Wednesday 27 February 2008

Hello

Hi everyone, I expect that you are all back to normal life (whatever that may mean). Keep in touch and keep up the good thoughts,
best, b.

Thursday 21 February 2008

from "visual intelligence" (d. hoffman)

to the flat (faces) group:

After his stroke, Mr. P still had outstanding memory and intelligence. He could still read and talk, and mixed well with the other patients on his ward. His vision was in most respects normal---with one notable exception: He couldn't recognize the faces of people or animals. As he put it himself, "I can see the eyes, nose, and mouth quite clearly, but they just don't add up. They all seem chalked in, like on a blackboard ... I have to tell by the clothes or by the voice whether it is a man or a woman ...The hair may help a lot, or if there is a mustache ... ." Even his own face, seen in a mirror, looked to him strange and unfamiliar. Mr. P had lost a critical aspect of his visual intelligence. ...

Wednesday 20 February 2008

cut.n.pasten.paste.npaste

The cut-up from last post remind me that maybe you will like to meet two of my favorite writers (that is, if you don't know them yet).

They are William S.Burroughs and Kathy Acker. Both experts in the techniques of cut and past and change an appropriate.

Make Property History

You can find almost all the texts published by the Situationists and references back to the Lettrist International on Ken Knabb's site here. Check out the idea of detournement in particular. In one aspect this is a very early analysis of remixing but a remix with a very specific point to it. Here's a bit of the essay.

'Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations. The discoveries of modern poetry regarding the analogical structure of images demonstrate that when two objects are brought together, no matter how far apart their original contexts may be, a relationship is always formed. Restricting oneself to a personal arrangement of words is mere convention. The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy. Anything can be used.'

In some respects it's an outline of 'playing connect' relating to montage and 'cut up' techniques. In this case it is often used to reposition or re-appropriate main stream, i.e. capitalisT culture and expose the unstated mechanisms by which it functions.

inspiration

The psychogeography directly corresponded to the project I project lead and one sentence on the wikipedia made me feel so related to this idea that I immediately book marked into my inspiration folder..

Psychogeography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography
"...A more straightforward definition is that it is "a slightly stuffy term that's been applied to a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities. Psychogeography includes just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."

Well in the project MOVE we are feeding the research with the question "what moves people?" so I also immediately sent the link of the wikipedia page to the people I collaborate with in this project.

"Society of the spectacle" relates to things we've been discussing in the flat group and though having to dig deeper, I found the theories very triggering. An example when reading was that I'd like to try making the face on face projections come from a TV. This is something that would transmit a message we've also been discussing within the flat group. It would also create a nice aesthetics, having the TV between the audience and the performer where the image also acts as light thrown at the performer (free from Michael's words yesterday).

Debord's Psychogeography

Just an interesting paragraph from the wikipedia article on psychogeography and Debord (especially the last part)

Guy Debord's truest intention was to unify two different factors of "ambiance" that, he felt, determined the values of the urban landscape: the soft ambiance – light, sound, time, the association of ideas – with the hard, the actual physical constructions. Debord's vision was a combination of the two realms of opposing ambiance, where the play of the soft ambiance was actively considered in the rendering of the hard. The new space creates a possibility for activity not formerly determined by one besides the individual.

However, it is imperative for one to be aware of a certain amount of humor in the SI's conceptualization of psychogeography. "This apparently serious term ‘psychogeography,'" writes Debord biographer Vincent Kaufman, "comprises an art of conversation and drunkenness, and everything leads us to believe that Debord excelled at both."

Guy Debord, automatism

Sorry that I left so soon today, I am in Gent now to meet Sarah since she was not able to make it to Brussel today.
Anyway, interesting discussion this morning. I was thinking about the automatism where people these days are living in. Like Debord writes, people are beïng lived by the big leaders, media and capitalism. Questions like 'are we individual/are we autonomus?' have pessimistic answers. We are told what is good or bad, what to buy and what not, whe don't have many choices, or at least, that is what they tell ous!
More about this later.

texts box (digital format)

'Temporary Autonomous Zone' by Hakim Bey

'Development of collaborative environments for creation of theoretical texts related to the practices of VJing and realtime performance' by Ana Carvalho to be published soon at Vague Terrain

'Paying VJ: Theory personified' conversation between Mark Amerika and Ana Carvalho

'VJam Theory, Collaborative Writings on Realtime Visual performance' Collaborative writers. Upcoming book by realtime publishers and available online at VJ Theory website

'VJing and Live A/V Practices' by Andrew Bucksbarg. Text published at aminima magazine, special issue on live cinema curated by Solu and also available at VJ Theory.

There are also other books and texts already included in other references posts.

Wednesday morning - discussion

Thank you all for participating by doing the research and sharing your findings.

The importance of ideas that drive art movements and individual projects. Ideas from Situationists can be found in many art projects and is in realtime audiovisual performance a very strong reference.

- Giving up control
- Process
- Play
- Non-specialization

Wednesday morning - references

Film (in two parts) "Society of the spectacle"

Situationinst International online: history, movements and ideas related to Situationist and texts available to download.

Tuesday 19 February 2008

alternate perception

Hi everyone,



Our research is based on alternate perception. Shooting footage with a slow motion camera at a very high frame rate to make the invisible visible. We wanted to experiment with sound to create these footages. Trying to show the movement of sound in/on different materials like smoke, skin…
The building of a tracking system in MAX/MSP is the other technical part of our research. This will give us the position of the audience in space.  If a person moves towards the screen the picture will accelerate. If this same person moves back the footage will then slow down till a nearly still picture. The person could choose how to interact with the footage.
This experiment will be enhanced by sound also treated in slow motion.

Putting a audience in this particular space could create a unique feeling of enhanced time.


stay tuned for an other chapter of our experiment ;)

'The art of memory' by Frances A. Yates (as an opening into the mental)

(What I was thinking about today...)

In classical rhetoric, images and text were mapped onto virtual places to aid the memory of orators. Memory was enormously important to orators because they were expected to deliver long speeches with total accuracy. In fact, memory was of such value that there developed an "art of memory" designed to strengthen the natural memory. Frances Yates explains that this artificial memory depended upon the recollection of images:

The artificial memory is established from places and images . . . A locus (loci) is a place easily grasped by the memory, such as a house, an intercolumnar space, a corner, an arch, or the like. Images are forms, marks or simulacra of what we wish to remember. For instance if we wish to recall the genus of a horse, of a lion, of an eagle, we must place their images on definite loci.

Artificial memory was a kind of "inner writing" the orator reviewed while presenting a speech, observing the places and their contents, the images, and recovering the memories for things (the subject matter) that those images represented. The orator used a series of places (the topoi of classical rhetoric in which one "found" arguments, known as inventio) in which he placed one of many sets of images, depending upon the speech he was to remember." . . . the loci remain in the memory and can be used again by placing another set of images for another set of material" . These images were to be easily memorized. The anonymous author of the Ad Herennium, a classical rhetoric, discusses which types of images the orator should use in order to best remember them.

As a method for remembering information, the artificial memory of classical rhetoric pre-figures a method of writing in virtual worlds. (In a simulated environment, we have the capacity to externalize our memory in a machine; striking images which guide the reader through a web of interconnected spaces may produce spoken or written text. )

More information about The art of memory.

Aesthetics and Politics

A translation of Jacques Rancière's "the politics of aesthetics" into English on the 16 Beaver Group Site. Here

Flat group

The flat group is in a process of categorising our practise.
Today we have tried out projecting digital faces on our real faces. Shifting gender, expression and rythm (stillness or motion). We have decided to create the "Flat Blog" and we're looking for further performance tools including technical, dramaturgical and aestethical elements.

Artists writing as they work

Texts written by artists and books edited by artists are of major importance to define this area of practice and to frame it within art theory context. Historians tend to have a perspective and a bias point of view. Not trying to dismissing their role. As I wrote in this text, soon to be published at Vague Terrain:

'As collaboration is an important feature of these practices, when the subject is theory, the same feature is apparent: theory may now be developed by individuals as part of a collective or even collectively.'

Publishing online, which follow the 80's photocopied fanzines and artist books, it is quite easy. But there are also other ways, as magazines and development of publishing houses. As practitioners, we are the voice of our own practice's construction of theory and history.

Mark Amerika and the iRes symposium at Tate

Here's the symposium 'Disrupting Narratives at the Tate Modern last year. iRes has been very supportive of us at VJ Theory. While you're there check out the Tate's video lecture archives.

GO GO GO

Bruno Latour Videos and Audio files

For examples of actor network theory from lectures by Latour click here.

Bodies in Space (Space is the Place)

This article could be a useful overview of ideas surrounding bio politics and the relation of the body to environment and technologies. There is a pdf version available too.



html

pdf

note...

A mental travel is not some kind of a transcendental move to another continent; a mental travel is more about standing still and realising that you only know what is virtualy in your head. ?

Tuesday morning - references

For Althusser on interpellation, the full text is at: http://www.marx2mao.com/Other/LPOE70NB.html
in part 2 page 170 onwards.
Don’t forget that this and many more references are available on the vjtheory http://del.icio.us/vjtheory page. Please feel free to add any more references you have found during the workshops, or afterwards for that matter.

Foucault on Discipline and Punish

Some excellent video lectures at the European Graduate school site including intro to Gilles Deleuze by Manuel DeLanda and lecture on matrixial theory by Bracha Ettinger .

Many more at: http://www.egs.edu/ and go to Faculty tab and video lectures.

Ranciere and the emancipated spectator (good for participation and audience and live performance. The first section is very low in volume)

'On Linguistics' Interview with Julia Kristeva

'Paris: Ville Invisible' by Bruno Latour


From the box:
'Notes on the theory od the Actor Network, Strategy and Heterogeneity' by John Law

DVD Foucault 'Creation of Beingness'

(on behalf of VJ Theory and Ana and Brendan as individuals)

trial setup...

experimenting with infrared motion tracking system for a simple trial setup to test different interaction methods considering the relation between physical objects, projected light and the human body as a tracking device.

reffering to the meaning of objects (how was this guy called again?)...

Tuesday morning - notes

Identity: community, collaboration, participation, networks, identity (individual and collective), subject construction, body (use of it in performative situation)
Althusser – how are we controlled as individuals. Language construction of ourselves.
Lacan – interpolation. Language as fundamental way of being.
What something is. The being of something.
Semiology and signification: the structure of the meaning of everything.
Community: taking as example VJ Theory as a collective identity and a community: inclusiveness.
Identity: what defines the self: differentiation, persona(s), areas of work and the use of identity.
Networks: actor network theory. Consciousness in the position of performer/ viewer/ other. Technology/ space/ other objects as actor in a performative situation.

(on behalf of VJ Theory and Ana and Brendan as individuals)

19/02/2008 Digital Facial Image

Deleuzes celebrates the close up as a liberation of affect from the body,the Digital Facial Image aims to catalayze the production of affect as an interface between the domain of information (the digital) and embodied human experience.

The Flat Group (Ambra,Filip,Lotta,Arnold)

Identity

This is the text I mentioned when we spoke about identity;

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

collaboration in the process

Documenting the process is sometimes of great help as allows going back and forward to some ideas, thoughts and references we came across while working, at any stage. Realtime audiovisual performance, Isn’t it a visible process of making?
The blog ‘Theory notes to Cimatics Masterclass’ aims at being a collective documentation of ideas that inform the projects in development.
Collective and collaborative work is closely related to the practices of realtime performance. The ‘texts box’ has a collection of written works to share. This is in a way, a temporary, little library about VJing and reatime audiovisual performance, to which all contribute with texts and books and that all can enjoy.

Monday 18 February 2008

Interactivity :: physical space versus virtual

Interactivity + physical space versus virtual

Day 1: Connecting the joints between early ideas and concepts, with the group.

Ideas discussed so far:
Recording with high speed camera to create slowmotion imagery.
Interactivity to create different framesrates.
Making a new ways of experiencing beyond the human eye with highspeeds recordings.

The Flat Group

Turning around the atmosphere of a flat.Creating relations by shifting characters,gender and age.Tomorrow we will start experimenting with projecting person on person.

The Flat Group   Ambra Lotta Arnold and Filip

space and matter as an instrument!

- physical vs. virtual / physical + virtual
- enhancing and playing (negotiating) with spatial and material qualities
- regarding projections as thrown light (forming a entity with matter)

WAAAAATER+++
FOOOOOOOG+++
GLAAAAASS+++
MIRRRRROR+++

Monday morning - references

film; 'Ghost in the Shell'
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
http://www.everybodys.be

From the texts box:
‘Development of collaborative environments for creation of theoretical texts related to the practices of VJing and realtime performance’
And
‘Playing VJ: Theory personified’ (available online at VJ Theory website)

Monday morning - structure

A- Introduction to VJ Theory


B- Artist theory and theory and practice which informs and is informed by each other

- academic versus artists methods in the construction of theoretical and practice reflective texts.
- references, emotional resources and personal history. Taking as example Donna Haraway’s writings: Resources are coming from conversations with friends and colleagues, description of processes of learning as well as interactions with her dogs and sci-fi (among others)

- Theory which comes to inform and is informed by practice.

- Collective thought
- Individual reflection on work and ideas