#furtherfield

We are just animals, humans and machines getting on together in specific lifeworlds

A site specific, interactive sound work creating moments of connection between strangers of all species by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Lisa Hall. ​

This work can be accessed using a mobile & headphones in Finsbury Park during May-December 2021. Scan the QR code on Furtherfield's gallery to begin the work, our compass will launch and guide you on new pathways. Offsite visitors can access a simulated version of the work via the website using a mobile device. 

In 2015 Eric Zepka in the article Science Fiction Realism published by Furtherfield wrote on sci-fi images and their “meaning”. He sees them as a kind of folk language for common experience within a technoscientifically oriented world. Reading it made me feel sad.

Is it about fleeing reality - escaping responsability - creating a dream, a nightmare ... is this us? Give me Ursula Le Guin’s words.

With visual language, very quickly we get to a stranger and more indeterminate range of science fiction possibilities than narrative tends to map out for us........If our environments advance exponentially quicker than any generational or traditional mythology, what sort of language can we have for expression?

A world not of local cultures, but of computational production. Here anyone can know anything, it doesn’t matter where you’re from.

The real is replaced by the potential.

Image : Giselle Zatonyl

What is the language to talk about the world? If we turn to artists’ visualizations, what does that tell us about languages we speak, and ones we read? What does the graphing of incomprehensible mechanisms tell us in turn about art and its history? The machine’s narratives tend to drown out any functional reality. Genre storytelling tropes become repurposed as collective cultural ideas.

In the realm of speculation, anything is possible, and nothing is fully acceptable.

Rachel Falconer was unfortunately unwell so this class was rescheduled to reading week which I could not attend due to prior commitments. The following is based on the week 2 readings only.

Last term I mentioned how “something that personally concerns me is the preservation and commodification of new media art”. The issue of curating computational artworks was the discussion topic this week so naturally I dove straight into its material discourse.

To begin with I read Christiane Paul’s Introduction for ‘New Media in the White Cube and Beyond’ This text I found to be quite fascinating as she explores the “presentation and preservation” along with the challenges of curating digital art. She speaks of how our traditional notions of the ‘art object’ are becoming gradually reconfigured due to an emphasis on process within our information led society. How computational art is predominately based on algorithms; so modern curators and artists should learn to interface with these digital technologies. One of the most interesting sections was when she speaks of how presenting net art in a gallery setting could be considered not the “natural state” to view such work. This reminds me of Taipei Phototime by Lev Manovich in which he visualised real time Instagram images uploaded from Taipei and New York. Should a work like this be shared in a white cube space or online? Which distribution method would speak to the nature of this piece?

The next reading was an E-Flux journal by Boris Groys entitled Curating in the Post-Internet Age which I found to be an equally compelling read. He speaks of how contemporary art galleries are supposed to remove cultural context and exhibit the work in an unbiased zone. However, the reality of the situation is that these spaces are comprised of “hierarchies, curatorial choices, and strategies” so arrive with a wealth of implicit biases. He then elaborates that in the digital era we are also framed by an “amalgamation of technology and ideology”, which I believe to be quite a profoundly insightful observation. But personally, I disagree with his argument that the internet is inherently a “narcissistic medium” since there are plenty of online communities that have more democratic intentions.

This made me start thinking about the multimedia report and how these issues relate to my artistic practice. In the past I have found some institutions to be unwelcoming and highly selective when it comes to computational art. But early examples such as Nam June Paik’s satellite "installation", Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, have shown us that art can transcend the confides of a gallery. Modern online collectives and hacktivist platforms such as Disruption Network Lab give me hope that the revolution will be digitalized. For the research project this has given me an idea to investigate how Blockchain could impact the future of the art industry. Rather poetically, my practice has found more of a fanbase online where you receive instant feedback and constructive criticism from an international audience. That said I still believe art should be a shared experience IRL rather than just on a URL, but it’s important to consider these issues for the medium to progress.

References • http://atc.berkeley.edu/201/readings/Christiane_Paul_Reading.pdf • http://manovich.net/index.php/exhibitions/taipei-phototime • https://www.e-flux.com/journal/94/219462/curating-in-the-post-internet-age/ • https://www.isthisitisthisit.com/ • https://news.feltzine.us/ • https://www.furtherfield.org/disruption-network-lab-art-as-investigating-misconduct-wrongdoing/

Image from Taipei Phototi by: Lev Manovich http://manovich.net/index.php/exhibitions/taipei-phototime

For the Assignment 1 project an aspect of computation I want to explore is Blockchain. The Wikipedia definition of blockchain is a ‘growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. By design, a blockchain is resistant to modification of the data.’

This technology still seems allusive to me, despite the Transmediale lectures I attended, so my goal is to explore this topic from a theoretical, computational as well as artistic perspective. Something that personally concerns me is the preservation and commodification of new media art, as it seems to me that most institutions have not yet come to terms with this new discourse. Blockchain offers a digital signature as a sign of authenticity and encapsulates decentralized transactions based upon trust as well as online anonymity. With a similar democratic approach to the Open Source movement, this could potentially revolutionize buying and selling computational artworks. With the modern digitization of every aspect of culture, I feel now is a good time to research this contemporary topic and explore what artistic potential it may have.

In our group session we discussed each other’s projects and it seems that I am not the only person somewhat confused by the concept of blockchain, so the first step would be to uncover this mystery. To initialize this process, I began reading an article by Artnome which explores the potential of blockchain within the art world. The text serves as a brilliant introduction to the topic as it briefly covers areas such as entrepreneurial approaches to the technology, the problems with blockchain and its applications within computational art.

However, for more in depth reading it came to my attention that Furtherfield recently published a new book entitled ‘Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain.’ This text would be an absolute necessity for my speculative research project and to tie in with the release of this publication they hosted many recent events which I missed unfortunately. However, I plan to keep my eyes peeled for any future Furtherfield events or exhibitions and, as primary research, I might also contact them for discussion on the topic.

Ultimately this is for a final research artifact, to which I believe a Ryoji Ikeda style data visualization would be most suitable. From a theoretical perspective, this exercise would help to visually communicate what the blockchain is using practical skills from Lior’s Programming for Artists module. For inspiration, I found another article on visualizations of bitcoin data which are both informative and impressive to behold. Some of these even come with recipes and links to API’s so this would help me to begin the process of Visualizing the Blockchain. 

References • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain • https://www.artnome.com/news/2018/7/21/art-world-meet-blockchain • Catlow, R., Garrett, M., Jones, N., & Skinner, S. (2017). Artists re:thinking the blockchain. • https://datalion.com/visualizing-blockchain-7-beautiful-informative-bitcoin-visualizations/

Image from Visualizing blockchain 7 beautiful informative bitcoin visualizations by: Data Lion https://datalion.com/visualizing-blockchain-7-beautiful-informative-bitcoin-visualizations/

Image from Visualizing blockchain 7 beautiful informative bitcoin visualizations by: Data Lion https://datalion.com/visualizing-blockchain-7-beautiful-informative-bitcoin-visualizations/

Image from Visualizing blockchain 7 beautiful informative bitcoin visualizations by: Data Lion https://datalion.com/visualizing-blockchain-7-beautiful-informative-bitcoin-visualizations/