thoughts on the reading

One theme addressed in this course that really interested me was the political and cultural shifts that are occurring now as our society based on the fundamentals of material commodities moves more and more into the realm of the intangible. While earlier writers like Jean Baudrillard and Hans Magnus Enzenberg debated the possibility of Marxist revolt through new media, more recent essays dealt with whether the Marxist model is still applicable at all, since many formerly material relations of control and exploitation have disappeared, and been replaced by virtual relations. One essay that really opened my eyes was the Critical Art Ensemble writing about “Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance.” The metaphor of nomadic power was very clear and scary. It brought together many aspects of contemporary tools of control: secrecy, conspiracy, obfuscation, spectacle. While many cultural critics have pointed out these issues, and complained about the omnipresence of corporate control and immediate co-option of transgressive elements, I felt that this essay not only did this effectively but provided a good model of how to revolt within this seemingly impenetrable system.
While I have often felt that the problem with internet protest and dissent is that it the virtual action does not have as much clout as a physical action in the street, the potential strategies that hackers could use to subvert that were imagined by the CAE convinced that the internet is the way to go. While free sharing and the challenging of copyright laws is quietly subversive to the capitalist system, it is exhilarating to envision more radical acts that can be done virtually.
While hackers are important, many articles also gave artists the imperative to act within the cyber system to imagine models of change. Bill Viola gives artists the imperative to understand how these systems are affecting our ways of seeing and thinking. They must not be technophobic but instead be on the vanguard and help define this vision. Artists like Lynn Hershman who create interactive works are also subtly challenging media culture. While the internet is highly interactive, I feel that as it evolves, in its most popular forms it is gradually being transformed into a passive experience like all our other media consumption. By creating works that force audiences to interact with media in an uncomfortable way, the audience must reconsider their relationship to all media. As an artist reading these articles gave me direction and perogative to create.

rest of the timeline

1977- Myron W. Krueger builds his Responsive Environments. “Virtual Reality” installations where viewers use their bodies to interact with computers and with each other via computer.
1977- Alan Key and Adele Goldberg hypothesize personal dynamic media in which they imagined a future where personal laptop computers could be used in classrooms and different professions.
1980- In A Thousand Plateaus Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari propose rhizomatic, hypertext like texts as an alternative to more traditional linear western texts
1980- With Minstorms Seymour Papert sought to bring personal computers to the realm of children’s play and education, he proposes the constructionist model of education in which children learn through hands on application of academic principles, for example, children can learn about mathmatics through computer programming
1980- In Richard A. Bolt’s essay “Put-That-There” he describes a three dimensional interface that uses gesture and voice, but privileges voice interactions over textual, thus rendering computing interaction closer to human interaction
1981- In Theodore Nelson’s Proposal for a Universal Electronic Publishing Archive, he describes his project Xanadu in which a network of users could freely share information, link information, and use information from public sources. This became a powerful model in the free sharing we see on the web today
1982- Bill Viola “Will There be Condominiums in Data Space” describes how video and technology can help us form a new vision of the space around us
1983- Ben Bagdikian’s “Endless Chain” shows the evolution of media corporations into the era of new media
1983- Ben Schneiderman describes direct manipulation interface, an intuitive interface language where real world actions are represented metaphorically on the computer screen
1984-“Video Games and Computer Holding Power” Sherry Turkle studies video games from a psychoanalytic perspective and looks at how players immerse themselves in the world of the game to fulfill important psychological roles.
1985- “Cyborg Manifesto” Donna Haraway appropriates the myth of the cyborg as a symbol for a post-gender indentity. For her cyborgs in their hybridity represent an alternative to strict social and gender dichotomies.
1985 Richard Stallman writes the GNU manifesto as a reaction against those who were turning internet software in property. He proposes systems of free sharing (Free Software Foundation) like copyleft, and criticizes copyrighting laws.
1986- “Using Computers: A Direction for Design” Cultural critics Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores propose that rather than trying to imitate human intelligence computer programming should be used as a tool to enhance interpersonal communication.
1986-1991 Brenda Laurel applies classic ideas of aaristotlean theater to computer software and demonstrates the new possibilities that computers lend to traditional performative arts.
1986- With “Towards a New Classification of Tele-informational Services” Jan L, Bordewijk and Ben van Kaam attempted to assign typologies and provide classifications for computer media
1986- In “Mythinformation” Langdon Winner demands responsibility from the advocates of the computer revolution, and discusses the politics of the information available through new technologies

1987-“Plans and Situated Actions” Lucy A. Suchman challenges the traditional plan based model of AI and argues that interaction and “understanding” between people and machines is fundamentally impossible
1988- In “Siren Shapes” Michael Joyce defines exploratory and constructive Hypertexts, constructive hypertexts being those that are being built by authors and users, and exploratory hypertexts being those that can no longer be modified.
1988- With “The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems” Bill Nichols reinterprets Walter Benjamin for a video game society, in which the festishization of the object is transferred onto the process of interaction and simulation
1990- Lynn Hershman and Grahame Weinbren create the first works of interactive video art.
1991- Pelle Ehn and Morten Kyng’s Utopia Project employs users (skilled workers) to help design new technologies
1991- The multiplayer online role playing game Habitat allows for players to communicate online in a virtual environment.
1991- In “Seeing and Writing” J. David Bolter investigates how our ability to manipulate text on the computer affects our relationship to reading and writing
1993- In “Hypertext and the Laws Media” Stuart Moulthrop explores the political capacity of hypertext
1992- Robert Coover encourages literature students to experiment in the realm of interactive hypertext novels
1993- In Understanding Comics Scott McCloud dissects how all aspects of comics work, helping us better understand our relationship to text and image.
1994- In “Surveillance and Capture” Phillip Agre explores how our privacy and surveillance online modifies our behavior.
1994- “Nonlinearity and Literary Theory” Espen J. Aarseth begins to create a literary theory and classification of nonlinear texts
1994- The Critical Art Ensemble describes how corporate powers of control have infiltrated the cyber realm, and proposes new forms of web protest.
1994- The World Wide Web catches on and beats out other Internet services to become ubiquitous in households across America

New Media Reader Time Line 301-375

1974- Theodore Nelson writes Computer Lib/ Dream Machines
- Sought to clarify computer technology for the masses
- Predicted personal computing
- Imagined how computers could be used to redefine and enhance educational and other non-corporate settings

1974- Augusto Boal writes "Theater of the Oppressed" outlining his revolutionary theater techniques
-created interactive improvisational theater and performance pieces which encouraged discussion of political and social issues
- allowed participants to imagine and therapeutically work through different political or personal problems and solutions

1975- Nicholas Negroponte "Soft Architecture Machine"
-outlined how computers could be used by experts in non computing fields, specifically architecture, to enhance their work
-describes how how software can be as responsive and intuitive as possible to a user's needs

1976- Joseph Weizenbaum "Computer Power and Human Reason"
-Wrote about the controversy surrounding his talking bot "Eliza" and discusses the danger of human-technology empathy and interaction

New Media Reader pages 231-301

Thee texts in this segment discussed the debate over whether technology determines the course of history or if the social situation gives rise to technology. The authors were also debating whether new medias represented a potential mouthpiece for the masses or whether it was merely a tool of corporate control. I agree William's argument that the technologies discussed here, television, radio, etc, rose out of a very specific milieu of social change. These technologies were commissioned and developed in the service of those in power, and it shows. For me the purpose of most entertainment technology is distracting spectacle and the illusion of choice. While media like TV seems like a pro-democracy force that gives everyone regardless of gender, race, or class a common culture, it is also anti-democracy in that it gives consumers an illusion of choice and freedom because they can choose whether to watch American Idol or the Amazing Race. The internet is the receiving/transmitting tool that Enzensberger imagines, and it may challenge a lot of the arguments of these authors. I can see it as a tool of control and as a possible tool of revolution. As a tool of control it furthers the phenomenon that Baudrillard describes of the faits divers. On the internet, we are flooded with information and sensational stories, so that everything is important and nothing is important. There is so much information happening so fast, that nothing can retain enough attention long enough to become more than a symbol of revolt. Despite all the content sharing that happens on the internet, it is owned and controlled by a few corporations, and mostly we just consume their content. Also what Williams says about the TV as an in home device also goes for personal computers. People are isolated and turned inwards through these devices. Although people can talk on message boards or on websites about revolution, this will not scare anyone unless people are gathering in the street and perpetrating actions.
However on the other hand, maybe a revolution of the future will happen through technology, and will not be material. I read about how warfare of the future will target the enemy's communication system. Under this model it is conceivable that a small group could take control of a nation by hacking into its systems of communication. Secondly, if there is one thing the internet is good for, its creating imagined communities, and imagined community is the first step to an imagined future which is the first step towards revolution so who knows....

G.H. Hovagimyan's lecture and demo

I was impressed by the methods that Hovagimyan used for his works. I was especially inspired by the videos that could be played in any order. These were surprisingly effective and it was interesting to see how a linear narrative could be broken down. I also liked learning about situationist performance art, and seeing those historic performances because these is not something that I have looked into a lot. However, I was a little weirded out by the content of some of his performances. They seemed a little elitist. Privately owned public spaces are the least of our problems in the world right now. If you want to be punk rock and start shit with the man, why bother doormen who are just trying to do their job? I felt like the tone was that they were just trying to freak out all these people who could never possibly understand what a art happening is. Why should doormen and passers-by be made to look foolish if the artist's goal is to challenge these big corporations. It made me feel uncomfortable. Similarly were the two women who peed in the barbara kruger retrospective. I'm not a big fan of her work, but if you wanna take on the institution of the art world, she should not be the target. Young women artists need to recognize the rarity and the debt they owe to succesful women artists who came before them, whether they like their work or not. This is something that I feel strongly about.

New Media Reader Time Line 231-301

1968- Doug Englebart and William English demo an interactive computing system.
-set precidents for both the internet and personal computers
-introduces the mouse

1970- "Software- Information Technology" Exhibition at the Jewish Museum
brought new media art and the issues that surround it into the eye of the general public

1970- Hans Magnus Enzensberger writes a Marxist Theory of Media
-suggests a new orginization of media in which the masses can be producers and not just passive receivers of culture and media, and thus create the means for social change

1972- Jean Baudrillard writes "requiem for the Media" in response to Enzensberger
-rejects Enzenbergers' idea of turning the consumer into producers of media
-says media is inherently a tool of bourgeois control, and that all it contains is reduction of what it reproduces to pale models

1972- Raymond Williams writes "Television: technology and cultural form"
-rejects technological determinism
-provides a case study of the causes and effects 0f television

New Media Reader 177-227

I loved Italo Calvino's mathematical crime story. I thought it was ingenious of him to use the genre of the crime story. The actions he uses in his equations (to rape, to murder, etc.) are funny because these are actions that we generally conceive of as being beyond the rational, unpredictable, and unexplainable. But also, he is playing on the crime fiction idea that all crimes can be solved by a hyper-rational computer like mind (McLuhan mentions Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter" for example). Finally, I thought it was a good satire of the genre because the plots of these kinds of stories are often formulaic, involving a set number of stock characters doing a set number of actions, as I discovered at my own peril while reading a massive pulp fiction anthology recently. It reminded me of the article we read about how movies of the future might conform themselves to the desires of the viewer, and shows a model of how this might work. It was also interesting showed how cultural or personal biases can subjectify a seemingly objective mathematical process, in showing the actions that Calvino thought each character might be capable of, or which actions could exclude each other. In the real world, by some freak incident maybe one of the eliminated combinations of actions and characters could occur, but not in the rational world of fiction or computing.
McLuhan's articles were so dense with ideas and references that sometimes I had difficulty understanding it all, but several of his ideas stood out to me. His "Gutenberg Galaxy" excerpt resonated with some of my recent preoccupations. I'm taking a class on the history of mass media. and reading a book about Victorian sexuality, most of the sources for which are sensationalist newspapers, pamphlets, and pornography publications. In these contexts, I often think about how the internet is currently considered to be bringing information to the masses as never before, but the wealth of affordable publications that sprang up in the 19th century was a similar paradigm shift, into paradigm that I think is still mostly holding sway today. I was especially compelled by McLuhan's statement that widespread literacy created a shift from the manufacture of art for a patron, into the manufacture of art for mass consumption, and transformed art into a commodity. This also forced the artist to be more aware of the audience and the arts intended effect. This was the first move towards artist/veiwer interaction. I also was interested in his discussion of the individual versus the group experience. While we mostly consume and interpret culture in an individual way, we also have a shared experience in pop culture, a level on which people can communicate across class, race, age and gender.
"The Medium is Message" was interesting because of McLuhan's argument that technologies have a meaning in and of themselves, that they are political and non-neutral. This was different from most articles we have read where technology is only as dangerous as those who wield it.