Every historical period sees itself as contemporary

Every historical period sees itself as contemporary. The inventors of the telegraph made many of the same claims as the designers of the Internet. Pioneers in the production and creation of film in the 1890’s traveled the world in an effort to generate interest in the new medium and to establish networks of playhouses where their films could be viewed (this activity is now being repeated in the Microcinema Movement which uses DV cameras). Every form of transportation that humans have invented has led to their use in the transmission of information from trains to boats and planes. The movement of personal letters across vast distances especially from the 17th century onwards is partially the result of the increase in modes of transport, especially ships (and the idea of a post office as a fulcrum for distribution). Typography remains as important to the World Wide Web as it did to early forms of publishing with the Gutenberg Press. Modes of illustration, although fundamentally altered by sophisticated software, remain embedded in centuries old methods of drawing, painting and sketching.

My point is not to belittle or dilute the importance of new technologies at the beginning of the 21st century. Rather, it is to place them into a context that will connect innovation to history and that will show how the very notion that a computer can create links between different bits of information was an “invention? that came about because of a three hundred year experiment in Western culture with novels and theater. It is important to remember that during the early phase of discussions about computers among engineers and designers, computers were generally thought of as “arithmetic? machines, or glorified calculators. As time progressed, it was the culture of experimental labs like the Bell Labs and Xerox-Parc that began to move computers far beyond initial assumptions both about their power and their utility. Brilliant scientists and engineers ran those labs. The actual role and impact of creative artists and designers needs to be examined with great care, but it is clear that the effort to go beyond simple functionality came about because of the tensions and challenges posed by different disciplinary orientations clashing with each other.

Pathways to Innovation in Digital Culture

Although this report was written in 1999, it still has many elements that are very important to present day debates about digital culture.

Michel Serres and Technology

Little India in Singapore

The brilliant French philosopher, Michel Serres proposes in recent publications that one of the best ways of understanding history is to think about human events as a series of interconnected folds, a networks of networks in which events that may have taken place thousands of years ago are still connected to the present through human memory and human artifacts.

The folds of which Serres speaks can be visualized as a series of pleated pages in which different points touch, sometimes arbitrarily and other times by design. The metaphor that Serres has developed has another purpose. In order to understand the technologies, social movements and cultural phenomena that humans have created, each point of contact among all these pleats needs to be drawn out in a detailed and narrative manner. Although Serres does not describe this method as stream of consciousness that is sometimes how it reads, to the point where the simplest of objects becomes the premise for an expansive narrative.

For example, (adapting Serres’s method) the notion of networks needs to be understood not only as a function of technology and communications systems, but also through the efforts by nearly every culture and every generation to develop a variety of bonds using any number of different means from language to art to music to political, religious and economic institutions. This suggests that the Internet, for example, is merely a modern extension of already existing forms of communication between people. And, while that may seem obvious, many of the claims about the Internet suggest that it is a revolutionary tool with implications for the ways in which people see themselves and their surroundings. More often than not, its revolutionary character is related to obvious characteristics like speed of communications, which may in fact be no more than a supplement to profoundly traditional modes of information exchange. The intersection of the revolutionary with the traditional is essential to the success of any new and innovative technology and may be at the heart of how quickly any individual innovation is actually taken up by individuals or by society as a whole.

Some recent comments on Research and Wikipedia

From Chris on Research in the Arts

Here in the UK, arts research culture might be a bit more accepted, but it is still nascent. I agree that the terms 'practice-based' and 'theory-based' set up a problematic dichotomy for research culture. In acknowledging the distinction, one runs the risk of mirroring the historical bias towards empiricism. This bias has supported a hierarchy of epistemologies that, descending from quantitative research to qualitative research and from theory-based to practice-based research, denies the creative arts a platform for expression as knowledge.

The ways in which the creative arts shape our understanding of the world are difficult to measure, but no less significant than other models of knowledge. If most 'pure science' researchers would accept that some form of rudimentary research occurs prior to art making, can we take it even further? Can we suggest that an artwork - in itself - is a form of research?

I believe we can. Especially when it involves the active questioning of existing frameworks for understanding, with the inclusion of an 'experiment' designed to fill in the gaps that are opened up by these questions. This occurs most frequently in the new media arts now, an area informed by cognitive models of the human condition, based on active experimentation with new technologies that pose questions about how we perceive.

The conclusions from these arts experiments may not be concrete, indeed they may be difficult to outline and impossible to apply in any economy. But insofar as they function as part of a process of semiosis - the generation of signs and thus meaning... well... they're rather important, and deserve to be encouraged.

From Mary on the idea of an Art School as Wikipedia

If Wikipedia were an art school, it would look like WalMart. Nah. It would look like an academic department that has been around for too long - a congerie of pseudo-experts. Nothing worse than that. Consolidated mediocrity. When I first saw Wikipedia I thought - WOW - post-structuralism meets pedagogy in the form of an ever-evolving set of artifacts. Nope. Take a deeper look at the rules governing the construction of knowledge in Wikipedia -- no controversy blah blah -- but the most interesting thing to me -- no original knowledge -- wow -- and just go look at how this absolutely implausible limit condition is defined and policed. Fascinating. Then go look at the Rosa Parks entry, and carefully go through the history of the page. Look at the contest over "getting it right" and "getting the controversy out of the story". Art school. Wow. I hope not. Wikipedia is modernism run amok. A moebius strip of epistemic spam.

From a Recent Event at Emily Carr Institute

Presentation on Research in Art and Design

CURRENT is the Journal of Design at Emily Carr University. Here is a recent discussion between myself and the editors.

Discussion