communication
http://www.sounddome.org/sounddome16
SoundDome: Composing with Space
"What makes your heart sing? For me, and for the other members of SoundDome.Org it is the point of intersection between sound, technology, and space. The sound dome brings to life an extraordinary three-dimensional sound world previously conceivable only in the imagination of the composer." Dr John Coulter Managing Trustee
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http://www.ramakarl.com/website/
Rama Hoetzlein is an interactive media artist and computer scientist working in the areas of knowledge engineering and behavioral systems. I seek to develop the theoretical foundations of new media arts, and to explore the design, limitations, and capabilities of intelligent systems. My goal is to enable convergence between these dynamic digital systems and the processes of physical making, building and interaction. [source:http://www.ramakarl.com/website/contact/]
(Left) Thomas Locher, A - H, 2002/2015. (Right) Thomas Locher, A - G, 2002/2015. (more images here)
by ANA TEIXEIRA PINTO : July 14, 2015
Long before post-internet aesthetics and ubiquitous networking began to overhumanize technology, men in gray flannel suits were the standard metaphor for the dehumanizing nature of corporate technocracy. This expression, which swiftly became vernacular, stems from a 1955 novel by Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, describing the search for purpose in a pre-digital context amongst those who perceived themselves as just an organic extension of managerial structures. “Post-Information,” Thomas Locher’s current exhibition at Silberkuppe, in Berlin, is all about men in gray flannel suits—or rather, their absence.
In “Post-Information,” the display mirrors the subject matter: the exhibition spans two soberly staged rooms, which are metaphorically sealed off by the strategic positioning of an aluminium, shelf-like sculpture, Gestell (1990), obstructing the gallery’s entrance/exit. The series “Politics of Communication” (2000), shown in the second room of the gallery, consists of five large-scale composites of image and text. The pictures are of office furniture ranging from sleek to functional—at times as individual items (office chairs), at times as complete ensembles (workstations, conference rooms, storage systems). Each grouping is accompanied by text captions, which either describe or examine the tenets of communication theory: the nature of information, message, code, medium, and meaning. Information is technical in nature. Strictly speaking, you cannot interpret information; you can only decode it. Within the rubric of information theory, an exchange lasts only as long as is necessary for the information to come through, from sender to receiver. Once both parties believe the message has been successfully transmitted, communication will typically end. To make use of Locher’s example (as mentioned in the press release):
A. Please give me a glass of water B. (Hands the water to A) A. Thank You
Information and communication theory treat human psychology as a servo-mechanical analogue—a comparison introduced by Norbert Wiener. A servo (short for servo-mechanism) is an automatic device that uses error-sensing feedback to correct the performance of a mechanism. As Niklas Luhmann puts it, “humans cannot communicate, only communication can communicate.” In systems theory, agency is a property that only emerges at the macro level, out of the combined action of all individual parts. Society, as a whole, is thus endowed with the volition that system theory denies that individual human actors possess. But since systems are operationally closed, a system has only its own operations at its disposal in order to form its structures. The only thing a system can will is to self-reproduce; communication is thus an operation that continuously replicates itself.
In Politics of Communication, corporate space appears to be fully determined by these rigidly choreographed communication protocols. Most of the text captions are descriptive rather than prescriptive, but even as descriptions, they seem to fit the operations of a recursive algorithm rather than those of a human society, where the determining factors of structure formation are hardly internal to the structures themselves. This programmatic character is echoed by another series on display in the gallery’s front room, A–G and A–H (2002-15), two frames mimicking floor plans, and by A.1—Z.2 (1989), a large-scale spreadsheet with all the information blanked out. Locher’s artistic career—which spans several decades—can perhaps be best described as an attempt to de-naturalize meaning. His work is methodical and analytic (rare qualities, at present, when most artists tend to pictorialize everything). Forcing the viewer to undergo a deadening process of redundancy and repetition, the artist points to the slippage between “coercion from within” and “coercion from without” in the rhetorics of management—whose purpose as a social technology, as Locher makes increasingly apparent, is to strengthen integration and to implement corporate discipline rather than to convey information or promote communicational exchange.
System and information theory were typically construed as being strictly non-political, which means they do not represent social interaction as antagonistic, along the Marxist model of class conflict, but rather treat all types of “action” and “reaction” as an integrated equation. In Germany, in particular, these disciplines were used to displace the legacy of the Frankfurt School in social sciences. Friedrich Hayek and the Austrian school of economics were also eager to adopt the terminology employed by Wiener, arguing that order in market systems is an “emergent” property. But this order was already in place in Adam Smith’s description of market interaction, and regulating devices, like Watt’s governor—the original servo—had since the dawn of British liberalism been correlated with a political rhetoric that spoke of “dynamic equilibrium,” “self-regulation,” and “checks and balances.”
We’ve come a long way from IBM punch cards and the world the men in gray flannel suits used to inhabit. Our hetero-affective devices, like iPhones or Google glasses, conjure the fantasy of a highly fluid biosphere inhabited by virtual communities. As Fred Turner argues in From Counterculture to Cyberculture (2006), cybernetics managed to dissociate itself from its Cold War military-industrial connotations. From the 1960s onwards, many members of the budding counterculture came to embrace information technologies as tools for personal liberation, drawn to the promise of the new digital frontier: non-hierarchical governance, flexibility, and spontaneous structures. “Post-Information” is a sober reminder that the type of social interactions communication theory describes is not ideologically neutral, however, nor is it devoid of coercion. As one of the captions reads: “a message is an obligation.”
(1) Niklas Luhmann, “How Can the Mind Participate in Communication?” in Materialities of Communication, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 371. (2) Otto Mayr, Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986), 139-140.
Ana Teixeira Pinto is a writer from Lisbon, currently living in Berlin.
Retreived from: http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/thomas-lochers-post-information/
[image] photo credit: Charles Nègre, La tailleur de pierre, salt print from a collodion on glass negative, summer 1853 courtesy of Hans P. Kraus, Jr. | New York. Retrieved from http://stemtosteam.org/case-studies/
A fascinating conversation on Radio NZ between Noelle McCarthy and Professor Bruce Sheridan around creativity, generating ideas, improvisation, education, failure and a lot more... the ideas around 'STEM' (science, technology, engineering and maths) vs STEAM (add art to the mix) was a great analogy. A 'stem' rooted to the ground as opposed to 'steam' which has the ability to be everywhere ... read more here http://stemtosteam.org ... and listen to interview on Radio New Zealand here
Bruce Sheridan: psychology of creativity
Bruce Sheridan is the Chair of Cinema Art + Science at Columbia College, Chicago, and North American regional Chair of CILECT, the world organisation of film and media schools. He has returned to New Zealand as the fourth Creative Fellow for the University of Auckland’s Creative Thinking Project, to deliver a series of public lectures drawing on recent research into creativity and discussing evidence from neuroscience and cognitive psychology to make the case for reintegrating art and science in education. RNZ
we sat facing each other, fists pounding the table, plates rattling, scattering and shimmering on the wooden surface . like boiling water on the hood of a pick-up truck in the middle of a texan summer . two minds interlocked in a battle of differences . two opposing views, neither one understanding the complexities of their intents . the shouting got louder and the ability to rationalise increasingly became dimmer . loved ones dispersed, sheltering from the eruptions . we continued to shout . 'art is not art unless it is universal' thump ! the plates danced ... 'but hold on a sec, does that mean that i am not an artist because i am not universal?' no reply... 'art is only good when everyone recognises it ... like monet or michelangelo... that's what art is! bang! ... it went on like this and things shut down ... what began as a conversation, where the exchange of ideas and the sharing of experiences around a common space enlivened by the gift of food and drink, had now become, once again, a lecture . this is not normal i thought to myself . thankfully those days are gone .
Niépce, ca. 1826. View from the Window at Le Gras
The subject of cameras and surveillance is widely written and commented on both in academic circles and in popular culture. It's a duopoly of mind which tugs at our notions of privacy and identity, security and comfort. As technological and manufacturing advances increasingly move into the nano-space, not only are we able to capture every second of our daily lives, but we can also instantaneously ‘transport’ ourselves into the lives of others in different location on the planet.
Eleanor Heartney, author and art critic describes the artist as “having a lens on the world”. [1] It is a lens which not only observes and focuses on the here-and-now but one that also comments on that which encompasses the periphery, those events, attitudes and perceptions of what is happening on the boundaries of an increasingly changing world. Through this lens the artist can question and observe what life might be like, not only on the fringes but into the future as well; a germane metaphor for the digital age. From the Hubble telescope and CCTV cameras to mobile devices and endoscopic cameras there is very little these days that is not being observed, not being monitored, not being scrutinized and not being recorded through the lens.
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