Applications with Red Burns
This class opens our eyes to the world through the words of a variety of moving presenters. Each one works in their own way, pioneering their respective field by working at an expectional level.
Week 1 - Heather Graham - Media Creator/Social Worker A former ITP student, she is a strong example of how technology can have a strongly humanitarian purpose. Her DP work on 'The F Word' was nice, it introduced the idea of merging documentary film with fictional elements... I think this can be an interesting technique although it distorts any hopes of reaching actual truth.
Her interviews with poor southern families was also quite interesting and made me realize the extreme poverties that exist in America, the mothers she interviewed made 3K - 8K per year and survived. One lady had 2 sons that died in Iraq... with little memory of them except for a cassette tape that was left behind which Heather helped to get to work.
Week 2 - Vito Acconci - Renowned Artist/Architect Vito is a passionate beast by all measures. Porbably the most amazing of all of our speakers. He began his speech by reading a poem he wrote for a proposal to design some type of space station or something in the Antarctic. The poem was dripping with rich metaphors of a city constructed of light and ice... it was sick!
He's done a variety of art beginning in the '70s, mostly famous for masturbating under floorboards as viewers walked through an empty gallery room. He explored other concepts of self mutilation, interactive spaces and a whole lot of other things. He is currently an architect in NYC creating unbelieveable structures, highly futuristic... he's innovating the idea of interactive architecture. He also spoke of viral architecture that infects its viewers.
Week 3 - Steven Johnson - Writer The author of 'Everything bad is Good', he described the idea that most of the media everyone considers bad actually has a good side. Videogames and TV are improving our cognitive processing abilites and helping us wtih - patience, decision-making, probing, and telescopic thinking. Some examples included the increasing complexitity of videogame interfaces, and popular TV shows. Although content might not be advanced the amount of layer plots and sub-plots is.
I presented the following week with Gilad, Terrance and Angela for our group project. Our reaction took place in the form of 'life as a videogame'. It takes place in the future where videogames have become as real as real life and a program dubbed 'Real Life v.3' has taken over peoples lives. The main character 'ROM I/O' roams through a digital world where he meets his true love 'Joule @' in a comical satire about online living. *******I'll post a link for the video we did soon.
Week 4 - Ze Frank - Comic/Media Guy - www.zefrank.com Ze was one funny SOB. He ranted on about the age of authorship, bursting theory and prime patterning. He was absolutely hilarious, although it was a bit difficult to find some of the main points of his speech. Essentially he accidentally created a silly flash site of himself dancing years ago and it ended up going viral. For the next 2 years he became obsessed with keeping this massive audience he'd acquired. He gave 'age of authorship' examples in the form of people becoming obsessed with airline safety, barf bags, and stewardess outfits. He seeks a core language that can unit all things... says that a practice of methor associations within your own head will help with handling media and language, it reveals a fundamental way of thinking. Context and content are bundled together. He currently teaches a class at ITP.
Week 5 - Andy Carvin - Policy Makerwww.digitaldividenetwork.org This guy discussed the 'media divide' across the world and issues relating to accessability. His speech was done with a dry powerpoint presentation and lacked in the zest that we're used to from other speakers, but still an important topic. In America and throughout the world the poor population suffers largely from lack of access to technology, mainly the Internet. His group has been lobbying extensively to improve the technological accessibility of populations. Andy represents a positive force in empowering the worlds right to information access.
Week 6 - ???? - OS Designer Another former ITP Grad she is the lead interface designer for Microsoft and discussed her past life and current role in designing the new Windows OS' Vista & Longhorn. She prohibited the use of cameras and showed us several images from the upcoming OS, including many of her own ideas that are going to implemented into it. Surprisingly, she used to work for Apple before Windows, WTF. Her past dealt with architecture and spatial design. Her skills then transferred over to GUI design and media technologies. Her main points related to the layered complexitity of living systems and how this is incorporated into the OS. The main new windows innovations we'll see are improved searching, redesigned interface and ability to locate things by usage and common associations... OS X was already there a year ago....
Week 7 - Daniel Rozin - Interactive Artist smoothware.com/danny/ Daniel Rozin is ITP's current artist resident and an ITP grad. He's a master of fussing code with physical computing to make somethign called art. He designed the famous 'wooden mirror' , which gained him international popularity, including the Bitforms gallery. Most of his works have a mirror concept behind them, including trach mirror, shiny balls mirror, and circles mirror among others. His work is very interesting and speaks on a very basic level... it just reflects you, no other language is attached to it. "Retain essence of what you're trying to do by scaling down"... interactive design does not have to be digital in nature.
Week 8 - Curtis Wong - Interactive Technologistresearch.microsoft.com/nextmedia An interactive media pioneer and a senior employee of Microsoft's Next Media Research Group, which focuses on exploring what new consumer media experiences are possible with the growth in computing power, connectivity and storage in a compelling, elegant and transparent way in the 3 to 10 year timeframe. He designed the first ever interactive CD-ROM about Beethoven in 1992, although aesthetically a bit crappy by today's GUI standards it still had an amazing degree of complexity and was extremely well done for the time. It had a variety of different non-linear navigation methods based on, index, history, story, gallery, reference, and documents. He also created interactive content for laserdiscs back in the day. Some of his other works include an online VR interactive art gallery, an interactive online piece called "Commanding Heights" for PBS and an upcoming special for frontline about AIDS.
Week 9 - Clifford Ross - Photographerwww.cliffordross.com Clifford Ross is a world famous photographer and artist. He had an inspiring presentation discussing what truth really is and how close artists strive to reach the 'Reality Quotient'. He describes this as the essence of what's really 'out there' , this is dictated by the medium and something taht must always be kept as high as possible. He revealed this philosophy in his latest piece of photography about a mountain in colorado. He needed to capture the essence of this mountain but could not do it with his current equipment so he decided to create the largest photo ever created using a custom built camera that took him 1.5 years to build. He's now working on a new age 'psychlorama' that will be the largest wall of pixels in existence, over 12 feet high in a 260 degree circle using about 180 digital projectors and about 60 billion pixels (something like that)... insane. He recently met with the guy who designed the now famous touch interface from 'Minority Report', which the guy was commissioned to develop using gloves with sensors.
Week 10 - Clay Shirky - Technologist, Intenet Veteran, Social Software Guru www.shirky.com Clay has been partially credited with coining the term 'Social Software' and is now a professor at ITP. His presentation was very well put together and his strong words enlighted me on a few issues, mainly on the classification of the Internet. Our library of congress' current classifaction system is an utter failure, the idea of a 'Top Down' classification system, i.e. sub-dividing content into increasingly smaller and smaller categories make work in a library with 'shelves' but makes no sense in a digital setting. These types of traditional classification systems have traditionally failed on the internet. Only within the last 1-2 years have people been figuring out a more effective system of classification known as 'tagging'. This has been hugely successful with sites such as flickr, de.lici.ous and live journal. This is a system with no hierarchy that uses user definied tags to guide user interest in a non-linear fashion more reflecitve of the Internet itself, it thinks about the community as a whole. Clay is a true Internet beast and I hope to take one of his classes.
Week 11 - Michael Holly - Engineer This MIT grad told us about some of his random adventures around the world in a rather unorganized but enjoyable presentation. He's won a variety of awards and nominations for his work as an engineer. He talked about the great works of Polaroid inventer Edwin Land, and quoted him "Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess." His main point had to do with the idea that great success is a combination of luck & tenacity, which I feel is accurate. If you wrok tenaciously you will find yourself in situations where you meet extraordinary people that will help guide you in the right direction. He also touched on the concept of counterintelligence, subvert existing technologies, and developing machines that think, networked objects can save or destroy us...
Week 12 - ???? - Creative from Intel - www.intel.com/research She mostly spoke about the process of gaining grants for your work. Most business' in the US provides very little grant's for artists. However, in today's world science and art are combining more and more, ITP is the perfect example if this phenomena in action. Often times artistic expression will lead to an advance in science and vice versa. This former creative director for Hanna Barbara has pushed Intel to provide more grants for artists, her ability to see the value in art has led her to convince Intel to be one of the few American corporations to provide funding for artistic endeavors.
Week 13 - Alex Rainer & Dennis Crowley - Mobile Developers www.dodgeball.com These 2 recent ITP grads developed the mobile based social software system known as Dodgeball. This proved that a social app using a low tech approach could be viable enough for Google to purchase them. They also developed Conqwest, a barcode web linking system. They listed some great points -
1.) Document everything
2.) Build Early & Often
3.) Don't be afraid of what you don't know
4.) Fake it if you have to
5.) Don't be afraid to go outside for help
6.) Find the way you work best
7.) Package it up for mom.
8.) Get the word out
9.) Don't think of your work as isolated projects
10.) Don't be afraid to start from scratch
Bob Greenberg - CEO RGA - www.rga.com The CEO of one of the world's leading ad agencys, with 400 employees he had some exciting words about the future of the media landscape and good concepts of business practice. His resume is massive, including post work on Predator, Alien, Sevem, nikeid.com, and a ton more, he's recieved hundreds of awards. He renforced how important collaboration is and the need for media to go beyond a narrative and be more in depth. The line between creative and producer is blurring, a synergy of mediums will take a place. He mentions the beginning of a new 9 year innovation cycle in advertising beginning now. The different merging mediums include, mobile, Internet, broadcast, and experiential. Personally, I feel that the mobile and experiential markets are rife with potential exploration and new avenues. The use of barcode cellphone snapshots, optically interactive public displays, neetworked clothing, and bluetooth reactive media are a few examples of the future media landscape. The tech bubble is beginning to re-inflate rapidly...
My Journey on the M5 Bus -M5 took off and we went forward. We rode along on a river of black tar that rolled on infinitely. As we merged onto ‘Avenue of the Americas’ we entered a canyon of concrete forming a narrow passageway that intersected into a single vanishing point on the horizon. These massive structures formed a perfectly straight tunnel, guiding the bus in the right direction. The sun was bright, but mostly blocked by the tall shadows of buildings to our left. Hydraulic pistons lowered to allow in new passengers.
The further we went the more my stomach churned from the tainted Pakistani food I ate the night before. As my mind got cloudier from sickness I allowed my mind to drift, things became all that much more surreal, the buildings blurred into one massive connective fiber, a hall of mirrors, mammoth caverns, endless futuristic expanses. I was worried why I was going somewhere I didn’t know and for no functional purpose. I wondered about this place that I was in. This was a completely fabricated expanse, it is a topography terraformed to mans desires; or maybe it doesn’t match my desires exactly. My perception of this space is heavily layered, it’s rich with so many different sounds, images, bits, thoughts, stomach pains… This experience is tied to an emotion purely mine. Do these structures all around me unite us or not? I kept wandering onward debating going home and sleeping or focusing my mind on an unknown destination that seemed far away from me. I touched my forehead and felt the inkling of a fever coming on.
By one definition, “psychogeography, is the active search for, and celebration of, chance and coincidence, concurrently with the divination of patterns and repetitions thrown up by the [meeting/collision] of the chaos and structures of cities, personal histories and interpretations. It is based on the technique of the "dérive", an informed and aware wandering, with continuous observation, through varied environments. It can be sought and can lead anywhere (Unknown author, describing Situationist thought).”
Situationist art dealing with psychogeography embodies a connection between points in geography that don’t normally intersect in the physical sense. Classic examples come from Guy Debord and Constant Nieuwenhuys. Everyone has a psychogeographic map rich with connections unique to our own emotional connections with that space. Reinterpretation of everyday spaces can reveal a complex layering of moments, a layering of culture and individuality that creates richness in life. The situationist movement attempts to create these rich moments, or situations for viewers to indulge in, it gives us an experience that’s unique and fulfilling beyond a functional value. Moving outside of established areas, also described as ‘deriving’ or ‘drifting’ can invoke experiences more visceral, and in opposition to the mainstream pathways set from the top of the hierarchy. This philosophy has a strong feeling of experimentation, encouragement to link different levels of being, and resisting authority; all of which particularly excite me. The surreal and the real can often be a thin veil separated only by our own complex imagination.
As the bus drifted on the buildings seemed like they would never end until we finally made a left turn to ride along the west coast of the island. Finally, sky, trees, water and sunlight were visible. The road became less linear and curved along Riverside Park. My sickness seemed to be getting worse, and my nauseous and feverish physical reactions distorted the seemingly beautiful vistas around me. I watched the driver bob up and down with the hydraulic springs of his seat. I forced myself to ask him questions because I knew if I had felt better I would have been really interested in understanding his life more, so I asked him. I wondered what things could improve his experience as the driver. He spoke in short brief phrases on a variety of regulations relating to passenger safety. Next he blurted out, “2 people die per day in each borough from a public transit bus”. He made this statement with such casual confidence that I could hardly believe my ear. I asked him if that was really true and he nodded and repeated that quite often people are hit by buses, often times being stuck to the front of the bus for many blocks before anyone notices. One proposed solution to this was the application of a button that the driver hits which controls the upcoming traffic signal. I was hearing such bizarre tales form this driver that it made it difficult to understand if this was true or not. I tried to ignore the unsettling feeling of physical sickness, images of people killed by buses and drifting forward into the unknown.
The situationist father, Guy Debord, described psychogeography as “The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” Ivan Chtcheglov had declared, "It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and surrealist writings.”
As exemplified by Jean-Marc, when seen under a microscope, the veins of a plant leaf resemble an intricate web very similar to the complex infrastructure of a city. This comparison conjures up an almost magical connection between 2 amazingly opposite objects. Does order exist in this chaos, or does one cause the other in some way? This journey has led me through a direct dissection of the NYC labyrinth. It was a straight line up 6th avenue, Avenue of the Americas. The M5 lines was one of the original 8 bus lines from the early 19th century, according to the bus driver who has spent the last 15 years driving along it. We were traveling over years of history. It was back in this history when the original plans for this concrete mountain range were set in to motion. The path I was following was a path originally created by people probably no longer living. The modern architectural structures around me were designed along the paths of this combination of history, culture and individuals. These numbered blocks, encasing skyscrapers, and traffic signals, to name a few constructions, attempt to create order in a place of layered complexity. These layers exist in many forms: The layers of shuffling people in all directions, many coming from other cultures and speaking other languages. The layers of history and time are visible on the stone surfaces of buildings and streets. Layers of bureaucracy exist in the top down approach in which move of this environment was created. These layers combine to create an eternal feeling of something brewing, something experimental, a vision for the future. Order and chaos drift, continually nudging into each other, collectively barely holding the life around us together.
“Our public spaces and our life in the city should be rich with history; they should be dynamic, exciting and sublime. When the commoditization and cooption of everything we experience in the city becomes the norm, the absolutely particular and individual spaces we can and should create become our post-industrial cities most vital assets. (Unknown author, on the Construction of Situations)”
Even with technologies we see a layering of old upon new, a traffic light that’s user controlled from a bus. The people getting on and off of the bus also showed me a layering of culture and personality. As we moved further north culture and language seemed to shift along with it. Slowly minorities became the majority of people on riding the bus. Once the bus hit broadway most of the riders were Black and Latino in appearance and Spanish became as common as English. As the M5 line cut its path through Manhattan Island I experienced the socio-geographic trends of this part of the city. The further north we went the more space became slightly less condensed and human demographics shifted. Buildings became less tall, medians with trees were visible on the roads, and things seemed more breathable. I felt feelings separate from the canyon made of skyscrapers that I felt earlier. A north-south axis exists in New York City that creates a spectrum of different people and culture as u got up or down it. The spectrum is gradual yet varies quite dramatically on both ends of the extreme. Harlem has a different psychology than midtown. Midtown has a different psychology than Chinatown. My feelings feel different than the woman next to me. Seeing this cross section of the city created by the M5 line revealed a visible example of my time in history. This bus line was a tangible timeline of our place in history, passengers faces and the sights around me painted a clear image of the complex collective psychology of space around me, each location being charged with different energies. The seemingly unpurposeful ‘wander’ on this bus revealed “a symbolic order of the unconscious (Michel de Certeau).” Areas of unknown bring us a step closer to finding out our true connections with the space around us. Breaking free of typical patterns and stepping into overlooked corners can invoke imagination and transfer from the mundane into an imaginative playground.
