Monday, August 27, 2007

What I have been reading

Sadie Plant - Zeros and Ones
Walter Benjamin - the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Marshall Mcluhan - Understanding Media; Extensions of Man
Friedrich Kittler - Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
Jean Baudrillard - The Ecstacy of Communication, Simulacra and Simulation

Touch Screen Technology/Physicality

The focus of technological developments seems to be about encorporating touch and physicality into our electronic devices.

In entertainment - the Nintendo DS, operated by a stylus on a touch screen and the Nintendo Wii which uses a motion sensitive control system. The Wii allows for a level of immersion and 'reality' to game play. The Nintendo DS features an application called pictochat which allows users to create a wireless chat room with other Nintendo DS users, whereby they can swap drawings created on a simulacra of a sketchpad - complete with lined paper, a scribbling sound, different thicknesses of pencil and an eraser. I would be interested to see if these technologies could be 'hacked' in some way so that computer games systems could be used to make artworks.

WACOM pen - allowing us to draw digitally in a more naturalistic way - from the japanese WA meaning harmony and COM meaning computer. A tool to allow us to be in harmony with technology? On talking with the WACOM representative at the Adobe Live conference in May, I discovered that it is now possible to draw directly onto a computer screen with a WACOM pen instead of onto a separate tablet. I was told that there are future plans to develop fabric screens so that the process of drawing seems more natural. WACOM bamboo site

The apple iphone will be the first mobile device to be operated entirely by touch screen and will feature a phone, music and video player and internet access - iphone
Minority Report computer screen
Jeff Han - touch screen technology being developed at MIT YouTube Video
Virtual Reality
Marshall Mcluhan - The Extensions of Man - 'Automation'

Profiles as drawing

I see the profiles we can create on the internet as a form of creating drawings. It's like making your mark on the internet; I was here. I AM here. The way you build up a picture of who you are, or at least, how you would like to be seen by others. In some ways, using a programme like Second Life, creating a Weemee, you literally are building a digital drawing of your avatar (NB - I am interested in the origin of the term Avatar - ) to be displayed in the game or environment. Computer games have done this for years - you can create your identity within the game as a way of feeling immersed in it or connected to it. I feel that it is a way of connecting ourselves to the technology.

Facebook my facebook page
Facebook pages are a drawing of yourself, and feature many ways to represent your tastes and spin an intricate web of your contacts. Relationships are created, developed and displayed. Networks are drawings.
Grafitti Wall
Using a basic drawing programme where only line thickness, opacity and colour are editable, drawing can be used to leave messages for friends - some can be very intricate.

Self Censorship

It seems strange to be making work that is so very personal - dealing with the intimate details of my life - but actually censoring large areas of information as too personal to share just yet. Is this dishonest? I'm in a dilemma when I think of an artist like Tracey Emin - dealing with the personal in such a blatant way - so that the content is so very obviously about the car crash of events that can be life. I'm just sharing snippets of communication in an abstracted way - little hints at what i'm up to in the digital world. However, people have already commented that it seems so personal to be looking at things like my emails, text messages and facebook/myspace profiles. I like the idea of viewing this stuff feeling slightly uncomfortable/a bit naughty.
Thinking about: Tarcey Emin, Sophie Calle and Tomoko Takahashi

Strands in the work

Communicating via electronic means;
- Person to person mediated by technology - email, text messaging, profiles - content - music, photographs, lists of friends
- Person to machine - sharing thoughts, storing important information, co-dependence
- Machine to machine - Loop of communications - phone to phone, bluetooth to computer, computer to printer, computer to memory stick, camera to computer, external hard drives

The processes of drawing digitally/hand rendered;
- Hand rendered drawing, basic mark-making, human touch, instantaneous, direct, autograph, authorship, genius, the original (see Walter Benjamin; the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction)

Where is the original in the digital?
Materiality - I draw the immaterial to make material. Pinning something down, assimilating it, making it mine.

The internet, the digital is a very temporal medium. Things change every second - a new email in my inbox moves and shifts, my facebook profile changes all the time - human relationships change all the time. Capturing a moment. Digital life has become so significant, I live my life through the digital