Connections

In essence, all the things I have read this week have really come to suggest the implications and importance of connections. So I guess the idea is that things are already connected in certain ways and you can just find the connections relevant to you.

Jorge Borges and his "Garden of Forking Paths" has many implications for the application of technology and transferrence of knowledge. I think some of Borges' other works perhaps deal more overtly with these issues, but there are definitely a lot of provocative thoughts about connection in this text not only with Ts' ui Pen's simultaneous realities, but the ancestry and professional ties are also significant to interconnectedness.

Connections are made with all different implications of technology in Bill Viola's "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?" Viola takes a sort of piecemeal examination of structures, relationships, touching on religion, art, and a whole host of other topics that leave me wondering where one really begins and another ends.

I also considered the words of Tim Berners-Lee and others in an essay called, "The World-Wide Web." As I read this attempt to explain what is now part of daily life, I realized that people then thought these guys were just blowing smoke and could be brushed off, but now their words are complete understatements and extremely conservative assertions given what the web now accomplishes. When I later read about the Porcupine and the Car anecdote in Viola's article, I thought that was exactly what this article was. It was thought to be silly and harmless at the time, but now the car has made roadkill out of that confident porcupine.

Sherry Turkle's Alone Together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other, actually touches on a lot of the issues raised by the other articles. I only read part of this book, but here is what I picked out. Everyone is quick to point out the ways the internet has changed our lives for the better, but I am with her on this one. What about the ways it has affected us negatively? Creating more demand on our lives, more strain on our eyes, increasing social ineptitude, encouraging laziness, and much more are all prices we pay every day for convenience. I am not so sure that all this is better.

I guess that makes sense when Viola, in his essay, explains that the internet is a tool just like everything else and it will accomplish only what its user implements it for. This reminds me of the phrase, "user error." My brother owns a computer consulting business and I have heard his stories as well as experienced for myself how angry and frustrated people get using computers. They are stressed out and they blame the machine for their problems, but in reality they should be angry with themselves for not understanding their machine or for other humans who programmed software poorly. To be honest, the biggest drawback of a machine is also its biggest asset. It does exactly what it is supposed to. Unfortunately, people have different expectations and are never satisfied with this because they are imperfect and they make imperfect things. Is it really the computer's fault that it is being used in a different way that it was designed or programmed for? This is doubtful. What is the real benefit of technology and connections? Is it convenience or understanding or something else entirely? As I continue to use the internet and other technologies to edit my videos, market my music, create a book, etc. I think will have to reconsider the impact of these connections and what they all mean. I hope to make some valuable connections, but also some surprising or unexpected ones.

IHRTLUHC

JorSev

The Radicant: the end, the beginning, or just another root?

Nicolas Bourriaud closes his book with a summation of concepts--being tied together? He addresses issues of appropriation, copy, and decisions. He makes an interesting point in that the fast-paced world of today continues to value time over space so that duplications are no big deal. people are borrowing and using shortcuts to produce, perhaps putting less effort into their own contributions expecting that someone else will borrow from them in turn. Is this the answer to the questions we have about the future of art? Does this provide us with what we came seeking when we picked up the Radicant? While all these concepts may prove thought provoking, I have to wonder if this is what is really happening. Have people really begun to abandon effort and craftsmanship for convenience and ease? I think some have, but I do not think that this is all we have to look forward to. Is Bourriaud guilty of these transgressions (perhaps innovations to him) himself? This book relies heavily on connections by nature, are all these references and thoughts something new, something old re-hashed to appear less lazy, or something different?

Monsieur Bourriaud, have I not been patient with you and your ideas? Why do you leave so many unanswered questions, hasty proclamations, and half-solutions? Why must you leave a bad taste in my mouth? Should a radicant ever really meet itself to become so entangled or neatly wrapped up and controlled by its own roots? Shouldn't it expand on into the infinite without the traditional closure of a book? If the author believes so adamantly in the future of art, the internet, mixed media, etc. and has such a great understanding of the direction in which these things will progress, why does he even bother with the obsolete format of a printed book? Why should he even publish his work? Why wasn't it composed and limited to exist solely on the internet, the vehicle of his radicant? Should I have obtained a Kindle and read this book through that lens to understand what I am missing? Why are he and his writing so obviously French and Franco-minded in a day when the ever-diverse radicant is drawing from whatever sources are of relative convenience, regardless of individual culture or perspective? Could not these views or exercises be demonstrated in a more complete way? How limited is the thought of one who extols limitless possibilities? How does one provide so little when one purports to have so many explanations?

Ok, N.B.
Good talk.



IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson

p.s. Radicant, Altermodernism, Post-post, etc. would it be too much to ask that some better terminology be developed? Words need not be slaves to the concepts they describe.

Philosophy and the Radicant

The second part of Nicolas Bourriaud's The Radicant deals with altermodern concepts further with an increase in discussion of philosophy and and influential thinkers. It seems that this portion is less effective in introducing more concepts, but more concerned with elaborating the concepts already introduced to delve deeper into the meaning and relationships of the continuing conceptual themes.
Bourriaud starts to introduce examples, largely consisting of art work by Damien Hirst and Marceld Duchamp's readymades to point to how art has evolved to new places compared to what used to be acceptable on an intellectual level in the art world. This allows him to propose ways in which art might be changing in the present to become something new in the future and what sort of implications that the birth of web 2.o may hold for the future. Bourriaud discusses ideas of Walter Benjamin that were critical in the development of discourse surrounding topics like the results of image reproduction through mechanical means, which leads to the current question of what will happen to art once digital, and internet media so dominates our culture that those traditional means are all but forgotten. Benjamin argues in one of his most influential essays that an original image has an "aura" comprised of its unique, original existence, individual history and uncorrupted characteristics that cannot be observed by any form of reproduction. What will happen to such an "aura" on the internet? Can art made on a computer and existing only on the internet to begin with have some kind of "aura," or does it even really exist as an art object at all? Critics like Clement Greenberg pushed for art to be produced in its purest and most honest form, which was for him a reduction and emphasis on the use and demonstration of the most basic and essential tools of art. This led to works by the likes of Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and many others to create a form of art that best embodied this minimalist sort of intellectual art. What might be the result of such a direction of simplification or emphasis on basic elements when applied to internet and computer media? It seems that Bourriaud poses his earlier concepts and conjectures of the Radicant to answer these questions and predict the direction of his altermodern, but I am not so sure it is convincing.

IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson

Diverging Paths Connect: Nicolas Bourriaud's The Radicant

I don't know where to begin discussing The Radicant because it takes a great deal of time to read, for me. This is not because I find it too difficult to understand or can't relate to it, but quite the opposite. I find it dense and thought-provoking. There are so many concepts contained within that I can only take in bits at a time as my head starts reeling from all the possibilities and thoughts that are relevant to my mind and my situation. I will attempt because of this truth, to limit myself and challenge myself to find and highlight only those things that I find most important and the most recurring concepts in my own mind. To start off, I find the term radicant as defined by Bourriaud to be very well-stated and aptly described. I think that the progression of the internet and technology along the current path is very much like a system of roots that spreads out and connects wherever possible. I will also say that this a very large concept when I think about what that means to the lives of us here, and now experiencing these changes and networks. It can be scary and exciting simultaneously, perhaps with a bit of beauty thrown in. When described in that way, I might start to think that new media and internet possibilities have a achieved a level of sublime, though I am not sure that is accurate to say. I think that Bourriaud's raising of the issue of video is very interesting. He has a good basis for predictions about future trends from the unique kinds of statistics he picks up about particular video content and shifts from completely original concepts to the increasing trend of borrowing, remixing, or creating any type of mash-up that has been becoming increasingly simple and more prevalent. There is a valid point here when he speaks about not a decrease in creativity, rather a different emphasis on speed and a different type of creativity to create new things from preexisting or borrowed elements. From there, the possibilities become more spread out as he discusses how much more video use and uploading exists now because of Youtube and all the similar video platforms. It is exciting, though I think also daunting and a bit frightening to consider that, indeed in a short time there may be little of our lives that goes undocumented by video or does not become digitized, transformed, and edited for display in a variety of possibilities. I have similar mixed feelings about the consideration of measuring greatly different artists and their works in the same place and time regardless of the circumstances of their works' production. The fact that such information as well as cultural, regional, and chronological aspects of oeuvre and identity could be so blurred as to become irrelevant or impossible to ascertain when judging the content of work. Will that eradicate the need for criticism, comparison, and evaluation all together? If there are no differences of creation that can be depended upon, will there be differences in result or will art just become more similar as all the divergent ideas and concepts become melded into the web 2.0 world? It is appealing to think of such freedom from stereotypes and unfair judgement or no judgement at all, but then what becomes of art? Will it continue to have value and purpose or just become a mass of indistinguishable content that is too difficult to measure or understand? If the things that we are experiencing now and witnessing the changes of are all part of the Web 2.0, what will a Web 3.0 do to change the way we disburse and collect information. I don't think art can ever be the same in times that are so quickly changing just like The Radicant explores artists' new approaches to investigating time, history, post colonialism and other themes. Bourriaud's suspicion that the next wave of art after post modernism will not be a group of concepts and trends that spread globally, rather ideas that will start off as global "from scratch." If this is true, where does that leave criticism and the art history that discusses and classifies trends once they have happened? Will it, too, have to speed up and become global to develop simultaneously with such a movement, or would it fall behind and be done away with in the process of streamlining to only necessity and removing anything that seems obsolete? It becomes evermore unreliable and perhaps futile to speculate as technology changes and updates the world so rapidly.

IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson

Laurie Anderson: Intersection of Arts

Laurie Anderson: On Performance provides a revealing look into the artists thoughts and ideas even more than it explores her particular works. Laurie Anderson is an interesting artist because she crosses into so many areas with her artwork. She has taken performance art and technology to new levels and even made her way into pop music and inventing with tools for her violins and other compositions. Some of her concepts are more interesting, but what is most important is the way she keeps developing and changing herself with the times. It is remarkable that she can keep going and sustain some of her methods and concepts so consistently and is not afraid to create a body of work and then change direction or back off from a particular idea when it is no longer foremost in her mind. I find her personality and thoughts to be most interesting and I find similarities in some of her perspectives with some of my own thoughts on the issues. I found her fascination with Van Gogh and the need to compare artists to him whether there existed a direct parallel or not to be a humorous, but understandable occurrence. I think we all run into something that is so relevant to us that we fixate on it to the point that it bothers others. I also understand her desire to incorporate her daily experiences into her life since that is one of the directional influences on my current video project. I also see a parallel in the wish to explore the voices each person adopts in each context that they find themselves in. This sort of interest is one of the reasons why I am attracted to the idea of combining daily happenings and scripted events with the sort of personal interview to show the different sides of characters. My ideas also tie into the way Anderson chooses to view her work as a sort of discourse with the viewer, I value that sort of perspective on the relationship between artist and viewer as well. I do hope that my project will open up ideas and concepts to my viewers in the same fashion. I think that artwork is more valuable to both parties when the works are capable of opening such an exchange of ideas. Her discussion of documentation of her work was quite provocative and reminded me of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. I often have conflicting concerns about documenting my own work and it is easy to see that the exact occurrence of the performance event, or the "aura" of an original work for Benjamin, cannot be summarized or substituted in any way. There are certain works, especially in crossover and performance art that just cannot have a surrogate or faithful preservation and it begs the question, "should we even try to preserve something that is inadequate?" I think Laurie is right in classifying our culture as overly fast and I feel there needs to be those individuals willing to take the time to slow people down and scare people to thinking about what they take for granted. Such a message is needed far more frequently than it is received. The last point of interest for me in Anderson's perspective was that of the love-hate relationship that she has with technology. I often feel some of the same frustrations and elations that she also gets from technological advancement. People do use language as a defense and a crutch to help or protect them from the things they find uncomfortable, but I find this unacceptable and unhealthy because there are some times when one really needs to experience something uncomfortable for a change. If you only had comfort all the time, you would cease to know what it is. Discomfort is necessary to know comfort by comparison. I also agree that people have different styles of communication just like voices depending on context. I personally hate talking on the phone and always have had this sort of aversion because it makes people act differently and makes them feel like it is okay to be less polite or formal and to say things that they ordinarily wouldn't. Anderson spoke about this more in terms of the computer and how e-mail changes conceptions of communications to encourage the feeling of no responsibility for increased use of profanity and a reduction of flexibility through fixed comments and policies. I think this is a very perceptive observation. I notice more personal frustration with people's tendencies to be less formal, clear, or grammatically correct than is necessary and at the same time they are reducing their actual social interactions by substituting with computer chat or other networking made possible by the internet.
IHRTLUHC
Jordan Severson