Category: locative mobile media

Here is the text about the modern world.

Space Elevators may well be a possibility by the year 3000

We staged “Light Space Time & Motion” on 12/11/2021

Moholy Nagy – Light Space Time and Motion

A audiovisual musical journey into the light sculptures of Moholy Nagy

featuring 3D anaglyph projections of the *Light Space Modulator* as well as Moholy Nagy’s own films and the special effects work he built for Alexander Korda’s 1936 Science Fiction classic based on H.G. Wells “Things to Come”.
John Smalley will perform as Moholy Nagy, Molly Hankwitz maker of special stage props and art director.

Music and projection film edited by David Cox.

*Song “Light Space Time and Motion” lyrics by John Smalley, music by David Cox
All Music Tracks by David Cox
Intro
Moholy
Lines and Circles
Tango
ABC of Sound
Light Space Modulator
*Light Space Time and Motion

9th Conference on Computation, Communication, Aesthetics & X 12 – 16 July Online

xCoAx is an exploration of the intersection where computational tools and media meet art and culture, in the form of a multi-disciplinary enquiry on aesthetics, computation, communication and the elusive X factor that connects them all.

The focus of xCoAx is on the unpredictable overlaps between the freedom of creativity and the rules of algorithms, between human nature and machine technology, with the aim to evolve towards new directions in aesthetics.

xCoAx has been an occasion for international audiences to meet and exchange ideas, in search for interdisciplinary synergies among computer scientists, artists, media practitioners, and theoreticians at the thresholds between digital arts and culture. Starting in 2013 in Bergamo, xCoAx has so far taken place in:

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Bodies Online – Magdalena Festival is a women in theater festival, Suzon Fuks turned me onto it as she has performed several times. Just caught the end this time around, but want to write more about it for next iteration.

061821_counterculture publication

Article on the countercultural newspaper, The East Village Other to which many luminaries contributed! sent to Craig for his approval. smile.

062021_global_land_commons

native-land.ca – downloadable app and online map of indigenous territories, treaties and languages

Benjamin Bratton has made me think in this talk he gave as a response to AI and cultural directions in the development of the tech, all in conjunction to the Claudia Schmuckli (curator) exhibit, The Uncanny Valley, at the de Young. Bratton begins with the really important query…why are we making AI a reflection of ourselves…(as if we really know what ‘human’ is). Why do we need to envision AI as something like ourselves? He points to the problematic formulation of this conundrum with a series of Sophia-like robot images, and bot-types, and likens the intentions to copy ‘human’ to an awful circus that transpired around computer scientist/theorist Alan Turing’s homosexuality. As soon as Turing was outted, his story was taken from him & stuffed violently back into the closet to such a degree (he was made to take medications to make him “normal”) that it drove Turing to his untimely death. Bratton’s precise comparison of the push to make AI in our own image, and the crushing suppression of Alan Turing, is a critique of the type of thought (philosophy of technology) which Bratton sees as a similar violent direction. He makes it clear that by taking this direction we are most importantly overlooking the fundamental difference of machine intelligence/AI which is that it is not something which is not ‘human’,but rather it is something inherently tied up and bound to human intelligence and that we are, essentially missing an opportunity to learn from what we cannot readily know — what we might “see” about ourselves –and what the intelligence of machines really as to offer. An example he develops is to talk about the violent pathologies inherent in the programming of facial recognition software as it profiles and categorizes its subjects. In this act of analysis, the problem is the transposing of the pathologies back into and inculcating them within the code and the powerful delivery of the software. This critique has been started on AI as well, in basic questions regarding the formulation of algorithmic logic. Bratton echoes Donna Haraway’s appeal in her1982 Cyborg and Simian manifesto to see the human/non-human aspect of techonology as inextricably linked together in the formulation of it all and through which she rejects the binary logic which would separate- human from not-human – when in fact, there is always an intertwined relevance of one to the other.

Bratton illustrates his powerful comparisons with great precision, and he argues that it is  simply a “wrong” direction to go in to try to “make AI human” and the bearer of bad logics.  He notes efforts to invent a palatable ‘Siri’ and ‘Alexa’ home-attendant to the variety of leanings; or the “philosopher in a petri dish” and the domesticating of AI and misunderstanding of its power altogether. Instead of modelling AI and its capacity to automate on ‘human’ as ‘human’ is constructed, he suggests a transdisciplinary approach to view AI, instead, as a distributed intelligence  about which we know very little, and through which we might learn something. He suggests too that we might not want to know what it sees about us. Examples & images explore  Japanese history, dolls, robotics and the cultural traditions from which AI emerged. It’s a clearly voiced and hopeful theoretical starter-kit  on key debates in the production/reproduction of AI.

Note: You may need to subscribe to this excellent youtube channel – Fine Art Museums of San Francisco – in order to see this, but here is the title & link: The Inverse Uncanny Valley: What We See When AI Sees Us.

 

 

From penned diary entry…hence the date:

January 19th – Eve of Joe Biden’s Inauguration and not better time to write than now…Apprehension, delight, fear, anger, intelligent remorse.

January 21st – Do not know Tony Longson’s work, but as a member of the several network lists, it is clear that due to Covid 19 and other ailments…computer scientists, theorists, computer artists, are getting on and dying out…a whole generation of Web 1.0 users, who made enormous contributions in the very early stages of computer art, are leaving us.

We Remember Tony Longson, R.I.P.

“The Q Anon Shaman: The Return of the Mythic” on Rebelwisdom on YouTube, is a discussion about the gregarious man in the Viking hat who helped storm the capital. Speakers, including Erik Davis, discussed the Q Shaman primarily as a likely social phenomenon of conspiracy thinking, which apparently requires a visual culture to really grow in power, hence badges, flags, costumes, language, acronyms. This form of communication is similar to branding/advertising spin which gains momentum through “identification” with the brand. Wikipedia describes Q Anon (c.2017) as ‘a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against U.S. president Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal. U.S. prosecutors have called it “a group commonly referred to as a cult”. Cults develop through the ability to create feelings and sense of belonging. They have identifying markers, signs, clothing, agreement on their ideology, and members. Mobs also form out of immediate need for attention and the power of “unity” and “identification.”

The era of Trump’s lies and his and his Administration’s quest for power has been the dominant ideological position for 4 years, plenty of time to go from Pizzagate (2016) to QAnon (2021); for followings and “followers” to flock to their screens to see what else has been posted in a disturbingly accelerated pace of development. The sense-making apparatus of civil discourse is inherently progressive and productive because it reveres the exchange of differing ideas and opinion over individual authority. The disillusioned and disingenous empowered populus enerate new “forms” of sense not based in fact or reality and believe their own ideology because it is “right” cannot see their way out of the bottle. Trump has fueled the lean, illogical, ill-informed and ignorant formation of ideas. Social media accelerated the pace of his poisonous “reach” and helped the lies (and his entranced followers) to gain unusually threatening momentum.

The QShaman was a centrally-poised figure in media from the Capitol. Colorful, humorous, raving on and seemingly in control, he acted out a fantasy of control, for what spectator?