Re: [-empyre-] Is the Internet like a Medium of Art?

[gh hovagimyan]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Recently I did a "Post Browser" piece . It  
harkens back to earlier net.art works such as netomat or Jodi.org.  I  
look at the internet as both a medium or vehicle and material. The  
material is the information that is on it. The medium is the networks  
that transport the material. It also has the properties of a global  
mythos that transcends and/or absorbs local associations. The  
internet can be both a subject and and object.  Or rather you can  
hold both a subjective and objective viewpoint at the same time. I  
agree with Daniel's discussion of the qualities inherent in the  
internet. I also like to physicalize my new media art bringing it  
into a hybrid balance with the real world.


On Apr 4, 2014, at 1:45 PM, Daniel Herwitz wrote:


--empyre- soft-skinned space--
One has the sense that the internet is no more a medium than  
language is. Language may become poetry, prose, screenplay, blog,  
scholarship, essay and so one, it is irreducible to any given  
medium or genre. The internet is, one might think, similar. One can  
put anything up there, design a website every which way, from  
curated images to pure text to any imaginable coordination of word,  
image, projection, in any form of simultaneity or narrative. The  
limit is merely the technology, which is immensely capacious. But  
there are ways in which the internet is like a medium: it  
derealizes whatever is uploaded from all traces of physicality. The  
aesthetics of the nineteenth century according to which it was  
necessary to view the cathedral of Chartres in early morning when  
soft light bathed its facade in golden haze, and then inside at  
midday when the summer light of midday illuminated its stained  
glass windows in deeply saturated green, blue, purple, and red, in  
order to know the art and aesthetics of the cathedral, when the  
aura of place was supervienient for the aesthetic imagination,  
simply evaporate, turning the artwork on the internet into a  
dimensionless, placeless, strange thing, at once ghostlike and as  
banal and ordinary as morning email. Images on the internet are at  
once abstracted, and consumables, and this means that certain kinds  
of media fare quite differently on the internet than others:  
paintings uploaded as images lose all materiality, sculpture the  
same, film projection loses size but retains one dimensional scope,  
performance (whether skyped, taped or crowd-sourced) happens in an  
encomium wholly apart from the theatre. The internet may not be a  
single medium but it is a clear filter which filters distinctive  
kinds of art media quite differently. This means art communication  
on the internet is at once a loss and a gain, and needs to take  
cognizance of that. The important thing is to try to create art  
that will not degenerate into a mere example of another website of  
millions, on which people click for a few seconds between clicking  
on everything else. How does one retain the quality of absorption,  
uncertainty and intensity associated with the aesthetics of the  
nineteenth century, that is, associated with seeing art in its  
place (Chartres) and for a long time. How long is enough, and how  
intensely?


--
Daniel Herwitz
Frederick G. L. Huetwell Professor
Department of Comparative Literature
University of Michigan
2012 Tisch Hall
435 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003

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Re: [-empyre-] empyre subscribers: we want you to tell us about your new projects and post your bio

[gh hovagimyan]

--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hi Empyrians --

Tim and Renate have asked what projects we are working on so here goes-

I've been working with the Kinect Camera for the past couple of years.
I have 3 kinect projects I'm working on.  I am developing a post  
browser interface
that uses 3D space and infrared 3d space as a physical/virtual  
interface.  I believe that
the printing/browser interface is 20 years old and really irrelevant  
to  our data environment.
I share some of and I am inspired by data visualization aesthetics  
but I find it rather impersonal.
I think one of the tasks of artist in the 21st century is to humanize  
and physicalize data interface and retrieval.

http://nujus.net/~nublog/?p=578
--
I am working on a collaboration with Rhys Chatham (well known  
minimalist musician) and Raphaele Shirley (light artist/sculptor)
in a three person collaboration.  I am using my 3D virtual body to  
control Raphaele's light sculpture's.
In this case I am moving in response to Rhys's music and "performing"  
her light sculptures.

--
And I am working on 3 projects for Santiago, Chile. One is to rebuild  
a Gordon Matta-Clark work in the museum there.
Another is to be shown at the New Media Bienalle in Chile. I will be  
doing 3D Karaoke in Spanish.

http://nujus.net/~nujus/gh_04/gallery20.html
And finally I am developing a new media workshop at the art school of  
Santiago for the Spring of next year.

--
My bio is here -- http://nujus.net/~nujus/gh_04/bio.html
---
On Jun 27, 2013, at 2:51 PM, Renate Ferro wrote:

LEASE let us know what you are working on now.  What are your  
interests?


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Re: [-empyre-] The New Aesthetic - questions and conclusions

[gh hovagimyan]

A curator here in New York is trying to reconstitute the early pre- 
web artist bbs's such as ArtNetWeb, thing bbs and rhizome. He wants  
to also use the original machines and have the archives available on  
the web for research. He's also asking for very early internet works  
that depend on netscape 1.0.  Seems to me, there is now an effort to  
understand the "New Aesthetics" and begin to sort out it's starting  
points.  I would say that right at the beginning when everyone in the  
90's started picking up computers and using the web there were  
several definable strains of aesthetics.  here's a partial list,  3D  
objects and worlds,  chat and social software, surveillance and  
privacy, web sites (as publications or interactive works),
sound art, video on the web and digital video. Digital photography is  
in there but it seems to be wrapped up in the other forms. Then there  
is interactive art, human and machine interface, open source and  
hacking community.  Let's not forget the computer vision crowd,  
virtual world and online theater.   This keeps on being added to and  
refined. For example the first online 3D code was VRML  that sort of  
petered out and is now wrapped into Augmented Reality.   Anyway all  
these aesthetic currents are constantly evolving and are very  
exciting as a new language.  It is just then beginning of an ontology  
so we don't know where it might lead. We do know that the "modernist/ 
post-modernist" discourse is pretty much played out and really boring.


On Sep 28, 2012, at 9:25 AM, Lichty, Patrick wrote:

Also, I want to ask where people see NA going, if anywhere.  Will  
that be dependednt on the development of technologies, or human  
reflections upon them?


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Re: [-empyre-] The New Aesthetic: Seeing Like Machines - "Drones at Home"

[gh hovagimyan]

Speakiong of drones --
Here's a performance in the UK. Tom Schofield did the programming --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cseTX_rW3uM&feature=share


On Sep 13, 2012, at 9:35 AM, rrdominguez2 wrote:


Here is a current drone projec


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Re: [-empyre-] The New Aesthetic: Seeing Like Machines

[gh hovagimyan]

I never heard of New Aesthetics but I like the idea. Of course every  
new tool or technology brings a shift in ways of seeing and doing and  
making.  We can trot out the Marxist "alienation"  theme and it hold  
up.  Anyway,  I've been using computer vision which is teaching the  
computer to recognize things.  Part of that is using the Kinect to  
create live 3D video and integrate the physical body into virtual  
space and vice versa.  When you add Augmented Reality it expands the  
information layer to become part of natural reality.
Throw in Video Mapping and the traditional discourse between art and  
architecture is shifting to mediasphere/ information layer and  
architecture.  Is that what is meant by "New Aesthetic" ?


On Sep 13, 2012, at 8:56 AM, Lichty, Patrick wrote:

y Robotics class this semester, we are building a UAV to create  
drone art


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Re: [-empyre-] July on empyre: Screens

[gh hovagimyan]

I think Lev Manovich has an essay about AR that talks about how the  
information network has gone from outside reality to become more  
integrated into day to day reality ala tablets and smart phones.
Recently I've been working with Kinect cameras that map x,y,z axis'  
using infrared. Now the information layer has become part of physical  
space.   I'm also working with AR but incorporating it into a larger  
discourse on art.
For example using paintings as AR markers to extend the discourse on  
painting into the information layer or extending the sense of  
movement, touch, body architectural space into the infomatic  
discourse.  I believe that Simon has a long time approach to these  
issues.
Anyway, I think the screen has a teleology that comes from painting  
to proscenium arch to screen. The hidden information layer is  
infrared and 3D imaging.


On Jul 9, 2012, at 6:01 PM, Clough, Patricia wrote:

Screens disappear as a external device and becomes definitively an  
extension of our senses


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Re: [-empyre-] ambiguous artistic strategies & critical engineering

[gh hovagimyan]

On Feb 9, 2012, at 10:18 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:


In the case of computing this means a competency in programming.


gh responds:
There's a crossover point between computing and physical perception.   
Perhaps starting with Pascal and his discovery of the x,y matrix.
Creating an abstraction and then turning it into a program to run on  
a computer is a logical process. The core artistic question is what you
choose for your starting point in the real world that you then turn  
into an abstraction(algorithm). I tend to start with an art work I'd  
like to make or a series of perceptions
I'd like to explore or convey in the digital world.  Why choose  
digital? Because the chain of logic in the process of abstraction  
allows me to examine all the
perceptual components.  Indeed, once you are freed from the template  
of film or linear narrative or Rennaissance perspective or creating  
physical objects
you can create new vehicles for sensations and emotions in the  
digital realm.


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Re: [-empyre-] ambiguous artistic strategies & critical engineering

[gh hovagimyan]

On Feb 9, 2012, at 8:44 AM, César Baio wrote:

My background in video gave me important clues for me to understand  
that digital is much more closely related to the video than to the  
film. Not by chance this relationship feels very strongly also in  
the aesthetic field.


GH responds:
I started out in high school in rock bands. My father was an  
electrical engineer working in computers and communications.  After  
Art School I was doing performance, installation, conceptual art and  
primitive video-performance.
This was in the 1970's.  In the 1980's I was doing punk performance  
art and music and had a gallery in the East Village in NYC.  In the  
90's I started working with computers.
I had no training I was self-taught but there were a lot of  
scientists and engineers in my family.   To answer your question --
The idea of a communication network  of sound, images, text generated  
by users is a step beyond the broadcast model of television and  
video. One of the issues of video-art is the idea of limiting copies  
in art to make a rare object.
The main idea of video is a live broadcast or a disjuncture of place/ 
space so your initial premise seems correct to me.  However, video is  
just one of the multimedia components of digital art/media.  For  
example. data sensors, audio I/O
video, stills, photoshop, hacking, animation, video mapping onto 3D,   
virtual worlds etc.. all hold equal value.   Obviously we're talking/ 
working in an information world.



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Re: [-empyre-] short report from NL

[gh hovagimyan]

Hi All,
Simon's analysis is totally succinct. Even stranger is a retreat  
within new media back to video exhibitions. Seems like they're  
cheaper and easier than interactive works. I believe the new media  
artist has a place in the digital design chain as the artist NOT a  
designer. This is a research issue. Artists look around at the world,  
they feel it deeply and understand human intentions and desires.   
This is what tends to be lacking in the digital design chain.   I say  
keep going, keep producing experimental works and don't worry about  
the traditional art world. It's sort of like worrying about the blue  
chip market in Impressionist paintings, it has not relevance to new  
media art.

/gh


On Nov 28, 2011, at 10:04 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:



I agree the media art scene is something of a ghetto - but it isn't  
a cattle-market like the mainstream art world. The media art scene  
does indulge in navel gazing, like any self-defining community.  
Indeed, navel-gazing is probably a prerequisite to such self- 
definition. But many media artists can be found seeking to escape  
that definition at every opportunity. It can be argued that media  
art is what it is because the artists doing it so dislike being  
defined by their practices that they are constantly inventing new  
media forms in order to escape such definition. This is why media  
art seems unable to successfully define itself. To the art world  
that appears as a weakness. To those who wish to avoid or subvert  
the art world, whilst sustaining something like a "practice  
formerly known as art", this is a strength.


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Re: [-empyre-] Augmented reality as public art, mobile location based monuments and virtual memorials

[gh hovagimyan]

One way around the proprietory lock I've been using is the Kinect  
camera hack. There's an open TUIO driver that allows for connection  
to any of a number of  free software environments including PD.  The  
kinect gives you the interactivity and live video. Using PD gives you  
the GEM window with openGL rendering or sound or sensor interface.   
The larger question is what do you want to do.  The most obvious is  
to start with a vocabulary of  human gestures and movements as the  
starting point.   Then there is the discussion of where the AR event  
takes place (on screen, projection, goggles or Real 3D). This reminds  
of early body art and performance art. Insofar as a simple art system  
can produce tremendous results.  I find it sort of interesting that  
there is potential for a rigorous discussion on the Ontology of AR  
and changing human techno-consciousness.

On Apr 20, 2011, at 8:40 AM, Rob Myers wrote:


The problem is that these are currently immature products relative to
previous AR technology. They are also proprietary software, which  
limits

artists ability to address their limitations.


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Re: [-empyre-] Welcome Patrick Lichty

[gh hovagimyan]

I'm working on a new performance investigating AR using a hacked  
Kinect Camera.
The NYTimes had an article today a mentioning  new 3d. -- http:// 
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/science/12tier.html?ref=technology
Of course pplayStation just released a 3d screen that doesn't need  
glasses.
I see the real job of artists to explore the parameters of AR away  
from the corporate/cartoon/games/hollywood -marketing apparatus.
It's one of the greatest things about new media. The hacker culture  
is constantly setting up alternate venues.
 I'm actually in a PD patching circle hosted by Hans Christophe  
Steiner that's hacking the Kinect for PD. Once that project is completed
every artist will have access to the tools.   Right now you can get  
the hacked kinect drivers from Open Kinect and OpenNI.
It's still a little wild and wooly because you need to use command  
line and shell scripts to run the programs.


here's a 3d sketch for my performance -- http://nujus.net/~nublog/?p=214




On Apr 7, 2011, at 9:31 AM, Julian Oliver wrote:

The fact that the art can be pose-reestimated independent of viewer  
position is

the innovation wrought by software.


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Re: [-empyre-] This drawing while turning on a computer.

[gh hovagimyan]

gh comments:
When dealing with computer drawing the structure is a set of  
instructions.  You know x,y coordinate for a point, the another point  
etc..  What computers don't do is understand the interstitial  
emotions and dynamics of a drawing. Drawing si the basis for all all.  
It's the primal mind-body connection manifested in markings and  
tracery. Sol Lewitt  approaches the problem in a myriaid of his wall  
drawings. He gives a set of instructions to the people drawing. He  
then watches them as they execute the drawings. Sometimes he would  
suggest to move to a different area or change an angle. Much of what  
he deals with has it's roots in both topological psychology and  
phenomonology. These sciences are no being applied to cognitive  
research and A.I. to get a more naturalistic result from computer  
decisions.  Witness IBM competing on the US game show Jeopardy.   
Here's a Sol Lewitt set of instructions --  LeWitt's directions for  
Wall Drawing 45A are, “Straight lines 12 inches long, not touching,  
covering the wall evenly.”  A computer would not understand when to  
stop nor where to allow breathing space between the lines.


On Mar 3, 2011, at 1:00 AM, christ...@christinamcphee.net wrote:


"This drawing while turning on a computer."


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Re: [-empyre-] always negotiating

[gh hovagimyan]

All art is a negotiation of some sort.  Unless the artist is a hermit  
or an art Naif or Art Brut, art is made with an eye to context.  It's  
also about the patron.  For some artists the patron is the  
university. They make art that reflects the academic environment. For  
some artists the patron is the non-profit alternative spaces. Of  
course there is also the gallery/museum/market system which is a big  
patron.  All of these patronage systems are negotiated with during  
the process of art creation.  I had hoped that the internet would  
present a new system that was not of these existing systems. That was  
the case with the early internet but now it's been subsumed.  
Personally I'm always looking for a way around these systems. I know  
one must negotiate but each system has it's restraints which inhibit  
the free flowing creative process.  One of the principals of  
creativity is to engage these systems and enlarge their scope to  
include your own point of view and discourse.  That appears to be the  
negotiation of which you speak.

On Oct 11, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Renate Ferro wrote:

Would you agree that there is always a negotiation in the process  
of art making?


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Re: [-empyre-] The archive

[gh hovagimyan]

In the 1970's artists would do installations and performances and  
then makes drawings of them. The drawings were presented as concept  
or proposal drawing even though they were done after the work was  
made.  Actually I find that this is a traditional practice among  
artists. You start a painting or sculpture and then make drawings as  
you go along. It's a way of exploring the way you think.  I have  
always found that being an artists is directly contradictory to the  
bureaucratic systems that demand for any grant or exhibition  that  
you present a clear proposal of what you intend to do.  Most of the  
time an artist makes art because they are exploring and discovering  
new paths of perception. It's not about product.  This of course is  
the opposite of a commercial market that demands product.



On Sep 30, 2010, at 10:04 PM, Cynthia Beth Rubin wrote:

 But for now I go with artists faking parts of the documentation to  
tell the best story


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Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[gh hovagimyan]

Hey Simon, That sounds like a really interesting art project!  Very  
early internet practice before high speed internet and web browsers  
involved electronic bulletin boards and also MUD's & MOO's.  Those  
sort of morphed into artists websites/lists and second life.  Early   
BBS (bulletin board services) had a lot of emotion. Among artists it  
was like belonging to a secret club that only a select few knew  
about.  Most of the art world neither knew nor cared about computers  
and the internet. It was a lot of fun then because of the freedom and  
the anarchy.  There are some people who are trying to do facebook art  
but it's not very potent. facebook ties into a soft marketing  
information system.   What was most interesting about early internet  
art practices was that the software and code were very primitive.  
most of the actual content and structure was left up to the  
imagination.  It is still possible to set up an alternative system on  
the internet that uses the same structure as facebook and iTunes.  
Just off the top of my head I'd say you could use RSS (XML) or maybe  
some PHP.  My colleagues in France Peter Sinclair and Jerome Joy are  
designing sound systems that have people around the world put up  
microphones connected to the internet. The sound become the material  
for art works.  I like the idea of working in partially physical and  
partially virtual worlds.  It's a way to disrupt or open up the way  
we socialize, make art and communicate. Here's the link for those works;

--
http://locusonus.org/
--
Here's a recent piece of mine using a seesaw as a movie controller.  
Talk about social sculpture!

--
http://youtu.be/2E76h201_5Y
--



On Jul 8, 2010, at 6:01 AM, Simon Biggs wrote:

This begs the question why nobody has setup a Facebook-like system  
based on

actual human characteristics and behaviour, reflecting how we socially
interact in practice? Such a model would require an open and  
generative
approach to what characteristics and modes of engagement are  
possible, with
constantly emerging dynamics and modes. Hate, love, tolerance,  
boredom and
distaste would be only a few of the states that connections between  
people
could be set to. People might choose to determine these states  
themselves or

the system could heuristically do this on their behalf. That could be
fun...and revealing.


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Re: [-empyre-] Creativity as a social ontology

[gh hovagimyan]

Perhaps an ontology of groups is in order.  In USA we look at  
statistical groups for demographics, you know groups to sell  
something to or voting blocks.  Then there are belief groups such as  
churches and fringe groups such as sovereign state people or Aryan  
nation or tax rebellion. The positive progressive groups such as  
unions or environmentalists are usually demonized by both the right  
wing and the mass media.  It's odd but I think you see the full force  
of consumer capitalism at work on warping information.


On Jul 7, 2010, at 12:54 AM, davin heckman wrote:


contemporary US culture where
individual and collective are pitted against each other in a perpetual
cold war


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Re: [-empyre-] Fwd: Minor Simulations, Major Disturbances

[gh hovagimyan]

Many campus radicals in the 60's & 70's came to the same conclusion.  
They realized that the only way to be a true revolutionary was to be  
a criminal or "outlaw." You get people who become bank robbers or  
drug dealers to fund their revolution.  The other call from the 60's  
& 70's was to work within the system to change the system. There is a  
3rd way especially in higher education and that is to start your own  
school. This means find a patron or a backer to fund a new type of  
tactical media school. This is what Joseph Beuys did in the 70's in  
Cologne. He opened up a free university.  Obviously you can't start  
with a "free university" because you all have to make a living.  But  
as a radical gesture especially within the new media computer science  
and communications world it could be one of the most radical  
movements of all.



On Apr 15, 2010, at 1:14 PM, Beatriz da Costa wrote:

We can't simultaneously ride a career as "interventionist artists,"  
claim a political edge and demand funding, space and support from  
an institution like Calit2. It simply won't work, at least not in  
the long run. Eventually, the support will either stop, or the  
political "edge" won't be quite as edgy anymore


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Re: [-empyre-] self and others

[gh hovagimyan]

gh comments below:

On Jan 13, 2010, at 2:15 PM, Christiane Robbins wrote:

> it seems that we always keep landing on this flea ridden canard –
> “what is art ?”


What is Art?

Flea ridden indeed! Analyze the question and you get the premise for  
an avant-garde. No-one asks that question anymore everyone even  
philistines know what art is and knows what they like. I'd pose the  
question differently and ask what is the difference between art and  
craft or maybe what is the difference between art and a theory of  
art.  Anyway, given the question I'd say that art making is part of  
the human psyche or mental structure. It 's related to and may even  
be the first shift to abstract thinking before the emergence of human  
language around 30,000 years ago. There are of course painting  
elephants but they've been taught by humans.  They do really nice  
Abstract Expressionist paintings but they don't paint portraits of  
other elephants. My favorite quote or definition of art is from Magda  
Sawon who says that an artist takes something and transforms it and  
then transforms it again. The second time it turns into art.

I've said in other posts that the support system for art is what  
defines art. There have always been artists in human society. Looking  
at for example a tribal society you might get shamanistic masks or  
maybe carved stone tablets of tribal laws and an arch to carry them  
around in. It seems there's always cross over or cross reference or  
commingling of art and religion.

Here's some more pertinent questions for the 21st century artist.   
Who do you make your art for? What market are you trying to capture?  
Is your art an extension of your life style? For example do you  
believe in Art=Life?  Do you need a college degree to be taken  
seriously as an artist?  Is there a path to professional advancement  
as an artist?  Do you think of your art making as a career? I could  
go on but you get the point.

My observation is that the current art system and type of art being  
made around the world except maybe in traditional or tribal societies  
is supported by a series of small cults or interlocking rhizomatic  
marketing systems.  It reflects global capitalism. Each artist/ 
gallery/museum gathers supporters who are essentially their clients  
or customers. The art that they exhibit is a variation on a number of  
personal obsessions or life style choices. People who agree with that  
lifestyle choice use the money exchange system to buy art that  
reinforces their choice.   It's like fetish masks but in this  
instance art functions in a small tribal clique of consumers with  
disposable income.   This is the "patron" of the artist that I had  
alluded to in an earlier post when I quoted  Rimbaud. The other part  
to this system is the theoretical or linguistic system that verifies  
art and its value. It also certifies that an artist is indeed an  
artists and that what they produce is art. This is of course the  
University or Academic system that gives out diplomas and produces  
many theorists and critics to write about art. This is the "poet"  
Rimbaud refers to whom Rimbaud refers.  So if you want to answer the  
question what is art there are two answers.  Art is anything that is  
exhibited and sold in an art gallery and art is anything that a  
critic or art theorist defines as art.

As an artist I try to operate outside this system or make proposals  
that break apart the structures of art. I like to challenge the  
precepts and principals of the existing structure.  This doesn’t  
garner me much support because I think of art as a liberation and  
transformation of the psyche.  It’s essentially an anti-marketing  
position.

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Re: [-empyre-] Unfolding Complicity

[gh hovagimyan]

gh comments below:

On Jan 4, 2010, at 9:01 AM, John Haber wrote:

> Want a moral or two to make sense of this? One is that in the past it
> was plausible to set a strategy to avoid complicity. You could set
> yourself apart from commerce, or you could embrace it as a storyline

My collaborative group Artists Meeting has a piece called Artists  
Meeting Art Machine. It's an automatic art machine that's made for  
art fairs. You purchase a token, put it in a slot and the machine  
randomly selects an art work either a drawing or a small object. The  
piece is actually a transactional art work that deals with the public  
and is specifically made to critic the market within the  
marketplace.We recently exhibited this at the Pulse Art Fair in  
Miami and hope to travel it to other places.  Here's the url if  
anyone is curious.  -- http://artistsmeeting.org

This work does function just as John says. It also has some other  
"implicit" meanings.  The aesthetics of choice are taken away from  
the purchaser. It's amazing how people have been geared to walk into  
a gallery and snap into an aesthetic choice mode. They equate the art  
experience with shopping.  You know, do I like this? does this appeal  
to me? Does this reinforce my viewpoint of the world and my social  
position etc..  The Artists Meeting group mans the booth and explains  
to people who ask what the machine is that it's a DIY hack. They also  
explain that although choice is taken away the element of surprise is  
given to the purchaser.  It's an attempt to give the creative  
surprise and discovery that an artists finds naturally when making an  
artwork.   The piece is actually not about the objects it dispenses  
but about the whole situation.

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