Keith Armstrong connects an ecological crisis with the crisis in subjectivity. Ecosophy is a wisdom of the dwelling and that creative practitioners would like to engage with ecosophical ideas, but how. This study and action research project is refining praxis and new media is useful in developing this conversation. Documented a research project around 'Public Relations' an installation design project around a platform in a major public railway station in Brisbane. What I enjoyed about this is that it is work thoroughly in the public domain and combines analog feedback (suggestions box for instance) with digital systems, with a public sphere sort of project.
As an academic presentation the DVD documentation Keith showed made very literal and visible what an ecosophical approach might be.
Keith Armstrong
Dan Fleming on Hypertext and Empire. A paper I have very much looked forward to. Dan opens with Ted Nelson's comic book reader, and from there to questions about the literal nature of the representation of the link in the comic book reader (visible lines on screen between nodes) to more ambiguous or richer notions of linking. He then showed a nice preliminary work in Flash that uses collage layers in a literal manner to explore how links might be embedded in this model. I'm not convinced that this works, because at some level I think Dan is still treating the link as quite a literal and singular object. There is a tension between the link as an event with a multivalency, and the origin of the link as metaphoric, visual, or whatever.
damn, had to run out to deal with conference admin things, missed important bits.
Contrasts instrumental uses of hypertext linking versus cultural forms. Why has the hyperlinked emerged and become a part of our culture? There is a wished for world in the link rather than wished for knowledge. Described the movement from nation states and the idea of the mass (public mass) towards a notion of the multitude, a 'ghost-citizen' the promise of an empowered consumer, an idea Dan is appropriating from Negri. This is dense work, and requires familiarity with the paper. Dan described what I'd probably think of as a political economy around the multitude and the common (via Negri) and uses this to contrast the multitude and Empire, where Empire is that which offers but closes down the promise of the multitude. What is good is that this is then layered onto hypertext as a technology, but no so much as a technology but as praxis, and more specifically hypertext linking.
Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop's paper. Nothing to write, too busy listening. This is exceptional work. A complex close reading of an interactive fiction work, the sort of close reading that provides a deep, theoretically informed hermeneutic. The sort of reading of such work that is thin on the ground. Concludes by dissolving the dualism that Lev Manovich (and many others) establishes between games, narrative, play, story, and information or representation and control. That the interactive fiction that is being played and read has to be played and read, there are explicit levels of cybertextual activity, interpretation, and activity. They are simultaneous and not something that is added on top of game play.
Posted by amiles at May 20, 2003 10:30 AM