image making

machine art

Gold farmers... whatever... Alexander Galloway - The interface effect

Alexander Galloway - The interface effect A specter haunts the world of digital games, the specter of the "Chinese gold farmer." But who is this shadowy figure? The Chinese gold farmer is a gamer who plays online video games day and night in order to earn virtual gold and sell it for real money. Journalists and researchers have stalked this elusive pirate around the world, uncovering computer rooms in China stocked with young gamers toiling in meager conditions for inferior pay!" (pp.121) ...

... "The Whatever in question here relates to singularity not in its indifference with respect to a common property (to a concept, for example: being red, being French, being Muslim), but only in its being such as it is." [... ] "Whatever is the figure of pure singularity. Whatever singularity has no identity, it is not determinate with respect to a concept, but neither is it simply indeterminate; rather it is determined only through its relation to an idea, that is, to the totality of its possibilities."* The whatever follows a logic of belonging (x such that it belongs to y), not a logic of predication (x is defined through y, or more simply, x is y) [...] The trick of the whatever is thus to abstain from the assignation of traits, to abstain from the system of biopolitical predication, to abstain from the bagging and tagging of bodies. (pp.139-140)

* Here Galloway quotes from Girogio Agamben's The coming community, 1993 (It is important to note Agamben's understanding of “whatever” not as being indifference but based on the Latin translation of “being such that it always matters”.)

Galloway, A. (2012). The interface effect. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.

Disinformation v2

...

Scattered around the external environs of the meeting room are the shredded remnants of what was once an official document. A report, which carried its weight through an association. Not only is the original document connected to an institutional identity but also to an individual. A set of individual, contracted identities, employed to perform their job. A ‘hired hand’, a set of possible misinformants. A journalist, an expert, a politician.

The Art of Work

Luis Camnitzer — Thinking About Art Thinking

May 7th, 2015

• supercommunity
• View Original
• e-flux journal 56th Venice Biennale

"Trueartsupposedlytakesformin anareathatisconsideredunreachable.It’slocated between consciousnessandtheunconsciousandissubjecttomagical interpretations."

"Or is it where cognition has to be served and needs the development of complex approaches to knowledge—of connecting what is presumed to be non-connectable—so that nothing may die submerged in conventionality and stereotypes?"

"All this makes me prefer to view art not as a means of production but as a form of thinking — art thinking, in fact. It makes me see that a textbook is a monologue that transfers information, and that fiction is dialogical because it demands empathy."

Luis Camnitzer (b.1937) is a German-born Uruguayan artist and writer who moved to New York in 1964. He was at the vanguard of 1960s Conceptualism, working primarily in printmaking, sculpture, and installations. Camnitzer’s artwork explores subjects such as social injustice, repression, and institutional critique. His humorous, biting, and often politically charged use of language as art medium has distinguished his practice for over four decades. http://www.alexandergray.com/artists/luis-camnitzer/

Who owns an image?

[image] A captured still from an encountered video left behind on an electronic device in a consumer goods store, 2015.

I got in trouble the other day ... again

Its not the first time I have been questioned for appropriating, using or capturing images of images. This time it was far less conclusive (in my opinion) but just as problematic, I guess. In one of my earlier journal entries titled pattern recognition :: I listed a series of quotes from some writers and thinkers who reference patterns and the importance of sequence and structure in the understanding of the world around us. I set about searching the web and decided to use an iconic image of Marshal McLuhan by the photographer Henri Dauman as my ‘poster-child’ image.

I had contacted Mr. Dauman and asked him for his permission, but in my haste I posted the image before him granting it, and subsequently he wanted to charge me an exorbitant fee for using it. I removed the image gave him a sincere and humble apology and searched the web for an alternative. I later went on to find out that Henri Dauman and the New York Times had successfully sued the Andy Warhol Estate for an image that Warhol had appropriated for his work ‘16 Jackies’ from a Dauman photo titled 'A Sorrowing Family Marches Together,' showing Jackie, Robert and Edward in the funeral procession (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/08/nyregion/photographer-sues-andy-warhol-estate-over-kennedy-photo.html), so I suppose, I shouldn't mess with him.

In a more recent incident I was pulled-up for ‘taking’ photos of individuals from a ‘demonstrator’ device, which are commonly found in technology stores. It’s part of an on-going project of mine which involves observing the way that humans continue to expand and multiply their digital image into shared spaces. I am interested in the performative 'culture' a camera instigates and how we are ‘leaving’ traces of ourselves in digital form on various devices; the implications that this might have to the ‘ownership’ of an image and what value that image might carry for the ‘holder’ of that image.

It raises some interesting issues for me as I believe that the image is now intrinsically part of the ubiquitous digital public domain. Although an image might ‘resides’ on an electronic device, in a consumer goods store, I don't know that it means that the image ‘belongs’ to the retailer; and even though it may temporarily be ‘situated’ on an apparatus I don't think it ‘belongs’ to that device either. In a way the image that is 'left-behind' is no different than walking down the street and capturing a passer-by or photographing an album cover from a second hand shop or the walls of some hipster bar toilet. The individuals, often its more than one, consciously ‘leave’ their images behind for someone else to ‘find’. It’s like a 'tag' or a bit of 'techno-urban-graffiti' (maybe there's a better word for it), for me, it's the digital equivalent of the ‘Kilroy Was Here’ mark. The recording of the image is not done for the benefit of the retailer or the device for that matter, it was made for someone else, it becomes a mark to be encountered, and if I decide to take it away with me, to extend the life of that image, what’s wrong with that? I know I am on some shaky legal grounds here but it makes me wonder about the 'value' of the image. The image 'left' then goes on to be part of that device. In a way it enhances the 'features' of the device by making the device more appealing to the consumer, by 'showing-off' its capabilities to 'capture', 'record' and 'play-back'. By exploiting the residual image it hypes-up the 'product benefits' and increases the desirability of the product by demonstrating its pixel-perfect ability to represent colour, motion, skin-tones, etc. The image 'left' has now taken on an added unwilling function and its intent is 'hijacked' for the benefit of some unknown entity who is only concerned with ROI's, KPI's and stakeholder investments.

I was told by the retail floor person that the store upheld the privacy of the individuals and that they deleted the images after ‘some time’; of course even after the image is ‘removed’ it still remains on that hard drive, in another form (topic for a different discussion). They understood that we were in a public space, although technically it probably isn’t, because that space ‘belongs’ to the corporates who rent it, and that they wanted me to ask permission, which I then did, but was then denied consent. So, I am not sure where that leaves things, but it opens up some further questions around the ‘ownership’ of an image, the ‘value’ that the image carries, its scale within an 'economy' and who benefits from its 'value'? It also makes me think more about the hidden ‘shadows’ of information, the ‘exchange’ that an image actions, its ‘employment’ as a commodity and its position within virtual spaces.

Jonathan Monaghan

[image] Still from Jonathan Monaghan Escape Pod, 2015 - computer animated HD film, 20 minute seamless loop.

I have recently been mesmerized by the work of Jonathan Monaghan and I am not sure why, but I keep coming back to watch the online excerpts and previews of his animated video loops. It’s a genre that would normally not sit comfortably with me but it has me hooked. A Village Voice article concludes that "his vision of a life looped and collapsing back onto itself is like the image of a snake eating its tail: a metaphor for a world of terminal narcissism where assholes rule." ¹

What unsettles me is that I’m not sure if it’s the hyperreal gloss of the digitally manufactured landscapes, the highly reflective interiors of artificial environments or the haunting soundscapes of the minimalist Nordic synthesized pop music, which sound more like a Hollywood sound track, a 'Rocky' climax, or possibly a Hal moment from 2001: A Space Odyssey, that make these animations a bit 'wobbly', a bit askew. Or possibly it’s Monaghan’s ability to parody contemporary social and political issues through the manipulation of pixels and software with a twisted take on truisms which fascinates me.

https://vimeo.com/118074898

The title of his latest show, Escape Pod, 2015 at Bitforms Gallery in NYC, suggests a utopian failure to our reality and that hope might only lie in the digital construct of imagination. A golden stag runs endlessly towards a horizon which stretches infinitely into nowhere as virtual images of consumerism and materialism play themselves out. “In a climatic moment, the golden fawn is birthed out of a BoConcept sofa, only to be carried away, into a heavenly Duty Free Shop in the clouds. Seamlessly looped in a twenty-minute cycle, Escape Pod suggests an apocalyptic decadent future – one that is militarised, totalitarian and permeated by extravagance. It is a representation of laboured pursuits, particularly of the otherworldly or unobtainable.“ ²

[vimeo 38398862 w=520 h=301]

In Sacrifice of the Mushroom Kings, 2012 Monaghan's fascination with power is personified by the iconic geo-political spur which represent a historical past but is nonetheless transported into the present through the metaphors of CGI animated gaming heroes. In the preview scene, a GIJoe character taught with steroid inducing digital magic, on the verge of bursting out of his skin, creates a narrative tension as he enters the amplified gladiatorial theatre to take on the golden bull which collapses and rolls over in a submissive gesture to capital exegesis and ideological might. The symbolism is obvious but somehow the exaggerated characters and the accompanying audio creates a sense of being in-between two worlds. Its as if they have somehow escaped their own online ‘shoot-em-up’ gaming realities only to be trapped in a digital fantasy that mirrors a world which bewilders them. Its like an 'Ivan meets GIJoe' moment from the Clash, a post-punk rebellious juke-box in virtual 3D animation, all from the comfort of your couch.

And for a more 'profound' take on his work read this from the Village Voice: ¹ Ass You Like It: Jonathan Monaghan's Playful Videos Go Deep by Jessica Dawson - Wednesday, Apr 15 2015

² Jonathan Monaghan opens Escape Pod at bitforms gallery, NY. – In Featured Events / March 22, 2015. https://anti-utopias.com/newswire/jonathan-monaghan-opens-escape-pod-at-bitforms-gallery-ny/

anti-utopias is a curated contemporary art project exploring new territories in the field of curatorial practices. The project is built around a comprehensive thematic and critical international contemporary art platform founded in 2011 by Sabin Borș, and functions as an ongoing laboratory for experimental approaches to contemporary art.

Regimes of signification... Louis Althusser

Louis Althusser, fotografiado en 1973 durante una de sus clases en la Escuela Normal Superior de París. / PATRICK GUIS / KIPA / CORBIS. Retreived from http://elpais.com/diario/2011/06/16/cultura/1308175201_850215.html

Chapter I: The unworkable interface

Alexander Galloway - The interface effect

"... the four regimes of signification:

(1) Ideological: an aesthetic of coherence, a politics of coherence;

(2) Ethical: an aesthetic of incoherence, a politics of coherence;

(3 ) Poetic: an aesthetic of coherence, a politics of incoherence;

(4) Truth: an aesthetic of incoherence, a politics of incoherence.

[...] Thus an additional claim is helpful, [...] if anything can be said about the changing uses of these regimes in the age of ludic economies it would be that we are witnessing today a general shift in primacy from the first to the second, that is to say, from the "ideological" regime to the "ethical" regime. […] ideology is in recession today, at least in terms of its classical effectivity; there is a decline in ideological efficiency. Ideology, which was traditionally defined as an "imaginary relationship to real conditions" (Althusser), has in some senses succeeded too well and, as it were, put itself out of a job. Instead, we have simulation, which must be understood as something like an "imaginary relationship to ideological conditions." In short, ideology gets modeled in software. So in the very perfection of the ideological regime, in the form of its pure digital simulation, comes the death of the ideological regime, and simulation is "crowned winner" as the absolute horizon of the ideological world. The computer is the ultimate ethical machine. It has no actual relation with ideology in any proper sense of the term, only a virtual relation."

Galloway, A. (2012). The interface effect. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.