[syndicate] Fwd:REFRESH! conference, some impressions

fmadre at free.fr fmadre at free.fr
Thu Oct 6 11:15:47 CEST 2005


>                                   The First
>
>         \                              .
>          \\
>I am        \\
>              \\
>                \\              new        My own
>                  \                          , including Fluxus
>                   \\
>                     \\
>the real"-that         \\
>                         \\                                  ---------
>                           \                -----------------
>                   follows -----------------         comes
>                  ---------   \\
>                                \\
>The first thing                   \\
>                                    \\
>                                      \
                                        \\
>I thought was pretty good,               \\
>histories" to a session on                 \\
"history                                      \\
>                                               \
>                                                \\          --------
i                                            ----------------
>                            ----------------        \\
>                    --------                          \\
>                                                        X
>                                                      //
>                                                    //      pleasure.
>                                                  //     the young
>nothings,              a bit more               //         occasion.
>                                              //
>                                            //
>                                          //                     point
                                         //                   ---------
>s                                     //     ----------------
>                             ----------------
>                    ---------     //            order:
>                                //           the age
>                              //       shift
>                            //
>                          //                                         ----
>                        //                                     ------
>                      //     . I learned something.     -------
>                    //                            ------
>                  //                       -------
>                //                   ------
>              //              -------
>            //          ------
>          //     -------
>        // ------
>       ----

>                             I mean   o   c    ,    t     int)
>                                la            if
>                                i
>                               s
>                               c
This
> was an                            -no discussion of
> mentio                 en
> machi                 nd-b
value-
> for

>
>
> clu
peopl
> rea
>
lazy
> but p
> to be
> presen
> the Oc
>    * Mi
> sustain
>    * Joha
> institution
>    * the final,
> Diamond. This wa
the
> table,  nd it was
> it was  eally a hi
> feelin  that while t
>
>I didn'  go to everything, needless to                       re were good
>things    other panels. I heard that Clau                  cybernetics
was
>excellen   for instance.
>
>That said   he conference overall suffered gr           what Trebor
Scholz
>and Geert     nk have dubbed "panelism": a terri       structure in which
>moderators      delivered papers within the format    a way over-tight
>schedule and    h virtually no time for questions; a few speakers went
>beyond their       d minutes in the first sessions and then panels were
>policed to an a         conian degree, making the entire assembly tense.
>Discussions were                 d. In     , to this art historian it
>seemed weird that peop                      conference on something as
>shifting and relatively openly              ew media" (how many papers in
>fact began with loose attempts to list the salient features of new media)
>and then sit and hear something they could have read already. for though
>the organizers had posted quite a number of papers on their official
>website      _____            __    __            _      __      those
>papers.     / ___/__ ___ ____/ /_  / /  ___ _  __(_)__  / /__
>           / (_ / -_) -_) __/ __/ / /__/ _ \ |/ / / _ \/  '_/
>What sur   \___/\__/\__/_/  \__/ /____/\___/___/_/_//_/_/\_\    ess of
>anxietie                                                        egorized
>as "art" or as "new media," these inflected many of the panel
>presentations and discussions, and not in a productive way. Part of the
>problem, as Andreas Broeckman pointed out in the final crit session, was
>that the mission of the conference was probably too broadly and vaguely
>defined. But what         ___           __                      rt
>history" can't de        / _ | ___  ___/ /______ ___ ____       know is,
>what precisely is       / __ |/ _ \/ _  / __/ -_) _ `(_-<
>castigation of ar      /_/ |_/_//_/\_,_/_/  \__/\_,_/___/       ., it
>sounded to me lik                                               p; this
>seemed overwrough    ___                   __                   and
>politically thoug   / _ )_______  ___ ____/ /__ __ _  ___ ____  as quite
>right to note tha  / _  / __/ _ \/ -_) __/  '_//  ' \/ _ `/ _ \
>conference his ch /____/_/  \___/\__/\__/_/\_\/_/_/_/\_,_/_//_/  times.
>Art history and n                                               or worse,
>Rudolf Arnheim; new media people would do well to read Panofsky and
>Warburg, just as I and at least some of my colleagues read Weiner and
>Kittler. Art history may not yet be able to deal with new media, but
>perhaps it is also the case that new media doesn't know how to deal with
>art history.
>
>On this score a truly                    ck on the first day by Mark
>Hansen, whose h                                     lame that even the
new
>media theori     ere bugged. Instead of new media         g its lack of
>recognition by art history and then its savaging of sa      e want to be
>with you; we hate you" or "I love you; go away") it migh     more
>productive to stage a genuine encounter. Leaving aside And   s Broeckman,
>who gave a very nice but grossly amputated (ran out of time   resentation
>              __  ___         __             ful presentati   comparing
>             /  |/  /__ _____/ /__            the art histor   s who were
>            / /|_/ / _ `/ __/  '_/           dieval Islamic     or with
>           /_/  /_/\_,_/_/ /_/\_\             were no art his  rians
>                                             ready part of th  inner
>             ______    _ __                  sely the encoun    that
n            /_  __/___(_) /  ___
>             / / / __/ / _ \/ -_)            t historian,      an
>            /_/ /_/ /_/_.__/\__/             on appropri     , and while
>                                             tation of     historical
>material was painful and for at least this listener un    ined his
>credibility. (On the other hand, Cornelius Borck, a h   orian of
medicine,
>gave a |errific presentation-historically nuanced,     lligently read,
and     |
>careful|y resea|ched-on the optophone of Raoul Hausman and Hausman's
>complic|ted rel|tionship to prosthesis.) From my perspective this
suggests|       |
>a serio|s probl|m of disc|plinarity: surely just as new media
>artists|theoris|s expect | sophisticated treatment from art historians
>(Simon |enny ag|in: art h|storians|should learn engineering, cognitive
>science| neuros|ience bef|re they |iscuss n|w media.) so new media
artists |       |         |        |        |
>and the|rists s|ould trea| the wor| that co|es before-both art and
>media-w|th the |istorical|complexi|y (witho|t going |o Pennyian excess)
>art his|ory at |ts best d|monstrat|s.      |        |
>       |       |         |        |        |        |
>Other i|sues th|t came up|        |        |        |
>    * P|oblems |f storage|& retrie|al of ne| media w|rk. From an
> histor|cal poi|t of view|this dem|nstrates|a remark|ble degree of
> self-c|nscious|ess on th| part of|new new |edia-som|thing new,
> incide|tally, |n the lon|er histo|y of med|a, and i|terest|ng as a
phenomen|n.     |         |        |        |        |      |
>    * H|ge anxi|ty about |he "art"|status o| new med|a, alo|gside a
> subthe|atic of|the relat|on to sc|ence and|to scien|ific m|dels of
research|       |         |        |        |        |      |
>    * A|ulatory|fetishizi|g of cog|itive sc|ence, en|ineeri|g, and
> neuros|ience (|n marked |ontrast |o the di|sing of |rt his|ory).
>    * L|ck of a|fixed def|nition o| new med|a, with |epeate| nods|to
> hybrid|zation,|bodily en|agement,|non-hier|rchical |tructu|e,   |
networki|g,     |         |        |        |        |      |     |
> and so|on.    |         |        |        |        |      |     |
>    * D|sconnec| of the k|ynote sp|akers. C|uchot ha| diffi|ulty |ith
> Englis| and se|med, whil| emphasi|ing hybr|dity, to|be spe|king |rom
> another time. Sarat Maharaj rambled for nearly 2 hours abo|t Rud|lf
> Arnheim and the Other; I found this talk excruciating, though I |ater
> spoke with someone (media artist, go figure) for whom it had bee| a high
> point. And Lucia Santaella's beautifully delivered, rigorously
> near-hallucinatory and religious but to me quasi-apocalyptic vision of
> the "semiotic" and "post-human" present/future of the "exo-brain" was a
> chilling picture of species-death.
>    * Ongoing problem of gender and geographic distribution. While
> non-Western topics                                                  one
> panel that dealt i _   _  ._   _|  _  ._                            also
> the one panel that(_| (/_ | | (_| (/_ |                            t the
> most flak in its f _|
those
> dealing with non-Western paradigms were Western. This relegation of
> dealing with the Other to the women is typical. There was also some
> grumbling that many of the non-Western projects had been tucked into the
>              _                                     . It would have been
>           \_|_)  o                                 en a panel on doing
>             |        _  _                          -Ameri-Nippon.
>            _|    |  / |/ |  |   |  /\/             rpoint.. And then, as
>           (/\___/|_/  |  |_/ \_/|_/ /\_/           of the people at the
>                                                    dom had little
gl
> apples at their desks. No sign of Linux.
>
>                         _
>                      \_|_)  o
>                        |        _  _
>                       _|    |  / |/ |  |   |  /\/
                       (/\___/|_/  |  |_/ \_/|_/ /\_/





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