THE ART FOR HUMANS (AFH) TUMBLR BLOG ARRAY (Part 2)

From ART FOR HUMANS WIKI

Jump to: navigation, search

THE ART FOR HUMANS [AFH] TUMBLR BLOG ARRAY [Part 2] Share 

Today at 10:29pm | Edit Note | Delete

THE ART FOR HUMANS [AFH] TUMBLR BLOG ARRAY [Part 2] 1000 Revolutionary Actions DRAFT/BETA By Paul McLean 02.05.10

< THE AFH TUMBLR BLOG ARRAY

  • Real "PURE" Digital [1] [89 posts]
  • "I Love You, Monster" Exhibit Design [2] [62 posts]
  • ALT.dimension [3] [41 posts]
  • HOW TO START A COLLECTIVE DURING A RECESSION [4] [76 posts]
  • CURSOR [5] [14 posts]
  • Defining Art [6] [72 posts]
  • Transthesis [7] [256 posts]
  • VisiOn + Beauty [8] [69 posts]
  • Proposals [9] [22 posts]
  • American Road [10] [68 posts]
  • Cali Car Culture [11] [64 posts]
  • Not an Artist [12] [11 posts]
  • There's No Art in Hell [13] [256 posts]
  • Transmissions from Marfa [14] [61 posts]
  • White Buffalo [15] [18 posts]
  • ARTSTAR [16] [36 posts]

[Total: 1,126 posts] [Project Timeline: 09.01.2009 - .02.05.2010]


TECHNICALS

Critique [techne]

The AFH Tumblr Blog Array operates as a virtual text with local applications. As with all dimensional constructs, the AFH TBA is faceted and layered, viewable from multiple perspectives and animated, with moving and static components. The array is driven by a narrative that is expanded by linkages with actual events or phenomena, referencing realtime flow. However, the timeline of the AFH TBA is fluid, multi-directional, and intertwined with other timelines, some of which originate from within the AFH production framework. The pre-aesthetic and aesthetic elements exhibit multiple behaviors in the TBA. Images, for example, appear in multiple contexts, and sometimes combine into sequences or patterns. Meanings and values are attached via context. Content of all varieties are viewed progressively, as potential points of origination for dimensional analysis, output, or expressive features, to list several image functions. There are others. It is worthwhile to consider that the artist, with respect to original material, utilizes the web medium as a veritable "echo chamber" for actual artworks. None of the web-based, compressed reproductions or transmitted images possess the identity of the original artwork. The artist views reproductive web-art as generative source material, on par with mimetic theory. The user's navigation or paths through the posted material at AFH TBA, and by extension the AFH network of sites, is conceived as indicative of personalized mapping, an expression of technique or craft, symptomatic of user identity, and also a snapshot of general or particular user processes and profiles. The artistic content in the AFH TBA consists of new and re-sampled materials, literary, artistic and documentary. The issues addressed pertain to issues relevant to contemporary society. History is referenced to "color" the current discourse or social/-self examination, an additive function of reflection or reflexive exchange. The format is transitional, as a mid-process movement towards cloud computing and Digital Humanities protocols. The artist encourages epistemological critics to consider the necessity of environmental space, open source, and time-place specificity in reviewing the discourse contained in the AFH TBA. The concept of containment, it should be noted, is not accepted as concrete in the dimensional engagement of data - only with respect to actual or material objects.

Consideration of Parts

Designated for this project as a primary means of content exchange, the blog functions representationally and conceptually as a body for the voice [Axiom]. The blog is therefore a container for [one] history, and as such is accountable, in its configurations, assumptions and selections. The links within the AFH TBA text connect the [one, as in SET 1] voice and history [fabricated, linked, referenced, re-sampled/-formatted] to all electronic text extant in the wired medium at a [the] given moment. Philosophically, the entire action may be thought of as a captured moment [snapshot], unique in the aspect of Point of View [PoV] or singular perspective, but omni-oriented in relation to the universal field of existence, as an action. The author suggests the AFH TBA construct is therefore a proposition of dimensional relativity, not a question of contingency or for psycho-analytic correlation/generalization. The mathematic analysis of the array is encouraged by the author, with particular interest in complexity, linguistic associations, behavioral sequences [plus more], especially in the revelation of choice or sequences of actions amounting to choice.

In considering the vast relative document contained dimensionally as a captured event or snapshot in the AFH TBA, artificial man is made relative to natural man in each blogpost. In that sense, the operation is neutral, but the subsequent operations are subjective or derivative, and not necessarily relational. Does a bot explore the text as a natural person would? Since the artificial cannot respond except by proxy, consideration must be assigned to Artificial Intelligence [AI]. The question is whether the bot is a tool or a sentient, or an artificial proxy. These definitions are not identical and always pre-aesthetic in nature.

Another serious question involves the projection of alternative reality in the coded text. Fundamental to the question is another concern: Where does the action exist? A reference is certainly the genre of film or in some aspects the television. The cinematic only exists as a window within the blog for now, although this will surely be temporary. However the linguistic features of the web-/computer-media do connect with the script as a construct, and therefore a dimensional literature may be implied, or even derived from the AFH TBA. The author would suggest that the AFH TBA is also converging in meaningful ways with branded identity, providing ample reason to explore further the so-called aesthetics of identity. Within the text, identity is rendered proportionally among several definitive characteristics. As stated, perspectival emphasis distinguishes between the artificial and natural, but the analysis must also consider the pre-aesthetic here. The active elements in this analysis include functional usage, proxy, and motivations, when user subjectivity is attached to behaviors. The avatar, as a formal representative of the natural person should be considered within this context.

Applications

Disclaimer: The Lead Artist contends that the production is still in the first stage of development, and the following observations or projections are not to be mistaken for proven conclusions.

<

A generalist, media-driven assumption suggests the literary field is flooded with works, data. However, a few transnational corporations control most of the traditional production and distribution pipelines for printed work. The meme in play: old media is on its way out; and new media, electronic content are the future. It is questionable whether the editorial/selection policies practiced collectively by the dominant media conglomerates is beneficial to democratic society in the long-term. Like the art world, the evolution is being severely distorted by corporate market practices, highly resistant to governmental regulation and public or social concerns. Literature, especially the forms that represent the concerns of natural persons, when those concerns contradict or oppose corporate or artificial messages, is clearly being undermined with intent and by design. The AFH TBA suggests a dimensional solution for what amounts to a corporate denial of service hack on the democracy. Although the sample TBA is essentially single-operator, the TBA can ostensibly be expanded to a multi-operator format. This seems an obvious next step.

The relationship of the AFH TBA to performance [as in performative art], is complex. The author explicitly scripts for theater and other script-based media. What of dance? Dance will be featured in other "I Love You, Monster" production facets. However, it is conceivable that dimensional productions incorporating derivative components from the AFH TBA will be realized. Currently, the development of such projects has not evolved beyond concept phase. The structural precedents in our working projections thus far are drawn primarily from AFH 01 cycle of exhibits, including "Heartless," "A Cold Empty Feelin'," "SEAM01" and "HOME01." See the AFH archives for documentation. While informally dance was a feature of AFHGC, it was not presented in a dedicated space mode, as in "Bar Codes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes." Most AFH productions, throughout the past decade, beginning with "Sirens + Conflagrations" were inspired by dance. AFH TBA will not evidence ensemble features at least until the second half of the first year's production, when the collective begins to assemble around the shared narratives, and leitmotifs. "The 1000 Revolutionary Actions" and "I Love You, Monster" cycles will eventually merge into the opera medium, and at that time the dimensional narrative will be fully articulated. It is likely that the AFH TBA by then will be hardly recognizable comparatively. The launch of 4DPop will be the next key dimensional/cross-platform trans-junction.

Premise

The medium is electric and linguistic. The non-linguistic media therefore are, if not disadvantaged, then perhaps distorted, and some aspects artificial. A blog is hardly a medium best-suited to a user's first experience of dance, for example.

Response [Query]: Is anything translated into the blog real? [The answer becomes interesting when one considers the avatar/user dynamic.]

>

On the Issue of Creativity and Curiosity as Pre-Aesthetics

The issue is not resolved, certainly, in AFH TBA. However, much progress in parsing the subject has already occurred during this phase of production. Most promising are tie-ins with social media, such as Google's ever-broadening service array. It is clear that the relationship [applications] connecting actual experience with user curiosity is a narrowing field. This is particularly true in the domain of dimensional topology, or mapping, which may be discussed as a more broadly relevant issue of representation of actual or material space in the virtual space specified for search and response, attached to purposeful desire and direction.

In general, Google's accumulated search data collectively provides a snapshot of human inquisitiveness. In creative terms, the user can apply the search/action declaratively and expressively as a means to define identity, or more precisely the pursuit of clarified self. While this procedure is transitive, the seeking of intelligence based on location, especially time-based or time-sensitive location, positions time and space and movement in concurrent or equal relevance. Motor vehicles and other mobile devices equipped with GPS technology animate the search for location in real time. What is often minimized in the celebration of the new technology is its potential for abuse in the surveillance state, as a backdoor transmitter of user position and intended movement. Popular media normally assigns this fact to the police pursuit of "Terrorists" or criminals, or some other anti-social element, or conversely, as a hyperbolic assurance in the negative downplaying by effect the legitimate concerns these tracing technologies should engender in any free or democratic society. In AFH TBA, we will in the next phases of production not only confront this uncomfortable reality [virtual and actual], but explore the means by which free movement can remain so.

Compared to the search engine, the blog is even more elaborate a locational construct. To present the divergent qualities in quasi-poetic terms: The blog is more like a fingerprint, or the roller on a typewriter, or a combination of both. The search engine is most useful to the analyst in the aggregate. The search engine's value is like the accumulated snowfall transforming the landscape. A blogpost is, in the same model, a snowflake. The comparative values of search engine to blog are similarly relative. The act of composing a blogpost is akin to writing in the sand with a feather. Therefore, the blog corpus is too complex to easily be analyzed in any aggregate form, other than numerical. In other words, as in the listing below the heading of this essay, the number of blogposts is a quantitative one. It is hardly possible to summarize the content in similar fashion, especially when the author has manufactured the text dimensionally, and designed it to be resistant to reductive conclusion, as is the case with AFH TBA. In fact, the entire opus is created with resistance not only to classification, but to any kind of summary. In effect, the TBA is acting as a countermeasure, if not a solution, to trends that synopsize complex content to support the practice of superficiality. Many of the techniques employed by the TBA author are formulated to resist compression, when compression is harmful to both user and content. This is relevant to the educational viability of the platform, as well as the AFH TBA text itself. The tactic may be thought of as homeopathic by inspiration.

The AFH TBA is now in a formulation that asks the question, "What is the best form of packaging for the work?" The options for output are plentiful, but what is the best output medium for the dimensional text - a series of books? The current education model is conceived as an array of products, built around the traditional textbook, but inclusive of electronic-based media [online components, CDs and DVDs], as well as workbooks. The consequent question is in what architecture is text usage envisioned? For example, the text could be partitioned into monitor-based or projected exhibit elements, with static or moving visual presented in a large gallery with audio encompassing the environment, as in "Inside>Outside" [DDDD, 2000]. Such a configuration is ideal for a text with multiplicity of perspectives. The question is whether the form is ideal for a text created utilizing multiple personas, as is the case with AFH TBA. At this point, the TBA represents a collective document created more or less by a single individual. While the presence of exterior or extending sources and re-samples in the text blurs the distinction [solo and collective], it does not substantively alter that fact.

To frame media output in poetic or metaphorical terms: To print a blogpost is like carving one's name in a tree. The harm is immediate. The scar is meaning. The morality of the action is ambiguous. It would be better to make a painting on a rock face, a pictograph. The comments feature embedded in most social media today obviates the material permanence of a natural act, such as mark-making by "primitive" or natural man. The democratic concourse attaches also. The blogpost therefore initially appears to be statutory, or at least declarative. With feedback added, however, it assumes a much more egalitarian shape. One solution from recent AFH productions [AFHGC and the CONTENT series of exhibits by the Lead Artist] contain a form that appears to activate space similarly. The medium is optical feedback, interacting either with ambient architectural or natural environmental features, or artworks or persons.

It is common practice over the past decade of blog-olution to incorporate images within text, or to otherwise attach them, as in the comments field. How is the present tense stabilized in this formulation? It is not. The visual is only as stable as any memory, actually less so. In this artificial present, the image is not moving, a captured superficiality, translated through a series of reorganizations and compressions. Nothing original can be assigned to this widget, although much often is. To suggest in the context of AFH TBA that a simultaneous reference to the illuminated manuscript [literally, as opposed to an illustrated text, a graphic novel, an advertisement or a comic strip] and the expansion of that medium to include moving images or projections is now possible. The author suggests that the sustenance of the traditional medium should not be abandoned for the newly possible one, but instead that the two be contextualized and exhibited as interactive elements, rather than as a dualistic, either/or proposition. Jung's Red Book may be attributed as a worthy precursor, and the AFH TBA as a potential production material.

On the intervention on creative flow presented by the blog tools: Let's simply acknowledge that the procedures required by the computer and the uploading process, or whatever means by which data is contained in a blogpost presumes artificiality, but in fact may be better defined as a craft problem that can be improved or mitigated. The emerging technologies associated with Cloud Computing practices may solve many of the ease-of-use issues that now apply to both solo and collective production in a dimensional art space, involving the blog as an active component in the exhibition space. AFH's "A Prayer for Clean Water" introduced a kiosk-based single-user solution in 2005. Our design for a similar output-oriented in-gallery device was designed for the AFHGC project, but production problems caused the project to remain in BETA. With new devices appearing [iPAD, netbooks, Kindle], which are at least conjecturally designed for dimensional applications appropriate for an active/interactive experiential art environment, the projection that "I Love You, Monster" may succeed as a new vehicle for user-art media is not unlikely to be achieved. If so, the dimensional bridge between creativity and art can be effectively demonstrated. Only a dimensional application of that nature can rescue the blog [and all social media from its inherent artificiality, by situating its usage in personal, natural space in realtime.

Comments [Personae]

We can discuss style. We can discuss form or function. We can discuss design, which would involve the discussion of all three pre-aesthetic elements. None of these considerations means anything real in the blog environment until the dimensional features are introduced, developed, realized and animated - and don't forget the signature finish, the patina of uniqueness - personalization [!].

Personalization is the distinguishing condition of a dimensional [art] blog, as opposed to any blog focused on style, form, function or design as the primary attribute. Consider Zeelio, Milo, Veronica, Tommy Robbins, PJM and even Peter Drucker in the AFH TBA. Characters are the helpful constructs, dimensionally necessary, whose role is the conveyance of content. To extend the dimensional [dramatic] metaphor, the context is not only setting, or environment for the dramatic action or script. The context is also the defining mechanism for rendering content into a form that has social relevance. Historically this mechanism involved the forming of concept/content/narrative plus more, the articulated action, into socially recognizable processes of content exchange - e.g., a duel, lovemaking, a conversation. In the blog array those actions are collected in a pool of available action.

It does not help to stick to facts. Of course, anyone will respect facts. They order the schema, don't they? In the blog they do not. The only true facts in the blog are the codes that create the blog in real time on your monitor, only for you. The creative is reversible in the blog reality. The human user is not the creator in any strict bloggian configuration. If he is honest the author will remind the blog reader that the author is only a collaborator while blogging. His writing partners are a computer, hard drive, software applications and the codes activating all into a usable tool. The sub-text to any text presented on a blog is that the blog can not exist as a solo venture. In this sense, the blog is filmic.

In my dimensional blog array, I name my co-authors as fictions engaged in the realistic discourse, unfolding in realtime, composed as a wovenform and added to the online medium in waveform [through multiple-venue postings, as the center of a spoked wheel]. As a reward, speaking from the PoV of hindsight, the medium provided me with the proper format for conveyance of content to adequately cite my collaborators [fictional and factual]. The secret was the dramatic intercourse, the dramatis personae.*

To prove this assertion, we must first decide [as a collective action] that a computer is not artificial, any more than a person is not artificial by nature, or a hammer, or a watermelon. Whether a thing is conceived primarily or secondarily [with respect to the human subject and his state of creation, which must necessarily introduce the creator into the equation] as created thing is in some measure only interesting for the student of hierarchy. The participant in existence will necessarily view things differently. The range of responses is by no means, however, limited to hierarchies or the existential.

An artificial person never wrote a good song. Neither did a watermelon, but this doesn't mean a watermelon is artificial, does it? The artificial is always encouraging real things be defined as artificial, as obfuscation. In this statement is the pre-answer for our assertion. By suspending thought and vision in a fluid content environment, and by engaging the content from multiple perspectives, a richer understanding of both the internal and external subject of our exploration. The important factor is the simultaneity of the examination. When the examiner is capable of simultaneously faces inward [toward the subject] and outward [toward the environment] and does so in conjunction with a collective formed as a circle [Maciariello's Proof], the data assembled will always be better than any assembled and presented by a single individual.

Abstract

The key to correctly assigning dimensional value to a blog-based expression or articulation is not only an issue of appropriate use of interior space, at least not until the environment is animated dimensionally and related to other structurally similar blog-based expressions or articulations. The key, because value is collective, is appropriately identifying the space between the data sets, and determining its defining qualities. The interior space of the blog may be value-defined on the basis of meaning, a function of realism and representation.

In the AFH Tumblr Array, the space between the articulations permits intercourse [actually trans-course] among same-sets, which is to say, the identical element [or control] connects the sets separated by space. The space between also permits real-time verification, as the establishment of value-defined for the collectively shared space-between.

To review, formulated as a quiz: [What is special about an identical twin? [{Teacher: One aspect perhaps is the condition of natural reflection.} {Observer:A twin is the opposite of a clone.} {Student: How?}] [What of two computers, mechanically reproduced as exact duplicates, and containing the safe software/hardware configuration? How do the respective users re-define the computers? What if the same user works on both computers, as two distinct persons?][Then bring to mind an artificial person, and by extension every other artificial person, since they are all absolutely the same - by definition. Every corporation was born in 1819 of the same father. What did the artificial create in any of this array of activities and outcomes? What was the question they contributed to the exploration?

- Paul McLean 02.08.2010

  • Also recommended as contextual reference of peculiar interest: CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, INSTRUCTION DIGNITAS PERSONAE, ON CERTAIN BIOETHICAL QUESTIONS [17]
Retrieved from "http://wiki.artforhumans.com/wiki/THE_ART_FOR_HUMANS_(AFH)_TUMBLR_BLOG_ARRAY_(Part_2)"