For: A Wedge between private and public
Symposium in interactivity and public space
22 April 2010
SESSION 2 - Interface

Report by John Haltiwanger

Steven van Thije spoke to address the notion of interface and how it relates to art, especially in the sense of the museum. Invoking Michael Serres' *The Parasite*, Steven discussed how "systems work because they don't work"--if a relation remains it is because the connection has failed. In terms of art, one can either act within the realm of the interface or one can engage the interface directly. This is the idea of playing with the limits versus using already understood rules.

Artwork can be an action upon the interface or it can be a moment of density within a system. How does a museum facilitate this? 19th century museums did not display art on the wall in an organized gallery style. Instead the collection was placed "all at once" on the wall, a kind of direct interface to the art depot. The type of knowledge production in the culture at large is reflected in the interface of museums. In the early twentieth century museums began to transition towards becoming an exhibition space rather than an art depot. The 19th century museum interface pointed towards the universal while the 20th century museum points addresses the individual with its exhibition interface. The exhibition style was designed to disappear the body of the audience.

What is currently happening in the museum space? If art no longer functions as Rockwell's did (self-contained, internal focus) and instead focuses on the edges, how do we display it? Less and less artwork is just objects to collect but rather installations. Therefore artwork cannot just be collected and placed in the art depot. When the artwork is a complex interface it allows for contemplation of how to share and/or display this type of art.

For: A Wedge between private and public
Symposium in interactivity and public space
22 April 2010
SESSION 2 - Interface

Report by John Haltiwanger

Alexander Galloway presented a deep investigation of interfaces. His first example is the contemporary airport, which is split into four stages. The first is the check-in kiosk, where we see the outsourcing of the check-in procedure to the traveler. Those behind the desk no longer act as representatives of the airport, instead acquiring the role of tech support for passengers befuddled by the self check-in terminals. Next is the security queue, an interface that utilizes both old techniques ("Remove your hat, shoes, and jacket please") but also new techniques such as data-mining and computer vision techniques (facial recognition, gesture monitoring). This stage has a distinctly theatrical quality with certain people taking on roles and asking certain questions and others answering with certain responses ("Has anyone touched your bag?", "No.").

After this theater experience, which is embodied as a straight line, comes the shopping area. If the security interface is a straight line, the shopping area is a curve. All manners of meandering pathways through well-lit rooms. International trade is physically instantiated and made clean for mass consumption, buffered by the presence of the security interface. The last stage is the departure gate, an interface to the destination and the final stage of the airport. Indeed it represents the airport's true function, the kernel of its reason for existence. The outer layers of interface are established in order to enforce procedures deemed necessary for the functioning of the departure gate interface.

The purpose of this example is to highlight that interfaces are back, and perhaps they never left. Plato conceived communication as writing the words on the soul of another person. Interfaces are everywhere and seem to seek invisibility. The more devices erase evidence of their own functioning, the more effective they are. To succeed as an interface is at best self-deception and at worst self-annihilation. In some ways an interface is only an interface when it disappears from view.

Interfaces should not be seen merely as "surfaces with significant meaning" and discussed in terms of 'intuitive' or 'not intuitive.' It is better to conceive them as doorways and discuss them in the language of thresholds. Interfaces become important in the issues of cybernetics in that it is the site of discussion where human meets machine, flesh meets metal. Or in systems theory, where energy flows from one node to another in a system.

Interface and media may be two names for the same thing. From the viewpoint of McLuhan and the concept of re-mediation, media are merely containers that encapsulate other pieces of media. This can be seen as an "onion" model of media. Media themselves are then intrfaces: through the containment concept it becomes the means by which the encapsulated media can be extracted from the layers. Interfaces/media are the point of friction, of agitation between layers.

Interfaces are an 'outside' that possess the 'inside', "a fertile nexus" that has its own autonomy and represents an area of choice. Galloway uses the terms 'text' and 'paratext' to discuss this inside / outside scenario: paratext is the dge, while text is the center. Interfaces can be seen as any artificial differentiation between two media. Any examination of the difference between the edge and the center leads to understanding that it is difficult to discern where an edge ends and a center begins. Avant-garde techniques are very interested in this tension. In film or literature the distinction is termed diagetic vs non-diagetic.

Digital media are actually relatively good at maintaining the distinction between edge and center. For example, an HTML contains both simple ASCII (plain-text) and a dynamic web page. The difference is which program is used to view it, the text editor or the web browser. "The source code of HTML is an interface." We impose a linguistic construct to address the site of differentiation. It is a kind of doorway where one medium is understood as distinct from another medium. It's not a thing (bank machine, self-check-in terminal) but an effect, a process, a mode of translation. A fertile nexus.

How does an interface succeed in effecting a coherence, a centering, a localization? To answer this question Galloway invokes the triple self-portrait of Norman Rockwell. This painting plays with the idea of the interface yet in the end deals with the problem of the interface by repressing it. The process of viewing the painting draws one's eyes in circles, the painting does not break the frame but rather circulates internally through the three portraits. Galloway calls a "diagetic surface, a circuit between the artist, the mirror and the canvas." The image is a process not a conglomeration of artistic details.

In contrast he presents a famous parody of Rockwell's painting from influential magazine MAD in which the magazine's mascot Alfred E. Neuman is painting a self-portrait that is the back of his head. That is, the self-portrait is from our vantage point, not from the perspective of his reflection in the mirror. The mode of address becomes the core concern and the viewer is addressed in an intense way. The circular coherence of Rockwell's painting is broken into orthogonal spikes. These spikes are focused entirely on externalization rather than the enclosed, internalizing circulation of Rockwell's.

This kind of direct address is almost entirely excluded from narrative forms. Rather it appears as a common tool of the avant-garde to engender 'short-circuits' that address the issue of interface (the "fourth wall"). With Rockwell we see a interface that addresses itself to the interface but in the end answers the problem by repressing it. Alfred solves the question of the interface through a schizophrenia. It dwells on the pain of shattered coherency in the face of an interface.

There are two types of interface we have today: those that present their internals to an audience but also those that exist move cross-ways within and between mediums themselves. All interfaces are looking back at us, even when we become engrossed with them ourselves.

For: A Wedge between private and public
Symposium in interactivity and public space
22 April 2010
SESSION 1 - Affect

Report by John Haltiwanger

Eric Kluitenberg's presentation concerned the relevant future paths for affective interactive art. As a first example, Eric showed footage of Radio Ligna's "remote controlled flashmob" I am(not)sterdam to highlight a central element of his thesis: that forced interactivity is integral to developing new affective art.

Our senses are overburdened by the ever-increasing velocity of new images, especially in public spaces. What is to be done about it? Paraphrasing artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, "In relation to the 'violence of the visual' that is taking over the public space: we don't want less images, we want *more* images." The informational environment is hyper-saturated, leading to a tension between that environment and the cognition's capacity to be affected by it.

Digging into the specific problem of affect in relation to digital art, Eric invokes the notion of the 'third body'. To illustrate this idea, imagine the experience of putting a new vinyl album on a record player. The first time listening to a record, a new experience happens. When the record is put away, the experience is not fully present. It's only a memory. But when the record is played again, the experience returns. The experience is not attached to the listeners body, nor the record, but to this 'third body'. The third body is not technologically determined and still exists and receives these experience attachments even if the music is not contained on a record but in a digital file. Digital technologies are technologies of complete and perfect articulation, especially in regards to control sequences. However, the completeness of the digital is accomplished at the loss of a continuous flow (digital representations occur in discrete steps). Something needs to be left out for digitization and what is missing is the precise thing that makes us feel that the digital object is anemic. In other words affect is the thing discarded by digitization.

The means, then, for injecting affect into digital art are two-fold, i.e. "breaking the frame" and "imposing the frame." The former means developing art that points beyond itself in a negative way. This type of art should deny a system's rules, its inherent methodologies. An example in this vein is Bubblespace, a radio frequency generator that, when turned on, effectively jams all wireless communications in the device's area of effect. This is accomplished by injecting white noise into the wireless frequency range which wireless-dependent devices interpret as the absence of a connection, thereby stopping all network functions.

A divergent yet similarly effective approach, especially in regards to interactive art, is to create scenarios in which interactivity is truly and literally forced. The aforementioned "I am(not)sterdam" may be an example of this, but Eric seems to want to push it further by proposing the design of a system through which the audience must go through procedures in order to accomplish anything, for example even leaving the system at all. This space of "undesired activity" is ripe with the potential to affect.

For: A Wedge between private and public
Symposium in interactivity and public space
22 April 2010
SESSION 1 - Affect

Report by Juliana Brunello

Art, as part of public interaction strategy, is capable to break open the technological paradigm, which is colonialized by technology. When you analyze the role of technology in society or the role of technology in art, there is a tendency to alienate technology from our culture, like it was dropped upon us from engineers or corporations. Geert Mul thinks it is not the case.

The steam engine was already invented by the Greek, however, that did not result in the industrial revolution. Why not? Was there no need for it back then? When this invention was re-invented many centuries later and lead to the Industrial Revolution, it is because we, as consumers, embraced the idea of the Industrial Revolution. With this example we can see how technology becomes an integral part of our culture and language. We are seeing the world through technology and by using this technology to observe the world, our view from the world is being formed.

This way of putting things suggest that there would be a neutral way of seeing things if technology did not exist. However, even if you leave out the technology and go back to just eyes as an instrument, there has already been proved that different cultures tend to see the world in different ways.

Mul keeps a hierarchy in which interactivity takes place. We are living in the world of dynamics that has been stretched in Modernism, becoming more mobile and more dynamic. With the application of IT/Databases and their use, we are now living in a world in which information is very dynamic by nature. We are always relating to the information and its speeded up dynamics. In this universe of information there is a part in which we, as persons, interact. Inside this part there is another one, a micro- way of interactivity, "where you push a button and a door opens". This is also addressed as interactivity. However, when you stick to this definition, you are throwing away the valuable and inspirational part.

In his work, 'The library of Babel' (2004) Geert places the visitors in a world of visual information, in which they are in interaction to what is happening. They feel they are a part of it, but there is no goal. Nevertheless they can discover this new environment and find out the invisible rules of it. The second part of the work is a meta image taken by a camera. The visitors look at the interactors in the work trying to make sense of the work. This meta image is much stronger than what he envisioned.

Another work, Horizons (2008), also works with this ideal of meta images. In this work the horizon stays the same as the landscapes open and close in a flowing movement. Here he deliberately used a meta image of people wondering around the work and people watching those people, so that the people are projected into the landscape, in which they are wondering.

Both meta images are related to the concepts of interpassivity that van Oenen presented earlier. Mul believes that this view from a second position is interesting, because it has a reflective quality, of seeing people trying to make sense of an environment, of which they get only clues.

For: A Wedge between private and public
Symposium in interactivity and public space
22 April 2010
SESSION 1 - Affect

Report by Juliana Brunello

What does interactive art do to, with and/or on behalf of us? Gijs van Oenen thesis to this (these) question(s) is that this represents a function of the processes of the Enlightenment and Modernity. It is a function in the historical sequence of activity, interactivity and interpassivity. They represent ways of dealing with the impacts and challenges of the modern world.

Van Oenen's presentation at the symposium brought up many interesting points, which I will try to summarize the best I can. I divided his speech in four parts:

1. Enlightenment
2. Modernity
3. Interactivity
4. Interpassivity

1. The Enlightenment (and Modernity) affects mind and body.

"Don't let your mind/body be directed by the world, instead, dare to think for yourself" was a motto of the time. According to the German idealism, the mind constructs the world by means of understanding it through concepts (Begriffe). This way, we make the world our own, it becomes no longer alien to us. Instead of the world directing us, we direct the world.

2. Modernity (beginning of the 19th century) involves a constant making over of the world and of ourselves.

Everything is in motion. The bourgeoisie class, which is central to modernity, has to change all the time as well, in order to stay the same. This means, it has to continuously reinvent itself in order to keep up with the world, which is constantly being made, remade, produced and reproduced. "All that is solid, melts into air".

Change in this period goes together with speed, and both are related to technology. In modernity, technical and social processes are being speeded up. "Nobody ever invented a machine to slow things down".

Technology, speed and change make new regimes of perception necessary in order to understand and appropriate the world. As a consequence of that, positive sciences, like biology and sociology, emerge. This new regime also affects the body . Processes of modernity makes our bodies to be literally projected to the world, like a projectile. The world begins to be impressed to our bodies in a much greater speed and force if compared to how it has been before. Machines of projection and impression are e.g.: trains, automobile and the cinema.

Mind and body have to learn how to deal with this new regime, which leads to new forms of creativity (arts, technology, etc.) on the one hand. On the other hand, there is an overburdening of the senses, which leads to failures to deal with challenges imposed by the world. Walter Benjamin speaks of the loss of experience and concentration; and Georg Simmens of the blasé tendency of modern city life. What they mean is that all expressions that hit us in modernity make us construct a defensive screen. We become unimpressed in order to protect ourselves from this world filled with strong impressions, from a world that presses upon our mind and body and demands more and more from both.

From the 1920s onward, people have been actively conditioned to become fit with the demands of modernity and emancipation. Modernism on the cognitive level manifests itself in the social policy making, which shapes the world to match the new demands. Processes of discussion, feedback and reformulation have emerged from this process.

Space has also been influenced. It is now designed to let us take part in modernity. Parts of the world are projected to be of public experience and high speed; others to be private, healthy and functional. The environment must reflect modernity values in order for us to act like we are supposed to in modernity.

3. In the era of interactivity (1970s), not only the bourgeoisie, but the ordinary people must become involved as well.

Interactivity is the new norm. People are affected by policy plans. Everybody must feel they have a chance to be heard and people become co-producers of policy. Institutions of social life become interactive, including art, which has now its realization through participation. E.g.: Yoko one: cut piece. The public becomes part of the self realization of the art work.

Interactive arrangements transfer part of the activity to the visitor and the visitor becomes part of the self-realization of the art work. Art becomes engaged with the public and society; and simultaneously, the public becomes involved with modern art performances. Visitors are transformed from passive expectators into active collaborators. The public becomes more emancipated than in the old fashion way. Interactive art arrangements create a partnership of equals between artists and expectators, they become co-dependent.

E.g.: of shared responsibility artist-public and the incorporation of technology can be seen in the work of art telematic dreaming by Paul Sermon: This installation is about the physical and emotional reaction of both visitor and actor. The principals of emancipatory and democratic involvements are being here strongly extended.

4. Interpassive arrangements (mid 1990s): While interactive arrangements transfer part of self realization and activity to the visitor; interpassive arrangements take them back.

The work of art is now watching itself. E.g.: screens that look at each other, shutting the visitor out. The visitor is now redundant. The work of art, as well as the political sphere, has learned to pre-anticipate our reactions, by means of monitoring, measuring and surveillance.

The philosopher Baudrillard writes about 'pulling fate', that means being confronted with the anticipatory verification of our behavior. "Our action has been already verified before we actually act". How should we characterize this part of the interaction that has been taken over by the art work? Is consumption being outsourced by the art work?

E.g.: Outsourced enjoyment: the artist that offers to drink your beer and enjoy it for you, or the iPod that watches TV on your behalf. This way we get rid of our passivity by delegating the enjoyment to other people or machines, so we can continue to be busy elsewhere.

Van Oenen cites three ambivalence of interpassive behavior:

1. Enjoyment and horror by the realization of a desire that is not meant to be realized. It leads to a confrontation with undesirable consequences.
2. We don't really know if we want to outsource the enjoyment.
3. Believe is transferred to others. "Others believe in it". Believes are claimed by no one.

G believes that interpassivity implies the outsourcing of actity/interactivity and that Interpassivity arouse due to the success of interactivity. We feel overburdened by our interactive emancipated life, which constitutes what he calls an "interactive mental fatigue". We fail to act and to answer to the demands of modernity, which are of interactive kind. We develop a kind of resistance to what is happening to our society. It is not that we are dissatisfied with principles of emancipation - we want to live up to it. We are, however, not able to. "We want to have a holiday from ourselves".

Function of interpassive arrangements and art:
Interpassive works of art present us with directions that we are unable to give to ourselves. They direct us. They incorporate interactive scripts and steer our behavior. They are like a road block that makes us slow down. This is, by the way, the same direction we want to give to ourselves, but fail to produce due to our overburdened state. Issac Asimov points out that robots do not desire for power, but seek to assist us, pushing us to the right direction.

Our environment is nowadays increasingly interpassive shaped. Unforeseen consequences must now be dealt with. We must now be persuade to norms we have already agreed on, but fail to follow. Interpassive artifacts are here now to correct us, not to teach. Interpassive art works affect us, but so not direct us. They make us reflect on our interpassive condition, bring to light our interpassive condition.

An example of interpassive art work (is it art?) in public space is the flash mob, mobilized in real time through for instance sms. They involve a collection of random people, on a random place, to perform a random activity. This is part of a mobilization strategy. Will it shape our political sphere as well?

Symposium on interactivity and public space

22 and 23 April 2010
TrouwAmsterdam

The two-day symposium - A wedge between private and public - looks at interactive art in public space from the perspective of three core concepts: object, interface and affect. On day one, theoreticians discuss and expand on
these principles, while the second day focuses on three case studies. The symposium creates a clear connection between the theory of interactive art – often considered from the discourse of new media – and the practical
aspects involved in commissions in the public space. The symposium is a follow-up to Research into the functioning of interactive art in semi-public space organised by the Research Group Art and Public Space of the Rietveld
Academy commissioned by SKOR.

Affect, interface and object are fundamental to interactivity and its use in artworks. Keynote speakers Robert Pfaller, Alexander Galloway and Willem van Weelden will discuss these notions, followed each time by responses from two speakers (from the world of contemporary art and new media). The case studies which are the focus of the second day, explore how these notions
relate to concrete works of art made in commission situations. Two projects will be used by way of example:
one for a rehabilitation clinic (a new start for Aernout Mik’s work AAP) and one for paediatric and juvenile psychiatry centre (a ‘work in progress’ by Daan
Roosegaarde). In the third case study, artists Martijn Engelbregt and Roel Wouters look at ‘undesirable’ interactivity.

Participants include: Alexander Galloway, Johan Hoorn, Erik Kluitenberg, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Geert Lovink, Geert Mul, Gijs van Oenen, Robert Pfaller, Daan Roosegaarde, Christa Sommerer, Steven ten Thije, Ronald van Tienhoven,
Roel Wouters, Martijn Engelbregt and Willem van Weelden.

Thursday 22 April from 10.00 – 18.00 (doors open: 9.30)
Friday 23 April from 10.30 – 18.00 (doors open: 10.00)
Trouw Amsterdam, Wibautstraat 127, Amsterdam
Entrance: € 25.00 per day /students € 15.00 (incl. lunch,
coffee, tea)
Registrations: wegde[at]rietveldAcademy[dot]nl
Language: Day one: English. Day two: Dutch

www.followthemoney.nu (video availabe)

Conference on 14.01.2010 at de Balie

Short summary by Juliana Brunello

First Welcome: Hans Maarten van den Brink welcomes us participants to the conference. He shortly explains that this is the 11^th edition of the circuit of conferences done by Mediafonds, Sandberg Institute and for the first time with Erasmus University. The speaker points out, that the theme of today’s conference, which is actually more of a ritual due to its periodicity, is not data visualization, but about ruling the world.

Introduction:  Annelys de Vet starts her introduction with a funny graphic representation of the efforts put into preparing this conference. She concludes that summing all of the costs involved in it, it is as if each one of the participants was paid 117,65€ to be here today.

She continues by asking some important questions: how do we deal with overload of information and numbers? Do we need data visualization to understand it? “If the database is the new narrative then what is the role of visualization?” (Lev Manovich)

She concludes her intro by asking the participants to continue researching about it after the conference; otherwise if there is no interest in doing so, one should leave the conference, as it does not pay the immense effort to put the conference together. Since no one left, she introduced the first speaker and the actual conference started.

Fist Speaker: Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens. Unfortunately for me it is in Dutch. Therefore I have nothing to report.

Second Speaker: Koert van Mensvoort. Money as a Medium

The speaker made a very entertaining and informative presentation, showing new speculative ideas on how the future system could look like. His presentation involved the themes money, media, data and reality. He stated that money is one of the oldest virtual realities in our culture. This also shows that the virtual has a deep penetration our society. “We are moving from the world of things to the world of information. Virtual economy is booming nowadays, the opposite is to say of the real one.” (Not his exact words, but sort of) As an example he shows one of the new millionaires due to second life.

“Virtual money is a pleonasm. Money has “always” been virtual.”  In the beginning cattle had been used as trade object and it was not virtual. Tools were also used as currency. In China, these tools became smaller, just representing the object itself, and then they became round, becoming virtual. These were made of metal, which was too heavy to carry around, so that paper money was developed. Other places they were made of expansive metal. Later on the credit card found its place in our society: physical and virtual at the same time, “but just plastic”.

The speaker continued by showing the difference between implicit weather data (as seen from the window) vs. explicit data (as seen in numbers). Financial data is explicit, but how can it be implicit visualized? There are no natural phenomena in this case. An interesting case in Kenya showed how prepaid airtime became a de-facto monetary value in the country. In this case “the signifier becomes the signified”. Will then telecom providers become banks and v.v.? Who will make the money? Government or corporation?

Mensvoort stated then that database has become our reality. Our days were consisted of things, now of databases (“are we already living in the matrix?”). He also spoke of the concept of Noosphere: the sphere of human thought. It transforms other systems, like the biosphere. Is this therefore a natural phenomenon? Are the financial and virtual systems a kind of ecosystem? If one compares two ecologies: rainforest and financial system – one is stable and the other of rapid growth – one is self sustainable and the other feeds on biosphere – however, both are threatened. A proposed solution was to link the financial system to the environmental one. To deal with climate change we need system change. The proposed solution: Environmental value needs to be monetized.  The eco currency (separate currency) should be created. One would earn to preserve and depending on the environmental urgency, the currency would fluctuate. However, there are many problems involving its implementation.

He finishes his presentation by expressing his hopes, that geosphere, atmosphere, biosphere and datasphere will live in harmony. I hope so too.

Third speaker: Christian Nold

The speaker introduced the idea of Bijlmer Euro, an experimental currency that should support the development of local identity. This way, data visualization can change the local. It is a very interesting project and I will no longer discuss the it here, but suggest a visit to the following website:

http://www.bijlmer.softhook.com/

Forth speakers: Floris Douma

In Dutch…

Fifth speaker: Richard Rogers. Mapping for people

Very interesting and entertaining, sometimes ironical, presentation about mapping. He started his presentation by explaining what the use of mapping is: it is to find out things that actually help who are looking for it. Activists, NGOs, IGOs, States, celebrities and the common men can find use in it.

Activists want for instance to know how big is the movement they are involved with. They collect URLs and map it in order to visualize the scope of the movement. However, cluster maps have its pros and cons, sometimes provoking a sense of concurrence, which was not the initial goal. NGOs can with the help of mapping find out important relationships. INGs can for instance visualize “who spoke during which issue?” and “which issues which delegate speaks or stay silent?”. States can recognize who their allies are per issue, by for instance mapping in clusters of terminological blocks. Celebrities can check how popular they are, what kind of issues they should be associated with and therefore which kind they should support: children, mine bombs or organ donation?

Rogers points out that maps can show and at the same time construct reality. They send out an invitation to enter a symbolic world. They prompt people to rethink their strategies, for instance to make one’s position higher in a hierarchy, as it has large impacts on how one thinks about himself.

For more information check www.govcom.org

Sixth speaker: Staffan Landin. Gapminder

Landin is a very enthusiastic speaker and a true believer in Gapminder. He explained that the data brought from the world is in a “strong” way transformed in statistical data. However, when statistical data should be brought back into the world producing knowledge, it is done in a “weak” way. This enforces the prevalence of pre-conceived ideas, which are actually wrong. Gapminder should make it easier for people to understand statistical data and therefore grasp the knowledge they transmit in a better way.

The graphics shown in the presentation were really nice ones, very entertaining. I do recommend a visit to their website. However, one must keep in mind that it is very ease, even with nice techniques of data visualization, to misinterpret data. One can for instance confuse cause with effect, of join two variables that actually have no connection to each other making it looks like it does.

Check it out at www.gapminder.org

Seventh speaker group: Yuri Engelhardt, Martijn de Waal and Raul Nino Zambrano. Data stories

The central question of this presentation is “how can one use database to tell stories?” One of the speakers explains, that all we do today is stored in databases. This opens up a range of opportunities to get data and tell stories with it. But how? Documentary and filmmakers have been doing that. A new genre has emerged, a new discipline. However, this is not completely new. Minard designed a graphic in 1869 that “told the story” of Napoleon’s march. Another example of the early development of storytelling with graphics is e.g. Land of promise; Rotha (1946), a city speaks (1947).

More presently, the film “an inconvenient truth” (Guggenheim, 2006) provided a kind of prototype to the “powerpoint” cinema. However the graphics don’t do all the work, rhetoric is also needed. (At this point the speakers show the part of the film of an animated data graphic with al gore explaining the development of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.)Other good examples of contemporary films of this genre are “The federal debt” I.O.U.S.A. (Creadon, 2008) and “The crisis of credits” (Jarvis, 2009)

Second genre: Geography data used to tell stories. The example the speakers have chosen is “Britain from Above” (BBC, 2008), which uses for instance GPS data from Londoner taxis and other satellites images to make a film.

Third genre: Database Cinema. The exemple used here is “What a life” (Canada), in which they use several devices, like quizzes, to create a story. One is invited to explore the areas of the website.

Forth genre: Interactive web graphics, with the characteristics of being interactive and online. E.g.: “they rule”, a database that shows the concentration of power. One can upload the maps they created by searching data. Further examples: the “baby name wizard”, “how Americans spend their day” and “we feel fine”

I strongly recommend a visit to the websites they cited for an educational look and good entertainment.

Eight speaker: Judith de Leeuw.

In Dutch.

Ninth speaker: Ian Forrester. BBD Backstage

Missed big part of it…. Sorry…

Tenth speaker: Joris Maltha. Catalogtree

Catalogtree is involved in designing data visualization. At the moment they are doing data visualization mostly to American magazines. However, at the presentation he spoke of their approach to design. He emphasizes the meaning of self organization as design tool.

He showed some projects in which social data of people behaving in a certain way has been used. He presented one in which the theme was cultural norms vs. law enforcement, by using data of a research that showed diplomats parking their car incorrectly and the corruption indexes of the CIA.  The conclusion of this research was that corrupted countries have more diplomats that park their car incorrectly. Biased? Maybe… (flocking diplomats nyc 1999-2002) Using this data they produced different designs in form of posters. You can check them at http://www.catalogtree.net/projects/diplomats

Another example of their work, which also involves social behavior, was a map that became useless because of its continuous use, and the habit of people touching it with the finger where they stood. This part of the map was so worn out, that one could not recognize it anymore.

Further example was “the blue marble”, not done by Catalogtree, but for NASA.. In this case, satellite data should be made understandable to a larger audience. Oceans were painted blue, forests green, etc. It looks like photography, but it is not.

In the end of the presentation there was a weird discussion about the design involving diplomats, if it was biased or not. Fact is, that there were only pictures of their cars, in different sized considering the amount of time they were parked incorrectly. There was no citation to countries or so. Someone pointed out one could still influence something, by changing the color of the poster, that it would make a difference if it were red of white. I don’t see the point… I believe that the speaker also didn’t, as he decided at a certain point to just leave the podium.

Eleventh speaker: Mieke Gerrizen. Infodecodata

In Dutsch, so I left home, as it was the last presentation of the day.

Conclusion:

The conference was very informative and entertaining. I learned a lot just being there and came out with new ideas. I will definitely keep my attention on the subject. I do understand now how data visualization can “control the world” now. One can use it to prove a point, to influence, to convince and not to mention it: to lie. Very tricky thing…

What will happen to web cinema as we shift from learning to see and how to feel to learning how to participate in this new electronic space of modernity?

Andrew Clay is the first speaker in the morning session and talks about web cinema; Mind the Gap! He is lecturing in Critical Technical Practices at the Montfort University, Leicester and program leader of BSc (Hons) Media Technology in the Faculty of Computing Sciences and Engineering.
Andrew never heard about Video Vortex before, nevertheless he gave an interesting lecture closing ‘prosumption’ (producers and consumers) and widening between online moving image participation culture and traditional theatrical culture.

Technology has been used to materialize the use-value of film – film as aesthetic experience commodified. BMWFilms.com is an example of how we engage with expanded cinema as viewers and collectors of new forms, new genres that are at the same time old forms – the new as the ever-same of modernity as conceived by Walter Benjamin. SWK culture demonstrates participation in production as imitation of the strategies of traditional media.

The web via the internet is a gateway and a delivery system for film as material digital files that can be seen as resonant cultural objects, ‘fetishes-on-display’ in the web arcades. The web is also a ‘cinema of distractions’ and ‘attractions’, a digital playground allowing playful enchantment of utopian non-work and the hybrid work-leisure of user-generated content achieved through proximity to electronic machines, and this is where our hopes and fears for web cinema are made material, where our love of film is tested.

Web cinema shows us that we should be fearful about the exhibitionism of online audio-visual culture. The BMW Films advermovies mobilize Hollywood resources to web short film production bringing viewers into new relationships with advertisers. The ability to make films available to others is greatly extended, but participatory film production is not inherently progressive. One might hope that participant production will bring progressive forms of more democratic media, and certainly there are interesting experiments such as A Swarm of Angels, a ‘groundbreaking project to create a £1 million film and give it away to over 1 million people using the internet and a global community of members’ So, there is still the possibility that we might become trained in good habits.

James Provan a Scottish student, songwriter and video producer, uses especially stop motion techniques. The stop motion animation Pancakes took him 90hours to make.

In terms, then, of our symbolic engagement with films as commodities, we have used technology to materialize the aesthetic experience of cinema-going. I grew up watching films on television and I learned to love film. I received a film education watching a range of films from different cultures and historical periods in my ‘home cinema’ as well as visiting public cinemas. In both cases the engagement with the physical existence of film as celluloid, and the series of commercial exchanges associated with it were quite remote. They were more experiences than material engagements with physical objects. The introduction of the videocassette recorder (VCR), films on Video Home System (VHS) tape and subsequently on disc formats began to change this.

Since the introduction of the VCR, it is widely possible to ‘possess’ film, or at least the right to own a viewing copy. Subsequently, the cinematic heritage has developed more physically through the ownership of films in personal video collections as well as a memory-based recall of viewing experience. This physicality, of ‘getting our hands on’ film, is further developed using the web and the ‘next-point’ of the technological materialization of the film and video experience – mobile devices that can store downloaded moving image products. Television and the computer have been used to bring cinema into the home, and mobile devices such as phones, laptops, PDAs and multimedia jukeboxes are bringing cinema into new public spaces outside of cinemas. The web, like television, is not just a viewing space of aesthetic experience but it is also the source of material objects that can be saved and archived. The web continues the expansion of cinema from experience to materialism through the downloading of films to the hard drives of the PC.

Furthermore, in contradiction of the common view that digital media promote dematerialization, digital technologies such as the web do not dematerialize film as commodities, but instead allow them to be re-materialized as part of a historical process, most recently subject to the conditions of ‘hypercontextualisation’. Peter Lunenfeld (2002) uses this term to identify the real interactive potential of cinema and new technologies whereby the film text is just one element in a wider network of intertextual commodities such as DVDs, videogames and websites – a condition of marketing, promotion and responsive consumer participation.

Benjamin recognizes that there was a growing trend for readers to become writers in published media that began in the press with letters to editors. In the same line of argument he points to the progressive potential of film to offer ‘everyone the opportunity to rise from passer-by to movie extra’ so that ‘any man might even find himself part of a work of art’ (1935: 114). However, the development of video and computer technology has facilitated a level of participation in cinema that goes beyond the ability to appear as oneself in a film. Digital video technology enables the production of web cinema and web technology provides the distribution channels and exhibition spaces. The real ‘jolt’ of web cinema is the invitation to participate so that spectators become film-makers just as readers have become writers.

Andrew lectures also about the departure from the screening culture of production and consumption. Advocating ‘de-participation’ – rolling back of video interpersonal, social media communication of online video and the promotion of the web as a modified theatrical screen culture. Within this topic he shows a video of Howard Rheingold used as a social media communication of which he was quite shocked about. The movie is about learning to participate – teaching media literacy, interactivity and participation begins early.

He concludes with: ‘I would like more WeScreen and less YouTube’.

System Flaws and Tactics

After the opening speech by Bram Crevits (Cimatics) and Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures), the 5th edition of Video Vortex kicked off at the amazing Atomium in Brussels.

The first session addressed System Flaws and Tactics. This session was inspired by the inherent errors, disabilities and restrictions of online video technology that often conduct our behaviour but can also provide inspiring new insights. Liesbeth Huybrechts and Rudy Knoops gave the first presentation of the day, titled 'Playing that video'. They work at the School of Communication and Multimedia Design (C-MD) in Genk, Belgium, where they lead the research group Social Spaces, on the topic of social, societal and spatial issues, using the internet as a tool and interface.

After pointing at the rules of play and playground, and building on theory of tactics and strategy as defined by De Certeau, the presenters explored the diffuse difference between work and play in the age of new media. Knoops pointed out that Google employees get to spend 20% of their time 'playing', i.e. working on their own projects. In his recent work, Julian Kuecklich refers to this conflation of play and labour as 'Playbour'. Knoops and Huybrechts showed impressive work by the C-MD students in Genk, and called for play as a critical tool, and encouraged a practice of tactical play.

Next up was Brian Willems, who lectures in media culture as well as British and Irish Literature at the University of Split, Croatia. In his talk, titled 'Blindness: the inability of YouTube to read itself', he argued that online video often demonstrates blindness,as theorized by Paul de Man, Agamben, and Proust, and rather than being readable. He presented two cases of online video: The Rodney King Story, and Natalie Bookchin's installation 'Mass Ornament', which was presented by the artist herself at the Video Vortex conference in Split (2009).

According to Willems, the Rodney King story demonstrates how difficult it is to read video. In the video, King, lying on the ground, tried to get up when the police attacked him again. The police later stated that they considered his standing up as aggressive behaviour. The video does not clarify whether this was indeed the case. Therefore, Willems argues the video demonstrates its blindness. In this respect, the work by Natalie Bookchin is equally hard to read. Inspired by the chorus lines of the Tiller Girls, she selected and sorted YouTube dance videos so they form a chorus line, through montage, soundtrack and composition. Willems pointed out that the amount of screens, layers and motifs makes this video hard to read, and therefore confronts you with its illegibility or blindness.

Rosa Menkman, artist, VJ and PhD candidate at KHM presented her Glitch Studies Manifesto, in which she called for a more drain approach of technology studies, which includes the study of its flaws and failures:
1. The dominant, continuing search for a noiseless channel has been, and will always be no more than a regrettable, ill-fated dogma.
2. Dispute the operating templates of creative practice by fighting genres and expectations!
3. Get away from the established action scripts and join the avant-garde of the unknown. Become a nomad of noise artifacts!
4. Use the glitch as an exoskeleton of progress.
5. The gospel of glitch art sings about new models implemented by corruption.
6. The ambiguous contingency of the glitch depends on its constantly mutating materiality.
7. Glitch artifacts are critical trans-media aesthetics.
8. Translate acousmatic noise and soundscapes into acousmatic video and videoscapes to create conceptual synesthesia.
9. Speak the totalitarian language of disintegration.
10. Study what is outside of knowledge, start with Glitch studies. Theory is just what you can get away with!

The session ended with a presentation by the artist Johan Grimonprez, who guided the audience through his You-tube-o-teque. And while the sphere of the Atomium was shaking because of an autumn storm, grimonprez created his own whirlwind, going from the history of the remote control and the invention of zap-proof commercials, to hitchcock pastiches and the swine flu vaccine scandal from 1976. (www.zapomatik.com)

The Society of the Query conference is covered by bloggers on www.networkcultures.org/query, photographers (check flickr, tag sotq) and a twittering audience (#sotq).

Soon after the event, the presentations will be online as video on demand. Thanks to the crew and of course all speakers, moderators and participants. And for everyone: enjoy the last day, and don't forget the evening program full of Google art!

More info: www.networkcultures.org/query