Our Coming Sixth Sense

As I've been thinking about perception (thanks a lot Robert Irwin!)(He's had a good and bad effect on me, I have to say) and experience and the ways in which art can effect those things in us, I came upon this fantastic TED talk introducing an interface that could truly alter and transform the world around us. It's quite astounding as to the possibilities, and without the real thing unleashed on the world, we can only speculate.

I always think about Facebook or Twitter and the revolutionary impacts they created, though no one could have predicted how they might have been used at their inception. With that in mind, the technology demonstrated in this talk might not even make a mark on our culture after all, but my mind spins at the potential. Our flaccid and analog could be way more interactive, letting a wireless camera and projector serve to do what we could only attempt to rig up through RFID chips. Why wire the world? Why not wire ourselves? Are we not already? I am consistently marveled by the output of the MIT Media Lab. If only we were all so brilliant; if only schools were all so well funded and contemporary in mindset. Keep an eye on this Fluid Interfaces Group and the things coming out of MIT, they may just change our world without us even noticing. Also, if you haven't, check out TED. Since being turned on to them, I have learned a lot about the world, and much of it is optimistic.

http://www.ted.com/

http://fluid.media.mit.edu/


http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/index.htm

http://web.media.mit.edu/~pattie/

Bjorn Melhus/Sandy Skoglund

I've been in talks with a friend about collaborating on a book somehow related to Star Trek. With the way we both work, he writing and me doing what I do, I can't imagine that the references will be too clear. But I just happened last weekend onto a video at the Denver Art Museum about an artist names Bjorn Melhus. After seeing his piece "Captain" I haven't been able to think about much else besides Captain Kirk pastiche and b-movie not-so special effects. Little details are important, and right down to the background noises or the faint musical dramatic flare, I found that the video was funny, confounding, and right out ridiculous. Something nice when you've just passed through a giant red room full of playful gray foxes that are smiling. Sandy Skoglund really transformed the space for her installation, and we were truly immersed.


http://www.denverartmuseum.org/home

Audio Visual Printmaking

Recently the idea was brought up by a colleague of mine, who also happens to be my roommate, relating to Brain Eno and his digital paintings. I was sent a link,

Brian Eno (14 Video Paintings)
http://www.ubu.com/film/eno_14.html

77 million paintings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRkNrWp6tLg

and yet my inquisitive nature stopped rather abruptly at the fact that what I saw was not paint, it was a video. Does a painting have to involve paint or the action of using paint these days? Who knows anymore? Still, we've been talking back and forth about printmaking being presented in a video or audio form, and my mind can hardly wrap around the idea.

First of all, what does a print sound like? If someone heard me carve wood or rub paper would they have the slightest idea as to what the noise was? How could a video document a print? I began to ponder photography and it's inherent similarities to printmaking tradition as I know it. I boiled my medium down to the simplest means, namely that it is a method of reproduction or transferring information. Prints essentially reflect content embedded in a surface. There are positives and negatives. One half is made for the other, and there is a balance represented in the impression given forth from one surface to the next. Is not photography the same, using value based matrices and light as a transferal medium onto a receptive substrate? Is not film then just an extension of that idea? But then a photo is not a movie, and a movie is surely not a print, and photos and prints may be one at times, but more often than not, they are separate as well. I search for a way to convey the print, other than the matrix or the substrate, and yet it eludes me. A video might only be documentation, and would not the final result of such a piece still involve the print, whatever form it might be?

What might the value be in a gesture truly removed from a print, where we might observe process, or hear the making of said work, and yet in the end our experience was outside of direct contact with the work? What would that metaphor be commenting about? If anything it might redirect our focus on this ever present tactile medium, despite the obsolescence it reflects, onto the new ways that prints renew their significance in our digital age.