stretched vistas

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shape / colour / modular

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stand-ins / and other thoughts

 

data /

modular /

chatter /

fractured /

Converstations with Doug Aitkens : artist / interviewer / facilitator

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doug-aitkensprocess | patterns | chaos | motion | place

"Doug Aitken was born in California in 1968. He lives and works in Los Angeles and New York. Widely known for his innovative fine art installations, Aitken utilizes a wide array of media and artistic approaches to leads us into a world where time, space, and memory are fluid concepts [...] Aitken’s body of work ranges from photography, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, and installations." Retrieved from http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com/bio/

In this series of interviews Doug Aitken's talks with contemporary visual artists, musicians, architects and socially conscious individuals across a diverse range of topics, disciplines and practice. They discuss processes, inspiration and art making and of interest to me is his interview with artist Aaron Koblin and the underlying theme of patterns. Through out all of the conversations the presence of patterns and systems is touch on, whether they be organic in nature, constructed visually or assembled aurally they exist within all that we do which facilitates our connections to and with our social world.

Station to Station (http://stationtostation.com) is another Aitken's initiated project where a train ride "connect[s] leading figures and underground creators from the worlds of art, music, food, literature, and film for a series of cultural interventions and site-specific happenings. The train, designed as a moving, kinetic light sculpture, broadcasted unique content and experiences to a global audience [...]" which takes viewers on a "journey into the new cultural frontier." Retrieved from http://stationtostation.com/about/

http://dougaitkenthesource.com http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com http://stationtostation.com

disinformation :

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DeBord quote
DeBord quote

"... disinformation [...] is openly employed by particular powers, or consequently, by people who hold fragments of economic or political authority, in order to maintain what is established; and always in a counter-offensive role.

If occasionally a kind of disinformation threatens to appear, in the service of particular interests temporarily in conflict, and threatens to be believed, getting out of control and thus clashing with the concerted work of a less irresponsible disinformation, there is no reason to fear that the former involves other manipulators who are more subtle or more skilled: it is simply because disinformation now spreads in a world where there is no room for verification."

Debord, G. (1998). Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London, UK: Verso

debord-Rad America V4 I5-page-001
debord-Rad America V4 I5-page-001

recomposited : from code to cortex to cognition

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recomposited_cover2

recomposited_cover2

extracts ...  a dichotomy of mind where we are consumed by the sheer volume of its existence yet simultaneously define its very being through our participation.... As everyday life increasingly becomes immersed within the digital environment how might our codification affect our visual perceptions, cognitive processes and our rationality ... will this type of assimilation exclude our ability to interpret those unseen spaces, those moments which are composed through a process of intuition and experiment ... click/tap image to download PDF

residue

≥ ][ What is it that we leave behind? the emotions of sorrow and loss? the physicality of presence, a smell? a touch, an embrace? ... / how do we know what it is that we leave behind and how do others resurrect those discarded bits, bytes, functions and intentions? ... / time erodes and memories fade... / some things are no longer wanted, exiled from our blithe consumerist attitudes, banned, abolished, replaced ... / some things, like events and occurrences move from our fundamental reasoning to the periphery of our understanding, where connections are marginal, where our synapses carefully choose which bonds to make, which modules should be inserted and which should be discarded ... / a bit like space junk or residual matter that echoes Cauchy’s theory of complex analysis, a holomorphic function mapped under stress ... / or maybe, precisely that ... far too complex ... / and what of the data that we leave ignored, that has no visible function, no commercial gain? where do those pixelated social couplings reside? * How do we aggregate a digital space to act as revealers of truth, the space where the machine and I, me and you, us and them coexist? ... / does this ‘virtual reality’ remove, neglect, disregard the need for responsibility, facilitate and defer rationality and compound understanding? ... / does the augmentation confuse or does it allow us to hide behind a code, a syntax, a digit of ideology, a hyperlink which offers us the promise of elsewhere? * Science, religion, philosophy, and politics have all attempted to reveal our truths for us ... / digital technologies attempt to democratize knowledge, to placate our need for acceptance and to insinuate where truth might be found ... / it also becomes a source for commodification and provides the illusion of wealth which further expands our concepts of hope, of our desire for acceptance and our need for homogenization ... / the digital space can also foster our ambitions for a more egalitarian existence and act as a companion, a catalyst for revolt and for dissent .../ it can be a subversive voice echoing millions of disenfranchised, a witness to the uprise ... / it represents itself in the hyperreal, the gloss of perfection, the glow of the screen and the flawless world of software, digital enhancements and predefined filters ... / it mirrors a conflicting environment, one which not only represents the oppressed and the objector but one that also acts as a conduit for the abandonment of liability and the deferral of accountability ...  * But maybe, things are far more innocent than they appear? like the sign that’s no longer there leaving a question as to why it was removed or what it may have said / or the condensation of air trapped inside a community notice inviting us to participate in an initiative which is no longer legible ... / or the discarded boxes, bits of wood, the off-cuts of structures which have lost their function ... / or maybe they mimic society’s flotsam and jetsam, a hello, a goodbye, a conversation, the hope for something new, something more immediate ... / or are these things far more real, like the scars that never heal or the words which linger long after the battlefield ... / or possibly a broken bit of code or the cadence of eloquent voices crushed, subdued ... / or the truth which lies in a sea of mistrust or the imagined which evaporates in the deserts of our minds eye? is it a mark of intent, a symbol of progress, a pixel exploded, a fragment of time? or perhaps it is just another image, just another byte for consumption, just one more bit of repetitive commodity, just one more digit that implicates us in our relation with the here and now ( / )

Benjamin Tiven and Triple Canopy

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Tiven_M_Daniel-arap-Moi [image] Benjamin Tiven, Daniel arap Moi at a Public Presentation, Unknown Date, 2013, inkjet print 20" × 25".

Pixels, root properties, illusions, patterns, grids and cities

Michael Cowan, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University and Benjamin Tiven, artist and contributor to the online magazine Triple Canopy, engage in a fascinating conversation, titled How we see in which they discuss the role of the brain in the understanding of the sensory world. The conversation revolves around issues that relate to our visual systems and the role of consciousness, evolution, experiential and scientific influences in shaping a visual understanding.

The interview is part of Common Minds, a series of essays which investigate the intricacies of the brain and the growth of neuroscience in contemporary society and science. Interestingly, Tiven titles this interview as a collaborative work and not an interview. This approach highlights the multiple roles that artists, such as Tiven, engage in and that any discourse is as valid a piece of art work as any painting, photograph, sculpture or digital creation. Below is a short extract from that conversation:

Our monitoring of the world is really much less continuous and accurate than we think it is. Experience is the conversion of energy into data. The project of all life is to correlate the interpretation with the energy source, since the better your ability to interpret reality, the more likely you are to survive and pass on your genes. Now, how close or causal is the relationship between the energy we experience and our interpretation of it—that's a different question. In fact, something like illusion or magic is based on a discrepancy between the information we're taking in and our interpretation. (Tarr, 2013 para 15)

Corrupted imagery and heads of state

Benjamin Tiven's approach to his art work is collaborative in nature and investigative in style. He deals with the longevity of images and the cross pollination of data from its analog forms into the digitised world as a need for survival. These manifest themselves as conversations that revolve around the issues of existence, memory and the way that stories are told. In A Third Version of the Imaginary, Tiven researches the archived footage, buried in the depths of the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation, and the events surrounding the 1973 Kenyan Independence Day parade. He brings the archived footage back to life through a series of interviews and conversations which corroborate the grainy, choppy footage from a technological past.

Tiven_every_day_static

Employing the internet, through Triple Canopy, as a platform for the reinterpretation of these occurrences, the ‘conversations’ express themselves as investigative journalism which delve deeper into the politics of regimes past, the power of political imagery and the data that forms these events. Tiven describes an aspect of his work as the "increasing interchangeability between objects and data" and in one of these conversations with Brian Larkin, Larkin describes that a “breakdown shouldn’t be seen as the absence of something, but rather as the groundwork for something else coming into existence” (Larkin, 2014). This view exemplifies what Tiven’s work is about; that all things have data, past, present and future and in the retrieval and archiving of these events, new occurrences happen.

The digital space can now act as the repository of our actions. The increased capacity of storage through micro technologies and cloud depositories has expanded the realm of knowledge and the capacity for the instantaneous retrieval of information. The explosion of on-line magazines, blogs and social media sites has spurned an environment where all our experiences can be recorded and archived. This ever expanding environment can also be seen as the collective memory of our times.

But one day, these digital spaces might mirror the dusty archival rooms of past regimes, which means that the decoding of our digital past will require new technologies and new visionaries to retrieve them from their slumber. So, who will be responsible for the reinterpretation of these memories? Who will re-mix, loop, splice, cut and paste new story lines in an effort to uncover the deeper connections that occurred in the posting of our existence? As the digital space increasingly becomes controlled and commodified will it be the artist, the writer, the scientist or will we relinquish that responsibility to the powers that govern us? And will these interpretations represent the truth?

Reference:

Tarr, M. & Tiven, B. (2013). How we see. Retrieved from: http://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/how-we-see

Larkin, B., Nyong’o, T. & Tiven, M. (2014). Everyday static transmissions. Retrieved from: http://canopycanopycanopy.com/contents/everyday_static_transmissions

Jim Campbell comes to Auckland

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peripherial_rythym In October this year the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki will present the hugely successful exhibition entitled Light Show, bringing some of the most respect international light artist working today to New Zealand. Of special interest to me is the inclusion of Jim Campell. I have been following his work for several years now and he is one of those artist who has inspired me to push my work into new territories.

His works straddle the cusp of art and technology, comprehension and emotion. After the suicide of his brother, who had struggled with schizophrenia for years, Campbell produced Letter to a suicide in 1985, a 30 minute video of Campbell and his parents addressing his brother a year after his death. That video would be his first and last and since then he has been investigating human emotional states, perception and memory through the abstraction of light and the diffusion of pixels into a 'low definition' unit which express themslves through light, grids, objects, motion and metaphors.

http://youtu.be/-JsLgypYqCM

In 2012, Jim was presented with the 13th Annual Bay Area Treasure Award by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In celebration of this honor, SFMOMA created [this] short film Jim Campbell: Transmitted in Light about his practice.

Retrieved from: http://www.jimcampbell.tv/news/

Cover image: Grand Central Station 2 –2009