DIgital Situationism and Urban Intervention

“The Interactive Spectacle.pdf -    http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:XUjvnSC8SH0J:www.idl.dundee.ac.uk/~shaleph/pdfs/The%2520Interactive%2520Spectacle.pdf+digital+Situationists&hl=en&gl=ca&sig=AFQjCNH12Z3_O3×40yKpOwUiEv0cZl20mw

“Department of Ongoing Digital Situations.”  http://www.toysatellite.org/doods

Paul, Christianne. “interventions in Virtual Public Spaces.” http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/1616/1531

Patricia Piccinini

fascinating work: i love some of her essays

Web 2.0 on youtube

although generally i don’t encourage too much you-tubery, this is what i showed this week

Instant Images

This excerpt is taken from an essay by Kathrin Peters published on Photo/Byte:
“since the 1980s the majority of theoretical considerations with regard to digital photography concerned image processing, the following will deal with electronic signal storage, i.e., not with the implications of image manipulation with the aid of computer technology, but with a more or less private photographic practice that uses digital cameras and/or stores photographs in digital distribution media. In this field, the notion of photographic authenticity is consistent; even more, due to the instantaneousness with which photographs can be taken and displayed under electronic conditions, it seems to have gained appeal. Disregarding some of the premature decisions with regard to the effects of the «digital revolution,» i.e., that photographic images will largely lose their reference to reality, immediacy and true-to-lifeness also remain central criteria for the image recorded on a chip or circulating in the Internet. ….

Exponential Future

Exponential Future
Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver

Artworks by Tim Lee, Alex Morrison, Isabelle Pauwels, Kevin Schmidt, Mark Soo, Corin Sworn, Althea Thauberger, Elizabeth Zvonar

Curated by Juan Gaitan and Scott Watson

18 January – 27 April, 2008

Reviewed by Christopher Brayshaw
Exponential Future, the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery’s new survey of emerging Vancouver art, is a failure of artistic and institutional nerve. “Curators Juan Gaitan and Scott Watson chose artists working in different media whose work involved a wide range of issues to give an overview of the new artistic thinking of our time and place,” claims an unsigned gallery press release. “The curators were interested in works that engaged the complex reality of urban life at the beginning of the twenty-first century.” This thesis would make a first-rate show, but bears only passing resemblance to the exhibition Gaitan and Watson have assembled….more

Society of the Spectacle

First published in 1967 by Guy Debord, member of the Situationists International. This is a rant against image based culture rooted in consumption. Still holds true today. read Chapter 1, Chapter 2

On the Poverty of Student Life

First published in 1966 this is a document published by member of the Situationists International. It is a rant against the problems of both economic and intellectual poverty and the institutionalization of education. read

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

“…In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men. Replicas were made by pupils in practice of their craft, by masters for diffusing their works, and, finally, by third parties in the pursuit of gain. Mechanical reproduction of a work of art, however, represents something new…”.
read more

We can look at Benjamin’s essay terms of its relevance to digital reproduction. When works are produced digitally and therefore subject to virtually limitless reproduction, does this change our ideas about art? 

Image, Language, and Belief in Synthesis by George LeGrady

“…All technologies distort. By expanding our abilities to perceive, they simultaneously diminish us. We experience the world through the senses and the act of seeing is one of giving meaning, taking stock of our environment to counterbalance chaos. Technologies that help us to see shape the way we see, and, in the end, determine how we see. These inventions have resulted from choices framed by cultural beliefs to arrive at a particular view of the world, not representing the totality of human experience but a view locked within the limits of a fluctuating history. In the way that we are born into language, we also enter an unfolding, socially defined world of visual continuum. We integrate these conventions unquestioningly, recycling them in varying degrees as a means to arrive at the new. As we consider the impact of digital technology on the production and interpretation of images, questions arise about the belief systems that are in place and their development over time….” read more…

Top tips for writing

Mark Bernstein offers ten thoughtful and inspired tips for writing blogs, although each tip could just as easily offer guidance for living a meaningful life as writing well. My three favorite points he makes are:

• Write passionately about things that matter

• Don’t tell us what happened: tell us why it matters

• Show us the details, teach us why they matter

George Orwell, in his 1946 lament Politics and the English Language, suggests the following:

1. “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”