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