<x-flowed>hello -- There have been some good postings recently and I have been in the slow process of coming up with some responses to amanda, johannes, sita, doug, robert, etc. The following is digresses from and is related to those responses (which I may or may not complete). This comment is more of an observation that has certainly occurred to me before -- but it relates to the discussion about connectivity, redundancy, vocabulary, new/ old, historical precedents, etc, etc: Last night I watched a special about Sir Robin Day -- recently passed away famous BBC journalist/ interviewer. There was some great footage from the earliest days of remote tele-interviewing in the 60s where it was clear that both parties were confused and disorientated by the situation. Obviously now it comes as second nature as a practice for those with access to television networks and orbiting satellites... and we who view these tele circumstances on the monitors in the home do not necessarily think *isn't it remarkable that she is in Afghanistan and he is in London* -- we have grown to expect our news services to be able to deliver this sort of coverage. Cellbytes activities (for information refer to earlier postings or the site documentation http://isa.asu.edu/cellbytes/), while different, as a set of practices did overlap with existing broadcast/ communications practices -- something we did not discuss much in the midst of trying to produce the work that we did. I am curious about where this overlap is significant (in other words is part of the production of meaning(s) we were also engaging with) OR NOT. What is the relationship between mass media and consumer practices, our understanding of an expectation of social/ cultural services blending with our spectatorial expectations of aesthetic/ artistic process/ product? Some potential red herrings have been discussed in recent postings -- I would suggest that another red herring in relation to projects involving remote locations converging in one space through media filters/ representations is the significance of 'digital' as different from other technologies. While undeniably what digital technologies have done here is to accelerate a form of access to a network that has given many (not all obviously) the opportunity to play with an expanded set of tele-technologies. Expanded beyond the tele-phone that is. And there is already a history of artistic work having done so. However, the sense of disorientation displayed by the early pioneers in tele-video conferencing and interviewing that I witnessed on television last night was very much the same disorientation felt by the individuals involved in Cellbytes. For example, where is the camera and how does one appear at the other end of the connection to the viewer? What is the performer's response when a communication link breaks down? What is the relationship between the performer as the instrument of apparent significance and his or her tenuous link with the technology operators [quote] behind the scenes [unquote]? Being digital has only enabled us to have an opportunity to actually revisit a set of questions that in terms of functionality and operability are already asked and answered in the context of broadcast practices. I guess then the question for us is how quickly do we learn what is already known and move on? Do we in the meantime find interesting and creative ways to exploit limitations in the technology (a good old artistic strategy)? Do we find ways to translate the forms and materials of tele-circumstances into other artistic processes in generative ways? Do we use artistic practice to interrogate the assumptions derived from existing institutionalized tele-communications? More questions than answers -- but that's the business we are in. Best, Scott </x-flowed>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 03/28/01 CST