a conversation with james bridle

Ffter watching his talk "waving at the machines", I decided to send James Bridle an email regarding his work and his opinions on the work I'm doing, since he seems to know what he's talking about. plus, I thought it might be good to get some first-hand sources. He had this to say about my chosen quote.

Dear Ally - 

Thanks for your message - I’m glad my talk was helpful to you. 

I’m not sure exactly what I can help you with, as I really disagree with the definition of “post-digital” in that quote - it seems extremely reductive. For me, “post-digital” (which is not a term I like much, but anyway) refers to pretty much everything that happens after you acknowledge that “digital” is not some separate realm of existence but intimately entwined with everything else. Reducing it to a glitch aesthetic really misses the point: like “post-modern”, the “post” here really means “crisis of” rather than “after” (as someone much wiser than me said) - everything is post-digital now, whether it acknowledges it or cares about it. The glitch aesthetic has its uses and many fine expressions, but it’s a very small part of digitally-infused work, post or otherwise.

Regarding the legitimacy of digital art, you’d be pretty hard pushed to find anything I don’t think legitimate as art.

I thought it was pretty cool that he emailed back, since I wasn't expecting much. I was surprised to see how severely he disagreed with the quote, but his points have opened me up to the idea of being more critical and sceptical about the quote. After all, it is 14 years old - things have really changed since then in the digital world, and it would be foolish to deny that. I also will look at how the digital world has a bigger influence than just in art. 

rainbow planes

across google earth, there are these "rainbow planes", artefacts of the camera's inability to capture red green and blue all at the same time. the colours are split up, leaving a trail of rainbow behind the planes.

these planes are dope. the idea that the computer is projecting it's vision as slightly distorted into the physical realm is really cool. artist james bridle took this one step further, "closing the circle" and creating a version of the rainbow plane in the real world.

dronestagram

a project by james bridle
looking at how closely linked social media and war is - "they share the same basic infrastructure"
photographs of drone strike sites
the same technologies that are used to find our way around, maps, is the same technology used to guide these machines to their targets
"all i do in this process is close the circle"

how to research for dummies

the only way i won't hate cop lectures is if i make blogging fun and exciting

ideas of chronologies has weakness - try to look towards the future, and we can't always know what will happen, like back to the future sort of

the way we research is not just one thing (???)

"process is more important than outcome"

creative practice doesn't just straighten and clarify the world, it reflects the world as we venture beyond problem solving into process, experiment and discovery

"everyone is a genius at least once a year" - success comes from having brighter ideas closer together

failure enables development in practice

talk to people if stuck!!!! stimulated approach

WERNER GAEDE - VOM WORT ZUM BILD

going out and gathering inspiration from various sources, books, films, etc

Systematic Approach

taking something pre-existing and restructuring it, dismantling, reproducing, etc

Intuitive Approach

development of thought process, based on internal perceptions and knowledge, subconscious

practive is developing intuitive approach

faster ideas: more successful in industry
here to develop capacity

moving on from previous experience
research for practice, not just essays

research is about experimentation, as well as sources
continually moving forward

"How" "Why" "What if.." - git gud at asking questions

TYPES OF RESEARCH

Primary Research

• developed and collected, for specific end use/to solve specific problems
• involves collection of data that does not yet exist

Secondary Research

• published or recorded data that has already been collected
• analytical - making connections

Quantitate Research

• generates numerical data, objective
• gathering and analysing of measurable data
• statistical analysis (such as surveys)

Qualitative Research

• studying people or systems through interaction and observation
• involved in quality
• can describe events, people, etc. without numerical data
• not statistical, provable, gives ideas about the perceptions/views

information should be sufficient, competent, relevant and useful

wikipedia is bad (ok then)

phase 1 - assimilation

accumulation of ordering of general information and specific information

phase 2 - general study 

investigation of the nature of the problem

phase 3 - development and refinement

phase 4 - communication to people involved

analysis

what is the problem/brief about

what do i need to know more about

what exists already

what are the specifications

research

how many ideas occur in response

what happens if...?

lateral thinking

evaluation

what fulfils the brief 

what looks best

what does client prefer

what is function

process - start anywhere

research is what you do when you don't know what you're doing

Jens Hesse - Paintings influenced by datamoshed videos

"Datamoshing" is a digital process in which videos are accidentally - or more commonly, intentionally - distorted and damaged as files. It is a process that changes and damages the different types of frames within a video, leading to images to overlap and drag onscreen, creating interesting aesthetic effects.

German artist Jens Hesse creates oil paintings based on these pictures.

I love these paintings a lot. The "taking back" of the digital aesthetic, often popular in internet culture, to the traditional aesthetic of oil paintings fascinates me. The artistic process becomes a game of tennis - constantly being batted back and forth, swapped between art forms and processes. The convention of an oil painting is that something is being painted from life - yet with this digital distortion, we can begin to ask questions of what is real life, and how influential the digital world is in our realities. 

Gerhard Richter - Cologne Cathedral

In 2007, Cologne Cathedral (Germany's most popular tourist landmark) received a new stained-glass window, created by German artist Gerhard Richter.

The window resembles pixels, and is made up of 11,500 identical-sized pieces of colourful glass, with 72 different colours throughout the window.

I love this piece, as it draws from digital influence to a place of religion and worship. In a way, it is a commentary on the "godless" world of the digital - where technology and science rules. Yet, this digital tech has found its way into a church, suggesting that perhaps what we worship in this modern age is technology, rather than actual religion.

It is a universal window - it does not hold bias or portray any characters in a certain way, nor does it tell a story. It is open.

James Bridle - Waving at the Machines

Notes from a talk given by James Bridle called Waving At The Machines, given in 2011.

• James Bridle coined the term "New Aesthetic"
• Render ghosts - live in the buildings we haven't built yet. Inhabit a world of imagination. A world that share boundaries with ours.
• He began to notice digital influence in real life - "come out of a digital way of seeing"
• Activity happening all the time around us that we don't see - wifi signal
• "Glitchy" effects - in music and art
• Minecraft - graphics highly influential

"Giving the real world the grain of virtual

• Making visible the digital - parametricism - avant garde, complex forms, eruptions of the digital into the physical
• Digital real estate
• Gerhard Richter - "new" stained glass window
• Jens Hesse - data moshed oil paintings
• David Bown - Tele-Present Water - "real" animation of ocean in real time
• Computers allow us to see through time - satellites remember - before/after photos
• "There wasn't supposed to be an after"
• Cameras ability to recognise faces - training
• Racist camera, limitations to technology
• Filters on photos - changing reality
• Cameras see and hear frequencies that we cannot - fundamentally different way of seeing the world
• Imaginary places - the sky on trap street
• Dutch royal family property removed from Google Maps
• Urban camouflage 
• Pixels really good at hiding things - tricks the eye, "removes" it from view
• Digital camouflage - hiding in infrared as well
• Aesthetic effects - new interactions in the world
• Tricking technology - facial recognition software
• QR codes bad, ugly, please no one
• Glitches are computers' attempt to speak

"The machines aren't very smart yet"

"They live on the boarders of our world"

• hashtag BotYodeling
• We see through satellites, through cameras, through technologies
• Entering into a dialogue with the machines
• Multi-touch finger paintings - Evan Roth - visual aesthetics meet human behaviour
• Ethical negotiation
• Shaping feelings and culture
• New nature in the world

Matthew Plummer-Fernandez: Digital Natives

The work of sculptor Matthew Plummer-Fernandez explores the "bleeding" of technology and digital aesthetic into real life creations. His sculptures are a mishmash of recognisable shapes, such as teapots and vases, with an undeniable digital influence.

His work plays with the idea of form following function. While the items still are just about recognisable as what they are, it is only at this very basic level that the bear this resemblance. The weird effect applied digitally makes them no longer appealing to use - the teapot would probably melt, and the plate would be wonky and uncomfortable. Yet, we constantly engage with the same digital technology on a daily basis, with it taking over more and more of our lives - our books, our calendars, our social interactions. Perhaps Plummer-Fernandez is suggesting that as technology consumes our lives, it won't be long until it takes over our physical routines and lives, too.

Internet Art - The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce, Julian Stallabrass

Stallabrass, J. (2003) Internet Art - The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce, London: Tate Publishing

"Anyone with access to a networked computer can put work on the Net without the say-so of an art instituion (public or commercial), and anyone with access to a networked computer can, in principle, take a look." (Page 9)

"While computers are agile in the realm of simulation, digital technology is not merely a matter of reproduction but just as importantly of production." (page 10)

"This art [digital art] is bound inextricably to the development of the Internet itself, riding the torrent of furious technological progress that brings back into illumination antique versions of modernism, torn from matter and hurled into the ether, and so made suddenly and curiously new." (page 11)

REFERENCING RACHEL GREENE (my other source) - "In an introductory article to Internet art, Rachel Greene warned that her accompanying illustrations, torn from the Web, were like animals in a zoo. In fact, they are even more confined and rigid than that. Isolated and deprived of interactivity, they are like the still and lifeless shells of taxidermy.  " (pages 12-14)


"The most fundamental characteristic of this art is that it deals with data, and can be thought of as a variety of database forms." (page 26)

Antonio Muntadas' The File Room - an extensive worldwide archive of cultural censorship, at first compiled by a team of researchers but later added to by the public. A collaborative site to which users can contribute information within the framework established by the artist. It is still displayed in a gallery, however.

"Advanced computer graphics tend to be as obsessively naturalistic and fussy as nineteenth-century history painting. In modernism, the sign of contemporary was a geometrical simplicity that mirrored mechanical forms, both being manifestations of a Platonic ideal; in the age of simulation the sign of the contemporary is the completeness of naturalistic illusion. This is seen particularly in the computer games industry which drives the technology swiftly towards the ultimate goals of flawless Virtual Reality." (page 34)

"There are various reasons why avant-gardism and an interest in autonomy were strong currents in the early years of Internet art. First, there was the need to carve out a recognisably distinct area of interest of this novel art. Second, since modernism and the avant-garde were once more lively models, the issue of autonomy had to be addressed. Third, it was a way of hitting out against disabling and over-recursive strands of postmodern theory that had been used to shelter an increasingly conservative art world, while propagating heated apocalyptic visions that had sunk their readers in helpless inactivity." (page 39)

"With internet art, time comes in fits and starts. It imposes time on the user, while the user imposes time on the work in a discontinuous rhythm. Internet art may also contain representations of the other arts, bearing within them their own temporal frames." (page 40)

"The net has the potential to be the ultimate archive, the repository of all human knowledge, opinion and culture, yet it combines that ideal with an aggressively amnesiac urge. It could be the perfect memory system with everything ever uploaded stored, digital and thus unchanging, a Library of Alexandria for the contemporary age but without the fragility (or flammability) of books." (page 44)

"Time online takes the form of a complex, congealed space, a space that is both experiental and physical." (page 48)

"In the mid 1990s Britain had a fertile mix of technological opportunity and dissident opinion." (page 52)

"At its inception, Internet art was a marginal and oppositional practice produced in reaction to various failures in the wider art world. The centres of the US art world were and are the least marginal and best connected on Earth. If it was not prominent at the birth of Internet art, the US became increasingly so as the new art was drawn into the mainstream." (page 53)

"The difficulty with making Internet art in much of the Third World is not merely technological but social and cultural... It can be hard enough for culturally informed Westerners to grasp much of this work, let alone for those of different cultures and languages, and those with expensive and uncertain access to the Net." (page 54)

"faced with such a murky mass of disorganised data, many online artworks are actually built around the need to advertise their presence, or alterntively end up commenting on the communication processes which are inherent to the network itself" [Jon Thomson] (page 56)

Harvard referencing plan!!!!!!!!!

I think in my Context of Practice essays (woo) I will attempt to argue that digital art has the potential to be as emotive and legitimate as art created with traditional methods, such as pen and paper. To drive this argument I will look at various sources and collect differing opinions to drive my point of view.

Source uno:
Greene, R. (2004) Internet Art, London: Thames and Hudson

Greene talks about how "a related criticism is sometimes aimed at the works' creators: that internet and softwarre artists, often self-identified as programmers, are not 'real' artists. This critique can be taken as a symptom of the changing modes of art and the evolving expectations of what artists should be, what skills or trades they should possess, and what their critical concerns should be." [page 13]

"For those who do not support it, net art is often thought to lack the craft and direct impact of work in painting and sculpture by privileging commercial tools, veering too close to graphic design, or exploiting cheap, "whizz bang" programming tricks (to which authentic, meaningful art should naturally be opposed). Furthermore, net practices such as software art do not align with existing gallery, museum and discursive systems, and these institutions often want to differentiate themselves from commercial fields."

It seems obvious that more high-brow art critics, then, seem to agree that digital art does not have a place amongst the more traditional crafts, despite the fact that art is in a constant state of evolution. It is interesting to note Greene's commentary on "what artists should be", as there is so often a classism within finer arts that create a set of rules and regulations for something that is often emotive and almost primal.

Additionally, digital art harks back to more traditional Dada art, which was intentionally strange, silly and nonsensical. "Many net artists feel a strong connection to the work of French artist Marcel Duchamp [who created the moustachified Mona Lisa below] and to the participants of Dada (the international arts movement that began in Zurich in 1916 as a reaction to World War I and to a traditional art public), all of whom helped to shift art practices away from traditonal forms of pictorial representation. Dada firmly embraced the random as a means of expression."

Lecture Notes - Digital Production and Distribution

I found this lecture very relevant to my COP, as I am looking at the digital aesthetic and the way that digital and technological influence can manifest within art and animation. The development of language and recording has been highly significant, not only within art but in all leases of culture and society. The technology of print and development isn't all physical anymore - it can be done through computing and via the internet, versus the traditional methods of print-press.

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) said "we shape our tools, and then they shape us." He was forward-thinking, and predicted a "global village" before the creation of the internet.

We become dependant on the tech we develop. One must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together.

Where we are today is not the end point. As technology develops, there is an impact on the society that uses it.

Ultimately, when considering technology:

• What does it enhance/improve?
• What happens when you break it?
• What does it make obsolete?
• What does it allow us to do?

The first Mac retailed for $1000, in 1990. It allowed a range of type, more public. It enhanced productivity. It retrieved individual creativity and allowed the democratization of technology. Got rid of traditional, handmade methods, though it had problems with speed, capacity, access, and price. 

The New Aesthetic/Digital Aesthetic

This term was coined by James Bridle

It refers to the blending of the virtual and the physical

Internet within the physical world.

NOSTALGIA VS INNOVATION 

The way we imagine the future is influenced by what we have today.

A virtual clock tells the time, whereas analogue shows us.

The Mechanical Aesthetic

Robots now synonymous with technological advancement 

Cyberman - enemy

C3PO - friend, service robot, "alternative" human

The Technological Aesthetic 

iCulture - "white and blue with chromey bits"

Like Apple - smooth, very clean. Everything is deliberate - no clutter.

Utopian Aesthetic

Utopian ideal of the future

An imagine community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities

"Superhumans" - created for a purpose, everything is highly efficient.

Also a dystopian view of technology - an undesirable future

Appears in subgenres of fiction (Hunger Games, for example), draws attention to currently existing real-world issues.

"WWIII is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation."

MUTATED . . . FRAGMENTED . . . DIVERSIFIED 

Spectrum of media experiences

Wanting to return to analogue - people trust and believe in it. 

The Information Age

Computer age / digital age / new media age

Mobilisation of digital communication

New tech eliminated physical costs of communications.

Digital culture - emerging value system. 

Participation community values.

Print Culture and Distribution - Part 1

Currently, we are living in the "Late Age of Print". Subjects taught now, such as Illustration and Graphic Design, were not taught in the art schools of the 1800s. Instead, they taught the "fine arts", of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and painting. The men only aspect of this was also stifling - only history paintings, classist.

As production became mechanised, the industry of art rapidly expanded to the lower classes, the working class. Instead of owning a singular piece of art, it became a case of experiencing it, being able to see it and get a cheap reproduction. The higher class hated this - reproduction was seen as less valuable, cheaper.

This one dude Matthew Arnold (who had some banging sideburns) called for culture to be "in the minority keeping" - to belong to only an elite few, not the general masses.

damn those sideburns could put guy martin to shame

Popular culture offers addictive forms of distraction and compensation - with culture being cheaply produced by and for the working class. Schools of design began to crop up, creating workers for industrial capitalism. Even LCA began as a school of design.

One argument is that technological reproduction removes the aura of a piece of work - the creativity, genius, and mystery of it. However, I believe that reproduction only increases this. By being so famous and well recognised, certain pieces of art become more mystified by seeing the original - almost like a celebrity.

History of Type Part Two: This Time it's Personal

 I found this week's lecture much more riveting and interesting than last weeks, possibly because it involved more about the technological side of typography, which is relevant to my COP quote, and also my personal interests. 

Type is not a natural concept - it's manmade, roots in spoken language. It is necessary, but not found anywhere else in the natural world. The durable visual form is a huge part of human history.

Following the first world war, there was an opportunity to rebuild the world creatively, especially in Germany, where so much had been flattened.

The modern concept of form following function was highly important in developing the fonts we know and use today, as well as other aesthetics and design of the time (around the early and mid 1900s). The graphic design from the Bauhaus turned to promotional, using commerce to drive design. The birth of graphic design.

Additionally, theatre, costume, new technologies, all were adopted into design - all areas of creative practice being threaded in. 

With the birth of technology to a wider commercial audience, along came fonts that we are still familiar with today - one notable one being Helvetica. This font was free of elegance or complications. It is clear, clean, basic. It isn't a political font, or a font that is trying to emulate anything but clarity. In this way, it is the epitome of 20th Century design.

Also, comic sans. Which I am writing this blog post in, to make a point. Or just to maybe get on my lecturer's nerves. I don't have much hatred towards the font itself, at all. More annoyance at the people who use it wrongly. But! I would advise Fred Bates and other comic sans haters watch this video. 

Type became forefronted in our visual culture, by the 1990s onwards. The introduction of the Apple Mac allowed every creative designer their own personal computer, to do with what they pleased. Type became democratised with the birth of computers and the internet.

Today, we see almost a "full circle" of type, with emojis. These hark back to the traditional methods of pictorial communication, using images to convey meaning. This was what interested me most in this lecture, something I had never really considered. 

Ultimately, font is integrated and collaborative. It is visually collaborative. 

History of Type (part 1) lecture

This week we had a lecture on the history of type, font, and all that jazz.

It really wasn't as engaging as I would have hoped. While I have interest in typeface and learning about how it was developed, I found the content on how language itself has developed less than enlightening. However, some parts were very interesting - such as discovering how the letter A developed, coming from the pictorial representation of an ox.

Additionally, I found it interesting to see how important general education in terms of being literate was. It's strange to think that it wasn't expected of many people to be able to read - something that is now almost taken for granted, given you have the ability.

Interesting also to learn how the way we make type influences the ultimate look of it - something painted with a brush ultimately has a whole different aesthetic to something punched with a stick. Pretty fascinating to see how the means of production shape an entire language visually.

Overall though, this was probably my least favourite lecture so far. It wasn't engaging, it felt a little repetitive or drawn out at times, too. Maybe that's just because I'm not super into type and typefaces, but it was just not up my street. Maybe the next one will be better!

Context of Practice Research

CoP Theme: AESTHETIC

Search terms/key words:  POST-DIGITAL, POST-MODERN, POST-INTERNET, META-MODERNISM, GLITCH, INTERNET ART, AVANT-GARDE.

LCA Library	1: You are Here: Art After the Internet – Omar Kholeif 2: Internet Art (World of Art) – Rachel Greene 3: Glitch: Designing Imperfection – Iman Moradi and Ant Scott 4: The Fundamentals of Digital Art – Richard Colson
Google Books (preview)	1: Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art – Virginia Hefferman 2: Aesthetics of Interaction in Digital Art – Katja Kwastek 3: Cinematic Cuts: Theorising Film Endings (Resolution, Truncation, Glitch) – Shelia Kunkle
Google Scholar	1: Web.Studies (Arnold Publication) - David Gauntlett, Ross Horsley 2: The Aesthetics of Failure: “Post-Digital” Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music - Kim Cascone 3: Art in cyberspace: The digital aesthetic - Andrejevic, M.
Websites	1: An Essay on the New Aesthetic – WIRED – Bruce Sterling 2: How seapunk went from meme to mainstream – Vox 3: Waving at the Machines – James Brindle
JStor	1: Ontology and Aesthetics of Digital Art – Paul Crowther 2: Making Things Our Own – The Indiginous Aesthetic in Digital Storytelling – Canice Hopkins 3: Ten Myths of Internet Art – Jon Ippoloto