36 | 2006

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10

Camille Utterback's Series EXTERNAL MEASURES
Dorin, Lisa (2006)
Camille Utterbacks' work is often discussed solely in terms of its pioneering approach to interactivity. For Lisa Dorin, who curated the Animated Gestures exhibition of Utterbacks' External Measures series, Utterback's project also lays claim to a rich art-historical lineage of nonobjective painting, abstract animation, and avant-garde film.
Code.surface| |Code.depth
Raley, Rita (2006)
This essay begins by identifying a central idea in the critical discourse on code art and code poetry: code is a deep structure that instantiates a surface. The AP Project’s Jonathan Kemp and Martin Howse, for example, explain that their work makes “manifest underlying systematics,” that can make the digital “physical, audible and visible through geological computing.” In what sense, if at all, can we trace a computing operation down to a foundation, bottom, or core? Why do we maintain this cultural imaginary of code and how has it come into being? Moreover, how have the metaphors of software engineering – particularly the notion of structured layers and multitier architectures – been put to artistic use? The thematizing of layers, surfaces, and spatial metaphors has become quite intricate in new media writing practices, as I will demonstrate in a reading of “Lascaux.Symbol.ic,” one of Ted Warnell’s Poems by Nari, and recent projects by John Cayley, including Overboard and Translation. These readings, among others, will point to a logical tension between, on the one hand, the discourse of the foundational architecture of code, a “geological computing” that mines the depths to produce a geology (or a mythology) of surface and, on the other, the discourse of computational code in terms of inaccessible, inscrutable processes.
Computer Games as Narrative: The Ludology versus Narrativism Controversy
Ryan, Marie-Laure (2006)
Is the concept of narrative applicable to computer games? Are games therefore part of literature? Or do they need their own methodological approach and institutionalisation? In chapter 8 of her book Avatars of Story Ryan investigates the battle between narratologists and ludologists and explains why a game may not be a story but can be a machine for generating stories, why the narrative in a game often is only an affective hook disappearing once the player is absorbed in the fire of the action, and why on the other hand some times the game is just a ludically organized system for storytelling.
Das Publikum als Pinsel: Camille Utterbacks interaktive Installation UNTITLED 5
Simanowski, Roberto (2006)
Jackson Pollock malte mit dem ganzen Körper, Yves Klein mit dem Körper seiner Assistentinnen, Camille Utterback mit der Bewegung des Publikums. Das Bild (ganz Code statt Farbe) ist das Ergebnis einer stattgehabten Performance - und vergeht (Dokument ohne Dauer) gemeinsam mit dieser. Ist die Installation Werk oder Werkzeug? Ist das Publikum der Künstler oder ist es Utterback? Roberto Simanowski geht der Frage nach und diskutiert die sensuellen und kontemplativen Effekte von Untitled 5.
Digital Art as Social Sculpture and Musical Score: Interview with Richard Rinehart
Simanowski, Roberto (2006)
Editorial
Simanowski, Roberto (2006)
Event-Sequences, Plots and Narration in Computer Games
Jannidis, Fotis (2006)
Starting with the debate between ludologists and narratologists this essay tries to show that there is a narrative aspect in computer games which has nothing to do with background stories and cut scenes. A closer analysis of two sequences, taken from the MMORPG Everquest II and the adventure game Black Mirror, is the basis for a distinction between three aspects of this kind of narrative in computer games: the sequence of activities of the player, the sequence of events as it is determined by the mechanics of the game and this sequence of events understood as a plot, that is as a sequence of chronologically ordered and causally linked events. This kind of narrative is quite distant to the prototypical narrative which is the basis of most of the narratology. But actually all media, not only computer games, need their own narratology.
Hypermedia and the Question of Canonicity
Ensslin, Astrid (2006)
This article is concerned with the question to what extent literary hypertext and hypermedia are compatible with the concept of canonicity. The discussion centres around ideologies surrounding canon and censorship, the causal relationship between canon and the curriculum and, finally, the role and possibilities of digital literature within traditional and innovative notions of canonicity. I argue that the traditionally static concept of the literary canon (including alternative canons) needs to be replaced by an inherently dynamic one, which follows the principles of avant-garde aesthetics. The article closes with an exemplary ‘rule canon’ for literary hypermedia.
Scott Snibbe's DEEP WALLS: A Close Reading
Simanowski, Roberto (2006)
Deep Walls (2003), by Scott Snibbe (see interview), consists of a camera and a rectangular screen which is divided in 16 smaller rectangular screens. The camera records the projected shadow of the viewers who move in front of the screen, and each of the small screens plays one of those recordings over and over until a new recording replaces the oldest recording. The piece is set up in a way that the viewer is not aware that she is recorded; she only realizes that her oversized shadow is projected onto the big rectangle, not knowing that when she leaves her action materializes as a looping silhouette in one of the small screens. Given the inexplicitness of the grammar of interaction, in many cases what is recorded is the attempt to figure out the grammar of interaction. This can be considered a metacommentary on interactivity. However, there is much more symbolic in this installation.
Useless Programs, Useful Programmers, and the production of Social Interactive Artworks: Interview with Scott Snibbe
Simanowski, Roberto (2006)
Scott Snibbe, who holds Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Fine Art, and a Master’s in Computer Science from Brown University, creates electronic media installations that directly engage the body of the viewer in a reactive system. His work has been shown internationally at venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Artport (New York), Eyebeam (New York), and The Kitchen (New York); the InterCommunications Center (Tokyo); Ars Electronica (Austria); The Institute of Contemporary Art (London); and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco). He has been awarded a variety of international prizes, including the Prix Ars Electronica, and a Rockefeller New Media Fellowship. Snibbe has taught media art and experimental film at Brown University, the San Francisco Art Institute, the Rhode Island School of Design and UC Berkeley. He has held research positions at Adobe Systems and Interval Research. His works are designed to have specific social effects: to create a sense of interdependence, to promote friendly interaction among strangers, and to increase viewers’ concentration. Roberto Simanowski talked with him about kids, parents, Buddhism, benches and walls.

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