Archive for the ‘Research & literature’ Category

INTERFACE: Sixth Sense

Pranav Mistry, Research Assistant and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, has developed a prototype for a new computing environment integrating physical objects in the digital realm and vice versa, through the use of video and gestures.
In this TED talk he gives us a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in the Sixth Sense technology.

I draw immediate associations to the works of Myron Krueger in his VIDEOPLACE installation back in the 70’s, and the many virtual reality applications of the early 90’s. This guy, however, is bringing out the best of the worlds. Usable, simple and non-restricted.

Enjoy!

For more information on projects and works, visit Pranavmistry.com

BIOLOGICAL REMIX: Project draft

When remix culture enter nature

Man seem to be in a constant struggle against nature. We don’t want to wait for natural selection and evolution to present changes we have imagined. Some fights have been more successful than others, and the last decade have fostered initiatives that aim to work more closely with or build upon principles of nature. Science is turning to nature to deocde the source of various functionality that then are implemeted in human design.

For my academic paper in my Remix Culture class, I want to see to what extent remix culture as an activity has entered the natural domain.

This means that I need to find way to define remixing as a cultural activity, and for this I will draw on the curriculum and research we have explored in class (particularily the work of Jenkins, Barthes, Dawkins, Foucault, Lessig)
Based on these works and various discussions in class there seems to be some elements connected to this activity:

¤ Deconstruction: The ability to see new elemental pieces in a work, that carries their own specific beauty, intent or meaning.

¤ Reconstruction: The ability to choose specific parts for their meaning to construct a new narrative or context.

¤ Referral to the original work/s: The extent to which, and the various ways the remixed work is referring to the original.
Here I will explore the definitions provided by Eduardo Navas on his Remix Theory site, and Zachary McCune’s suggestion for a remix taxanomy. Both rely heavily on music as their source for definition and it is interesting to see how these definitions work in a greater realm of remix culture.

¤ Mixed media: with digital technologies, we see a a rise in mixed media remixes as well.

¤ Spreadability: the connection between the new narrative in a remix and its referral to the original seems to

¤ Amaterus and professionals: New media technologies have lowered the threshold for creation. Production equipment is not longer controlled and owned by professionals, and Internet has provided us with a forum for sharing that is unpresedented.

¤ Ethical framework: attribution, economic compensation, respect for the original work.

Having created a framework for understanding what “to remix” can entail, it is time to look into whether the current activity that exist in bio technology, bioengineering, gene technology etc. can be translated into remix.
I have found the best sources for exploration in the realm of biological art, where artists move into a domain previously occupied by specialised scientists, and will look into how their work introduces permanent or cosemtic changes in the biological setup of simple bacteria, plants, insects, animals and even humans.

DECONSTRUCTION

In terms of looking at deconstruction as an element of a remix activity in an biological realm, I have turned to the
various genome projects, especially the Human Genome Project, which is the highly ambisious scientific goal to identify the 20-25.000 genes in the human DNA, and their functionality, as well as tranferring this knowledge and technology to the private sector.
Scientists have already identified large parts of the genome of various animals (fully utilized in breeding technologies), insects (the fruit fly’s genome is now fully sequenced), even the neanderthals.

RECONSTRUCTION

Reconstruction in biological remix has to do the ability to bringing already isolated elements or qualities into a new composistion or maybe even narrative.
The performance artist Stelios Arcadiou aka Stelarc is preoccupied with the identity of the body, and in 2006 he comitted to surgery to have a third ear attached to his left arm. As he describes it “a facial feature has been replicated, relocated and will now be rewired for alternate capabilities”. This ear has the functions of the normal ear, and in one stage of the project (althoug now removed) a microphone was attached at the end of the ear (inside the arm) to transmitt the sounds caught by the ear.

REFERRING TO THE ORIGINAL

Here I am still looking for concrete sources to work from, although one can say that most reconstructions seem to be heavily relying on the source material. From works based on pure appropriation (e.g the DNA portrait visualizing your individual DNA sequences as visual art pieces, that you can buy, or Gary Schneider’s Genetic Self Portrait) to complete reformations of original intent of the building blocks, elements earlier viewed as part of a biological whole, are set together in new, cultural constellations based on the specific sets of functionality. One example is the student project led by assistant professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, Chris Voigt, creating living photographs produced through genetically re-engineering e.coli bacterias to respond as pixels in a SLR camera, the amount light exposure will trigger the production of pigment in the bacteria, thus producing the levels in a picture.

MIXED MEDIA

In terms of the question of mixed media, it might be frutiful to discuss interspecies mixes versus cross-species creations, or transgenic works basing itself in recombinant DNA technology – the composition of DNA sequenses that do not occus naturally together in a cell. This technology have been used to create insect resistant crops, to introduce genes from fireflies in tobacco plants for the plants to glow in the dark, to the latest creation of Eduardo Kac – the Natural History of Enigma, that he proudly names a plantimal – as this cross-hybrid Petunia (labeled the Eduania) expresses the genes of Kac in its red blood veins. There are discussion as to whether this is a true plantimal, as various bacteria and virus from different species explode and crash with our own human DNA (causing small, but often unimportant mutations). Here I need to find some good sources for discussion.

SPREADABILITY

Spreadability in biological remix might be transferred to the question of fertility. Whether the new work/creation is fertile and will live beyond its single appearance, or it the alteration is cosmetic, even superficial.
In case of the Eduania, this “plantimal” is fertile, its seed will give rise to a new series of Edunias.

AMATERUR/PROFESSIONAL

Biological engineering is no longer an activity reserved scientists. Although there are strict ethical guidelines framing the practise of biological research and engineering, off-lab organisations and networks of artist, hobby-biologists are forming, e.g. DIYBio who just held their DNA extraction Party and present themselves as:
“DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety”
or the more open source activist group Hackteria. Many of the projects in these groups are still simple in concept, and often concern with building the equipment required to work with micro-organisms in an off-lab setting. Still, they give an indication of bringing the technology, ethical guidelines and knowledge required to take nature’s potential in their own hands.

ETHICAL FRAMEWORK

I also want to look more closely into the ethical guidelines and discussion arised in the human genome project and will use discussion material presented in the project as a starting point.

Research material

I have benefitted from the article Gene Culture – The Molecule Metaphor in Visual Art by Suzanne Anker.
This article presents Anker’s research on how biological metaphors are appearing in visual arts, and how cultural hybrids (or “chimera’s” as she labels them) are appearing in biology through work of both scientists and artists. Particularily she is interested in how “genetic imaging operates as aesthetic signs” – and looks at examples of replication in art vs cloning (and other methods of copying gene material) and immaterial copyrights vs gene-patents. Of particular interest her presentation of bioartist George Gessert whose work have been labeled as genetic grafitti – where he let “fictional” genomes intervene in an ecosystem dominated by natural selection. (2000). She also touches upon the application of ethics that quite automatically seems to enter the conversation when biological engineering is focused on augmentation of man (e.g in the principles behind breeding versus eugenics).

REFLECTION: DAWKINS’ MEME

Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene, Chapter 11 (1976)

THE MEME AS A SELFISH REPLICATOR

Richard Dawkins introduces the notion of the meme, and uses characteristica of the gene from his theory of the selfish gene to explain another kind of evolution than the one proposed by Darwin in the theory of natural selection – namely the development of culture.

He states that genes propagate/breed/spread through the capacity of being a replicator, and the success of the replication is based on longevity – the life span of the gene, fecundity – fertility of the gene and copying-fidelity – ability to be copied
Dawkins translates these properties to the meme, and argues memes to be the driving force behind cultural evolution – an evolution not controlled by genes.
The process of meme replication is that of imitation, and any brain that is capable of imitation can also hold a meme.
He is arguing that memes aren’t high-fidelity replicators as memes slightly change or mutate when it is copied from one brain to another.
Finally he argues from man’s ability to “defy” the selfish genes that results in natural instinct of survival through e.g. our use of contraceptives, in the same way that man can escape the indoctrination of particular (and selfish) memes through “discuss[ing] ways of cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism”.

SOME UNCLARITY

Dawkins speaks of memes as cultural genes, and to some extent is in unclear to me whether he considers all ideas and concepts to be memes or clusters of memes, or only those that are not based in rational argument and evidence.
How else can a discussion liberate us from the indoctrination of selfish meme?

He is also using the metaphor of the virus to explain some of the properties of the meme, which is confusing as he originally translated the meme’s qualities from the gene. Viruses are not natural replicators, but “parasites” that attach themselves to the replicating ability of a gene, which causes them to spread.

MEMES, MARKETING AND THE FREUDIAN SUBCONSCIOUS

In the British BBC documentary seriers “Century of the Self“, the writer, Adam Curtis, is explaining the starting point of modern marketing with its utilization of Freud’s psychoanalytical principles, especially the theory’s of the subconscious being dominated by primal desires and aggressions. The effect of a marketing campaign was measured by its ability to connect to the primal desires of subconscious, however in a clever and covert way, to attract people to a given product – and in this way “engineer the concent” of the receiver – turning him/her into a passive consumer – a controllable receptor.

There seems to be some similarities between the perspective presented in this documentary and the indoctrinative effect of the meme, as well as an ingredient in the discussion of how media spread.

NEIL STEPHENSON’S UR-MEME OF ENKI

In Neil Stephenson’s Snowcrash we are introduced to mixed reality world, where virtual technology and the real physical enviroment of man is overlapping. In this future we confronted with the invention of (audio)-visuall virtual software program/virus that speaks in the language of Enki. Enki is the Sumerian god of Technology, who introduced tools to mankind. Enki re-programs us with new functionality, by speaking directly to our hardwired brain, into the firmwire so to say. This new knowledge is not granted us through a reflection and emerging understanding, it is rather an upgrade of our system. In “Snowcrash” a group of people have gained knowledge of the language of Enki, with interesting consequenses…

I wanted to add this assosiation as well, as it made me think of a hardwired version of Dawkins’ meme, and one that we can’t resist under any circumstance, because it is introduced before reaching an rational mental capacity of the mind.

REFLECTION: FOUCAULT & BARTHES

Michel Foucault:
What is an Author? 1969
Abstract: An critical view on the notion of an author by looking at various aspects, such as the individualisation of the author, the difficult relationship between an author and his/her work in terms of interpretation and finally, the notion of the author funtion. He opposes the postition of the author with the position of the discourse a writer can bring about.

Roland Barthes:
The Death of the Author 1967
Abstract: Barthes looks into the relationship between the author, the work and the reader. He argues that the notion of an author came into play at the end of the middle ages with the new found focus on the individual, and as a result contemporary culture understands a text through its relationship with the life, hostory, taste and desires of the writer of the text. This view is constricted as an author in many ways is a copyist, a mediater of language and secondly that it ignores the contribution of meaning provided by the reader.

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT: PERFORMER, AUTHOR, READER

Barthes argues for a historical development of the author-reader relationship.
Pre-individualistic times (before the Reformation) did not connect a writer with a certain text (much as Tom Pettitt presents in the “Before the Gutenberg Parenthesis: Elizabethan-American Compatibilities” where he states that: “pre-parenthetical culture is [..] dominated by [...]: the re-creative, collective, con-textual, unstable, traditional performance”.) The writer is a mediator, a messenger presenting the collective knowledge in a narrative, and the performer (whether that is the writer himself or someone else, is judged by his her ability to present a good narrative.
Anna Nimus in Copyright, Copyleft and the Creative Anti- Commons states that “The Romantic revolution marked the birth of proprietary authorship” and that “different pre-Enlightenment traditions did not consider ideas to be original inventions that could be owned because knowledge was held in common”.

Barthes continues that the authorative position of the author in terms of understanding, grasping the meaning of a given text is an illusion. It is a tyranny of interpretation – as the text has been given a final meaning – way of understanding. Barthes says: “To give an Author to a text is to impose upon that text a stop clause, [] a final signification”. The illusion lies in not seeing that it is the readers and their endless interpretations of the text that constitues a works total meaning.
He argues that the author is really dead the moment a text comes into to being. He says: “The Author [] is always conceived as the past of his own book”, “the Author is supposed to feed the book – that is, he pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it.” At the point of conception it is handed over to the readers who automatically gain ownership of the text through grasping the words and the language behind.
NB: How does this relate to modern hermeneutics and historism as a mean to interpret, understand a text?

THE AUTHOR FUNCTION AND THE DISCOURSE

Foucault sets up four characteristica of the author function:
1. That the function of the author is connected to the system of law and organisation in a society
2. That the way an author function affect the discourse varies over time
3. An author is not immediately attibuted a discourse when a work is produced, it happens in retrospect.
4. The author function does not refer to a single, real individual (as Barthes demonstrates in the introduction of his article through citing Balzak in his story Sarrasine stating that “all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices”. Who is speaking?

Foucault continues by asking: “What difference does it make who is speaking?”

Foucault looks into the function of the author, and how this function is connected to certain discourses, as opposed to others. He claims that the role author and the concept of originality of his/hers works came the introduction of legal systems introducing the notion of property. The author has a distinct impact on the meaning of a text, and authorative figure that even through methods of seperating the author from the work – he/she is still very present in the understanding of text.

Foucault continues to see how this function introduces some types of discourses and limits others.
As Barthes, Foucault introduces a distinction between an author and other types of writers. Barthes points to the modern writer as a sciptor (as I understand it he introduces the writer as a medium, a messenger who performs and handles collective knowledge through language. This is still a bit vague to me), whereas Foucault calls for another system of contraint, other than the author function, to regulate the interpretation and growth of a work (fictional work).

Another interesting point of Foucault is his distinction between fictional and scientific works.
He argues that scientific texts today are not based in authorship/author function, rather in a common ground/principle of truth that constitutes a paradigm that the writers play within. He further argues that writers within scientific disciplines are not founders of discourses as their work is referring back to physical world, that it is defined “in relation to what physics or cosmology is”, whereas the work of founders of discourses refers back to the work itself. He uses the example of Sigmund Freud and coining the idea of psychoanalysis.

NB: How does this relate to Thomas Kuhn and his theory presented in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)? Kuhn postulates that paradigms occurs as a result of discourses when a certain scientific paradigm have difficulties in explaning new observations and experiences. E.g. as in the case of Copernicus and his theory of Earth’s postition in relation to the Sun and the universe. Does this not constitute a new discourse, as it completely altered the way man views himself as a part of creation?)

CONNECTION TO REMIX AND BIOLOGICAL REMIX

What does it mean when the remix has a distinctive impact on the ecosystems we are all part of? Does it really matter who did it, other than in terms of regulation – e.g in knowing who to blame if things go wrong?

REFLECTION: JENKINS & BENJAMIN

Henry Jenkins:
Textual Poachers – Television Fans & Participator Culture (1992)
Ch. 7: Layers of meaning: fan Music Video and the Poetics of Poaching
Abstract: A introduction to fan video making, narrative storytelling, commercial videos, convention videos and living room videos, and how the fan artist further conntects an original work with a fan community through remixing.

Walter Benjamin:
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)
Abstract: Introduces the notion of the “aura” of an orginal art piece – an how this aura is lost or distracted when losing it’s position in space/time thorugh mechanical reproduction. He further looks in to the differents between private media and public media and how this engages man in different ways.

JENKINS, HETROGLOSSIA AND FAN ARTISTS

Henry Jenkins starts of the chapter by introdusing Mikahail Bakhtin’s term “hetroglossia” – that refers to the inherent meaning that any word carries due to use in history. The true creation lies not in finding a new word, but rather to have the knowledge of the meanings a word carries and the ability to use the carried meaning into a new and desired context. Jenkins states that a fan artist main contribution lies in “the imaginative juxtaposition” of already produced content.

FAN ARTISTS AND THE CONNECTION TO A FAN COMMUNITY

The fan artist builds on the vast knowledge pool a fan community has on a subject, and plays on speculations and fantasies that already is hinted at within the community. The fan video is successfull if the artist manages to add perspectives, deepening the understanding of the fan universe, through his or her suggestions. In one way we might say that the fan artist is a critic, whose contribution serves as a starting point for new discussions within the community.
The skill of the fan artist is much like the skill of Mikahail Bakhtin’s writer, he or she needs to be knowledgeable about the meaning of each contenct piece, to be able to tailor them into a new narrative. An equally the work demand the pre-set knowledge of the fan community for it to convey its meaning.

PRIVATE AND PUBLIC MEDIA TYPES

Walter Benjamin talks about media that produces reflection and that these media are necessarily private, not public. The reading of book and viewing of a painting in a gallery are private in the sense that only one or few people can enjoy it at a given time. It is not a collective experience. Where that is not the case with architecture or film.

Jenkins looks into two forms of fan videos, the “living-room videos” and the “convention videos”, and opposes them to commercial music videos (ala MTV).
The living-room video is detaljed, complex and with many layers in the narrative. It is meant for individual viewing or viewing in small groups.
The convention videos need to be less complex as the group doesn’t “concentrate as deeply” and “want to laugh together”, the ability to reflect and participate to attach meaning to the material seems to be weakened.

The commercial music video on the other hand, Jenkins argues, is mostly without narrative – the mash-up of images and text the constitutes the video, have lost their original meaning. Instead of a narrative, the composistion and style is produced to distract the rational mind, and evoke emotions.

Although the convention video is created with a narrative, yet more simple, it still bear a lot of resembles to the commercial music video, with its focus on entertainment value.

Benjamin argues that film makers are constructing new realities with the film media, due to the possibilities presented in the media of filming in several shoots, cutting the filmed material. This cutting up of the reality gives the spectator an immediate experience of the reality presented, in form a shock. This experience of reality does not come from a reflection leading to an understanding -it is there to produce certain emotions and feeling is the viewer. This brings Jenkins notion of commercial music videos in mind, that he states “decenters and disorientates”.

COMMUNITY, PARTICIPATION AND MEDIA MANIPULATION

Benjamin also talks about the community aspect of media, that is adressing a group in this way. There is a room for all the participants to speak of their reaction to the film, a conversation that is of interest to all members, as it is based in this shared experience.

Jenkins emphasized the deep realtion ship between the communicty of fans and the work presented by a fan artist. The fan-artist suggests and critiques in his/her videos, and invites an already knowledgable group to partake in the discussion. The fan artist strengthens the bond that exist between an orginal piece of work and its fans.

Even though he doesn’t state it specifically, I get the sense that Jenkins doesn’t think a commercial music video gathers the same engaged audience.

Benjamin talks about the democratising effect of mechanical reproduction where all citizens can be part of the art piece. As a extra in a film, through a letter to the editor in a newspaper. Movies and print allows for new modes of participation in art.
But he also express concern in how media can be used as a tool for engaging a community of active followers in a certain way. Writing this article in 1935, as a communist an jew, the seeds of the Nazi propaganda must be all frightening.

In remix culture today, there are positive connotations to the ways technology has democratized media. We can all be creators, curators and distributors in a connected, digital world. What Benjamin fears might not be the active participation of man in cultural production, rather the monopoly or centralized control of a given media – the mass-broadcast whoose message is decided by a few, and a powerful few – a media manipulation of reality spreading desired narratives/opinions to a crowd.

Writing this a wonder it there is a closer connection between tconvention videos with its simple message (still narrative) and emotional evocations and the propaganda movies. Hmm.

RELATIONSHIP TO BIOLOGICAL REMIX

As I have decided to look into the strange realm of biological remix. The remix of either natural matter to create new lifeforms, or the mixing of cultural and natural content to create new identities, I will try to see how the notion of remix as presented by Jenkins related to my topic.

::: TXT WILL BE ADDED