<eyebeam><blast> The Museum of the Future/images as ecriture

[michael rees <zedand00@sound.net>]

What an intersting set of observations Jon Ippolito has put forward.
Some of those issues are handled quite clearly in other forms--music for
example. A conductor is an interpreter of the original script and may
radically alter the music from one performance to another. If the museum
becomes this conductor, this interpreter, it no longer has a pseudo
objective distanced stance. Which of  course will make the museum fluid,
living. Or as fluid as the culture perceives it to be. (remember in the
60's and 70's opera was dead and now its back badder than ever. I am
always interested to learn about the way traditional music defines
"artists".)

Some issues are obviously not. If code is written for a cisc chip
instead of risc chip and the cisc chip becomes obsolete in the future
and and and. The idea of Variable Media Initiative is maybe a little
like colllecting the musical instruments at the time of Mozart to
perform the Mozart works. Gosh, is there enough money to do this? Cool
if there is!

As an aside, it reminds me of Canova's scadalous portrait of Napolean's
sister, nude. You can see the work today, but originally it was designed
to be viewed by torch light. Evidently the torch light on the marbled
surface just makes the whole experience unbelievable and yet no one but
a few powerful people who can organize the viewing of the piece by
torchlight have seen it. And is it the same torchlight that Canova
designed the work for...... I found out about this through an art
historian and in thinking about it(I've never seen it in torch light), I
am sure my image is more outlandish, more defined, more real than if I
saw it in torch light. So, it is still very real for me. issues issues
issues.

Another issue of the technologies that make objects is reproduceability.
A file can create a print or sculpture over and over again. How do you
protect value in that environment. And regardless of the critique of art
object as fetish (which I don't completely subscribe to), protecting the
value of production of an artist is important--to the artist and later
to the collector/museum/ who will take care of it.

I make my work with technologies which will for sure be outdated in 3
years. They are expressed as objects and some of them won't make it five
years. Are they collectible? SHould I save the file to reproduce it
again in five years, with better more stable materials? Should I specify
that the piece be remade every five years? Should I allow time,
disintegration, entropy, and biology to determine which works survive?
Thinking so much about this can kind of get in the way of making the
work. 

I also remember looking at some Maholy Nage pieces made from the
plastics of his day. They were so brittle and they had yellowed. It was
not the piece that Maholy Nage had made and it was beautiful because of
that. 

I also saw some reconstructions of Tatlin's corner pieces. They were
done and exhibited in Switzerland. They were nigh perfect. They were
exhibited with the photos. If you looked at the photo and saw that a
screw head was stripped, so it was also stripped in the reconstruction.
I still don't know where I stand about this. Viewing the sculptures was
an extraordinary experience. I felt  all of the issues which were there,
before I realized it was a reproduction. The work had that reconstructed
energy about it. IT didn't make it less of an experience either. It
added interesting nuances to the experience.

What a world!! everywhere we look ambiguity, choice, confusion. How are
we going to handle all of this? And digitality just makes it worse, or
better.


Subject: Re: <eyebeam><blast> images as ecriture

Yukiko Shikata <yshikata@crpg.canon.co.jp> wrote

> Pokemon is originally game soft for Nintendo 'game-boy' and children
> exchange various pocket monsters by connecting terminals directly. It
> functions also as the new state of images, working as communication tool
> or memory device such as DV or Puri-kura stickers.


Dear Yukiko and list,

I seem to be eternally pragmatic. I have read and enjoyed the more
theoretical aspects of this list. There have been some wonderful voices
in all shades of tone.

So to the pragmatic and to the web/computer/as a medium. The nintendo
pokemon phenomena is very interesting to me. I read recently that
nintendo was coming out with a CAD modeling program for their game boy.
This is very exciting to me for reasons i will elaborate in a moment.But
first... 

If I understand correctly, the children are exchanging their own
products--granted they are mediated through the framework of a gameboy
and its software and all of its limitations but there is something
significant here. The children are no longer buying products, they are
buying tools to make products. This is a subtle shift in consumerism and
it has enormous ramifications.

If indeed, there is a modeling program available for the nintendo, these
same children can not only share computer data, but can realize the
models corporeally in rapid prototpyping. THey are making their own
toys. And if the program becomes freer in its sense of mediation, more
flexible, those products become more fluid. Again the important thing is
that the children are producing their own toys, as well as files, to
play with. This has weird implications on both sides. The forms of
consumerism are perhaps more subtlely insiduous on the one hand and on
the other the power of making is returned to the individual(perhaps a
little like a bygone era of american pioneerism or..?) . The power is as
subtle and sophisticated as anything an engineer at Hasbro would produce
for the child.  At the same time, the children are expressing
themselves, giving themselves and adults a better sense of who they
are,  and out of this fluid miasma emerges a reversal. I'm not sure any
concrete assumptions can be made from this. Any assumption will belie
the perspective of the person stating it. The truth is, we don't know
where this will lead us.

At the same time, this implies, we are able to create products as
sophisticated as any engineer or techno/cultural/military complex. (This
complexity is both how it appears, its feel in the hand, its
functionality as well as its content. This functionality may be the very
thing artists have been searching out, a means of production that is as
sophisticated as their conceptualizations.)

But lets not also forget about entropy, about energies moving from
potential states to ever less useable states. Please see this in light
of the abilities of the nintendo/child relationship. I have no idea how
to get around this fragmentation.

Also, on the list there's been a thread running about the computer as
tool or as medium, and its newness. In my mind there is nothing new
about the computer. IN a primitive form it is conceptualized by Alberti
in his "miracle" box. At the same time its hierarchy, both in code and
practice is three dimensional and relies heavily upon the idea of
perspective (re: an accountable relationship of form to its
representation). Pierro Della Francesca anticipated computer tomography
over and over again in drawings. The computer is a tool and a medium and
it is the realization of at least 6 centuries of thought by this
reckoning (there are other ways to reckon this, obviously). 

What is different is speed. Dromology. (not to place myself too much in
the Virillio camp). One of the things I loved when listening to Eve
Andre LAramee talk a few weeks ago was the observation that there have
been cultural developments of technology that predated the military
cooption of technology. Technology does not equal military. When
technology has been/can be implemented to the ends of the consciousness
industry---ok now I'm sounding idealist. But isn't there something of a
potential here?

Back to another thread. I recently had dinner with an engineer who is
making my sculptures. THis guy is an amazing problem solver and has been
able to squeeze my machinations out of his machine in ways that others
have told me is not possble. He worked for 20 years in the military
industrial complex. He told me about watching missiles hit hospitals in
the gulf war and his bosses telling the workers, ok here's a malfunction
go fix it, while they just watched the hospital and its patients
obliterated. He woke up on morning and quit. Working with me isn't the
most important thing in his life but it is obviously bringing him life. 

As I lose my coherence, I wonder what's the difference between a non
hierarchical multicultural expression and a lack of focus?

OK, now my post is becoming another thread which you must decide if its
worth it to read or to respond to. This list, which I really enjoy, is
on the verge of chaos and of overwhelming me. Thats intersting.

best,
-- 
michael rees SCULPTOR           http://www.sound.net/~zedand00/
1212 w 8th St. Bldg B #2,       816 753 3020 voice    zedand00@sound.net
KC, Mo 64101                    816 753 1542 fax
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