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Category: culture

The Politics of Technology: The Technology of Politics

Published April 4, 2008 by cgerrish

Woodstock

The network can’t congregate in a single physical location. Compare and contrast to Woodstock, or the gatherings of the 60s. It’s a limit of the current 802.11 wireless network technology. Perhaps no one anticipated that everyone would be able to and want to connect. And many people want to connect both with their laptops and their phones.

Given the current models, the physics of the event dictate that as the particles converge on a location, the network pipes clog to the point of stillness. The mass of people can talk to each other, but they can’t broadcast to the network.

Live blogging and Twitter have moved beyond the technology conference into both our politics and our lives. The Democratic Convention in Denver will feature a blogger assigned to each of the delegations. As we attempt to broadcast our politics into the network, in the interest of full and open disclosure, we’ll find we occupy a black hole. The density of the particles will prevent any light from escaping.

Of course, we’ll find a way to get reports out. Twitter, with its minimal requirements and multiple network paths, may be the most usable live reporting tool. The pulse of our politics could be largely expressed in bursts of 140 character SMS messages.

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A Recording Organism contra The Figure Signaling Through the Flames

Published April 2, 2008 by cgerrish

Antonin Artaud

When we look to the new, the thing that really connects: it’s technology like a punch in the face, a figure signaling through the flames. It’s not the code, it’s the hunger, the blood, the bone and muscle. It’s the electricity that connects one human soul to another. And it’s the connectors that allow that surge of power to flow freely from one node to the next in the network.

Fragments from the introduction to Theater and its Double by Antonin Artaud:

“What is more important, it seems to me, is not so much to defend culture whose existence has never kept a man from going hungry, as to extract, from what is called culture, ideas whose compelling force is identical with that of hunger.”

“If confusion is the sign of the times, I see at the root of this confusion a rupture between things and words, between things and the ideas and signs that are their representation.”

“A protest against the idea of culture as distinct from life–as if there were culture on one side and life on the other, as if true culture were not a refined means of understanding and exercising life.”

“We must believe in a sense of life renewed by the theater, a sense of life in which man makes himself master of what does not yet exist, and brings it in to being. and everything that has not yet been born can still be brought to life if we are not satisfied to remain mere recording organisms.”

“Furthermore, when we speak the word life, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from the surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach, and if there is one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.”

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The Precise Ambiguity of @megfowler ‘s definition of Twitter

Published March 31, 2008 by cgerrish

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Meg Fowler threw up her hands and finally said, “This is what I do.” She was trying to explain how Twitter goes to some new users. It’s a question that surfaces naturally with the uninitiated. They examine the “rules” and the capabilities, and then answer the question “What are you doing?” But somehow that doesn’t seem to adequately represent the buzz of talk surrounding Twitter.

The first thing new users observe, once they start following veteran users is that the question about what one is doing is only occasionally answered. What are the rules they ask, what are the rules about what to put in to those 140 characters, if you’re not answering the question?

This is where words begin to fail us. How to explain all that is not answering a question? How to explain who hears and who doesn’t? How to explain the river of talk that one follows? To explain one’s experience of Twitter, is to explain one’s self. Everyone’s experience is slightly different.

Meg Fowler’s description brought to mind Ludwig Wittgenstein’s discussion of how we learn and use language in his book Philosophical Investigations. Certainly we can talk about rules when we speak of language. But that’s not how we learn and eventually use language. Rather than learning a set of rules, it’s more a case of “this is what I do,” and you must do what you do.

Asking what one should fill the 140 characters with is like asking what words one should fill one’s voice with. Many social network sites attempt to provide context and set the rules of engagement. Following rules is what machines do, not what people do. I’ve often thought of human-computer interaction as the encounter between a world purged of ambiguity with a world filled with ambiguity. Twitter thrives on the ambiguity of its purpose, it’s a machine that leaves room for the human.

And Meg Fowler, why look to her as an authoritative voice? In a medium where most of use are finding our way and learning the landscape, Ms. Fowler has filled in those 140 characters more than 11,646 times.

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Narratives & Embellishments: Cariati, Hager, Ulriksen

Published March 29, 2008 by cgerrish

Vuillard’s Garden (detail) Christine Cariati

The opening reception for Christine Cariati, Liz Hager and Mark Ulriksen’s group show at Back to the Picture is tonight (Saturday, March 29th) at 7:00pm. You can find all the event details here. I’ve already dropped by the gallery and the work looks great.

Learn more about each of the artists on their web sites:

The image at the top of this post is a detail from Christine Cariati’s painting “Vuillard’s Garden.” The painting is, in part, a tribute to the intense pattern work in the paintings of Edouard Vuillard. The medium is gouache on paper. Gouache is opaque watercolor, and a notoriously difficult painting medium. Cariati’s natural landscapes are filled with color, beauty and spirit, even as the figures portrayed act out a darker Darwinian drama.

Liz Hager’s Digital MetalTypes are a revelation. I’d never seen photographs printed on to a bright copper metal sheet before. Hager incorporates self-designed textile patterns, 19th-century studio portraits and her own botanical photos into a series of captivating photo-montages. Through these images and the stories that accompany them, the viewer is invited into a private world filled with the secret thoughts and unconventional associations of its inhabitants. The viewer decides where to draw the line between fact and fiction.

Mark Ulriksen is well known for his covers for The New Yorker magazine. Over the years he’s had some of the great ones. Most recently his cover “The Emperor’s new clothes” was a wry comment on the troubles of Eliot Spitzer. Ulriksen creates acrylic paintings for most of America’s major publications, book publishers, advertising agencies and graphic designers. He paints pictures of the famous and infamous, newsmakers and homemakers, musicians and athletes, dogs and politicians. This show will exclusively showcase his work for The New Yorker.

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