Gene Youngblood assorted passages

There are some issues with Gene Youngblood’s interpretation of the computer as a medium. While it’s true that to some extent, computers can be a creative collaborator when it comes to art, computers are NOT free from error, as we’ve seen exploited with glitch art. Glitch art embraces the unpredictable and the unconventional, but definitely in a different way than Youngblood intended for – neither the computer nor the artist can predict what will always happen, and how, and this lack of control makes the computer less a collaborator and more a generative tool. It is NOT an active participant, because it has no control over its own mechanical failures, and the artist selects from its glitching what he wants and what he does not want.

I think in a lot of ways, for Gene Youngblood, the concept of the sensorium is a utopian one. The language he uses, primitive and complex, base and vulgar, to describe what is new and what is populist or general (like Disneyland) is in a lot of ways a sort of patronizing sneer at anyone who thinks dressing up like it was the Age of Aquarius and putting shit on your face is probably not the most constructive use of your time. Personally, I think his ideas about intermedia and stimulating the human senses in a deliberate way are cogent, but I wish, as with a lot of this written work in this selection, that it would see farther than it did. It’s a bit of a letdown, really.

Marshall McLuhan Reference in Annie Hall

More Projectz

The Black and the White Gods from Ben Russell on Vimeo.

Live Cinema Summit presentation - jonCates (2010) from jonCates on Vimeo.

http://mattpyke.com/exhibitions/super-computer-romantics

Tekken Torture???

W3FI from Chris Coleman on Vimeo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFFN1nu5MYk

expanded cinema performances

NoiseFold - from a distance from David Stout on Vimeo.

Intermedia, Hot & Cold, Leah Abir Lecture

(INTERMEDIA)

Youngblood's writing on Intermedia was very inspiring and educational to some of the happenings in the late 1960's related to this matter. He starts off the section by relating the artist to an ecologist, or one who deals with environmental relationships. With the power of technology artists have the ability to completely transform physical environments into intermedia spectacles. Youngblood defines Intermedia as "simultaneous use of various media to create a total environmental experience for the audience on the one hand intermedia environments turn the participant inward upon himself providing a matrix for psychic exploration, perceptual, censorial, and intellectual awareness."

Youngblood also explains various strategies for multiple film and screen projection environments. He emphasizes the importance of breaking out of the traditional theatre viewing experience by the simultaneous projection of up to 12 images at once. He was interested in projecting images on a very very large scale, and on a microscopic scale. One of the most intriguing sections to me was Cerebrum: Intermedia and the human Sensorium. He went into great detail describing an intermedia environment in New York called Cerebrum.

This is a place I would have gone to if I was alive at this period in time. It was a fusion of a nightclub, an art gallery, and an intermedia environment. Nothing was for sale here except time and the visitors participated in multiple synesthetic experiences and performances. This place catered to every sense of the body and allowed for people to live out fantasies and experience things they would have never dreamed of outside of this space. Within this space you become a "voyeur, exhibitionist, and participant."

Youngblood then goes on to describe multiple approaches to the intermedia environment. There is great emphasis on blurring the lines of the audience and the art. Many of the examples cited utilize multi projection environments and project the images on to multiple objects and spaces. A very important aspect of intermedia works is to make the viewer more self aware through the exploration of the senses. Often domes or planetariums where utilized as outlets for long performances and allowed the artists to have complete control of light and sound in the space.

HOT & COLD

This was a very philosophical and deep piece theorizing the affects of certain types of media on the human race. This piece Defines hot media as "a medium that extends one sense in high definition. High definition is the state of being well filled with data." Hot medias are also low in participation. In contrast "Low medias on the other hand require a lot of participation and are filled with spaces for the audience or participant to fill in or finish."

Throughout the writing the term hot and cold is applied to occurrences and multiple forms of technology. For example the author cites an example of hot technology succeeding a cool one when Australian natives were given steel axes by missionaries. Before this occurrence the men of the island took very much pride in their stone axes. After the missionaries came they distributed steel axes to men, women, and children. This act had major affects on the men of the society since it greatly changed everything they had known and practiced prior to this occurrence. "A tribal and feudal hierarchy of traditional kind collapses quickly when it meets any hot medium of the mechanical, uniform, and repetitive kind."

The author also brings up the possibility of being able to control different cultures by dictating the amount of hot and cold media they are exposed to. If there is massive unrest in one place because of something that aired on the radio then we would just program more hours of television time to cool of the people. It is just a theoretical phenomenon rooted again in this concept of the hot and cold. "It makes all the difference whether a hot medium is used in a hot or cool culture. The hot radio used in a cool or non literate culture has a violent affect."

LEAH ABIR LECTURE (EXTRA CREDIT POST)

Leah Abir spoke about her curatorial practices at MOBY Museum for contemporary art and Creative Time in New York. The first show she discussed was entitled MOBY Hosting. This show brought in multiple artist collectives and collaboratives over the course of three months. The focus of this show was to question the role of the public, the role of the artists, and to break down traditional museum art relationships. She was also very interested in the extent that the contemporary art museum could act as an actual host to the artists and what would come of this symbiotic relationship. For example one collective chose to live inside the gallery space for two weeks. This action of living in the open an inviting the public into their "space" was their form of Art. Another collective chose to stage cookouts and invited all of the surrounding area to come and eat and partake in conversation.

Leah Abir is very interested in collective action, communities working together, and re thinking what the role of contemporary art and institutions can be. She also talked about the show Living as Form that she co-curated for Creative Time in New York. This show also focused on community engagement, collective actions, socially engaged art practices, and included many works outside of the museum setting itself. She called upon surrounding business and institutions to contribute anything they could. Abir was very interested in blurring the line between what we consider art and every day life. There was also a strong emphasis on collaborative works for this show.

Here are some links to some of the exhibits she mentioned in her lecture.

http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2011/livingasform/archive.htm

https://picasaweb.google.com/104468926408492421437/MoBYHostingPerformanceNight

https://picasaweb.google.com/104468926408492421437/MoBYHostingOpeningNight#5365851477087296674

Response to "as we may think"

"Knowledge evolves and endures for the life of a race but not an individual" goes along with the author's thoughts about research analysis. Scientists spend so much time writing and book-keeping with their cures and thoughts, that during the same time they could have actually been helping someone. Because of the fixation with recording everything, the ill person is never helped. The society as a whole is helped, eventually reading these recordings and learning from them, but that is long after the people who were being written about are gone. The author mentions that this is to be expected when we live in a world of "cheap complex devices that are reliable," so it seems like he is almost against technology in a way? Maybe I misinterpreted his words. Like when he references the stenotype and how words are recorded in short little phrases and then afterwards turned into actual speech/story, but why not make a language to begin with, that easily follows such a recording device (or vice versa) ?

I like when he says "for mature thought there is no mechanical substitute," which always makes me think he has a problem with our dependence on  technology. Scientists can always make machines and devices to make things easier, that may even be able to get a lot of work done without the aid of a human being; but you need that human being, with mature thought and intellect, if you really want to accomplish something.

RESPONSE TO MEDIA HOT COLD

Maybe it's because I read both of these within the same hour, but this just hurt my brain and I didn't have much patience to keep re-reading to finally get it. I understand the main point, and it's definitely interesting to break down media into "hot" or "cold." Hot medium, like the radio, heavily focuses on one sense, while cold is includes a few more, like TV. What I dont get is how a movie is hot, but TV is cold. Or radio is hot, but telephone is cold. The telephone only relies one sense as well as the radio..your hearing. I personally don't see the difference. Or a movie and TV? Both require both visual and oral. I can't decide whether I consider speech to be "low" definition or not, either. I mean a friend can tell you a story about their weekend and you can follow every little bit without the aid of anything but your eyes and ears. But I guess hearing something and seeing the person speaking wouldn't stick in your head as much as having those senses, along with, say, writing it down. Is that why he thinks it's low definition then? Because an un-recorded speech isn't as long lasting or informative?  Either way though I appreciate the unique way of describing media...