#weeklyresponse

I think the criticism PDF was a good lens through which to view the class and the final project—the ideas of critiques hurting the critics can be helpful when thinking about living life as a non-artist but I think art school has beat that sentiment away in art spaces. I’ve not found infinite errors where I’ve been in negative critique spaces, there is always an end. I can’t fully say I think it’s beautiful to look for the “moments of exhilaration in the artwork…and not shortcomings,” but I will agree that each critic is imperfect (well the way that classes are structured as you gain years at RISD shifts slightly, from the critic being the ultimate guide to just an opionated guide later on). I’m really into criticism existing to help us understand, and understanding it as “an act of contemplation,” not as “an act of production” which I consider very cold (but again have had programmed into myself).

I was struck in the digital book (interactive research) about how the author “acknowledge[s] the fact that some key contributions always remain unnamed,” and whether that was meant to be about the reader/user of the digital piece. I really wish the PDF hadn’t gone on so long about English being the master language with other languages “altered, debased, inferior” to it, unless it meant specifically within the coding world, as I hadn’t given thought to code being consistently in English before reading this piece.

The concept of the media (in terms of website) being the thing that is consistent and its packaging/view station being the fluid piece to the experience I guess is just new media vs. old media in a nutshell, but is really a way of operating that I should’ve been utilizing for a while as an artist but haven’t been (really until this class). The looped book-as-website was a really clever way out of that box, and is an inspiration for how to (seemingly) eternalize/perpetuate objects.

I agree with the 1999 UK conference speakers who endorsed the fact “that style and medium should never subsume content and message” and that “computer technology should be seen merely a means to an end, not an end in itself.” As an artist I do often feel torn between the three theoretical stances (or torn between having to interweave them), to an antagonizing degree. I found the Dixon text to be most helpful in its references of works to experience.

I feel like the overall tone of Data Will Help Us is supposed to be ominous but yes I do think that data could help us see how the world could be. At least similarly, in a production mindset studying RTW and its production (and its effect on copies/reproductions in fast fashion) helps me to be a more conscientious designer (designing for a different future world). [Learning about how many parties are involved in mass production, how many production shops have caught fire, how many seamstresses have been injured or killed due to lack of safety, how little these seamstresses get paid and how hard it is for them to access healthcare, how many hours they have to work to execute certain design decisions, etc.]

I think it’s very beautiful that Mez Breeze wants to explore/combust the exclusion that happens with binary. People that aren’t well versed in various code languages can still enjoy some aspects of her work (sort of still inclusive, then), while they still can’t grasp all of it. Her use of avatars to mess up clear “authorship” also seems like something that just happened naturally for my friends and I growing up (via gaming platforms, and also being able to create usernames and publish virtually anything we wanted), but is a sort of freedom I hadn’t previously seriously considered including in my written/academic practice.

Text Rain by Romy Achituv & Camille Utterback is so beautiful!! I have to say I was pretty confused about the PDF reading mostly, but section 6 about re-reading is a familiar concept to me, one that Brown professors seem to agree upon overall. The concept of a reader accessing various parts of a static material at different times based on their choosing does highlight how before the advance of technology or in the absence of an experience of a performative work, the reader themselves was left to be in charge of their creative experience/curating their own experience. (External/superficial viewing experience.) Of course, always when a reader “completes” a static work by having an emotional reaction (as has been true since creative works have existed) it is an internal/deeper experience.

CFGs relative to 2D formats include HTML layouts and sonnet structure. In physical production spheres, CFGs encompass the order of making ready-to-wear garments. A men’s seam-enclosed button down has a strict order of steps or else not all seams will be enclosed. (Sometimes in certain types of shirts/ready-to-wear you can afford a misstep or out-of-order step.) Having heard about their ways before, but compounded by Berkman’s findings, the Oulipian S+7 and other systems were CFGs, were like HTML, were like the ordered instructions of how to make an enclosed-hem shirt, etc.