Current Developments 2

My current work involves experimenting with technologies and materials. For the development of the digital collages and projections I have been photographing and scanning leaves, cellophane and various textures to try to find a visual languages that corresponds with the research into hallucinations and auras.




The above image, with its ghostly effect, has the texture of old film which is different from the chalky looking image below.




There is a clumsiness to these two works that I am unable as yet to control.



The inverted image seems to be more successful than the positive images.


It seems that the leaf only works when it is in negative and when there is textures being picked up in the bckground. Below is a more successful version:

Wallpaper

No flowers please: wallpaper exhibition exposes the dark side of the home Crime scenes, school bullies and genitalia feature in first UK exhibition of medium:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/06/wallpaper-exhibition-manchester

Reading, scholarly activities and the attempt to not to waste time.

The vast number of texts and journals that litter my house is immense. It is like a McLuhan nightmare of “information overload”. There is also the distraction of a number of DVDs: the whole of Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Robert Hughes’s Shock of the New being the serious ones. Over Christmas I watched all thirteen episodes of Civilisation and began to read the book, which I have neglected to do over the past twenty years. The three examples here overlap in my mind as they do reference each other. The Shock of the New is like a fusion of Berger and Clark. Hughes emulates Berger, the young, hip radical critic in many of the early documentaries. Compare Hughes discussing Caravaggio for television with Berger’s style and approach in Ways of seeing. I am a bit obsessed with The Shock of the New: I have both additions of the book. The 1980 edition is a signed copy.

Digital Culture 2

Week 2: Social Networking and the 'Technological Unconscious'


Today's Digital Culture session was interesting. I am not sure about Scott Lash's idea of Post-Hegemonic Power. I remain to be convinced. I must add an entry about this..... and read a book


It has been argued that we are moving away from narrative, and a narrative culture: a process of 'knowing' and understanding the world, is actually dying, as a consequence of digitization. It is argued is the world under the auspices of new media where information is organised into databases: where narratives demand closure , digital narratives can never be complete. The database is the new notion of the bardic function that reshapes social relationships and democratizes the public sphere.


Phatic Technology and Modernity : http://journal.webscience.org/169/3/websci09_attachment_175.pdf

I am reminded of Robert Hughes criticism of McLuhan and the culture of glut..... must add.

Digital Culture 1

Week 1: Digital (Dis)Order - The Cybernetic Matrix

This semester's theoretical unit examines the rather complex and intricate subject of Digital Culture. The first session identifies parts of the histories of the digital. We were introduced to a key term such as cyber, cyberspace and cybernetics. All these terms describe or are connected with electronic communication networks like the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Cyber is derived from the Greek word Kubernetes meaning “Steersman” or “Governor”. The term 'cybernetics' was coined in Norbert Wiener's book Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press, 1948 and 1961) and describes it in “Cybernetics in History”, The Human Use of Human Beings in reference to the complex communications and control systems in the animal world and in mechanical networks, in particular self-regulating control systems. Wiener’s use of the term suggests how people interact with machines through a controlling device, such as a steering mechanism.

Randal Packer and Ken Jordan argued that “Wiener's remarkable insight, which is the premise behind all human-computer interactivity and interface design, is that human communication should be a model for human-machine and machine-to-machine interactions”. Packer and Jordan also point out that in his discussion of cybernetics “Wiener claims that the quality of man-machine communication influences man's inner well-being. His theory of cybernetics was meant to improve the quality of our existence in a technological society, where people are increasingly reliant on machines, and where interactions with machines are the norm. The design of machines, and their ability to respond effectively to us, has a direct impact on the social condition” (2001, p48).

I have read that Wiener was Hungarian born although Wikipedia states that he was born on November 26, 1894, in Columbia, Missouri (some websites say Maryland) other sources have describe him as Polish or of Russian descent.

From the word cybernetics emerges “cyborg", for "cybernetic organism".

Presentation

I am at last clarifying some ideas, but only some. I need to make far more work and actually produce a far better prepared presentation.

From Leonardo’s "Treatise on Painting"

“When you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes … or, again, you may see battles and figures in action, or strange faces and costumes, or an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well-drawn forms. And these appear on such walls promiscuously, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine”.