
>>> On 18 May 2017, at 23:05, Ziva Ljubec <ziva.ljubec@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Katerina,
>>>
>>>
>>> indeed, a critical stance towards historical and geographical approaches
>> to
>>> cultural heritage is always valuable. Both tangible and intangible
>> heritage
>>> has been, as you point out, processed in different ways for different
>>> political and economic motives and no mode of preservation and
>> presentation
>>> of the heritage can be taken for granted. Precisely for this reason I
>> think
>>> a hypothetical discussion of moving from unavoidably prejudiced human
>>> neural nets to hypothetically impartial digital neural nets might be in
>>> place. With almost unlimited computational resources, what would
>> computers
>>> make out of it all? To what degree can we restrain the human bias is, as
>>> you have noticed, an important issue to consider. Even defining the area
>>> can be troublesome, let alone the artefacts. The naturally given concept
>> of
>>> Mediterranean rim, the shores of the basin filled with Mediterranean sea,
>>> might start changing with changes in the global climate – which
>> coordinates
>>> are included and which excluded? Cultural concepts as well go naturally
>>> with their context and converting them into a digital form does not
>>> encompass the complete picture in "high definition." If we were to feed
>> the
>>> model with the "raw" data – what would constitute "raw" at this very
>>> moment? The heritage that was already digitized and uploaded from all
>>> possible sources or the analogue data from carefully selected
>> institutional
>>> sources? Running the model for a week, a month, a year, …, its data set
>>> constantly increasing, its neurons ceaselessly forming new connections,
>>> would it provide us with clues that we could relate to or with
>> alternative
>>> views, alien viewpoints of culture we considered familiar.
>>>
>>>
>>> Ziva Ljubec
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 5:40 PM, Pier Luigi Capucci <plc@noemalab.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear all,
>>>>
>>>> among the Yasmin invited respondents to the art*science Leonardo 50
>>>> discussion there is also Elena Giulia Rossi. Many thanks to Elena Giulia
>>>> for joining us!
>>>>
>>>> Elena Giulia Rossi - rossi.elenagiulia@gmail.com <mailto:
>>>> rossi.elenagiulia@gmail.com> (Italy)
>>>> Elena Giulia Rossi lives and works in Rome. Her research and experience
>>>> have been addressing contemporary art and its relation with technology.
>>>> Oscillating between tradition and modernity, and under a
>>>> socio-anthropological perspective. With a degree in History of Art from
>> the
>>>> University of Roma La Sapienza (1999), she gained a MA in Arts
>>>> Administration from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2002).
>> She
>>>> has been collaborating with different galleries and institutions in
>> Italy
>>>> and abroad, such as the MAXXI Museum (Rome, 2003-2012), P.S.1
>> Contemporary
>>>> Art Center (New York 2001); The Renaissance Society at The University of
>>>> Chicago (2002); the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection at The School
>> of
>>>> The Art Institute of Chicago (2002), and Studio Stefania Miscetti (Rome
>>>> 2004-2005). She has been writing regularly for catalogues and magazines.
>>>> She is the author of Archeonet (Lalli: Siena, 2003), and the editor of
>>>> Eduardo Kac: Move 36 (Filigranes Éditions: Paris, 2005). She currently
>>>> teaches Net Art and Theory of Multimedia Art at the Accademia di Belle
>> Arti
>>>> in Rome and she is founder and editorial director of the
>> multidisciplinary
>>>> platform Arshake (www.arshake).
>>>>
>>>> Thank you in advance,
>>>>
>>>> Pier Luigi
>>>> --
>>>> Pier Luigi Capucci
>>>> via Rovigo, 8
>>>> 48016 Milano Marittima (RA)
>>>> ITALY
>>>> Tel.: +39 (0) 544 976156
>>>> Mobile: +39 348 3889844
>>>> e-mail: plc@noemalab.org
>>>> web: http://capucci.org
>>>> skype: plcapucci
>>>>
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