concluding the future:

TITLE:
The future: not just a walk in the desert:

ABSTRACT:
“Not just a walk in the desert” is an interactive intervention art (1) experience – A travel experience, a tour, that engages with cell phones, video documentation. Edited versions of the videos will be posted onto the internet and then sent back to the travelers and to those with acccess to cell phone pods, for all to consume. I propose that this interactive, travel event, that traipses over existing, illegal immigrant trails, can promote an alternate linkage to the words ‘illegal alien’. An awareness wil be highlighted, where the public tourist has a private experience. Redefining the symbolic representations of the words illegal alien through a immersive experience. The use of video and pods cycles back into the experience, becoming a public document a new avatar to represent the illegal alien.

This very private, real act, of an illegal alien crossing the border is a private experience but a public problem. The illegal alien has become an avatar that is defined and mediated by new media and technology.
“Crime, murder, illegal drugs, missing kids, illegal aliens”
http://www.foxnews.com/national/crime/index.html

Illegal aliens 'not illegal'
www.worldnetdaily.com/weekinreview.asp

``The only reason a lot of employers want to hire a large number of illegal aliens is so they can exploit them.''
www.commondreams.org/headlines/021700-02.htm

A travel experience as art, is probing that provides “ the conditions to mobilize the signifier in the service of an alternative production” (12) The traveler, the internet viewers and cellphone users become modest witnesses. (Harraway) (wortex 2)

Introduction:
Extreme travel, reality TV, video documenting and their posting on the internet, is a preoccupation of today’s American culture. The American People have a history with the illegal alien, from The Sedition Act of 1798 (see wortex 4) through to the LA protest about immigration reform in 2006 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_United_States_immigration_reform_protests) The words illegal alien are a derogatory term, that applies to over 10 million people in the States today. My art project, is about using the very tools that exploit the ‘other’ to redefine the illegal alien. These are the everyday items that combine to inform and manipulate our public perceptions about who the illegal alien (wortex 4) Through interactivity disguised as a travel event, the participant creates a space where they can revitalize and recreate the identity of the illegal immigrant. By using the performative, engaging with everyday and networking technology I will create a rupture. A folding over of information, where the system that informs, informs on its self, exposing its own bias.

Imagine the ultimate travel destination. A real travel experience, that is dangerous, unpredictable, physically and environmentally extreme. An experience that is technologically savy, exciting, informed and allows the participant to be politically active. Not just a walk in the dessert.

For my future work as an artist, I propose a travel adventure that will take the adventurer on the illegal, desert, border crossings from Mexico into America Crossing the border from Mexico into America by illegal aliens is the norm in the eyes of the American public. We hear about the issue from politicians like Bush who in his 2007 State of the Nation speech stated that [he] “Will Call On Congress To Pass Comprehensive Immigration Reform.” It was recorded that the “President believes that America can simultaneously be a lawful, economically dynamic, and welcoming society. We must address the problem of illegal immigration and deliver a system that is secure, productive, orderly, and fair. (http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2007/initiatives/immigration.html)

Arnold Schwarzenegger the Californian Governor was quoted on Monday that he proposed an extending health care coverage to all of California's 36 million residents as part of a sweeping package of changes to the state's huge, troubled health care system.

A total of 6.5 million people, one-fifth of the state's population, do not have health insurance, far more than in any other state. At least one million of the uninsured are illegal immigrants, state officials say. “there is even a debate about what he said with regards to immigrants on YouTube). Wednesday, 29 August 2007
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9A0CE6D61530F93AA35752C0A9619C8B63

Media is all pervasive. On television the illegal alien is seen through the form of the documentary. ‘Crossing the line’: The documentary shows the minutemen squarely in the white power circles
The People Confront Racist Minutemen in Sacramento
http://santacruz.indymedia.org/mod/comments/display/22389/index.php

Web sites have been set up for personal and professional reasons about the illegal alien: http://www.illegalaliens.us/nationalsites.htm . This site, besides mocking the term undocumented, is an illegal immigration primer whose goal is to provide information on illegal immigration prevention, enforcement, and attrition.

Or http://www.humaneborders.org/
Humane Borders, motivated by faith, offers humanitarian assistance to those in need through more than 70 emergency water stations on and near the U.S.-Mexican border.

Utube post illegal alien videos such as Illegal Aliens Caught At Border http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn9nlyJaGC8&mode=related&search=
This is a video response to Border Cameras and High Tech Failure to Capture Illegal Aliens
Or Dangerous crossing at the border originally screened on Current TV gives small snippets of information like crossing arizona: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfCaIdJa6fE&mode=related&search=

Books have been written: – Enrique’s journey by Sonia Nazario
http://www.enriquesjourney.com/

Movies distributed such A Day Without a Mexican (2004)
One day California wakes up and not a single Latino is left in the state. They have all inexplicably dissappeared, chaos, tragedy, and comedy quickly ensue.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377744/,
Babel, 2006 where the nanny Amelia is in a bit of a bind, because she expected the parents home so she could attend the wedding of her son in Mexico. With Richard and Susan not returning soon, and with no one else available to watch the children, she takes them with her to the wedding across the border.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449467/)

Newspapers describe the illegal alien through headlines, images and footage of illegal immigration border crossings.
(http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/01/24/borderguards060124.html)

But they are disconnected, representations of the actual journey and the people, The illegal alien is a commodity and I am interested in using the way it is mediated into a productive real art experience.

The illegal alien is a terrorist.
The illegal alien is a father
The illegal alien is a young child
The illegal alien is a worker
The illegal alien a drug runner or coyote
The illegal alien is a wife, mother or girl
The illegal alien is a political refugee
The illegal alien is a person
The illegal alien was me

The illegal alien described by the dictionary –noun
1. a foreigner who has entered or resides in a country unlawfully or without the country's authorization.
2. a foreigner who enters the U.S. without an entry or immigrant visa, esp. a person who crosses the border by avoiding inspection or who overstays the period of time allowed as a visitor, tourist, or businessperson.

The illegal immigrant is an extension of technology. The illegal immigrant is tracked, counted, documented and digitalized. This forming of the illegal immigrant through and by technology has created an avatar that is reuseable, and can be reimagined whenever the machinations of power need to push an agenda.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060515-8.html
THE PRESIDENT: Good evening. I've asked for a few minutes of your time to discuss a matter of national importance -- the reform of America's immigration system.

The issue of immigration stirs intense emotions, and in recent weeks, Americans have seen those emotions on display. On the streets of major cities, crowds have rallied in support of those in our country illegally. At our southern border, others have organized to stop illegal immigrants from coming in. Across the country, Americans are trying to reconcile these contrasting images. And in Washington, the debate over immigration reform has reached a time of decision. Tonight, I will make it clear where I stand, and where I want to lead our country on this vital issue.

For my future research I propose that by using travel as an interactive art process, we can inform and redirect discourse. Through the event, the technology of streaming video, cell phones, internet and pods the illegal alien can be reimagined. Not as a threat, not as a problem, not as an avatar to be used, but as a human being. I intend to redefine the space of the Illegal alien by using everyday contemporary technology such as cell phones, e-mail, video editing, pods and the internet.

Travel and the internet are voyeuristic devices that enable us to look at things and spaces from a distance. We can make up you own stories, narratives and memories. They are built up through the distancing that technology imposses. But that distance is what I want to facilitate communication and discourse. Like the Art Historica in Chile (wortex 5) or the video mediation in Italy (2) My art uses the video as a less confrontational form of communication. Technology as a mediator can be used positively. The distancing from reality is less confrontational, yet the travel over the desert is a real interactive experience that informs reality.

NOTES:
Productive forms of video mediation are popping up everywhere:
Daily Texan
9/22/05
Groups watch Minutemen documentary
By Kathy Adams
People on both sides of the issue sat together and watched a documentary about the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, a group of volunteers who patrol the border for illegal immigrants.
http://media.www.dailytexanonline.com/media/storage/paper410/news/2005/09/22/University/Groups.Watch.Minutemen.Documentary-994511.shtml

Today Utube is creating a space where you can see people posting videos in response to other videos

Coco Fusco uses the immersive nature of the real experience in her piece Operation “A piece that explored similiar issues of torture was Operation Atropos.In July 2005, I took a course led by former US military interrogators designed for people in the private sector who want to learn their techniques for extracting information. I took a group of six women with me and filmed our workshop.”
http://www.wenited.org/read/index.php?catid=12
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/arts/design/30fusc.html?ex=1306641600&en=c5fff6f1c4084a36&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss


bibliography:

1. There are works, that is objects or actions, that are emblematic of the social problem or make a political statement.
Supportive works that are conceived of and created by the artist that, upon presentation, are designed to be linked to others, ultimately feed back into an actual social system.
http://hybrid.concordia.ca/~dart_projects/publicart/artinterv.html

http://www.numbersusa.com/interests/illegalimm.html

2. Pelizza, Annalisa 2007 Qua_SI Quality of Life in the Information Society Ph.D. Program University of Milan-Bicocca, Italy
Technology was used to mediated co..... were videoed about their ideas on the urban space. A video was then beamed over a video wall placed in one of the same contested squares, thus making the terms of the disputes among space users accessible by communities and individuals involved in the struggle as well as passers-by. The boundaries-generating discourse was thus made visible and audible and was embedded in the same contested space by means of the digital layer provided by the video screen. deeply imbricated in an image of the city made of multiple spatial- temporal layers. On the one hand, the process of accumulation of traces of ‘dirtiness’ – through direct or mediated experience – could be seen as acting as a temporal link, similarly to a back- forward technique, and as a mechanism recalling other spatial orders.

Revised my opening page to my Wortex

So here we go again

Day 1

TITLE:
Knowledge production; an institutionalized practice or a practice in the resistance of Art

ABSTRACT:

The Production of knowledge is historically based on the gaining and producing of information that is ‘situated’. (Latour) Situated in a discipline. Situated in the era of production. Situated in its politics and practices. The knowledge gained and opinions formed are then solidified in the form of a formatted document called the academic Paper (thesis, article, book). The writing and publishing of the document, is a tool, an intellectual practice perceived as subjective, yet often elitist in language, function and availability. (Gibbons) Today, the academic paper seems to work both as a metaphor for the institutionalization of the University System in the West, and as an artifact that displays ones knowledge and opinions. The writing of the paper is a type of apprentices’ document. Used to prove knowledge. Used as a way to canonize and solidify ideas. And used to reproduce the hierarchical nature embedded in the University system. I agree the Paper is an important tool; it is the culminating product of research, used in qualifying and quantifies information and ideas. But is it really subjective? Today universities engage with technology, using new methods of communication that facilitate the flow of information and the production of knowledge. But as Donna Haraway, (http://humwww.ucsc.edu/FMST/facHaraway.html) Bruno Latour (www.bruno-latour.fr/ ) and other intellectuals have argued this knowledge and the way it is produced is biased.

As a Master in Fine Arts (MFA) student in the Arts Computation and Engineering (ACE) program at the University of California, Irvine, I must qualify, quantify and visualize evidence of my production of knowledge, through the authorship of a paper and the production of a project. ACE is a multidisciplinary program where technology is a foundation. I believe that by engaging with technology we can produce a better representation of what knowledge we have gained and used throughout our years of study. I am not claiming that I need to create all the software, hardware or even research existing methodologies of scholarship. Collections of people are collaborating, creating, testing and trying that now in Universities around the world. But what I am interested in is the opening up of a multi-faceted approach to my thesis that addresses the way academic information is represented.

Each process of documentation that I have used throughout my ACE course was utilized for specific purposes. The Web Wortex concept is about giving the general public access to my academic process and information gathering. There will be only five parts and they will take the reader through my intellectual justifications. Each piece builds an argument that qualifies historically, conceptually and intellectually why I created the projects. In the Wortex I am not only trying to give people access by reading but access to articles, media, pictures and information that has influenced me in my knowledge gaining process. NOTE1 The Blog ( http://www.awillcocks.blogspot.com) traces the final days of my practical work at ACE. This venue gives the user a glimpse into the way I think, how my projects worked and what others thought about the project Precocious puberty. I have also used:
Myspace, ( http://www. myspace.com/fatsothedidileo
Facebook, a personal web site, (http://www.awillcocks.com/PP.html)
a hyperlinked narrative ( http://www.awillcocks.com/myprojects/html) Utube, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juTYTwOXZrU )
uber (http://www.uber.com/awillcocks ) and
current TV (http://www.current.tv)
all are different ways of disseminating information. By using these many everyday techniques, posting, responding and writing, I am essentially exposing the problems inherent in my own work. The multiple forms have created a kind of Modest_Witness.

INTRODUCTION: Why do we need more than a paper?

The history of the institutionally produced written document goes back before the creation of the first university. As a system to form education. (approx 1167 Oxford University was founded in England – http//www.ox.ac.uk/aboutoxford/history.shtml.)
Pharaohs, Kings and Governments, from Roman Times to the present, have used the written document to carry orders. Illuminated manuscripts spread religious doctrine. With the creation of the printing press (Guttenberg) the written document gained the power to influence entire segments of population. (books, manuscripts, journals, articles, catalogues, brochures, comic books, newspapers and magazines)

Up until the end of the 19th Century, little changed around the dissemination and collection of information. The written document, being the most important and widely used form of communication. But over the last century, the technological revolution has radically changed the way we communicate. We are now communicating globally via the computer, TV, radio and cell phones. (http://english.aljazeera.net/English/) Photographs, video, text and music are distributed dynamically into most households in America.( http://www.limewire.com/) RFID tags, GPS and satellite systems can track and identify on the fly. (http://earth.google.com/) Technology like the industrial revolution is changing the world.

Similarly technology has changed the how and what we research. Take for example the unraveling of the human genome. Through our understanding of DNA we can now track and target hereditary problems, in people who show no symptoms of the disease. (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/genome/heredity.html ) Today the multiple uses of technology are describing who we are through databases, nanotechnology and micro chips. (http://www.afd.co.uk/censation.asp ) Connecting information via optic fiber, wireless and satellites. (http://www.calit2.net/) Technology and the information highways have changed the way we communicate locally and globally.

Over time, the written document has remained a dominant method, for recording, authenticating and producing information. Within the University system, it is still used as the primary qualifying evidence of research and knowledge production. But, can the Paper stand alone as sole evidence of authentic scholarship? Can technology be utilized in a way that benefits universities and their knowledge production? The paper is a necessary institutional practice. It provides evidence of learned material, a space to declare research and share opinions.

At the University of Irvine, I was a part of and saw many benefits from using technology in research and knowledge production. The internet was a place where web sites, google jockeying, forums and wikkis facilitated the flow of information. People were collaborating, dynamically, editing, discussing, informing and reforming ideas. As you read this, hardware and software is being created that will make the flow of information even more dynamic. But despite the open flow of information there was a biasing. Knowledge production is still a situated practice. Knowledge production is a practice with a history that influences the way and what we produced. (Prakash)

The practice of authorship in the form of a Paper is an intellectual ritual traditional in most university disciplines;
Science: http://www.emory.edu/GSOAS/PDF/prismpressrelease.pdf. Medicine: http://edrv.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/er.2003-0038v1
Law: www.law.wisc.edu/fjr/innocence/
Arts: www.collegeart.org/caa/publications/AJ/artjournal.html
Architecture: http://people.bath.ac.uk/pnr20/Publications/rich06a.pdf
On the one hand, the paper is a way to gauge whether a student or professor has developed critical skills in their area of expertise. But on the other side, it facilitates the flow of the control of research. Organizes and directs the development of technology, managing the making of culture and the systems of the capital market (Bourdieu 1988) (Biagologi & Galison) (Haraway p7) (Foucault)

Using various forms of Web based apparatuses ( Blog, wortex web, etc.) as part of my paper I am challenging the way evidence of university scholarship is practice is deployed. It does not have to be just an addendum. The implementation of technology into the practice of paper writing gives the reader a more reflective space to interpret information. As Malcolm Ashmore proposes in his Reflexive Thesis book: (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ss/depstaff/staff/ashmore.htm )

“history (which) is continually in the process of being written, unwritten and rewritten by it’s various practitioners, commentators and critics, all of whom tend to claim for it different origins, precursor and lines of development as well as differing problematics, achievements and findings. “

Agreeing with Ashmore, and using that as the impetus behind my knowledge production, I question the place where just one piece is enough evidence. The various forms of Blog, ( http://www.awillcocks.blogspot.com) web pages, (http://www.awillcocks.com/PP.html) narrative and artwork (http://www.awillcocks.com )that I use, gives me the space to explore different avenues that represent my knowledge. These different modes of informing and reinforming have benefited my research, my knowledge and my projects. As I have used these different forms of evidence, my process has become more reflexive. Others using technology to benefit scholarship are popping up on the Internet everywhere;
free103poiint9web site: http://www.free103point9.org/
a web site that provides information about radio with manuals, history pdf’s, events and forums.
the new Online journal: on art and culture: http://www.theartsection.com/
this challenges the position of the Art critic having to be attached to a large media conglomerate.
Simply other students describing their work and displaying their thesis www.mslima.com/mfadt/thesis/thesisblog.html, http://www.blogthesis.com/mfadt/thesis/thesisblog.html
The make_it_technology on your time: http://www.makezine.com
has volumes of information on how to make and create things that you can also learn at university
Or even Ellen Luptons website: http://www.papress.com/thinkingwithtype/
that provides all the necessary information to teach a student how to use type.
They are not just addendums but scholarly products and processes.

The paper alone is not big enough to allow for the dramatic changes that have occurred because of technology. Technology has created huge changes in content accessibility, like video, sound or data gathering and generation. Technology has caused changes in the dynamic flow of information from wireless and fiber optic cables through to satellite tracking. We can access information from around the world almost instantaneously. These rapid changes are affecting how we interpret the world and need to be included as evidence of scholarship. The paper alone can provide rigid proof of a subjects understanding. It can be a space for questions and answers as well as being an historical and technical indictor of scholarship. But the way research and information is disseminated today is in a myriad of ways. Through multimedia, collaborative, networked and ‘open source’ processes that engage many senses..

The internet not only enables global research but access to research should be global. Take for example the networked amateur astronomers, who through the use of Internet are observing, gathering, documenting and sharing their findings. How do we include their accumulated knowledge as a resource in a paper? Alternate forms of media could make their findings more useful to the student or other academic. If we had dynamic access to their various accumulated links and images in the article perhaps we might have a better understanding.
It is also important to note that it is not only the professional that creates knowledge. Amateurs in many fields are using technology and its interconnectedness to create their own knowledge. Amateur astronomers are being taken far more seriously by their professional counterparts, who rely on them more frequently to track variable stars, like U Scorpii, or collect data on meteors, which scientists at NASA Ames in Mountain View are particularly interested in.
``With the Internet, we are in kind of a golden age of amateur astronomy,'' said Mike Koop, an electrical engineer for Lockheed Martin and a member of the San Jose Astronomical Association. ``We can link together and get the word out instantly.'' ****
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2000/01/17/MN77698.DTL

What is the best form of scholarly authorship? There are many forms of emerging authorship, challenging the system, such as the open_source network, mySpace, wikkipedia, blogs (www.blogthesis.com) or even utube. The open_ source movement being the most written and identified by academics in papers, has forged ahead in the digital realm. Creating new software, using forums that assist in the sharing and recycling of information collaboratively and destabilizing existing protocols in software production. The Open source policy is used and conceived as collaborative and inclusive. Because of its open editing process people from all over the world, network through the internet using existing code that is open and public building new technologies that not only challenge the power structures but build on top of them to form new and alternate solutions. (Lakhani)

http://www.opensource.org/
– Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.
–
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
– New NGO communities are starting to use the open source technology as a tool. One example is the Open Source Youth Network started in 2007 in Lisboa by ISCA members[11].

http://isca-web.org/english/youth/yource/theconcept
Networking for Social Change
“YOURCE” is an open source youth network that aims to develop an international community of people interested in youth work and volunteerism. This community connects its members on a web-based level while interacting through real-life activities and cooperation between members

http://www.cactuscode.org/
Cactus is an open source problem solving environment designed for scientists and engineers. Its modular structure easily enables parallel computation across different architectures and collaborative code development between different groups. Cactus originated in the academic research community, where it was developed and used over many years by a large international collaboration of physicists and computational scientists.

Wikkidepia and other dynamic editing sites have created entire encyclopedias of information. Overlay this explosion of technological innovation, which dynamically alters the way we research and formulate knowledge and research becomes integrated and dynamic. In labs throughout the world we see different institutions working on different parts of interconnected solutions, microscopically in a macroscopic world. Scientists and anthropologists, engineers and doctors now collaborate to create and translate together. The realm of producing information, facilitated by technology is already being created, tested and implemented into most university systems. But let us still presume, that technology does not change the fact, that theory and practice is biased. Haraway in her Modest_Witness book suggests that production of knowledge has never really been an individual objective practice. Perhaps we can never produce knowledge that is impartial. But by implementing technology into the knowledge making process it can provide a space to inform ourselves and others about our biases. Whilst increasing accessibility to elite information?

How do we declare our prejudices? Gaytari Spivak gives us an example in her writing. In her paper Megacity, she declares herself as an autodidact. situating herself from the start. Robert Nideffer (http://www.acad.carleton.edu/curricular/MEDA/daf/robert.html ) a professor at UCI published the first interactive multimedia dissertation on a CDrom offering information from different points of view. There is also the MFA students who produces work providing alternate forms of document to back up their ideas. (http://a.parsons.edu/~bacon/soundspade/media.php)

http://www.art.ucla.edu/graduate/mfa.html
Each degree is granted on the basis of the quality of the student's work as demonstrated in the exhibition that accompanies the final comprehensive examination. A review of work precedes the final comprehensive examination. The examination, usually oral, includes a formal exhibition of work and a document that includes vita, photo records of works, and an artist's statement.


Any one solution standing alone is debatable. But what is obvious is that the way knowledge is represented in different practices of intellectual scholarship suggests the need to include more technology . “Knowledge has become a “socially constructed process of negotiation among the disciplines, practioneers, commentators and critics” (5) _where does this quote come from?

http://www.gridtoday.com/02/0805/100192.html
Bill Gates
"Collaboration between industry and academia is crucial to deliver on our shared vision for the future of technology and education," Gates said. "Microsoft remains committed to deepening its relationship with academia, because only by working together can we create the next generation of computing technology." ****

The way we produce knowledge has become more diverse and dynamic. But as technology, education, commerce and politics merge, that knowledge becomes mediated. Mediated for different agendas. My projects are an attempt at disclosing some of these mediated representations: Is the recent interest in PP due to the increase in funding for obesity? Who is providing the money for obesity research? Are the children being misdiagnosed because culture defines girls as reproductive units and media reinforces these ideas? Does technology – the way information is gathered and collated bias where research funding is applied? Who decides what is important?

By researching information on the causes of Precocious Puberty I constantly found many conflicting ideas and research. What is true? What makes one bitof information more important than another?
August 4, 2007 Run Date: 03/30/07 By Molly M. Ginty
WeNews correspondent Health & Environment
U.S. Girls' Early Puberty Attracts Research Flurry
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3113
Scientists say girls are eating more food and putting on pounds, which is causing their bodies to boost production of the hormone leptin.

* "Leptin is made in fat cells and is necessary for normal reproductive function," says Paul Kaplowitz, chief of endocrinology at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington and author of "Early Puberty in Girls," published in 2004 by Random House. "There's an evolutionary benefit to this. You don't want to get pregnant if there isn't enough food for you to carry a pregnancy successfully. You would risk the baby's life and your own."
* According to the recent Pediatrics study, obese girls are twice as likely as normal-weight girls to sprout breasts early. Overweight girls are 50 percent more likely to do so. Being overweight as early as age 3 was found to be a marker for premature breast development.
* Like genetics, home environment can also play a role. Research shows that girls raised in households without their father present are likely to hit puberty young and that having an unrelated male such as a stepfather present speeds the process even more.
* Pollutants can also hasten maturity. In separate studies, Michigan girls accidentally exposed to polybrominated biphenals (chemicals used in flame retardants) started their periods a year younger than average; Puerto Rican girls exposed to phthalates (chemicals that soften plastic) had breast buds as early as age 2; and African American girls who used hair products containing human placenta also developed breasts at age 2.
Environmental Factors
* "Exposure to DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, a pesticide) and PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, chemicals used in manufacturing) may lead to early puberty," says Walter Rogan, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. "But research on environmental factors has so far been inconsistent."
* Other factors that may be linked to early puberty include low birth weight (under 5.5 pounds); eating dairy and meat products treated with hormones; and eating soy and other foods with high levels of "phytoestrogens," plant substances that mimic human estrogen.
* Sociologists also point to the "hypersexualization" of U.S. culture, where mainstream magazines flaunt near-nudity, where girls' dolls are voluptuous and where girls' bodies may in response be preparing for sexual intercourse earlier than ever before. ****

The fact is, there is a tension that fluctuates between alternate and institutionally recognized forms in the production of knowledge. Between the professional and the amateur. Between research and funding. Between subjective or objective knowledge, culture and technology. And these affect research, analysis and the formulating of ideas. Knowledge production is complicated and institutionalized. New methods of scholarship are being addressed about producing knowledge, but how do we represent it impartially?. Perhaps an eclectic array of documentation, that is more inclusive, overlapping and inclusive of the processes. My thesis is a post, postmodern project. As an Artist I am trying to relinquish the authority of the artifact by replacing it with the process NOTE2This project starts the process of disclosing my prejudices as Jeffery Shaw already wisely demonstrates in his ‘Web of Life’ installation

J. SHAW:
The audio-visual environment “Web of Life” is formed by an immersive conjunction of projected three-dimensional computer graphic and video images, together with a fully spatialized acoustic experience and a specially conceived architectural surrounding. The visitor interactively influences the performance of the audio-visual environment by imparting to it the unique patterns of his individual hand lines, thus giving symbolic and experiential expression to the action of connecting oneself to an emergent network of relations. ***

My Blog, wortex, web sites and paper provide different angles to view and understand what I am trying to communicate. The recycling, remaking and creating of my knowledge, is a multifaceted approach. Opening up my artwork to a disclosure of my prejudices. As well as giving others access to elite, intellectual information. Like the sign on the wall of an art gallery, that describes an artists work. These forms of media are the scribbles and notes on the paper, that are representative of my knowledge production .

NOTES:
1 It is very difficult for those not in the industry of knowledge production to get access to quality research and papers. Even when published the results are not necessarily true. Or you have to be members of universities, societies, attend conferences of subscribe to endless magazines to find the relevant articles)
2. Post post modern – a kind of post deconstruction. Not only deconstructing the past but by using a blogs or wikkis or forums or web one can dynamically deconstruct on the fly. Disclosing. Also making availabe new forms of media that can inform.

“According to Derrida, one consequence of deconstruction is that the text may be defined so broadly as to encompass not just written words but the entire spectrum of symbols and phenomena within Western thought. To Derrida, a result of deconstruction is that no Western philosopher has been able to escape successfully from this large web of text and reach that which is "signified", which they imagined to exist "just beyond" the text.

The more common use of the term is the more general process of pointing to contradictions between the intent and surface of a work and the assumptions about it. A work then "deconstructs" assumptions when it places them in context. For example, someone who can pass as the opposite sex may be said to "deconstruct" gender identity, because there is a conflict between the superficial appearance and the reality of the person's gender.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
Good analogy of the post modern artist
http://www.lkart.com/Cpm.html

3. The ACE program is a marriage of three disciplines each having different goals, research methods and scholarly production, where the process of building, sorting and the recycling of information in one uniform methodology is complicated and problematic


COMMENTS:
8/15/2007
Things to consider when assaulting paper...

To be blunt, I see paper as superior to pretty much all other media yet produced, for one simple reason: it persists. If a thing cannot be found, or 'read' when it IS found, it might as well not exist. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found, and as shitty as they are, reveal information (if not exactly knowledge, eg. revealed idiotic Essene washing rituals).
> you might need firefox to see it
Case in point. Which version?
Can I read it in 2017? 2027? 2047?
Can you today read many things produced electronically in 1997? 1987? 1967?
NASA has lost the entirety of data collected from many early space probes because the media rotted away, and only a handful of archival technology companies still have operable machines that can read "universal" 800bpi and 1600bpi reel tape that was in use for decades, once...
In a large view, today's stuff isn't really much different than how 100, 500, 1000 year old plays, performances, song, etc are "lost", even when we recover some recorded record of it. There's a lot of contextual subtlety (some of it subtle as a train wreck) that's simply not recorded.
WWW? This too will pass.
Of course for school purposes new media is assumed up front to be
automatically good, but it's pretty much ephemeral, so it's good for
momentary communication, cultural stuff like organizing, but inherently lousy for things to persist. Tom

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Latour, Bruno 1993 We have never been modern, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA.
“The difference, Latour explains, is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, between human and thing, distinctions that our benighted ancestors, in their world of alchemy, astrology, and phrenology, never made. But alongside this purifying practice that defines modernity, there exists another seemingly contrary one: the construction of systems that mix politics, science, technology, and nature. The ozone debate is such a hybrid, in Latour's analysis, as are global warming, deforestation, even the idea of black holes. As these hybrids proliferate, the prospect of keeping nature and culture in their separate mental chambers becomes overwhelming”
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LATWEH.html

Haraway, Donna Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemakeMan_Meeta_OncoMouse Published 1997, Routledge ISBN 0415912458
“The actors are many, and not all are human. Beginning with the Modest Witness, the key figure in the Science Revolution, Haraway shows us the trouble lurking in race and gender- marked practices for attesting to matters of fact.” http://books.google.com/books?id=ftO4jLQ2RM8C&dq=&prev=

Prakash, Gyan, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (1999) Princeton University Press $32.95
Prakash writes about the way we interpret the history and relationships of modernity, science and colonialism in India. What the West declares as the affects of colonialism on India is very different to the way Indians have understood this intergration
http://his.princeton.edu/people/e59/prakash/profile.html
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6705.html

Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus. Translated by Peter Collier published in the United States by Stanford University Press, 1988.
“Bourdieu identifies a more or less direct correspondence between disciplinary prestige and original social class of member faculty. This observation is the start of a thread which he develops concerning the linkage between academia and social class. Academic systems of classification (grading and ranking performance of students) tend to reproduce social class strata. [Bourdieu, 1988:207] Academic careers therefore tend to follow social origins. [Bourdieu, 1988: 215] Bourdieu characterizes academia as a fundamentally conservative institution that reproduces and reinforces social class distinctions as a result of internalized faculty outlooks and expectations.”
http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~mhalber/Research/Paper/pci-bourdieu.html

Biagioli & Galison Scientific Authorship 2003 Routledge
Foucault, Michael, History of sexuality, Published 1990, Vintage Books
ISBN 0679724699
Michael Foucault discusses the history of documenting and monitoring the child at the beginning of modernity. He state that it was a way of building a set of institutions that organize and control us today.

Ashmore, Malcolm – A reflexive thesis: Wrighting Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. With a Foreword by Steve Woolgar. 318 p. 1989 The Chicago University Press. SBN-10: 0-226-02968-9 Cloth $50.00
“This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientific knowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research practices and textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientific knowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction.”
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/3246.ctl

Lakhani Karim: Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2005

Lakhani, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School with an extensive research background in open source software communities and their innovation and product development strategies. His latest research analyzes how open source norms of transparency, permeable access, and collaboration might work with scientists. What he and his coauthors discovered: "broadcasting" or introducing problems to outsiders yields effective solutions. Indeed, it was outsiders—those with expertise at the periphery of a problem's field—who were most likely to find answers and do so quickly”
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5544.html Martha Lagace

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty Megacity
Grey Room, No. 1 (Autumn, 2000),
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1526-3819(200023)1%3C8%3AM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Spivak.html
Gayatri Chakravorty was born in Calcutta, West Bengal, 24 February 1942 to "solidly metropolitan middle class" parents (PCC). She thus belonged to the "first generation of Indian intellectuals after independence,"
“Spivak's work explores "the margins at which disciplinary discourses break down and enter the world of political agency" (SR). She interrogates the politics of culture from a marginal perspective ("outside") while maintaining the prerogatives of a professional position within the hegemony. Through deconstruction she turns hegemonic narratives inside out, and as a third world woman in a position of privilege in the American academy, she brings the outside in. (Hence Outside in the Teaching Machine [1993]). These contradictory positions have led her to develop the notion that the center is also a margin, more like the center line on a road than the center of town. "This is the classic deconstructive position, in the middle, but not on either side" (de Kock interview). This reconfiguring of the "center" (or re-centering, perhaps) also changes the position and status of the margins: no longer outside looking in, but an integral, if minor, language.”
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Glossary.html

http://www.awillcocks.com/wortex3.html

is up ...sort of.....

Having had several responses to my Wortex web page, the rather static nature of the way it comes across and the fact that it does not really take advantage of the way the internet is set up today is a problem. - for example the Wikkis is a place where where information can be edited by others, the self and information generated dynamically around the world of those connected. Basically all the Wortex is is a Photoshop document was the main reponse - so why use the internet instead of paper?

Looking at Wortex 1 and the way I defined my first page of the Wortex does not really explain what I am attempting to do. Content does not match function. Having done a Blog in Kavita Phillips class I found it a useful way of using the internet to show the public my art and research processes. This process opened me up to judgment and comments that not only affected the way I understood my work but perhaps helped others to see my biased flaws. It gave me and others a small insight into how I am influenced by other forms of media not only professional intellectual readings, but news, media or even a conversation with a friend. The information diverged as peopled responded. But what was also interesting and has been highlighted again with my use of the web page Wortex is the fact that even if you put it out there, information is only as good as the network that connects you.

I have had more responses about Wortex visually by people who would not normally read academic papers or even have access to them. It was suggested that they might start to understand what I done. They now have limited access, even if it was a simple visual skimming to what I had done and could revisit it in their own time. By posting on the web, I am allowing for some interesting conversations on the way I traced by intellectual processes that can not always be contained on paper- Perhaps like the statement on the wall that describes an artists work. In that sense the Wortex is my intellectual statement on the global wall in Academia?

So I know I have to redefine my argument about what I am attempting to do. I am not going to change the world of academia, (perhaps I could do that if I had another couple of years doing a PHD). I am not claiming that I need to create all the software, hardware or even research existing avenues of internet authorship need to facilitate the collaborative nature of the process of academia today. Collections of people are creating, testing and trying that now. But what I am interested in is opening up a multifacted approach to interdisciplinary studies and the research paper A paper that not only makes conclusions but is exposed in process. What I am trying to be a sort of modest witness kind of referencing. The Wortex concept is really about giving the general public access to the academic process and information. Not only access through writing but access to articles and information that can be better referenced or discerned. It is very difficult for those not in the industry of knowledge production to get access to quality research and papers. Even when published the results are not necessarily true. Or you have to be members of universities, societies, attend conferences of subscribe to endless magazines to find the relevent articles. So the Wortex was not about setting up a Wikki. I have seen work well, in the process of research and argument formation in several of Kavita Phillip's classes. But my several attempts at different web formats is a way of putting my process up onto the global market of the internet. Perhaps making it available to others.

I know my English is of a pretty insufficient in standard but I am working to produce more legible arguments with less run on sentences. I intend to use my blog as an ongoing daily documentation even for the final days up to defending my paper and the printing of the paper. The Wortex will end after 5 entries. They are the 5 arguments that support intellectually why I did the research and presented my projects in certain formats. There will be PDF's and other connections as well as language refinements, lots of pictures and hyperlinks.

As for the actual documentation of my art process - about how I created my projects - my discussion about the projects I have already set up a web site that connects you to some of the information. I will also be revisiting the projects by creating a hyperlinked story - like a diary linked so you can make your own narrative about how I went about each projects process.

I don't know if anyone realized but the wortex was also a pun. I essentially wrote a paper by referring to Foucault and the manufacture of authority through knowledge production, yet that was exactly what I was doing writing a paper about not only writing a paper but by posting it I am essentially exposing the problems inherent in my own work. Opening up to the public not just keeping it inside the intellectual industry that produce knowledge.

SOME COMMENTS

ange, i think what you are doing is fantastic, its the perfect format
for my 'visual' brain to access information, and the embedded pop-ups
are mirror actions of how information comes into my head - other
thoughts pop in while im reading about something else. I read the
whole thing and I find it interesting that the issues of authorship
are still up there as priority for University. As to your
frequent question in the second wortex re: is it ART - growing
chickens, maybe i could put my two kids in the gallery - they are the
best works ive made yet and it has to be ART because i am an ARTIST.
ha. catching up with tim this weekend and i look forward to hearing
all of what you two got up to. talk soon. keep sending, al

Things to consider when assaulting paper...


To be blunt, I see paper as superior to pretty much all other media yet
produced, for one simple reason: it persists. If a thing cannot be found,
or 'read' when it IS found, it might as well not exist. The Dead Sea Scrolls
were found, and as shitty as they are, reveal information (if not exactly
knowledge, eg. revealed idiotic Essene washing rituals).


> you might need firefox to see it

Case in point. Which version?

Can I read it in 2017? 2027? 2047?

Can you today read many things produced electronically in 1997? 1987? 1967?

NASA has lost the entirety of data collected from many early space probes
because the media rotted away, and only a handful of archival technology
companies still have operable machines that can read "universal" 800bpi and
1600bpi reel tape that was in use for decades, once...


In a large view, today's stuff isn't really much different than how 100, 500,
1000 year old plays, performances, song, etc are "lost", even when we recover
some recorded record of it. There's a lot of contextual subtlety (some of it
subtle as a train wreck) that's simply not recorded.

WWW? This too will pass.

Of course for school purposes new media is assumed up front to be
automatically good, but it's pretty much ephemeral, so it's good for
momentary communication, cultural stuff like organizing, but inherently lousy
for things to persist. Tom

WORTEX 2
http://www.awillcocks.com/wortex2.html

the art of scholarly proactice

get over to my NEW WORTEX

DAY 1 blog

http://www.awillcocks.com.8/7/2007

tracking precocious puberty and obesity
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn12048&feedId=online-news_rss20
the big pharma companies
Obesity pill increases suicidal thoughts
17:30 12 June 2007
NewScientist.com news service
New Scientist and Reuters

TITLE:The story never stops beginning or ending. It appears in continuity headless and bottomless for it is built on daily differences. Its (in)finite subverts every notion of completeness. yet there is a structure, there is a point but entry can be from any point and there can be no return.

Abstract;
war sounds
http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/soundfx/warsounds.shtml

illegal alien

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/7586027.html

Deputy Murder Suspect Has Long Criminal History

Rob Lowry

KENOSHA - The man now charged with killing Kenosha County Sheriff's Deputy Frank Fabiano is an illegal immigrant with a long criminal record.

http://www.blogcatalog.com/post-tag/immigration%20reform

TiTLE: "Illegal migration is big business in this part of the world and there is good money to be made guiding hopefuls over the desert"

ABstract

Title: connecting a history

Abstract: working with an artist in the production of an interactive at piece - myself helping with the technology the subject of my PP project became the topic, At firat he didn't really understand the projecting of the kids on the pesticides n home depot but thought there might be a connection especially as the children's were taking about puberty but there were no people to see it - it seemed pretty isolated and then he saw me walking through the isles, talking with blacks and hipanics who stopped and viewed and chatted they were obviously getting an individualised experience in public.
he was impressed by the apparatus that I had made to project the video and did not get the radio connection. I then spent time explaining the individual use and history of the radio and how today we use the radio as a personal tool the way of tuning the radio and the reference to the radio as a mediated space where I have created a radio station that is not regulated by the government. He then said that the guy Wjkorket - who uses the site specific places such as huge buildings for the project as a reference point on which t project his images but both the images and the location were representative. but the projects are very different Wjzork is working on the semiotic representations of both the projected image and the actual building i.e a government building yet min project was very specifically targeting those that created the imagined person.

He had seen the video of the large projections of on the oil rigs and wondered if people actually participated - and as we had found out and potentionally thought as an extension. people could stop in their cars and tune into the sound on their radios. He then related it to his own work where he would put up billboard photographs as a form of intervention. The viewer only got an understanding if they saw him gluing it down and they could ask him what he was doing. Other than that it would just be up to them to interpret. But he would sit back and just watch people reactions from a park bench across the road. Todd Gray

We also rewrote an application for UCHRI in New York

Guerilla projections

> My artwork focuses on the apparent remoteness and disconnect between
food production and consumption. By using everyday digital products
(available over the counter) I have created a low cost projector to show
videos in
public spaces such as food chain stores, in hospital corridors, where the
passerby can stumble across them. I am taking the message to the masses.
With playful interactivity inspired through technology, I generate a place
where the linking of meanings is hidden and codified in a dynamic form of
public agency for the individual. Using new
> media and technology as a form of mediation and language as my point of
> departure (i.e. the medical term "precocious puberty".) My
> questions are: Can the immersive use of  art activism and technology in
public places provide a space for individuals who normally have little
or no access to medical/science education be informed?
>
>June 14th awillcoc@uci.edu

or no access to medical/science education be informed?
>
>
>
> -Pearl  how is this

angela
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <awillcoc@uci.edu>
> To: "Pearl Ho" <hop@uci.edu>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 1:32 PM
> Subject: Re: ucira
>
>
>> absolutely
>> what do we need to do
>>
>> angela
>>
>

title: the reason

Abstract:
Through my artwork I will argue and demonstrate by way of visualisation and interactivity, in public and private spaces, that we are being deliberately manipulated both consciously and unconsciously by the purveyors of language and implementaers of media and technology

I went to the long beach artist walk and projected in galleries and on walls
ran into a young health worker interested in the project for working with youth at risk. This project was offering an alternate interactive environment that could catch their attention. I was projecting before the female fire eating belly dancers.

in an art gallery I was projecting on the ceiling and floors people stopped and as about the children but I was also grilled about the fact that they had seen it outside and maybe people could not understand it, was that part of my intent and by straddling both art and information a great linking

TITLE:
In defense of my project_evidence of knowledge_more than art

ABSTRACT:
The contemporary artist is a culture maker.1. Academic writing is writing done by scholars for other scholars. 2 The art of the academic paper is no longer just for the scholarly elite and should not be limited to the old idealized formats that are consistently used though out most disciplines in the American University System. By writing this paper as a blog I am proposing that the changes in knowledge production due to the technological revolution has created a chasm between knowledge production and knowledge dissemination. My Blog formed through networking and hyper-linking is not a solution for all disciplines but a relevant practice that proves my scholarship within the ACE program. The presence of New forms of Media literacy (Wikki), the nature of interdisciplinary (MIT) studies in the Sciences (site Cal it2), Computation (open source, site paper) and the Humanities (site UCHRI last summer) and the merging of research with commerce in the university system requires new formats and ways of authorship. I have created a bit of evidence, a space in the academic world where there is a possibility for rethinking. Rethinking the way we validate and give authorship to the scholarly production of knowledge. My paper, blog, is a performance, an artwork, an academic paper and a viable source of academic knowledge.

To: pumpkin@mindspring.com
Subject: response to PP
Date: Jun 1, 2007 12:01 PM

Angela remember when we went out for the first showing, there were a number of people who were intrigued. People in cars stopped at the corner stoplight would roll down their windows to get a better look, and asked what we were doing. A group of twenty-somethings in the parking lot across the street yelled questions to you and came closer to see what the video was about.

I saw the video I took on Myspace that showed the performance piece. The idea of taking art to the people, taking it off the gallery walls where it maintains a certain distance from everyday life, is very refreshing. People who would not necessarily walk into a gallery or a museum were invited to listen and view the piece in common, every day locations. I think the shock of having art brought to you probably made people remember the work more strongly than if they had gone to see it in a context that was not relevant to the work. It was out of context for most viewers, - seeing an art project in public but in context with the content of the art work, and that made it memorable. By going mobile, Angela you also able to make the piece more flexible. Instead of a blank screen or white wall, your video was projected on a myriad of different, contextual "screens", Those screens could be changed at will, which then altered the context of the video itself, so every performance was new and different.


That's all I got. 8^)
Laura


Bibliography

1. Sharon Hayes. Visiting Artist UCI April 24Th-26Th 2007


2. Writing at Dartmouth Online Writing Materials Materials for Students
What is an academic paper?
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/what.shtml

TITLE:
The technology of art: the imagined

ABSTRACT;
The process of art is often perceived as a free, democratic practice that is cutting edge, progressive and experimental. (Paco Barragan) The making of the artist, is a manufactured position, steeped in the traditions of institutions, mediated by history and technology, defined by those in the positions of authority, (Bretcht) that are embedded into the already existing systems of art production. I believe Art today is simply a place where the art of recycling and connecting facilitates the process of reinvention, where the marginalized are creating anew. (Larkin)
(Hausa video) (Youtube video)

INTRODUCTION:
Networked connections:
The connections between my process of art practice, my production of knowledge, use of technology and my life at home overlap, imposing onto and impregnating each other endlessly, often without my consciousness decision. For example; my children also become my muses when I want to visualize an idea. the way I hypothesize, sketch and create solutions for my art projects is very similar to the way I jot notes, plan, write and research a paper. Presently Language is the same starting point for my academic and artistic work. The finding and exploring of the words Precocious Puberty which is used to identify the disease, came from videoing children as much as doing my academic research. (pics)

The word precocious officially means:
1. unusually advanced or mature in development, esp. mental development; a precocious child
2. prematurely developed, as the mind, faculties, etc
3. of or pertaining to premature development
4. Botany: a. flowering, fruiting, or ripening early, as plants or fruit
b. bearing blossoms before leaves, as plants
c. appearing before leaves, as flowers
Origin: 1640–50; L praecoci-, s. of praecox (2.)

(show pics of sexy girls)

Although there is an 'official' meaning allocated to the word precocious, when I interviewed people, asking what their definition of the word was, it became evident that not only was there a vast range in meaning, but that the majority of those interviewed had an alternate understanding, an unoffical version. Precocious, had become a negative term was used to describe the child as naughty, excessive or rude, the meaning had transformed into a flawed behavioral characteristic. This simple exercise, where people were asked to define a the word such as precocious brought to my attention to the fact that adults also used words like "bubs, blooming and flowering", only when describing the puberty of a girl. Creating a problematic imagined image of the precocious Puberty child owning the disease. (Appanduri**)

graph link to PDF

Young girls seemed to own of the disease of early puberty not only because of the misunderstood naming but by the use of language that describes the process of puberty. Mix the language, with the bombardment of sexy images of the girl in advertising and the girls early puberty can be seen as natural. and these connections add up creating a wall which detracts from the need for finding a cause. (Jezebel theory) (site article showing PP in news) (show young sexy girl)







But the use of language is not the only frustrating factor, there are many connectors. In the past few years PP is simply seen as a bi-product of Americas problem with Obesity. Obesity, the new disease of the new century. (site an article in NY times around obesity) Obesity means fat and fat promotes estrogen and research shows that an increase in estrogen means early puberty. (site research) If you have increased estrogen then you need a product to counteract the effects of production of estrogen. The big Pharma companies then need to to create a new product that either curtails eating or prohibits the making of estrogen. Big Pharma then supports or creates facilities for research. in institutions such as hospitals, insurance companies, universities.(give link)
(show fat pills) (show lipo suction)

But is it that simple? This one scenario of placing obesity in the context of the manufacture of technology, the production of knowledge and promotion through new media, Obesity becomes a tool in the manufacture of commodities and profits. There is also the issue of steroids in food produced through the production of chicken and meat , phaliates that are found in plastics,(Dominican Republic) or the use of pesticides needed to produce fruit and vegetables in colossal quantities throughout the world or genetic. The connections and list of causes becomes endless and inconclusive, which has impacted the way I approached the meshing of sound and visuals for my project and the use of a blog that I can edit endlessly.

show cows and chickens

To: awillcocks
Subject: Video response
Date: Jun 5, 2007 7:59 AM

I tried three times to open the site on two different web browsers with the precise site that you sent me. Each time the site address reverted to just www.myspace.com, the general home page, and I didn't know where to go from there.
So I went back to the former guerrilla projections you sent before. As I said, the sound quality is too low and poor to really know what is being talked about so I just watched the video several times.

What I find most interesting is how appropriate the selected form of
presentation is to the concept of the piece. That is to say, unexpected and unannounced. To use this very mobile, guerrilla-style manner of projecting images onto chosen commercial and industrial sites is intriguing and gives a much deeper meaning to this insidious topic of far reaching implications.
This manner of presentation speaks very succinctly to the over arching toxicity that pervades this society's lifestyles on so many levels and the myriad spheres of life that it impacts. Using seemingly random businesses such as a pharmacy/health clinic, a building supply depot, and a water tower near a working oil rig to project images onto neatly comments on the benign/not-so-benign sources by which we may be potentially poisoning ourselves and our children. This style of work reminds me of a Michael Moore sensibility.

I have to remark, however, the garbled sound did not further the intent and in fact added confusion in this instance. The initial montage of people talking in a shopping aisle was also confusing but the images of a child with the number 9 projected next to an oil rig was very compelling. And I found the artist statement very helpful to read prior to viewing the video.
This is a very relevant and topical issue to pursue and I would like to see this idea and approach explored further . The quieter, stiller images communicate better however.

Leslie

The technology of the process:
My blog is up and running and today was panel day where the ACE graduating students presented and proposed theories and practice around the forming of our projects, another context for my work: Version 5. This performance or panel, where my images were downloaded through a web browser and documented on video, with me describing my project, yet another piece of evidence necessary for my proof of project. (link to UCI WEB) The act of re-documenting recycles. (Larkin) By showing my work through the Internet as I spoke, I was in a sense demonstrating the difference between actual experience and a mediated experience. I staged my talk as a performance where knowledge production and art were mashed though technology.

Technology provides all these different avenues and paths that add t and can unravel mysteries. Technology can bring a sense of truth to many of different types of people while facilitating the flow of information, translating, reconfiguring, transforming and informing. The actual experience of the site specific installation (projection and transmission) is intended to be a personal interactive experience that creates a situated event. Unlike the digital translation (video) or the staged demonstration in a gallery presentation which are not about the site, the situated or the situatedness (Appadurai), the mediation/showing of the project through documentation and presentations is beneficial to prove knowledge and practice but the crucial part of the Art is the actual performance where people respond to the physicality of the experience and a crack is created that can initiate dialog. (It is very hard to compete against the ramped corporate New Media)

"Technologies, being the apparatuses that are used to collect, organize, compute and translate information.
they have become the mechanisms and infrastructure for distributing messages, interacting with the worlds that facilitate the way in which we are meant to respond. (Dourish 2006)" My project, a portable video projector with radio transmission is formulated around the idea that technology enables me to create a space where the identity of the imagined subject can be translated onto an existing public space. The traditional public space (outside the home) is is a space that is inhabited by the presence of individuals doing there own thing. I am intervening in their space and the fact that i am recycling and reusing technology that they are familiar with abstracts and re-mediates the imagined child providing a new place for new interpretations. (site Dourish article about playing game in public) By creating a space where the face of the imagined child can be visualized, solidified by the video I am also situating the child,as a participant not just a victim. This new use of technology opens up the possibilities for inherent flexibilities, which can transform, translate and transport ideas, policies, people and knowledge..

This engagement of contextual space through performance and technology provides a real experience that can impact the everyday, the normative and redirect discourse (de Certeau) . Perhaps this is why we need to look to new Media as a viable format for knowledge production.


Notes:
Official - meaning authorized by a proper authority. an testament, a court document

Mediation: mediating meanings,
It is the way we are enabled to understand our environment and this in turn affects how we decode, interpret and interact with our worlds. (Bestor ) For example the radio waves are monitored by the government and large companies which regulate what gets played, what news we hear and it is their choice not ours. Freewave radio 99 point 3

The radio:
Radios as a form of evolving technology have developed along with the modern technology revolution, where their
discriminatory powers (transmission and receiver) are now similar to the highly evolved human
communication system, (communication interference is close to non-existent today so why are
they regulated?) The radio has been regulated since WW1 by standards and constraints, which
are now automatically built into the infrastructure of the hardware and software. Today the public
rarely questions the embedded nature of the control, seeming powerless or perhaps just
disinterested. ( transmission strength and specific wavelength usage are bought and sold by a
small number of corporations and organizations banning the amateur Radio user from distanced
communication and specific wave length usage, which directly affects what types of information
we receive and where). What we hear is mediated by those who own the airwaves and the radio
is just one of many examples where technology it is not only the distributor of information but a
material where the imagined is conceived and distributed. (Sussen 2006, 23)


Bibliography:

Barragan, Paco The Art to Come: 159 Artists 2001 Subastas siglo XX1, SL, Madrid

Larkin, Brian Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy Public Culture16(2): 289–314 Copyright ©2004 by Duke University Press

2. American Psychological Association (APA):
precocious. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Retrieved June 06, 2007, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precocious

By ‘subject’ I do not imply only human actors. Rather, we refer to any agent – be it a human
being, a natural element or an artifact – involved in a process of creation of meaning. See Latour 1987;
Hayles 1999; Whatmore 2002

3. An interview with Arjun Appadurai by Annette Baldauf and Christian Hoeller. Translocation_new
media/ art Modernity at Large. https://www.translocation.at/appadurai “site, situation and situatedness are
of paramount importance in the globalized world... But we need to avoid assuming that sites are the
same as communities or that localities are simply geographical locations”

Appadurai, Arjun 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(University of Minnesota University Press,
Appadurai discusses the use of the imagination and how it acts between how we imagine the world and
how that imagination influences our self-understanding, between social institutions and their effects on the
people who participate in them.


Cresswell, Tim 1999 Embodiment, Power and the Politics of Mobility: The Case of the Female
Tramp and Hobos Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, Vol 24, No. 2.
The tramps identity was constructed through a number of discursive strategies. Definitions through
documentation – the anarchist Ben Ritman
Different to the average person, where the tramp was someone that traveled on a train. The tramps
identity was created through newspaper articles describing biased accounts of individuals “as well as appearing in editorials and learned paper, the tramp was a favorite figure for cartoonists and illustrators.
He appeared to be either a foolish clown of a hostile threat...placing him at the boundary of the home
usually occupied by a mother” p182
The Imagined Image was further defined by laws, tramp laws where the existence of tramps was
understood (over time) in terms of “schemes of perception” p183

de Certeau, Michel translated by Steven F. Rendall. 1984. The Practice of everyday life.,
University of California Press, pp34-35

Dourish Paul, Bell, Genevieve, 2006 The Infrastructure of Experience and the Experience of
Infrastructure:Meaning and Structure in Everyday Encounters with Space

McLuhan, Marshall 1967 Medium is the message 1st Ed.: The Vanguard Press, NY; reissued by
Gingko Press, 2002

TITLE:
Art_Performing research_Proof of Project.

ABSTRACT:
Simply Art or is it a 'bounded object' (Latour) that connects the networked path, from the 'production of knowledge', through the construction of meaning, to the cementing of power within the institution of knowledge?

a bounded object activism

My project could be seen as a walk, a serious activist intervention, a graduate requirement for the Graduate ACE program or a post postmodern Art practice. By using an art piece I have researched and developed a titled Precocious Puberty that demonstrates my on going investigation of Language, Language as a kind of avatar, as a targeted mediator. The video art and radio transmission pieces that form part of this project are conceptually relevant and crucial to appreciating the Art. You will see how I have informed the public of three structured walks proposed as part of this project and then documented these performance pieces on Myspace, current TV, Youtube and on my own personal web site. The simplicity of small children interpreting words becomes more complex when mapped onto a tower, and heard though radio demonstrates the impact of language through multiple and concurrent use of ramped-up technology and new media. Everyone has an opinion, right? How much art is in the delivery?

On May 26, 2007, at 8:48 AM, awillcoc@uci.edu wrote:

> Here are a few videos take a look - my project
>
> http://www.myspace.com/fatsothedidileo
>
> angela


On May 28, 2007, at 10:32 PM,:

Hi Angela,
I am terribly sorry I couldn't attend your performance last night, but I am in the last
week of a yoga teacher training certification and couldn't miss class last night. (no I am not kidding, I am becoming a California New Age
woman...).I would have loved to see your actual project rather than documentation, but since this wasn't  possible it would be really
helpful if I could hear you talk/present the project before your actual thesis defense.

let me know if that works for you, otherwise maybe we can schedule a meeting where you can tell me all
about it. (I am leaving town right after classes end though).

all the best,
Beatriz
>
Beatriz da Costa
Assistant Professor of Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Arts Computation Engineering (ACE) Graduate Program University of California, Irvine

www.beatrizdacosta.net
www.preemptivemedia.net

INTRODUCTION:
The Inspiration: I have been documenting my children (Diego and Raphael) for the past 5 years, as they learnt how to speak, write, read, interpret and use the American English Language. Language is an essential unit of my children's education as they create an understanding of their world. Over time my children's use words has become a tool for the flow of information, communicating and understanding, processing and acting and interacting. Through examination, research data collection and documentation the construction of language has been dissected beyond the superficiality of observation (site some language research) My observations, although not scientific in technique, are the biased lens of a mother and artist. Overtime my children learned to interpret and use words and this has influenced the way they interact socially. Their use of language has begun to define their beliefs, fabricate truth or fantasy carried their emotions and imagined ideas. As my small children weave their way through life, the gradual accumulation of language serves to increase their knowledge. This is an accepted fact. But at what point is the getting of this knowledge bound by “rules” manufactured and imposed on our language so that in the act of communication we perceive what “they” want us to perceive?
school local store hospital

Whether or not the children were in total control of the language uses and terminologies they were being constantly bombarded by different information. Through documenting my children's progress I noticed that factors outside the home were influencing the way my children used their words and understood situations. New Media such as TV, web, radios Mp3's, video games and film as well as schools, institutions (hospitals) or simply a journey to the local store fueled gave new a meaning and context. Over time those in the positions of authority, the parent, the mentor, the teacher, the sibling, the shop keeper all influenced my children's view of the world the words had become 'bounded objects'. bounded by and through technology.(McLuhan) (Latour).

To:	pumpkin@mindspring.com
Subject:	RE: angela wilcocks
Date:	May 24, 2007 9:54 PM

Had a look at the videos Ange, took me a little while to work the projection one out but it is quite interesting, I like seeing the kids again.

Mark



At the same time I was documenting my children, I was a student working with a group of women at ACE. We were researching a common a obsession, food; food production, consumption and classification. I noticed early on, that I paid little attention to the food I fed my children and didn't really care if this impacted them. I had control over what they ate but essentially the cost determined what food they got. After lots of discussions, meetings and research I noticed the different types of language used, such as Organic, general merchandise, generic, genetic and particularly precocious puberty. Precocious Puberty is the medical term for a disease that is perhaps linked to a child's consumption of food, I misinterpreted it as a naughty kids problem, why? Some how the placing of these two words together make me think the child became the problem. Coincidently a friend emailed me today

To:	pumpkin@mindspring.com
Subject:	virtuality in art?
Date:	Jun 4, 2007 12:13 AM

I mentioned PP to a doctor I know earlier today and he said “mention PP to a doctor and we immediately know what it means. There is only one meaning for Precocious and that is early. Look at the word, it comes from pre – meaning before and corpus meaning body. The medical jargon has only one meaning. It is when it gets out in the media that this title gets overtaken by several judgmental, sexualized meanings that lead to a variety of perceptions.” I thought that was interesting.

For me even the fact these words imply that the child is gifted with the disease of Precocious Puberty is problematic. My first impression find connection between precocious puberty, food and the child? Researching the disease Precocious Puberty,formed my concept and ideas, directing the path of my interdisciplinary, technological project.(ACE) The connections with food, language and children was inevitable spilling from my Interdisciplinary studies into my home a classic. My children became my muses, they were my lab rats being exploited and documented as I processed the implications and artistic parameters surrounding Precocious Puberty.



The research:
The more I researched the disease Precocious Puberty, the more confused I became, the more complicated and ill-defined the problem became. I started off believing that it was probably caused by pesticides and steroids and remember thinking "when will I be able to afford organic food" Then while researching a paper for a Womens Studies presentation (and paper) the deeper I dug the more I discovered how little I understood of the disease I had become a Modest witness (Haraway). The medical research was problematic: a majority of doctors, scientists and writers consistently sited only one research paper as scientific their form of verification and qualification for the disease and the methodology appeared flawed.

‘Precocious Puberty’ is on the Rise By Kim Ridley, Ode. Posted January, 2007
Hormone-mimicking chemicals found in food, water, and many consumer goods may well be the cause of why children as young as eight are showing signs of sexual development…… Researchers call this phenomenon "precocious puberty," which some say is on the rise. Forty-eight percent of African-American girls and 15 percent of Caucasian girls show physical signs of puberty by age 8, according to a study of 17,000 U.S. girls published in Pediatrics in 1997. In a subsequent study of more than 2,000 boys, lead author Marcia Herman-Giddens found that 38 percent of African-American boys and 30 percent of Caucasian boys showed signs of sexual development by age 8.

Most of the statistics referred to by the medical, technical and news agencies essentially quoted 4 numbers, as a demarcation point for classifying the age for the early onset puberty (PP) 6 or 7 for black girls,7 for girls Latin ,8 white girls ,9,10 for boys. How accurate can these numbers be, when the research was done on 93'% white children with no consideration for their the socio economic background?

" METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted by 225 clinicians in pediatric practices belonging to Pediatric Research in Office Settings, a practice-based research network. After standardized training in the assessment of pubertal maturation, practitioners rated the level of sexual maturation on girls 3 through 12 years who were undergoing complete physical examinations. RESULTS: Data were analyzed for 17,077 girls, of whom 9.6% were African-American and 90.4% white. At age 3, 3% of African-American girls and 1% of white girls showed breast and/or pubic hair development, with proportions increasing to 27.2% and 6.7%, respectively, at 7 years of age. " (3)

Then on 22/5/07 A friend, Leslie called me from Atlanta. "Yes" she had received my e-mail about my projections in Long Beach. And "No" she would be unable to make the performance, but she had been thinking about me today. Leslie had been watching Oprah Winfrey’s show yesterday on TV yesterday when a member of the audience , a mother asked Dr Oz if it was normal for her 6 year old daughter to have breasts? Dr Oz was appreciative of the question, as this was a recent problem and had become important to him, it seemed to be occurring more and more in children today. Dr Oz named this early maturing as the disease Precocious Puberty and referred the problem to Oprah, asking her if she knew that 25% of African American children have Precocious Puberty? http://www.oprah.com. (Oprah archive 21/5/07)



I quickly hung up the phone, thinking how fortuitous it was that Oprah and my performance had occured on the same day. I logged immediately onto the internet, looking up Oprah’s web site to connect with Dr Oz. at least I can e-mail them.

To: "Oprah.com "
Subject: precocious puberty
Date: May 21, 2007 10:05 PM
I watched your program yesterday and found it extremely coincidental yet meant to be as I projecting my art piece – precocious puberty in public places
I am an artist and have been working the causes and effects of Precocious puberty for the past year.
I have created a portable projector with radio transmitter that enables me to walk the streets, malls and public spaces projecting my Art Work about Precocious Puberty.
Dr Oz was talking on your show in response to a parents worry about her daughters early puberty and I would suggest you take a look at my web site about this Precocious Puberty Problem.

http://www.awillcocks.com.PP.html.
Please feel free to contact me at any time
Angela willcocks

As an artist this could be my big break, the media, the news....the creating and building of interest in my work that will give me credibility. If Dr Oz, connects with me through my email, if he sees that I am interested in helping the public, he could be intrigued by my inventive art projections, then that could change my career, I could become a famous artist, all I need is that one piece of Media coverage legitimizing me. I can only imagine the chain reaction, the media, the galleries, the critics, the curators, the museums, the jobs possibilities, the universities. The fact is an artists reputation is built over time in the mediated space of the art world.



Being a successful Artist is a networked process, a process similar to the Academic. There are only a few ways to become an artist and culture maker. The most common paths are either being through the galleries, museums or the university system. All rely on the validation of the artist an artist that is reviewed in magazines, and books or mentioned in a Newspaper, becomes noticed. Take for example the heavily marketed Saatchi Collection exhibit, "Sensation: Young British Artists" 80% of the artist virtually all unknown now earn their living as Artists.

Chris Ofili christine Finn Van Gogh

Highlighted throughout history people such as Van Gogh or Frieda Kalo lived in poverty most of their lives, they had natural talent but where never recognized by the powers that control the Art world. The artist must take part in the production of their Art, the networking, the learning, the promoting and the selling, all necessary hurdles built by the structures within the framework of the Art World(Carter) For example Stelac the techno Australian a globally networked practicing artist.

To: pumpkin@mindspring.com
Subject: Oprah.com has received your e-mail
Date: May 22, 2007 12:05 PM

Dear angela Willcocks,

Thank you for your e-mail! Your message is important to us. Unfortunately, due
to the volume of e-mail messages we receive every day, we cannot guarantee that
you'll receive a personal response. Feel free to check out our Frequently Asked
Questions for additional help.
http://www.oprah.com/tows/program/tows_prog_main.jhtml

Thanks again for writing to us!

Sincerely,
The Oprah.com Staff
www.oprah.com

The promotion and the networking of the Artist is an essential key for success in the Art world today. It provides evidence of eminence. The artist must produce the work, but the connections that site, validate and display the artists work is powerful. The production of the artist is the same as the production of knowledge within the university system. It does not matter if it is the Activist artist who is supported by universities, grants and international conferences or the commercial artist supported in galleries, museums and corporate collections, the artist or academic need to be represented and both need media to highlight the importance of the artists career. Although there are several different ways to get noticed, the majority of aspiring artists follow specific paths. For example, firstly the 'high' artist (notes place definition of high and low art) needs a degree from a relevant university. The prospective artist has to be selected for a program under certain criteria by the Art Professors. Remember the Professors are artists employed by that institution and they build the reputation of the institution. The artists employed by the institutions are connected to galleries, curators and conferences that sell, display and promote their work. (Vehlmetta gallery +UCLA) The more important the university the more probability, you will be referred to prominent galleries or curators or conferences which in turn this validates your authenticity as an artist.

5/29/07
e-mail
Todd grey – UCLB

hey angela,

i saw you and your partner working at the home depot last tuesday. i kept a little distance in order to witness the interactions occurring around you, intending to greet you a short while later. i saw you speaking with a black couple across from the check-out area at depot, then went to get something from my car. when i returned i couldn't find you guys anywhere. looked all through depot, drove my car around the lot. i was only gone a couple of minutes. really wanted to observe more of the process. nice to see people putting on earphones and engaging.
best,
todd

As e-mails come and go I start to wonder how the idea of trying to promote yourself is not how the public sees the artist (Greenberg). Being an artist is like being a free spirit, someone who does not need to earn money because they are doing what they want. I then start to question my web site that I recently uploaded http://www.springmail.com/PP.html. Perhaps I need to change how the links go nowhere, maybe there needs to be more than just sound and a black square on some pages (all conceptual decisions demonstrating different parts of my research) The changes might compromise my Art Internet site, but the public will be able to follow the relationship between my hyper-linked pages. More clarity, less interpreting, more accessibility.

public forum public chat

All my Art is on the internet, open and accessible for public viewing. Our idea of the 'public' has changed from a place out of the house to a space created at home with access to the public. My thoughts project excitedly onto the fact that I might actually be able to get noticed. By posting my videos on the internet, I am not only proving my project for the university but I am opening up the possibility of having access for the public. Reflexively this New Media connection between private and public also promotes an artists practice .

To:	pumpkin@mindspring.com
Subject:	art again
Date:	My 24th , 2007 7:32 PM

hi angela,
just took a piece at the videos. like the guerilla stuff - the contraption that you where is really cool - love the performance aspect of it as well. it's hard to hear the audio inside the store - competes too much with the
audio in the video. oh yeah, the one that's projected on the water tower is really effective visually. i think scale makes a difference. i like the billboard conceptually, though the billboard imagery competes.

be well.
xo,
traci

Notes:

Bibliography:

Latour, Bruno (1987). Science In Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., USA.

‘Precocious Puberty’ is on the Rise By Kim Ridley, Ode. Posted January, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/environment/46213?page=1

KidsHealth > Parents > Medical Problems > Sexual & Reproductive System > Precocious Puberty
Puberty, usually occurring during adolescence, is when kids develop physically and emotionally into young men and women. Usually, this starts to happen no earlier than about 7 to 8 years of age for girls and 9 years of age for boys (the average age is about 10 for girls and 12 for boys).



3. Herman-Giddens ME, Slora EJ, Wasserman RC, Bourdony CJ, Bhapkar MV, Koch GG, Hasemeier CM.
Department of Maternal and Child Health, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 27599-7580, USA. 1: Pediatrics. 1997 Apr;99(4):505-12
Secondary sexual characteristics and menses in young girls seen in office practice: a study from the Pediatric Research in Office Settings network. Pediatrics. 1997 Apr;99(4):505-12. PMID: 9093289 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez

Herman-giddens is also quoted " that other factors, including girls growing up without their father in the home, lack of exercise, and endocrine disruptors – chemicals common in pesticides – could also be playing a role in the early onset of female puberty (see Why are girls growing up so fast?).

“It’s not normal,” Herman-Giddens says, “but with the growing obesity epidemic, the problem is likely to increase.”

Journal reference: Pediatrics (vol 119, issue 3)"

The Artist in the Modern World: A Conflict Between Market and Self-Expression - Review
Art Journal, Winter, 1998 by David Carrier

"But unless we understand how art is sold and promoted, how can we properly grasp its purely aesthetic qualities? Much of the effect of most recent U.S. art depends on its being presented in upscale galleries - and that would be impossible without the financial resources of successful dealers. "I hate being called an art dealer," one dealer once said to me. But without several generations of such gifted businesspeople, the U.S. art world could hardly exist."

Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection (Paperback) book (Paperback)
by Norman Rosenthal (Author), Brooks Adams (Author), Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain) (Author), Saatchi Collection (Corporate Author)

Clement Greenberg: 1909 - 1994 An Influential twentieth century art critic, best known for his promotion and defense of abstract expressionism. In "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939) he somewhat paradoxically combined his socialist convictions with a defense of avant-garde, abstract, "non-objective" painting and poetry, even while admitting that this art appealed to a small and shrinking elite, members of the ruling class, on whose money the avant-garde depended for its survival.