NEIN (9 rejected submissions / proposals)
By alex cruse
So much unseen labor goes into trying to get small groups of people to care about your thoughts and/or give you money, so that you may produce…even produce… even more work. These are failed attempts at that.
Name: alex cruse Prefered Dates: 12/15/2014-12/30/14 Project Description: I am proposing an experimental video-essay, which combines a reading of an (in-progress) text and abstracted representation of the built environment (please see the attached document.) Thus far, I have filmed portions portions of Los Angeles' underground tunnel system, financial buildings, and religious sites, in order to show 1) how representations of the body have been embedded into civic structures, and 2) how architecture and evolving ideas of technicity increasingly govern our interpersonal and/or sexual relationships. I use both speculative and historical works through which to explore these theories; however, it is not a "didactic" or documentarian effort, per se— se—much of the film is intended to be interpretative, and activated by the viewer. The film's title, "The Pliant Matrix," alludes to this flexible and subjective view of, perhaps, somewhat more rigid or "fixed" concepts (economic systems, architecture, etc.)
"Motor Babble and Resilient Machines: Phenomenology of the Biocomputer" From a neurological perspective, we are unaware of the medium through which we receive information. During this process, our brains' respective data structures are activated so quickly, that these systems cannot recognize themselves as such. A decreased temporal resolution of meta-representational functions implies that there exists no attentional availability within earlier processing stages. Therefore, we operate as cognitive systems that are unable to experience their own subsymbolic self-model as a model . Extending the work of cognition theorist Thomas Metzinger and digital poetics scholar Brian Kim Stefans, I will investigate how a 'transparent phenomenal self-model' (that being, the aforementioned integrated, internal representation of the organic entity as a whole) complements/complicates Digital Poetics and other computer-generated textual methodologies as literary praxes —and how each of these cant a phenomenological axis into the domain of neurobiological computation. Following this, I will also engage Max Weber's concept of Innerlichkeit ("a preoccupation with the mind as both object and subject of experience") [1] and its implications for Whole Brain Emulation (WBE), or, the hypothetical "uploading" of human consciousness to computational devi ces: as “schizophrenic” machines—which literally and figuratively embody the act of transmitting the thoughts of an Other —have already been willfully designed [2], how might human artifacts of language, culture, and experience be embedded into a bio-computational self-model? Moreover, how might these machines navigate this inscribed 'neural' topology and evolve an internal representation?
1. The Conceptual Self in Context. Ulric Neisser, ed. 2. at the University of Texas in 2011
I n M edia Res Res[ istance] istance] : Per Per f orm i ng Augmented Augmented Reali Reali ty For this symposium, my collaborator Julia Litman-Cleper and I wish to recognize the inherent difficulty in parsing visuals which “actively” construct a new, more politically -progressive reality, reality, from those all pervasive sign sign systems systems which assist assist the repressive repressive themes themes of the current current capitalistic capitalistic order. order. Even nascent nascent visual tropes in technologically-base technologically-based d art have been co-opted and recuperated, invoked by corporations to assert their brand‟s their brand‟s credibility credibility within within „net art‟ subcultures. Even this th is symposium‟s call symposium‟s call for “Visual Activism” implies impl ies an image-oriented process, through which institutions and corporations seek to construct their public identity. identity . We were provoked to try to find „de -visible‟ means of activism: resistance though non-visualization. With regard to the Internet — Internet — the the de-centralized pinnacle of image trade — trade — radical visions become collapsed within a fixed system and are neutralized by their proximity to banal and/or commercial commercial images. As Paul Virilio writes in his essay “Eye Lust,” “[m] “ [m]achines achines […] by mediatizing ordinary everyday representations end up destroying their credibility.” This limitation of imagery‟s political capacity has deleterious implications for globalized consciousness and political action. Rather than recognize the value of site-specificity or meaning as a product of de-territorializes and dislocates . localized knowledge, media-imagery now paradoxically colonizes as it de-territorializes
This precipitated the general thesis of our project: how can activists alter or augment a spatial reality reality of his/her own design, while still taking into account the inescapable ocularcentrism of our times? Can we create new spaces that combine real space + image-making, in order to both empower local interactions, as well as remove the prescribed authority of city wide sign-systems? Currently, the urban city-scape standardizes our collective vision. While its dominant mode, historically,
alluded to abstract activities outside itself, today it functions within a closed, entropic system of conspicuous consumption. Representations of the consumer-impulse consumer- impulse (“visual passivity”) have become embedded within social media — while while the dissemination of visuals may be intrinsically-motivated, the visuals themselves are still a product of hegemonic forces and distributed within a massive, unintelligible semiocracy. We turn to using spatial visualizations — visualizations — in in an attempt to incorporate collectivization and a sense of situated locality into the image-making process — process — thusly thusly emphasizing individual engagement. We propose an alternative zone of augmented-reality (specifically, projections of a theoretical urban plan using 3D modelling and a combination of different software) to empower the individual with the types of visuals that s/he chooses to see: removing advertisement images and including the viewer in the process of image augmentation. Through the creation of an installed space and the implementation of an ocular, wearable device that effectively deletes unwanted or unnecessary visuals from the wearer‟s f ield-off ield-ofvision, we endeavor to increase the user‟s visual -autonomy and ability to reclaim extant, industrialized landscapes.
(above images by Julia Litman-Cleper)
TRANSDUCE/MUTATE: THE BUILT EPHEMERAL Museums and galleries are hierarchical institutions, in service only to projects which advan ce and protect capital. In response to this idea, I have conceived of a quasi-biomorphic exhibition space without curators or organizational praxis; the contents therein are completely randomized, ephemeral, viewer (user)-generated, and in-flux. Through the projection of live footage of the patrons through Club Rothko Builder — their their likenesses a medium; WebGL a canvas — unique unique digital sculptures may be created, by distorting a 3D base mesh and adjusting the given parameters. Any Twitter hash-tags generated by users/viewers about the space can be processed p rocessed and using TwitIE (an open-source information extraction pipeline for “microblog” text, which uses Named Entity Recognition algorithms), algorithms), and could then be recombined the textual data with the aforementioned visuals in experimental, unexpected ways. Audio is likewise generated by the voices therein, and played back using vector-based amplitude panning for 3D sound spatialization. The politics embedded in the space itself (problematic issues of labor which surround both the physical environment and the technology within) unfortunately undermine the authenticity of a truly trans-material and decentralized artistic environment. However, the recursive and ephemeral qualities of the “exhibitions” would ideally remain resistant to the formalizing logic of art establishments, while simultaneously engaging themes of sur/sousveillance; Socially Distributed Cognition; the transparency and capture of telecommun ications; and how bodies are (literally, symbolically) represented within architectural confines.
My work is inspired by authors, film-makers, and theorists who encourage experimentalism as an embodied praxis of everyday life, and has been directly informed by theoretical architecture and the cultural trope of "city as text." I am interested in creating conceptual blueprints for future landscapes, to emphasize human agency in physical space as our interactions become more condensed within invisible, ephemeral zones. The project I am proposing for this residency would surpass —in both technicity and scope— scope —any of my previous aesthetic undertakings. However, it would extend the aforementioned philosophy at the core of my art-practice, and would hopefully contribute to ongoing discourses around urban surveillance. Using an intuitive, perambulatory method, I would record approximately seven hours of audio (one hour per day), from each of the five "circular zones" of Paris's public transportation system. I would then translate and compress the raw data visualizations into a single "sonic identity" for each zone. Subsequently, using the appropriate software, I would translate these wave-forms from their twodimensional state and prepare them to be printed as 3D objects. The process by which these pieces would be created —the computation of the images' properties— properties —would itself mirror that auditory grouping process carried out by the brain when it experiences sound. The resultant abstract knowledge structures produced by the brain as this process occurs would, as such, be represented as aestheticized, abstract data. Through the physicalization of data, the individual is paradoxically represented and displaced. These sculptures would embody the schematic spatial relationship between the city's transients and their aural environments. To this end, I would like to reintroduce the sculptures back to their source: ideally, having them temporarily displayed in the zones where the corresponding sounds were acquired. Additionally, this project would be a demonstration of how current data models often obscure, rather than illuminate, meaning within our external world. The density of these wave-forms would symbolize a reticular web of a thousand consciousnesses —the localized, 3D objects would collapse the distance between ambient sound; the white noise of industry; phatic and didactic speech. To quote Michel de Certeau in "Walking in the City": "the fiction of knowledge is related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more," to be "a totalizing eye." I intend to exploit this tension between information (what is recorded and processed) and knowledge (the information's symbolic content), and how technology delimits each. Ideally, this series would transmute the banality of the everyday— everyday—encoded in our linguistic and commercial systems— systems —and render it as a new, abstract, and visually-compelling form of urban poetics. Thank you very much for your consideration and time.
