An interesting article was posted by Jesse Shapins and Brian House (who collaborate on the Yellow Arrow) on the Urban Omnibus entitled Designers and citizens as critical media artists. They discuss their views on maps, cities, technologies and the role of art as a research practice.

Here are few themes and quotes that I found really interesting. I let you read the whole article and I’d be curious to read your thoughts.

On the method (which is a theme that emerged from our discussion on this blog - collaboration between artists and scientists, social scientists), they have several interesting points and a great quote:

“Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.”

- Viktor Shklovsky, “Art as Technique” (1917)

Jesse and Brian note: “We wanted to stimulate another mode of urban practice that was based fundamentally in the physical, social spaces of the city. In other words, we wanted to get students out of the classroom and onto the streets. We were inspired by Shklosvky’s concepts of estrangement and “Art as Technique”, we then aimed to use media arts critically as a mode of research to gain new perspectives.”

On language and ” a mutually transformative relationship between language and the city”:

An interesting project they mentioned: ” One of the projects I’ve always found fascinating is ABCDF: A Graphic Dictionary of Mexico City. The general principal of this book is to re-define the city through a new form of dictionary. Thousands of words are defined by images from a wide variety of sources, ranging from the home photographs of ordinary citizens, to historical newsprints, to the work of famous contemporary artists. These images are complimented by short texts in a glossary at the back. What emerges is a highly detailed mosaic of the city that brings to life the everyday life of the metropolis.”

… and a project they develop for their students: “Furthering the language theme, we built on De Certeau’s understanding of walking through the city as an act of reading and writing. After each student defined around 35 words for their territory, the final assignment aimed to synthesize this material and create a series of design interventions in physical and virtual space. Writing in this new language, the core component of the students’ final project was to write a “poem” that linked together multiple words they had defined in their territory. In addition to the longer and visual media, students had to also now define their words in 140 characters as text messages. The poem would be read, then, as an SMS-based walking tour of their territory that poetically connects the words in physical space using the new vocabulary they have defined. We created the interface and the messaging infrastructure, which they could then script for their particular walks. The walks provided an experiential tour of the multiple layers of physical, social, historical and fictional qualities that students identified through their research throughout the summer.”

Go and check Periplurban their research platform

al

Really happy to have made it to the centre of the maze to experience BSWW. The space that has been built is a beautiful and comfortable space. With a wonderful soundtrack too. Al and Aileen, it’s fantastic milena

Yesterday I was in the space and two visitors asked me “what’s next”.The first one coming from “the art world” (sorry for the simplification) asked: “what will happen to the installation? where will you present it next?”  The second one coming from “the business world” (once again, sorry for the simplification) asked: “what are the outputs of this project?”… I also heard although it was not explicit “Can you implement them?”These questions are in themselves interesting as they highlight the multitude of interpretations and understandings, but there is nothing new here. What is more interesting is that it made me realized that the installation had become something in itself. The second visitor saw it as a presentation of research ideas, innovative, different, but still with some potential outputs. One of my academic friends also asked me what papers will come out of this installation: once again the question of the outputs. These questions made me realized that the nature of the project has changed and if originally there was this idea to present my research ideas in a different way, this has slowly vanished in front of the “project itself” - which still draws on research ideas but which has become something of its own.This does not mean that there are no potential outputs (we are working on two papers) but these are not essential to the project, and there are more related to our reflection on the process than to the content of the project.  Back to the point raised by Aileen and Ben Rubin on the relationship between the form and the content, I am realizing how the heaviness of the content has vanished in the work with the material to reach a form, hopefully to get some kind of balance between both. al   

Hi Anne Laure,I wanted to (as always) continue talking about this. It is so interesting to me. I think we might be back around somewhere near the Sci/Art discussion we had recently right here on the blog. Both you and Milena (in her comments in response to you), talk about thinking imaginatively or thinking of new ways to present ideas. I am a firm supporter of this, of course, for many reasons, not least because of our shared interest in broadening the audience for research/academic work and we have often said this in any discussion of BSWW-as our reference by Foucault has suggested. But I think what is emerging here in these recent posts is distinct. What is coming up here are both questions of collaboration (and who is doing the collaborating) but also questions around the visual- to put simply when is something visual an illustration and when is it art? Whether interactive or not. And I think what is also important to consider, what does this mean when one collaborates with artists? Museum display, as in the case of the one Milena cited, has a visual, interactive and illustrative aspect-and may well be innovative in all those respects. I think those kinds of responses or thinking (and I am sure Milena would agree) are quite different from say what Rubin and Hansen do with their collaboration.Perhaps the key piece that is missing here is that in any collaboration with an artist, the project must move beyond the mere presenting of ideas. The project must in and of itself become a new idea. The question of the relationship of a form to it’s content (and the role of the viewer) is a long one in aesthetics. To impose the content on a form, the form dies (as Baldachinno, who is a blog member, said in a lecture). This, for example, has always been the difficulty of political art and I venture, collaborations with artists. This too was my fear of calling Building Space with Words, art. I felt that the obligation was, of our project and of our collaboration, to prove itself in the process of it’s making so to speak as to whether it was indeed becoming a ‘new idea’ or merely an illustration of an existing one.Given the kinds of response we have had and the richness of our discussions Anne Laure, I am excited.

Several people have asked me how this installation fits in my research, in my work.

I explain them how it was originally an attempt for me to present my ideas differently, and how it then became a way of “thinking with my hands”, with different media.

Linked to this I’d like to mention Bruno Latour’s work. Bruno has been a pioneer in curating exhibitions bringing together artists, sociologists, philosophers, scientists and historians - the first one was Iconoclash in 2002, the second one was Making Things Public in 2005. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/expositions/index.html

( Ben Rubin had a piece, Dark Source, in Making Things Public. http://www.earstudio.com/projects/darksource.html)

Milena also pointed to me an exhibition at the British library, Taking Liberties. The exhibition was about 900-year struggle for Britain’s freedoms and rights . There’s still an online exhibition: http://www.bl.uk/takingliberties

I found this format particularly powerful to present multidisciplinary perspectives and also to create opportunities (public venues?) for people to learn, experience, reflect and express themselves.

al

i would like to congratulate you for thinking out of the box to present your research, i am thinking already how this could be used for movie screening and how that can enhance the overall experience of watching a movie in a theater

Multidisciplinary encounters on Complexity in Arts and Sciences: an interesting event at IRCAM in Paris (co-organized with Centre George Pompidou) IRCAM, June 10-12, 2009 (for more information, see description below.

In case you’re in Paris at that time, it sounds like a very interesting event and completely in line with some of our discussions on the collaboration between artists and scientists.  

The event comprises of a three-days scientific symposium and twoart-science encounters in the evening.The whole event takes place inside the Ircam Agora Festival<http://www.ircam.fr/85.html>, june 8-19 2009, a major milestone in the French cultural landscape. It is also coupled with a Lars von Trierretrospective organized by the Centre Pompidou.

While the symposium will focus on conferences by prestigious scientists or art theorists, the evening presentations will give the opportunity toleading artistic personalities to confront their practices and ideology on the ground of complexity.Physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, epistemology, architecture, music, painting, litterature, cinema, theatre … a greatvariety of topics will be explored in an interactive fashion.Participants will take advantage of a selection of concerts during the Agora Festival program that have a unique connection to the idea of complexity.

The blog was started as a “companion” to the installation project we are working on with Aileen and that will be presented at NYU-Poly from March 5 to March 27 (BTW, thanks Yasmine for the nice post on Neo-Nomad). It is interesting to me that this blog has taken an existence of its own and several of you have mentioned to me that the conversation should be maintained after the installation.

To tell you the truth, I never thought of when to stop it. Now I got really into the discussion and I believe we should keep the discussion going, although we might want to reframe the terms of the discussion - how I don’t know; that requires some more thinking.

What I wanted to do today was reflect about the process, talk about the installation project as an intellectual scaffolding process. It started with this idea of presenting some of my research ideas, and in fact combining two streams of my research - hence it was more than mere presentation, it was already combination. This could be understood (and I originally  conceived it as…) as a translation exercise: an attempt to use a different medium, a different language game - art rather than peer review publishing.

This relationship, the nature of the collaboration has evolved into a dialogue. As I started working with Aileen, and as I have to explain her what I was trying to present (and Aileen can be tough sometime! thanks though for all these hard questions which pushed my thinking forward), my ideas evolved and the relationship between them too.

Aileen also made suggestions for the installation per se that led me to start thinking of what it meant at a conceptual level. Hence, I started thinking by drawing, sketching, taping on the floor, climbing on ladders and moving projectors. This is perfect for someone with an interest in materiality (which started with my interest with the materiality of the paper flight strips used by the air traffic controllers)! I cannot help thinking of the prototyping workshops with the computer scientists, engineers and air traffic controllers during the Cameleon project and this is a wonderful experience.

The ideas are still evolving and I am not sure how I will write the paper that will correspond to the installation. Yet, the installation has forced me to specify the concepts; it also has led me to uncover the different layers of meaning involved in this work. The blog and the discussions have also helped a lot. It is for me another interesting element to add to my thinking about the role of writing for knowledge sharing and development (that’s another project I have with Anca Metiu looking at the power of writing through a historical analysis of correspondences - Einstein, Descartes, Virginia Woolf, Mme du Chatelet, Kafka, Hudson Bay Company and East India Company… That’s another story… More on that topic another time).

Thanks to all.

Cheers,

al

As I was re-reading the introduction to the Design and the Elastic Mind catalogue (adapted in Seed)  by Paola Antonelli who curated the exhibition at MOMA last year (Feb-May 2008), a few passages seem relevant to the discussion on this blog. Let me share them with you.

- On the collaborative process and the interdisciplinary dialogue:

“Much of this is being done by bona fide designers, but scientists and artists have also turned to design to give method to their productive tinkering, what John Seely Brown has called “thinkering.” They all belong to a new culture in which experimentation is guided by engagement in the world and by open, constructive collaboration with colleagues and other specialists.”

“The figure of the designer is changing from formgiver to fundamental interpreter of an extraordinarily dynamic reality; one increasingly informed by science and mediated by technology.”

- On the importance of understanding and taking into account social practices:

“The most contemporary design theory is devoted to the quest for an environment, whether virtual or physical, built in human proportion.”

- On virtual space

“Without designers, instead of a virtual city of home pages with windows, doors, buttons, and links, the internet would still be a series of obscure strings of code, and appliances would be reduced to standardized skeletons of functions.  ”

It reminded me Milena’s post distinguishing between architectural and interpersonal cues (December 14). I guess I will add that the affordances of the technology are intertwined with the social and discursive practices of the people interacting in this virtual city.

Ciao,

al

Here is an exhibition (Fondation Cartier, Paris, http://fondation.cartier.com/index.php?lang=en&p=2&c=15&linkid=15) I read about a month ago or so. It came back to my mind while reading Yasmine’s quote. Two of our blog’s contributors, Marc Hansen and Ben Rubin have contributed to it.

Native LandStop EjectNov. 21, 2008 > March 15, 2009

Raymond Depardon and I both came around to this same question: what is left of this world, of our native land, of the history of what so far is the only habitable planet?” Paul VirilioWhile the world has reached a critical moment in its history, where the environment conditions what humans do and what they will become, the exhibition Native Land, Stop Eject proposes a reflection on the notions of being rooted and uprooted, as well as related questions of identity. Whereas Raymond Depardon gives a voice to those who wish to live on their land but are threatened with exile, Paul Virilio examines and challenges the very idea of sedentariness in the face of the unprecedented migrations taking place in the contemporary world. Paul Virilio´s concepts are given form in a design by the artists and architeDiller Scofidio + Renfro, as well as Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan, and Ben Rubin. The exhibition is, therefore, a confrontation. It is at once a contradictory and complementary dialogue between filmmaker and photographer, Raymond Depardon, and urbanist and philosopher, Paul Virilio. Depardon´s work has often explored native lands, and, particularly, the world of farmers, giving value to speaking and listening. His capacity to combine both the political and the poetic is clear to anyone familiar with his work. Through his writing, Paul Virilio has spent much of his time working on notions of speed, exodus, the disappearance of geographic space, and the pollution of distances.

Two quotes that illustrate the dialogue:

“Let us listen to these people, be they Chipaya, Yanomami, or Afar. Let us listen to these people and give them a chance to speak, so we can hear them express themselves in their language, with their own way of speaking, their own facial expressions.”Raymond Depardon 

“The nature of being sedentary and nomadic has changed. […] Sedentary people are at home wherever they go. With their cell phones or laptops, [they are] as comfortable in an elevator or on a plane as in a high-speed train. This is the sedentary person. The nomad, on the other hand, is someone who is never at home, anywhere. ”Paul Virilio