Schedule of Presentations for Final Assignment

Dec. 1

Videos + design sketches:

John
Ryan
Danielle
Aymann

Papers:

Tika
Tiffany
Costa
Morgan

Dec. 8

Videos and Design Sketches:

Tika
Tiffany
Costa
Morgan

Papers:

John
Ryan
Danielle

Aymann

Final Assignments

Final video version of Put Something Here with design specifications (sketches + description) for how this would be displayed in a public place, exactly where and how it would be interactive for public engagement.

Statement of intent and practice related to your work this semester, that integrates the themes of space, place, embodiment, public, democracy and opinion.  How do you wayfind in life?  What is your evolution?  What are your borders and boundaries?  How have you opened them, or how have you stayed within them?  750 words

What work of your fellow students has been most inspiring to you this semester and why?  Content is one consideration and technical achievements are another.  Please answer to both issues. 250 words

I don't have an opinion, is an opinion. Please defend with full theoretical premise.  750 words

National Design Triennial - A MUST SEE - up until Jan. 9, 2011

Why Design Now?

Discuss

Can way finding become traditional knowledge/song in today techno-psychotic society?

The ability for one to see who is around them in the local area by use of GPS tracking their friends on their phone is scary and dissolves the chance of life to play out like it should. Basing decisions off a map that's tracking people dissolves destiny.

The art of experience" I think this quote definitely summarizes what video installation art can be. A connection of the body to a work of art and how you move and interact and be inside the piece is the most important aspect.

Public Space should be available to anyone who can bring meaning to it. I think this quote is describes perfectly what this country is lacking and today we see public space filled with advertisements when it should be filled with peoples thoughts feelings and expression.

Now when thinking about wayfinding...isn't wayfinding the idea of the structure of the way the world is/was/has been set up? There is not much chance if you are walking through the streets and following the side-walk. Would that mean that John Cage would sit down and write a series of directions and simply walk them not concerned as to where the path is leading him-whether through the streets and alleys or not? Or is having the choice available and simply letting chance choose which of those paths to take the way that John Cage would attempt wayfinding?

My absolute favorite part of "As American as..." was as he talked of the child who sat on the rug and used the patterns on it as streets or ways for his cars etc. to go.

Video installation art captures the senses of the viewer to become an all senses experience rather than a single-sense experience. The idea of presentational arts being considered, "hybrid and complex" allowing the artist to represent not only one tense but multiple tenses such as past, present and future layered within makes the space in which video installation art encompasses both real and imaginary-giving an almost infinite spectrum of subject matter to attend to.

Do I consider myself an artist? I guess in order to answer that question we would have to first ask ourselves what an artist is. In my opinion an artist is anyone who produces art. Which of course leads to the question what is art? Which of course is a highly controversial question because it is so subjective, the definition of art varies from person to person. In my eyes, art is anything that a person can create. This creation does not need to be tangible either it can simply be an idea, however there is one exception: art isn't art without an audience. It is almost similar to the debate on whether a sound is a sound if nobody is there to hear it. Art is not art without eyes to see or ears to hear.
     Keeping this in mind, I think everyone is an artist. In fact many things are created by people, entirely by chance or accidental, which is still art as John Cage taught us. What separates an "artist" from the average Joe? The idea and belief that the person is an artist. When a child makes a finger painting and they take it home for their proud parents to look at doesn't the child have their audience? Since art is so subjective, any piece of art has the potential to be considered a success in somebody's eyes. Now this doesn't mean that everyone is considered a professional artist. The difference is that a professional artist makes a living off of producing art regardless of the mediums used. So to answer the question in layman's terms I am an artist, and anybody else with a creative mind is too.

the immigrants who come here now are already walking into communities which are already established whether it be a community which is inhabited by other foreigners or a community of American citizens. So what role do these new immigrants play in contemporary American communities? Their role is actually to unbuild this community and help rebuild a new, different one which will take their past traditions and cultures and together with others, transform them into a more diverse community. Now, some might argue that by doing this, you are destroying the memory of the old country and culture that was left behind.

Krysztof also believes that history tends to repeat itself but people can use past mistakes in history to prevent them from repeating themselves.In order to do this however, each day history needs to be rewritten in order to correct the injustices of the past. What he means by this is that we as human-beings need to first honor the past by remembering it, than pass the knowledge of it on to others so that it will live on and lastly, use the errors of the past in order to change the present and the future. The worst thing that we can do is be like the Nomads who lost their history by not defending it. It is essential for growth that we our first human-beings before we our citizens of a country or members of a community. While being members of a community or culture help us define our pasts and our own identities as well, we also need to realize that migrants or immigrants also have their own identities that they bring to the table. We all belong to many different groups or cultures which help make us who we are and this is very important, but we also need to take a step back and realize that as humans we all share at least one common group or community together and it is important to carry on past traditions which help each of us establish ourselves as individuals.

This means that not everyone experiences being in a particular space or place in the same way. A point that I thought of while reading this article has to do with the mental attachment to space & place.

·   How do we differ mentally while being in spaces since the awarness and emotion behind being there is all in your mind?

·   What does these mental thoughts say about us as people?

     I must say that I don’t agree with the majority of Yudell’s article. I do not believe that the places we live in produce instant instinct for movement. Of course we, as living creatures are meant to move: jump, skip, dance, etc. because if we did not move, we would be dead. However, I do not feel that the buildings we’ve formed and the houses we’ve built encourage motion in our bodies, if anything, I think they prevent it. When we are in these places, we instantly limit what our bodies can do. We do not run in the house or dance grandly in an office cubicle. I do agree though with the notion of space within our bodies, i.e. finding one’s “center” or even “chi”.

·   How does our interior space dictate our exterior space?

·   What does it mean for the body to move internally?

“Not all who wander are lost.” I find this quote to be extremely true, especially concerning our second assignment of drifting. We were lost on possibly unfamiliar streets drifting/wandering, but at the same time we knew where we were going because we had mapped it out in class. Additionally, I thought the article touched on a lot of interesting points about humans enjoying the feeling of being lost, as seen by our dialect, some of the structures we create (labyrinths and mazes), and extensive tools to find our way. I believe that “wayfinding” is something we all can relate to, whether literally or emotionally. Before reading this article, I didn’t stop to think how often we need/desire to find our way —- so much so that it consumes our culture.

I thought it was interesting how Morse placed “art” seperately from “video” almost as if they didn’t belong together. In my opinion, many individuals in the art world do not necessarily consider video an art as much as other mediums (such as painting) and do not see the difference between this medium and film. I believe that art should not necessarily have a distinct definition being that it is something left up to the interpretation of the viewer.

it makes the statement of the rise of mobile phones and/or smart phones creating awareness for many users. I myself use my phone to find a navigate my way through any situations. If I see a billboard that promotes a new movie, out of curiosity, I would jump on my phone and look it up either watching a trailer or reading a synopses. I even would then look for the closest theater and get directions leading me to that same theater.

  Next what I found interesting of what could be possible in the near future is the invention of "Geo-Annotation." Geo-Annotation could possible be the future for advertisement, when walking by a restaurant or even an outlet store you can access deals or sales that the store is promoting. This evolution can bring a new change in society and how it operates. To be able to receive knowledge on a location will be amazing and very productive as well as fortunate

"exchanges between the work of art and the places in which its meaning are defined." Right when I read that, it made me think of this one photographer (don't remember the name) took pictures of fabrics that people have stained after their deaths of either suicide, murder, or sickness. From looking at each photo, you can receive a sense of a story or a happening that has taking place on that specific fabric.

Technology has seized to amaze me after watching this one documentary for this one piece. It's called Under Scan by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, after recording a thousand short clips of random people laying down looking up to the camera and interacting with it in their very own way, they would have a tracking system in an area and when someone would pass through, it will then project one of the random clips where ever the pedestrian will be walking. I was blown away when I saw this technology in use as well as the thousand of recorded random clips, making wish I was there until I've seen all one thousand clips, more or less.

It is my understanding that a place provides security and stability as a location (a home). A space can be defined as an uncertain territory because it has yet to be defined. In other words, once you have defined a space, it becomes a place.

            There are many ways in which humans and animals go about “marking territory”. For one, we begin by attaching symbols. Symbolism is used when a person/place or thing represents something else. Because of this, we attach meaning. These meanings will ultimately develop the emotions we may feel when dealing with a particular environment. These emotions, which are inspired by memory and thus anticipation, complicate the human experience. Our past experiences define how we feel about that space/place. This also serves as a conditioning tool.

One of the ways in which we construct our perceptions is through our senses. They allow us to construct our reality. They provide an explanation for the things we cannot understand. Religion was first used to explain ‘space’ before research and science were introduced.

Maps have been a way for humans to create tools and technologies in order to shape their environments. Wayfinding is just a clever tool which helps establish our sense of reality and control. The Baldwin Effect, as described by James Baldwin, a pioneering developmental psychologist illustrates how organisms can learn to shape their environment and alter paths of evolution. Wayfinding is the process that allows humans to evolve.

The relationship between space and place is key to our understanding of site specificity. Both are influenced by our experiences in that environment. Influential artist Marcel Duchamp pioneered this theory when he debuted the urinal artpeice. Is main purpose was to question art and our perceptions of placement. Could a urinal become anymore attractive now that it was placed in an art gallery? Although most mainstream people could not grasp the genies behind the art, it does send a crucial message. Location determines our overall perception of an object. This theory can be applied to real life swell.

Platos' Cave Theory and how it applies to how many of us relate to the media. The theory states that we as humans are being tied down to watch media simultaneously whether we want to or not. It was interesting because Sarah labeled this theory as 'passive' although the figures were meant to be chained down.

“I didn’t choose art, art chose me”

art is “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance”.

Referring to Wodzicko: I do not completely understand his explanation of a “newly designed equipment”.

these recent stories affected me on a personal level. I’ve never been too interested in politics, but these stories made me question the responsibility we the people have to our state. Politicians are supposed to represent people and help organize society with the people’s interest in mind. However, a quick assessment of the common quality of life and everyone can agree that is not the case. Everyday issues such as property taxes, school taxes, healthcare plans, and social security are constantly being argued but never improved. Which brings me back to the responsibility we have as the people. We have to be more responsible; meaning we have to give more effort in trying to understand the issues at hand, what are the viable solutions to these problems, who is proposing or fighting for these solutions, are they genuine and truly knowledgeable about the subject, and perhaps most importantly go out and vote.

“The Robot Dancer” is probably my favorite of her pieces. The way it is able to interact “dance” with a person is interesting because it demonstrates the way one’s identity can be recreated. It also asks the question what qualifies something to be apart of another. Does the robot take on apart of the living dancer?

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction

Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction, an article in the New York Times

Bibliograpy of Readings for this Class

Yi Fu Tuan, Space and Place:  The Perspective of Experience, University of Minnesota Press 1977

-      Chapter 1: Introduction

-   Chapter 3:  Space, Place and the Child

Kent C. Bloomer and Charles w. Moore, Body Memory and Architecture, Yale University Press 1977

-      Chapter 7: Robert J. Yudell, Body Movement

Peter Morville, Ambient Findability, O’Reilly Media 2005

-      Chapter 2: A Brief History of Wayfinding

Ina Bloom, Signal to Noise: On John Cage and the Anarchy of Silence, Artforum Magaizine, Spring 2010

Anthony Townsend, Locative-Media Artists in the Contested Aware City 2006

Drew Hemment, Locative Arts 2006

Miwon Kwon, One Place After Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity, MIT Press 2004

Introduction:  Site-Specifics

Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, Editors, Illuminating Video,

Aperture Foundation 1990

-      Chapter: Chip Lord, Mobility as American as…..

-      Chapter: Video Installation Art: The Body, The Imgae and the Space-In-Between

Krzysztof Wodizcko, Critical Vehicles, MIT Press 1999

-      Designing for the City of Strangers

-      Interrogative Design

Auxiliary Reading

Alex, Ross, Searcing for Silence: John Cage’s art of noise, The New Yorker Oct. 4, 2010

Walter Kirn, The Way We Live Now, The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17, 2010

Raymond wacks, Privacy:  A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2010

-      Chapter 1: The Assault

Bibliography of Related Books for this Class

Chrissie Isles, Into the Light,

Whitney Museum of American Art, Harry N. Abrams 2001

Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer, Editors, Illuminating Video,

Aperture Foundation 1990

Jeffrey Shaw and Peter Weibel, Editors, Future Cinema:  The Cinematic Imaginary after Film,

ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany and MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass 2003

Martin Rieser and Andrea Zapp, Editiors, New Screen Media: Cinema/Art Narrative, British Film Institute 2002

Melinda Barlow, Editor, Mary Lucier,

The John Hopkins University Press 2000

Theodora Vischer, Editor, Gary Hill, Imagining the Brain Closer than the Eye,

Museum fur Gegenwartskunst Basel, Cantz Verlag 1995

Ursual Frohne, Editor, Video Cul/tures, Multimediale Installationen der 90er Jahre, Museum fur Neue Kunst | ZKM Karlsruhe, die Auttoren und DuMont Buchverlag, Koln 1999

Links from Sarah's talk

Bruce Nauman: Video Corridor


Gary Hill: The Viewer

Sarah Drury: Voicebox

Margie Medlin: Quartet: Robot Dancer (2006)


Kora VanDenBulcke & Thomas Soetens: Workspace Unlimited

Hyo-Jung Seo: Body-Reverie-Water

Raphael Lozano-Hemmer: Underscan

What is due on 11/10

Put Something Here, part 2 and 3

Blog responses to the presentations of Sarah Drury and Craig Kapp

Having read the article: Video Installation Art:  The Body, the Image and the Space In-between. Please respond on your blog.

Augmented Reality

Here is the link from Craig Kapp for how getting started with AR. It has all his demos and more:

Craig's blog

and here is the link for the Augmented Reality article

A Sense of Place, A World of Augmented Reality Part 1

The cell phone videos

If you have a smart phone, point your phone browser to this url:

http://neighborhoodnarratives.net/cellphone_videos/

Put Something Here Mid-term Assignment

Inspired by Krszytof Wodiczko, who "put" video installations into public space by projecting them onto architectural structures that had political and historical significance to the place, you are asked to base this assignment on issues/opinions that are important to you and reflect in some way, some condition of your own identity.

Put something into public space that is also directed to where you put it. Or not, it could be something that travels, has an "anywhere" aspect to it. Either choice is fine, but it must be specific.

Document it.

The media can be the documentation, or the media can be the thing you put into the space, or place.

This assignment also asks you to consider what is public. What is public space or place.

Wodiczko attempts to give voice to the vanquished. He defines the social "polis" as a narrative (both physical and psychological) constructed by the victors. Therefore, all others fall into different degrees of invisibility. If you were to try to make visible the invisible, to put something that is invisible into public space or place, what would that be?

Assignment for 10/13

Bring blogs up to date.

Three points of interest/questions per two sets of readings. Three sets of readings have been assigned so far (see syllabus) for a total of nine points due.

My relationship to art. The name, the act, the commitment, the rigor. Write. Until you run out of anything to say.

Integrate drift videos into your blog. Send me the url. (I have not received two as of this moment.) All the urls that I do have are posted. Check the map

Second "open system" group will present their event.

For cell phone:

30 second video (edited) tied to a place in New Brunswick. Export to web in Quicktime Pro. Have folder burned to disc or on a jump drive for 10/13. Theme: TIME

Final list of blog addresses

Please put these into the sidebar of your blog, along with the blog address of the main blog.

Aymann Ismail http://aymannvid3.blogspot.com/
Costa Boutsikaris http://costaboutsikaris.blogspot.com/
Danielle DiTaranto http://daniellevid.blogspot.com/
John Casale http://johncasale.blogspot.com/
Morgan Sun http://morgansun.wordpress.com/
Ryan Hrnciar http://rhrnciarvideo3.blogspot.com/
Tiffany Dodson http://teadeedivid3.tumblr.com/
Tika Prospere http://tikazombie.blogspot.com/

Who is John Cage?

And why do I care?

Check out this link.

Pippolitti Rist at Luhring Augsutine gallery

Check out this exhibit - worth a trip to New York City.

Sound Map

Check this out as a sound map of New York

Folk Songs for the Five Points

Google Maps - How to

Go to  Google – Maps.

You will see the options for Get Directions or MyMaps.

Click on MyMaps

Click on Create New Map

You will be able to give a title to your map and a description.  You will also have a complete set of tools available in the Map area (see hand, balloon, line or shaded area).  You can drop a balloon on any location and you can use the lines to connect the balloons or to create a route or radius.  And you can move everything with the hand.

You can also select your privacy settings for public or private.

If you move a balloon icon to a location that you choose, a little menu will present itself.  You can give the location a name and description.  If you click on RICH TEXT on top of the text box, you will get a full blog toolbar.  If you would like to add a photo, you can link it from Flickr by clicking on the Picture Icon and adding the url from the Flickr picture (Click on the image in  Flcikr and then All Sizes, and url will be on the bottom of the page).

So, in other words, if this is going to be a photo story, you have to upload your images to Flickr..

Our One Block of Video Psychogeopgraphy

Guilden and Easton Ave bisected by Courtland, Bristol, and/or Prosper or Hamilton.

Here is the route.

Yi Fu Tuan review

Some excerpts are from the paper "Neighborhood Narratives, New Dialogues With/in the Mediated City", by Hana Iverson and Rickie Sanders. 2008.

Place, according to Yi Fu Tuan (1977) combines a sense of position within society and a sense of identity with a spatial location.  Places have historically been viewed as physical sites, with natural and emotional endowments that speak to the limits of human freedom.  Not only are our human identities bound up with the hills and valleys in which we live but our very humanness and humanity is bound in this way.  It is place that gives rise to humanness – in the form of feelings, attachments, longing, nostalgia, desire, melancholy, and fear.     

... Space is perhaps best thought of as a three dimensional void where things are held to exist only if they occupy volume.  Location based technologies negate the consideration of volume and view space along the lines of abstract Cartesianism.

...Similarly, beginning with the 16th century, the conception of space which relied on the Cartesian coordinate system set in motion a marginalization of place.  Space with its numerical properties was regarded as absolute and infinite.  Thus it was perceived as scientific and crucial to the goal of imperialism.

...Certain activities are accorded special spatial status, while others are not.  Driving a truck is spatial (hence, work), talking on the phone is less spatial (hence, bureaucratic), and pondering an idea is simply ethereal (Sack, 1980, p. 17) hence, indolent.

Yi Fu Tuan refers to the kind of properties that create a sense of place.  He also questions, what is space, and how does one have a sense of spaciousness?  In what ways do people attach meaning to space and place?  The answer goes beyond the cultural; there are certain "animal" relationships to space and place... one could say, embodied senses of how we orient ourselves to space and place.  We are interested in how space and place are understood, so that we can question how technology disorients our sense of space and place, or amplifies our sense of space and place.

Three themes run through Yi Fu Tuans book:

1) The biological facts

2)  The relations of space and place

3) The range of experience or knowledge. 

He amplifies these themes on page 6 of the Introduction. 

Chapter 2 focuses on the Experiential Perspective.  Experience is made up of sensation, perception and conception.  These influence on a continuum, emotion and thought.

Experience is directed to the external world.  Seeing and thinking clearly reach out beyond the self. Feeling however, reflects the way in which the self is inwardly affected.  (p. 9).

This is important to think about because as you come to define your own experiences, it helps you think about how to design experiences for other people. The final project will be the result of a complex experience design.

tactile perception is at the extreme opposite of visual perception.  The skin is able to convey certain spatial ideas and can do so without the support of other senses, depending on the structure of the body and the ability to move. (p. 14)

Sounds, though vaguely located, can convey a strong sense of size (volume) and of distance.  For example, in an empty cathedral the sound of footsteps tapping sharply on the stone floor creates an impression of cavernous vastness. (p15)

(which makes me think of the creative possibilities of sound to create, record or alter space.)

Three principal types of space (p. 17), with large areas of overlap, exist - the mythical, the pragmatic, and the abstract or theoretical.  Mythical space is a conceptual schema, but it is also pragmatic space in the sense that within that schema a large number of practical activities, such as planting and harvesting of crops, are ordered.  A difference between mythical and pragmatic space is that the latter is defined by a more limited set of economic activities....  When an ingenious person tries to describe the soil pattern cartographically, by means of symbols, a further move toward the conceptual mode occurs.  In the Western world systems of geometry - that is highly abstract spaces - have been created out of primal experiences.  Thus sensorimotor and tactile experiences would seem to lie at the root of Euclid's theorems concerning shape congruence and the parallelism of distant lines; and visual perception is the basis for projective geometry. (p.17)

(so how would you design an experience that would separate the senses, and give a single sense experience of space. )

An object or place achieves concrete reality when our experience of it is total, that is, through all the senses as well as with the active and reflective mind. (p. 18)

(How can you deconstruct a place to recreate it as a new, whole, concrete experience?)

Spatial Ability, Knowledge and Place

P. 68 - Walking is a skill, but if I can "see" myself walking and if I hold that picture in mind sp that I can analyze how I move and what path I am following, then I also have knowledge.  That knowledge is transferable to another person through EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION IN WORDS, WITH DIAGRAMS, AND IN GENERAL BY SHOWING HOW COMPLEX MOTION consists of parts that can be analyzed or imitated.

P. 73 - When space feels thoroughly familiar to us, it has become place.  Kinesthetic and perceptual experience as well as the ability to form concepts are required for the change if the space is large.

How well do you relate to small or large spaces?  Do you become disoriented in large spaces?  How would you design an experience that relates small and large spaces so that the viewer/user has to orient through some kind of maze like experience to orient themselves.

What are the spaces that have become places for you?

Call for submissions - Vimeo Festival

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The first annual Vimeo Festival + Awards is right around the corner. We're putting in a TON of work to make it the greatest experience in the history of mankind (or at least close to that), and we want to make sure that the Vimeo community is represented fully. That's why we need your help.

The Vimeo Festival will showcase the greatest minds and the most innovative work that we see on the web. In that vein, we are creating a special gallery space to showcase the coolest work that the Vimeo community has to offer. If you make mind-blowing installations, futuristic video technology pieces, or anything else that is fun and interactive that you think would shine in the Vimeo Gallery, we want to showcase it at the Vimeo Festival (NOTE: We are only looking for actual physical installations, not just videos). This is a phenomenal opportunity to come to the festival and have your work shown to thousands of people in the heart of New York City's gallery area in Chelsea, not to mention displaying your stuff to the Vimeo community in real life!

To submit your work for either the Vimeo Gallery, please email us at awards@vimeo.com with a detailed description or video of your work.

The Vimeo atmosphere of unbounded creativity and technological innovation creates such a rich artistic environment on the site, and we hope you will help us to properly represent this segment of the community at the Festival. We can't wait to see your stuff!

YouTubePlay curated by the Guggenheim museum

YouTube Play

[murmur] Toronto

[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. The stories that are recorded range from personal recollections to more "historic" stories, or sometimes both — but always are told from a personal point of view, as if the storyteller is just out for a stroll and was casually talking about their neighbourhood to a friend. All our stories are available on the [murmur] website, but their details truly come alive as the listener walks through, around, and into the narrative. By engaging with [murmur], people develop a new intimacy with places, and "history" acquires a multitude of new voices. The physical experience of hearing a story in its actual setting — of hearing the walls talk — brings uncommon knowledge to common space, and brings people closer to the real histories that make up their world.

OneBlockRadius screenshot

One Block Radius, produced for The New Museum in 2004 by Christina Ray and David Mandl created a web based "psychogeographic portrait of a single Bowery block" with the help of media contributions from artists and the public.

Documentary Video embedded into a web site

This web site won the 2010 Webby award for best documentary, single episode.  Produced by the National Film Board of Canada, it is called Waterlife

http://waterlife.nfb.ca/

The blog addresses

One blog missing....

Aymann Ismail http://aymannvid3.blogspot.com/
Costa Boutsikaris http://costaboutsikaris.blogspot.com/
Danielle DiTaranto http://daniellevid.blogspot.com/
John Casale http://johncasale.blogspot.com/
Morgan Sun http://morgansun.wordpress.com/
Ryan Hrnciar http://rhrnciarvideo3.blogspot.com/
Tiffany Dodson http://tiffanydanielle.tumblr.com/
Tika Prospere

GlowLab and One Block Radius

Glowlab is over as an artist collective.  Wow!  That is why the site for One Block Radius is down.  But here is an archive of some of the work they did.

Christina Ray, the original founder of Glowlab is still working and running the Conflux festival, which is Oct. 8 - 10 at NYU.  I recommend dropping by. I'll be there....

Fluxus, Situationists, Psychogeography

Daniel Spoerri and The Anecdoted Topography of Chance are a prime example of Fluxus aesthetic - chance, happening, do-it-yourself.

The 20th century avante-garde art movements such as Fluxus influenced the Situationists, who are the precursors and spiritual inspiration for Locative Media.

The Situationist International and Guy Debord experimented in the 1950s by wandering around urban cities, recording the emotional pulse emitting from the metropolis. Known as drifting, these artists would chart human experience to a geographic map to create psychogeography.

Syllabus

Video 3/Advanced Video: 
Neighborhood Narratives

Fall 2010, Rutgers University
081: 441: 01; 081: 446: 01
CSB – 326 Downtown
 Wednesdays, 10:00 – 1:00

Instructor: Hana Iverson
Guest Instructor: David Gordon
Email: hiverson@rci.rtugers.edu; hanaiver@gmail.com
Office Hours: After class, by appointment.

Overview

What are some of the differences between video designed on a linear model and interactive video? In Neighborhood Narratives, the urban landscape is a canvas where digital media in the form of text, sound, and image are applied to real places in order to document the definable aspects of place that simultaneously reveal and construct their essence and trigger authentic engagement. Certain aspects of mobile media and interaction will be investigated through a video framework. This process encourages participants to combine the skills of the storyteller (the grounded expert with detailed everyday knowledge) with the flaneur (the mobile observer of the city with a broad overview). 

In Neighborhood Narratives we explore the real and metaphorical potentialities of mapping, walking, and way-finding as methods of developing attachments, connecting, and constructing narratives in a virtual and spatial locality (neighborhood).

The final assignments may be but are not limited to presentation on location in the city.



The course is divided into three themes:

Theme one: Place and Space. The course begins with an examination of the concept of place. We explore questions such as: What is place? What is the difference between place and space? How are places mapped?  What is the relationship of place to location?

Theme two: Embodied Practice. We investigate how the body can function as an interface to trigger media. With sensor-based body actions, the body can enact causal relationships in the environment. The body can trigger media projection, or the body can be a screen for media.  Extending this idea, the body is mediation and the world is the media.

Theme three: Merger of Mixed reality and Mobility. Mobile media are tools that connect the physical to the virtual, by handheld connectivity to networks and webs. New public sites are emerging as a result of this mix - situated storysites, cell phone applications, environmental installations that incorporate technology, to name a few -  that create a new form of experience and authorship.



Schedule of Classes and Assignments
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SCHEDULE IS SUBJECT TO CHANGES AND ADDITIONS!




Sept. 1
Introduction: What is Neighborhood Narratives? 
The history of the class, case studies. What are some of the differences between video designed on a linear model and interactive video?  What are the issues of public, semi-private and private video display?
Outline of class project + individual projects.

Assignment:  Storyboard your next two weeks on a T-shirt, giving location and event.
Sept. 15
Introduction to Space and Place
Review of T-shirt assignment
Psychogeography: One Block Radius (GlowLab), Murmur Toronto
Equipment, class project team, project design.

Assigned reading:  From Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience; From Body, Memory, Architecture, edited by Kent C. Blommer and Charles W. Moore, Body Movement by Robert J. Yudell.

Assignment: Selecting one block in New Brunswick, go on a psychogeographic drift for a min. of 1 hour, max. of 12 hours.  Select a topic to observe: people (can include interviews), trash, signs, architecture, sidewalks, etc. With a video camera, document your observation.  Video should be min. 1 min., max. 8 min. with all in-camera edits – turn camera on, turn camera off.  Compress in Final Cut and upload to YouTube or Vimeo.

Sept. 22
Place and Space: Review of themes
David Gordon joins class.
Review psychogeography: One Block Radius (GlowLab), Murmur Toronto
Review T-shirts, videos

Reading:  John Cage article from ArtForum; From Ambient Findablity by Peter Morville, A Brief History of Wayfinding
 
Assignment: Map videos to GoogleMaps or GoogleEarth
Sept. 29
Open Space, Open systems
John Cage by David Gordon. David Gordon and all he thinks about.

Assigned Reading: Locative Media Artists in the Contested Aware City by Anthony Townsend; Locative Arts by Drew Hemment

Assignment: Open system video, location-based.

Oct. 6
Embodiment. Cell phone video 
Steve Bull visitor
Review assignments

Assigned Reading: From Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation by Nick Kaye, Introduction: Site Specifics;

Assignment: Cell phone video

Oct. 13
Public Art.
Kystof Wodizcko and “Public Address”. 
Public memorials, counter-memorials.
Networked public screens
Review Cell phone video

Assigned Reading: Critical Vehicles; Creating Democracy, A Dialogue with Krzysztof Wodiczko 

Mid-term Assignment:  Put something here

Oct. 20
Public Art and Politics
Mid-term Review: Put Something Here
More about public display

Assigned Reading: From Illuminating Video: Video Installation Art: The Body, the Image and the Space In-between by Margaret Morse

Oct. 27
The Body as Interface
Sarah Drury visitor
http://isc.temple.edu/sdrury/sd/interactive_evokability.htmlhttp://isc.temple.edu/sdrury/sd/interactive_evokability.html
The body as agent for media in a public or performative environment
Akitsugu Mayebashi, Sonic Interface

Assigned Reading: Body, Memory and Community

Assignment:  Body as Interface Videos – installation or…

Nov. 3
Augmented Reality
Craig Kapp visitor

Assigned Reading: Jean Beaudriard, Please Follow Me

Nov. 10
Public/Private
Review Body videos
Janet Cardiff, Sophie Calle

Assignment:  Following

Nov. 17
Public/Private II
Review Following.
Outline requirements for final projects.  How to weave together the themes from the 5 major videos - drifting, live multi-source video, put something here (the public and politics), the body as interface, and following…
Discussion of Papers/Manifestos

Assignment: Following Part II

Mon. Nov. 22
Catching up.
Class project review
Discussion of final projects.

Dec. 1
Final Projects due. On-site presentations (maybe)

Dec. 8
Critique of projects, class etc.

TBD - MGS public presentation of projects and class video

First day and Psychogeography

http://www.mookychick.co.uk/spirit/psychogeography.php