Les Liens Invisibles: »A fake is a fake. Anyway.« Walter Benjamin: »The difference between »We can only guess that fake publishing will mark the dawning author and public, maintained artificially by the of a new information era.« The Financial Times bourgeois press, is beginning to disappear.«
Free Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces NYHEDSAVISEN Public-Interfaces Peer-reviewed Newspaper
When Art Goes Disruptive Today, the increasing commercialization of contexts of network- ing, and the co-optation of cultural instances of 1990s hacker culture by proprietary platforms (from openness to do- it-yourself), shows the ability of business to adopt and invade “moral orders” which were once attributed to their oppo- nents. Tatiana Bazzichelli, CAPITAL page 22
Why We Should Be ‘Discrete’ in Public We should consider that in the last number of years, Continental and Talkaoke is an open and mobile talk show format developed by The People Speak. It uses the media spectacle to propagate activity. Analytic Philosophy People can express themselves publicly, listen to each other and de- has undergone a major velop new perspectives on the world. revision on a number of unfashionable issues. If URBAN page 2. we were once spellbo- und by discourses, so- cial practices, texts, lan- guage and the finitude of human epistemology, Understanding Software Cities then today’s scholars choose to orient their ◆ With the development The main question is in what is not only media that is in- must compare the city with attention to the activity soft- thoughts towards the of new digital media, way does this happen? Does troduced to the city but also software. A possibility is to ware fosters rather than the independence of reality ‘the media event’ is in digital media merely provide software. Today’s media include the architect Chri- form it imposes. In order to itself. new forms and new pub- cities are software cities. A stopher Alexander’s idea of induce accessibility and not the process of retur- ISBN 978-87-91810-18-3Robert Jackson ning to the public urban lic spectacles in the city, or distinct characteristic is that a ‘pattern language’, that only use of software cities, ART page 12 domain. does it also propagate public the representations of media has influenced both common one must look in new direc- activity? Evidently, digital are always connected to un- user driven software interac- tions, in the direction of soft- CHRISTIAN ULRIK media changes the cityscape derlying computational pro- tion design and wiki editing, ware art and aesthetics. ANDERSEN & with media facades, urban cesses that change the com- and argue that we must pay SØREN POLD screens, mobile screens, plex life forms of the city. attention to the patterns ur- computer generated architec- To understand the life ban public interfaces imply. tural forms, etc. However, it forms of software cities we This means that we must pay URBAN page 2 9 788791 810183
From surveillance technologies to server-client ar- BEAM IT chitectures, the project questions who is watching and who has access to what? What happens when infor- http://www.itsnotthatkind.org/software/beam-it mation that is typically exchanged in an online context RUI GUERRA is beamed to a public space? How do online social platforms question the notion of public space and vice Beam It is an electronic screen meant for public space versa? that is open for user generated content. Simple text messages, photos or videos can be uploaded to the Beam It is developed by INTK and it is integrated into screen via an online interface and observed online via long term research and development focused on techno- live video streaming. logy and local communities. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 2 Public-Interfaces
Editors: Christian Ulrik Andersen, Geoff Cox, Jacob Lund Published by Digital Aesthetics Research Center & Center for Digital Urban Living, Aarhus University. Aarhus, March 2011 Design: Ida Knudsen, Geoff Cox, Christian Ulrik Andersen Print: Avis-Tryk A/S, Hornslet CC license: ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike’ ISBN: 87-91810-18-3 / EAN 9788791810183 Urban This research and publication has been supported by The Danish Council for Strategic Research, KINO, grant number 2128-07-0011 Nyhedsavisen Public-Interfaces
Emerging from ongoing research around inter- face criticism in the Digital Aesthetics Research Center and Center for Digital Urban Living, the aim of this newspaper is to broaden the topic to encompass the changing concept of the ’public’. The newspaper is organized into three thematic strands: ART as public interface; the public interfaces of URBAN space; the public interface and CAPITAL. Like others, we think the interface is a cultural para- digm. In the case of computers, interfaces mediate between humans and machines, as well as between machines and between humans. Interfaces thus involve an exchange bet- ween data and culture. In this sense, the computer interface can be described as a cultural interface combining cultural content (images, text, movies, sound) with machine/media control (buttons, menus, filters, etc.) and networks (the In- ternet). As a cultural paradigm the interface affects not only our creative production and presentation of the world but also our perception of the world. We recognize that in the past decade, interfaces have been expanding from the graphical user interface of a com- puter to meet the needs of different new technologies, uses, »The standard image of a software city is somewhere where the media saturation is obvious and clearly visible, like cultures and contexts: they are mobile, networked, ubi- Shibuya in Tokyo or Times Square in New York. However, less spectacular implementations of software in cities, quitous, and embedded in the environment and architec- resembling much digital urban living also demand attention.« ture, part of regeneration agendas and new aesthetic and cultural practices. In other words, we aim to investigate these new interfaces that affect relations between public and private realms, and generate new forms urban spaces and activities, new forms of exhange and new forms of The Patterns of Software Cities creative production. The newspaper brings together researchers within di- verse fields – across aesthetics, cultural theory, architecture ◆ In the history of stopher Alexander’s idea of a summarize experiences, in- bitants in a language that is and urban studies – united by the need to understand public media and urbanity it ‘pattern language’. dividual practises and prac- common and non exclusive interfaces and the possible paradigmatic changes they pose has been argued that Design patterns address tical solutions in a way that to architects. Accordingly, as to these fields. the urban has lost to a the public in different ways. makes it possible for others seen in the case of the carni- suburb ‘notably rich in In one perspective, they exist to re-write and re-use them. val, combining physical with Although our starting point derives from a con- private spaces and poor to pay attention to the user, Alexander’s book comprises social relationships often cept of the public informed by network theory in public ones’ (Philip and as such they are used of 253 patterns that each has challenge prevailing hierar- and the social practices around computing, we Kasinitz qtd. by Scott to make software usable to its own context, problems chies of control and experi- aim to expand this view in recognition of the McQuire). a public. From another per- and solutions that sometimes ence. ways in which contemporary power and control spective, they do not always helps complete larger pat- Design patterns are structured. CHRISTIAN ULRIK make the mechanisms be- terns or need other patterns ANDERSEN & hind the software public ac- to be completed. Software design patterns The following questions operate as points of departure: SØREN BRO POLD cessible. As an example, Alexander deal with both technical is- sues and formal user issues, »»Can the public interface be used as a useful concept for When software is imple- uses the pattern ‘accessible understanding changing relations between public and pri- mented in cities one must pay green’. People need open they may address how a co- vate realms within aesthetic practices? attention to the patterns they green places to go; but when ding task is handled or how much information can be »»Does the public interface offer a way of examining re- The urban media theorist imply, the activity they pro- they are more than three lational aesthetics, the cultural regeneration agenda and Scott McQuire argues that pagate rather than the form minutes away, the distance handled in a window. Like public art? with the development of new they impose. It is the object overwhelms the need (305). Alexander’s patterns, they are often subject to collabo- »»Does the public interface provide new understandings of digital media, ‘the media of this article to explain the Consequently, green spaces the relationship between creative production, the free mar- event’ could possibly return movement of pattern langua- must be one build “within ration between programmers ket sphere and its critique? to the public urban domain ges from architecture to soft- three minutes’ walk […] of and designers. In order to support this, Ward Cunning- »»How does the possible dissolution of the public and pri- and he sees art as playing ware and back again in order every house and workplace” vate spheres relate to bio-politics and contemporary forms an important role in this de- to account for these patterns. (308). In this view, the pat- ham in 1995 developed the of power? velopment. But in what way? Furthermore, to induce ac- tern helps fulfil larger pat- WikiWikiWeb, a forerunner of the Wiki. Ward’s Wiki is »»Does the public interface suggest new perceptions, bor- Evidently, digital media cessibility and not only use terns such as ‘identifiable ders or even the dissolution of borders between the centre changes the cityscape with of software cities, one must neighborhood’” and ‘work a simplified form of code and peripheries of urban settings? media facades, urban scree- look in the direction of soft- community’ (xiii). management and versioning systems (like Concurrent »»How do the experimentation and developments in the ns, mobile screens, compu- ware art and aesthetics. Alexander includes quite culture of software reflect emergent and self-organizing ter generated architectural extreme patterns in his boo, Versioning System (CVS)). public actions? forms, etc. However, it is as for instance the “Carni- Ward’s Wiki is a user-edita- According to Alexander ble web page dealing with not only media that is in- a successful environ- val”: “Just as an individual The newspaper and event was kindly supported by Center troduced to the city but also person dreams fantastic hap- design patterns. ment depends upon However, as noted by for Digital Urban Living, Digital Aesthetics Research Cen- software. Today’s media ci- an ability to combine penings to release the in- tre, and The Doctoral School in Arts and Aesthetics, Aarhus ties are software cities. The ner forces which cannot be software artist Simon Yuill, physical and social rela- design patterns in computing University, Denmark. representations of media are tionships. encompassed by ordinary always connected to underly- events, so too a city needs “are almost exclusively ap- plied to formal and technical All articles derive from an initial conference and PhD ing computational processes A pattern language its dreams.” Therefore, one workshop held in January 2011, at Aarhus University. Full that change the complex life “[T|owns and buildings will should “[s]et aside some part issues, how software mecha- papers can be downloaded and further comments made on forms of the city. not be able to come alive, un- of town as a carnival-mad nisms operate internally, ra- our website. To understand the life less they are made by all the sideshows […] which allow ther than how software func- forms of software cities we people in society, and unless people to reveal their mad- tions as a human ‘inhabited’ http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ must compare the city with people share a common pat- ness” (299-300). The pattern environment” (Yuill p.n.p.). software. In its understan- tern language, within which language is a way of demo- Combinations of physical in- ding of systems as inhabited to make these buildings, and cratising architecture and frastructures with social and structures, interaction design unless this common pattern planning by letting the pat- human factors, as found in has been influenced by ar- language is alive itself” (x). tern language respond to the the carnival, are left out, but chitectural theory and Chri- ‘A pattern’ is a way to needs and desires of the inha- must be invigorated. Within computing this happens, as NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Urban 3
I think we are still stuck with this idea of the street and the plaza as a public domain. I don’t want to respond in clichés, but with television and the media and a whole series of other investigations, you could say that the public domain is lost. But you could also say that it’s now so pervasive it does not need physical articu- lation any more. I think the truth is somewhere in between. Rem Koolhaas
gets and applications. flected on the predefined pat- The software city does not terns of the discourse itself. allow its inhabitants to acti- In such situations, the roles Building-Sized vely negotiate the relation and arguments transgressed between the physical and assumed expectations and the social. It is for instance became a matter of concern Interfaces in many places not legal to for the participants. E.g. in create patterns that chal- a public park there was an Media architecture and lenge copyrights by opening ongoing thread about the ex- the disappearance of the city Wi-Fi networks. What seems periences of a middle aged to be lacking is a pattern for woman from Greenland. In Tobias Ebsen agency, for writing and sup- Denmark, Inuit people have a porting people’s ability to reputation of heavy drinking, express, develop and negoti- often taking place in pub- In his 1984 book The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio descri- ate values and aspirations for lic parks. Her story demon- bed the modern city by its new types of visual imagery and their lives and their environ- strated a much more nuanced new modes of access to interior and exterior spaces. He saw ment. In a city dominated by and lived life exceeding the the contemporary transformations to the functions of the software and patterns of sur- stereotypical self-presentati- city as parallel to the developing concept of “the interface” veillance and configuration, on and in many ways ‘narra- with its communicative surface and the affordance for ac- patterns of writing become tivized’ the park to the parti- tion and control. At this early point, Virilio identified the increasingly important. cipants. increased virtualization of urban architecture by both func- Writing the software city To conclude, understan- tions and the superimposition of images for commercial Writing patterns relate Ro- ding and reacting to the com- advertising. Places like Times Square in New York City, land Barthes’ notion of ‘wri- plex life form of software ci- Piccadilly Circus in London and Shibuya Square in Tokyo terly’ a particular way of ties we may choose to benefit are the peaks of such transformation where architecture is reading associated with the from their patterns of surveil- replaced with images – dislocated and decontextualized open texts of modern litera- lance and configuration. We from their origin. “Public image yields to public image,” ture, addressing the reader as may choose to feel safer in as Virilio wrote. Both visually and functionally, the city is an active producer of mea- a city where health records, gradually reduced to an interface through which all public ning, rather than a passive money transactions and po- interaction occurs. consumer (Barthes 10). Also tential terrorists are tracked; Recent developments in media architecture have resul- drawing on Barthes, Michel we may choose to use the ted in entire building facades covered in luminous screens de Certeau in The Practice applications on our smart as seen on Kunsthaus Graz, Uniqa Tower in Vienna or the The Patterns of Software Cities of Everyday Life compares phones in meaningful ways, Ars Electronica Center in Linz. These media-buildings writing to walking and the like home banking or traffic may be seen as extensions of urban virtualization where lived experiences of the pe- updates; or we may choose to space becomes synthesized, dynamic and persuasive. Yuill observes, in the FLOS way of interacting with soft- destrian. have fun using their gadgets Once walls are replaced with screens, architecture disap- movement (Free/Libre Open ware, configuration means One example of how to and games. Change, howe- pears in the virtual image, Virilio argues. The dominance Source) that explicitly com- to change a system on a user write a city is found in the ver, cannot appear from mere of screens in urban spaces may have been anticipated by bines the technical structures level, including as diverse works of the British Artist participation. various dystopian fiction films like Blade Runner, where to individual freedom and actions as image editing, collective The People Speak. giant billboard-screens fly around in the urban landscape. refusal of intellectual copy- setting software preferences The People Speak develops To have a dynamic soft- The question is, whether media architecture is yet another right. or shooting monsters in a media platforms for public ware city that includes step towards the complete virtualization of urban space, or computer game. Configura- and civic conversation and an awareness and deba- there are other approaches to its application that subverts How are physical and tion patterns are found when decision-making. In 2009 we te about its complex life to totalitarian dominance of the building-sized interfaces? social relationships we use the software city to conducted a series of experi- forms, we need access In the discourse of media architecture there are often combined, in the soft- play games, find weather re- ments setting up one of their to the software city; we references to works of various artists that in many ways ware design patterns of ports, use a GPS for creating platforms, Talkaoke in Den- need to be able to write challenge the visual dominance of architecture. In some urban computing? routes, etc. mark. Talkaoke is a public the software city. cases, artists appropriate buildings in ways that resembles talk-show, highly mediati- notion of hacking. This may be seen in projects like: Blin- Art and aesthetics may not re- kenlights (2001) by Chaos Computer Club where an empty Software city patterns In this sense, inhabiting sed, mimicking a television studio, using lights, cameras, volutionize the software city office building was transformed into a giant screen, or the The standard image of a the software city is like and automatically overthrow inhabiting The Sims. screens, live internet bro- L.A.S.E.R. Tag tool (2007) by Graffiti Research Lab that software city is somewhere adcasting, twittering, video existing patterns of public, allows participants to paint onto buildings using a laser where the media saturation You are given the inhabi- annotation, post production/ urban participation, but plat- pointer and a video projector. Other strategies have been is obvious and clearly visi- tant’s right to configure the editing and online archiving forms like Talkaoke may applied by artists like United Visual Artists, who challen- ble, like Shibuya in Tokyo or system, your actions are re- (See http://vimeo.com/darc/ foster the first steps to think ge the physical nature of screens by distributing its pixels Times Square in New York. gistered by the system, but videos). Talkaoke uses the differently about the kind of into spatial formations, thereby departing from the idea of However, less spectacular you are never given the right media spectacle to propagate problem a software city is. a single perspective point in the representation. Examples implementations of software of a citizen to negotiate the of such strategies can be seen in installations like Volume activity. In an inviting, en- Works cited in cities, resembling much system itself. tertaining and informal way, (2006) and Constellation (2008). digital urban living also de- Alexander, Christopher et. al. A Surveillance and configu- people can express themsel- Pattern Language: Towns – Buildings These are experimental projects where facades and dis- mand attention. ration patterns both reflect a ves publicly, listen to each – Construction. New York: Oxford plays are appropriated by intervention and in disregard Investigating the digi- University Press, 1977. Print. for commercial interests. Rather, the installations invite particular view on the public other and perhaps even de- Andersen, Christian Ulrik, and tal layers of the midsized sphere. When public Wi-Fi velop new perspectives on to participation in the image formation and present am- Swedish town Lund we have Søren Pold. “The Scripted Spaces of networks are restricted and the world. Urban Ubiquitous Computing – the biguous expressions that to some extent allows the visual found that software is em- its users tracked it is to avoid Analysing the conversa- Experience, Poetics, and Politics of space to be negotiated instead of imposed. In these arti- bedded via ‘log-in spaces’ Public Scripted Space.” 2009. Print. stic approaches to the architectural interface, we may find violations of copyrights, ille- tions we found that people Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: and ‘iSpaces’ paired with a gal conspiring, terrorism etc. often reproduced official a possibility of re-creating a public-centered relevance for ‘hypertextual connectivity’ Éditions du Seuil, 1970. Print. Hence, a surveillance pattern arguments (e.g. discussing de Certeau, Michel. The Practice media technology in the urban scale. Buildings may be- connecting physical space fulfils a need to protect land climate changes, city surveil- of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University come more than mass mediums that impose a certain ideo- of California Press, 1984. Print. with virtual networks (An- and property. When I, using lance, EU elections). They logy. Technologies behind projects like Blinkenlights and dersen and Pold). Public McQuire, Scott. “The Politics of my smart phone apps, can actualized an argument, rela- Public Space in the Media City.” First L.A.S.E.R. Tag tool are already publicly available as Open participation in the city as find information about the ting it to the location and to Monday Special Issue #4 (2006). Source software. The next step in this process might be software is mostly characte- place I am, connect to my personal experiences, testing Print. Open Source architecture in the recreation of presence and Rancière, Jacques. “Literature, rized by either surveillance friend anywhere in the wor- and contextualising it. Quite spatiality in the city. or configuration. Politics, Aesthetics: Approaches to ld or track my whereabouts often, they also reproduced Democratic Disagreement (Interview As a general pattern, sur- and share them in public, the the stories and arguments with Solange Guenoun and James H. veillance is not only visual configuration pattern fulfils a Kavanagh).” SubStance 92 (2000): Works cited: that fitted with the public 3-24. Print Chaos Computer Club. Project Blinkenlights (2001).
◆ Critiques of the public art and architecture community in the aftermath by Rem Koolhaas a ‘mega- * This is an edited ex- instrumentalised role are not only often complicit of WWII, and with the fresh region’; its positioning ma- cerpt from the extended of culture within the within this stage of develop- canvas of a greenfield site. king it highly vulnerable to introductory essay to ment, but also offer moments He is fascinated by how assimilation into the sur- the book No Room to current stage of urban Move: Radical Art and development, so-called and forms in which power technology – coupled forever rounding conurbation. Its the Regenerate City, ‘culture-led urban rege- and counter-power negotiate, with the power of mass ex- residents, says Vasseur, are London: Mute, 2010. The neration’, are becoming clash and find articulation, termination after two world about to be ‘radicalised’. book is available from increasingly common. the spectrum of analysis of wars – is understood not as At this juncture, he thinks, http://metamute.org and urban regeneration must ne- something that threatens ‘Ar- it would be wrong to perpe- amazon.co.uk JOSEPHINE BERRY SLATER cessarily entail an aesthetic cadian visions of Britain’, tuate the local identity that ANTHONY ILES one. but as that which can create the town has nurtured for so them anew. Gibberd used long. But what is to follow, To understand the new, mass-produced ele- and what role should art play A rising crescendo of criti- dynamics of cities in ments in the construction of within this transformation? cism may finally be denting their neoliberal capita- the town, introduced the first The town’s unique at- the blithe confidence of the list phase, then, it is not residential high-rise block mosphere is largely a result ‘Creative City’ formula and enough to look at the into Britain, and one of the of the centre’s setting in a its liberal application to all structural and economic first covered shopping malls. parkland of green wedges manner of post-industrial questions alone – we But despite this, he wanted which connect it to the out- urban ills. Criticism, but must also investigate to found the new commu- lying residential areas. At the also and more forcefully, the visual languages nity on the ancient values heart of this radial and highly that other party crasher – the and conceptual ap- of religion, family and co- ordered design sit a canoni- global financial crisis – are proaches of the aesthe- operation – as witnessed by cal array of public sculptures undermining the blind faith tic activity apparently his extraordinarily detailed, by post-war British sculptors in the power of ‘creativity’ valued so highly by Elizabethan-modernist de- like Henry Moore, Barbara to heal our cities. Regardless their elites. sign for the town’s St. Paul’s Hepworth, Lynn Chadwick of what the post-crunch stra- church (1959) and the promi- and Elizabeth Frink. Says tegy for treating urban decli- As ever, in order to look for- nent siting of Henry Moore’s Vasseur, ne may be, we can begin to ward, it helps to look back sculpture of a family group Harlow’s distinction is see with clarity the contours to an earlier model of art’s in the water gardens as the that it employed and em- of a form of urbanism that use in the (re)construction visual centrepiece of Harlow. bodied culture and in parti- has developed over the past of community amidst urban [2] But Vasseur also draws cular sculpture to make an Nevertheless, his approach artists however, Vasseur ex- 20 years. One whose mobi- upheaval. Roman Vasseur’s attention to the ‘Dionysian’ argument for the creation of could be interpreted as an ar- periments with the strategy lisation of art and aesthetics engagement with Harlow impulses that underpin and a settlement away from the tistic intervention in its own of ‘overidentification’ with – and particularly a post- involves ‘disinterring’ the threaten Gibberd’s ‘Apollo- metropolis but referencing right, despite his insistence the bureaucratic process. For conceptual order of aesthe- original thinking behind this nian’ ordered ambitions for the Tuscan City State model. that he is not a ‘career pub- instance, while seeing ‘the tics – has worked to produce petite New Town, as it stands the town. He sees them as re- Vasseur’s engagement lic artist’. Indeed Vasseur public’ as a phantasmatic en- the propagandistic illusion on the brink of wholesale ex- lying upon the atavistic for- with the town is markedly tends to operate in a more tity deployed by government that a substantial regenera- pansion and redevelopment. ces of religion and the emo- different from the paterna- undercover mode; a kind of for its own ends, he never- tion of society and its habitat [1] Vasseur who was appoin- tive creation of a community listic example set by Gib- contemporary version of the theless invokes the term wi- is occurring. It is, however, ted to the role of ‘lead artist’ spirit centred around the pio- berd who also headed the Artist Placement Group’s thin negotiations as a ‘repri- one that masks the unalte- during the redevelopment neering moment of exodus Harlow Art Trust which se- ‘incidental person’, but one mand’, or a means to rein in red or worsening conditions of Harlow, a post-war New from the metropolis and, lected the town’s public art actively solicited by Com- full-throttle commercialism. that affect the urban majo- Town, has spent a great deal consequently, a static model works. It should be noted missions East – one of the re- In such a way, Vasseur uses rity as welfare is dismantled, of time thinking about how of inclusive exclusion. As that Vasseur’s role has been generation agencies involved the bureaucratic or com- public assets sold off and its master-planner, Frederick Vasseur points out, Harlow consultative and curatorial – with the agreement of the mercial body’s logic against free spaces enclosed. Since Gibberd, attempted to forge sits in what has been termed rather than directly artistic. town council. Unlike APG’s itself and, in so doing, turns
TEMPORARY SERVICES
BRETT BLOOM Redfern, Sydney »What is your opinion of this sculpture? Why do you think it was placed in this neighbourhood?« http://www.temporaryservices.org/ Several clipboards were put up within a 3-4 block radius of “Bower”. They held single sheets of paper, with questions about the sculpture and its placement in the neighborhood, which people were asked to fill out. We collected both written and emailed replies and presented them in a public exhibition close to the sculpture. NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Urban 5 the often crushing process of life itself functions; that it in my experience are not wil- racter in Polanski’s China- schemes, regeneration sche- ction whilst also finding it negotiation into a ‘sensual functions like life in order to ling to wait for revolutionary town, who, when asked what mes and creative industries hard to know how to act wi- pursuit’. be better able to regulate it. change in order to express kind of police work he did in which employed so many. thin such a treacherous cli- New audiences for art (Muhle, 136) their sensuous beings and so Chinatown mutters ‘As little Higher education’s increa- mate of cooptation. Neither have grown up in a time in If power has become life- are disloyal to communities as possible’. It was the only sing dependency on the re- able to successfully collude which life in general has like, it has also become art- of politics.” But his work in way to avoid making a bad venue generated by art and due to art’s lingering require- become hyper-cultural; the like. This is a worry for those Harlow is not without spe- situation worse. design geared courses should ment for autonomy, nor to leaden mail-outs from local concerned with art’s need to cific aims or the desire to also be noted. This period of effectively opt out (street art housing services must dis- be distinct from the rest of have some lasting impact. As art and artists have expansion has happened in becomes gallery art becomes guise themselves as lifestyle life, to antagonise or reveal He was drawn to the role become more integral parallel with an attack on the street art etc.), the artist magazines, groups of friends new forms of sensibility. Alt- because it was advertised as to contemporary urba- means of subsistence which working in the maelstrom of advertise and commodify hough New Labour’s 12 year “the first time that an artist nism, they have also made it possible to survive regeneration registers, either themselves for each other rule has been a boom time would work on a committee become increasingly as a cultural producer in the critically or not, the social via social networking temp- for art – not least public art selecting a developer-plan- astute critics. absence of a sales model, war it entails. lates, and even down-at-heel – the blanding out of notions ner”. He has also presented as workfare has come to re- refreshments stalls disguise of creativity (such as those an architectural review of Yet moments when artists place welfare, short-let hou- a shit instant coffee as the espoused by Richard Flo- some of the proposed rede- resist development and gen- sing has been undermined more cosmopolitan cappuc- rida and his followers), and velopment plans for the local trification directly have been by the government’s Decent cino. Half a century of con- the discovery of art’s ‘social councillors – a potentially rare. Art works more often Homes Standard and cheap, sumer society has produced purpose’, leave its future in very influential opportunity. mount an aesthetic resistan- dilapidated zones have fallen Notes: an insatiable appetite for doubt. As Vasseur surmises: But, at the recession ridden ce or, as Jacques Rancière under the demolition ball of 1. The plan is to increase the aestheticisation. So, despite time of writing, the future might say, a ‘redistribution development. Development population of Harlow by 40,000. This could involve transforming the centre the increasing lock-down One can envisage a of the redevelopment looks of the sensible’. Critical art of large tracts of cities ba- of the town, pulling down the old and personalised tracking of future where artists, uncertain. The ‘aesthetics of in urban settings survives de- sed on expectations of rising market square and replacing it with populations within the cy- or individuals with bureaucracy’ are, of course, velopment’s horrors, main- real estate values, the at- a new retail development, building bernetic matrices of the post- hostage to the movement of taining a tension with the traction of new middle class new transport links and expanding an extensive training the residential areas. The scale of 9/11 state, the aestheticisa- in visual arts and art the bureaucratic process it- context of its production and, residents, and an expansion the development is posing a threat tion of space reveals that the history will be slowly self, its glacial time frames, in the best cases, amplifying in retail are giving way to to the green wedges that surround powers-that-be must choose moved out of this new and the macro-economic them. Ballardian visions of luxury the town’s centre, and are key to its their mode of address more picture, all of which can be Future generations of ar- developments in a state of pastoral atmosphere. economy in favour of 2. After suffering from vandalism, the carefully than ever before. ‘creatives’ able to privi- enough to kill off the initia- tists will continue to face the chaotic and terminal decline. sculpture was removed and now sits Control must deploy the ve- lege deliverability and tive and desires of the under- contradictory bind of being Whatever the future of inside the newly built Civic Centre – neer of health and happiness consultation over other cover interventionist. Where both beneficiaries and losers alienated creativity and the part of the first and egregious phase of Harlow’s redevelopment. to get things done. Or, in concerns. Gibberd’s art programme can in the path of capital’s move- city may be, art and artists 3. On the concept of ‘creative de- Foucauldian terms, govern- be seen as conservatively re- ment of creative destruction symbolically and structurally struction’ in the context of culture-led mentality uses aesthetics to So while avant-garde at- trograde, Vasseur’s mercu- (each time on reconfigured register the tensions between regeneration, see Seymour. penetrate the subject more tempts to negate the privile- rial approach – in seeking terms and conditions).[3] economic realities and cor- to expose the Dionysian and During the present reces- porate-governmental fictions Works cited: deeply, to tap into our capa- ged role of art and artist are Berry Slater, Josephine & Iles, city for self-government. In purloined by government violent impulses which be- sion ‘creatives’ are regarded of the post-Fordist city eve- Anthony. No Room to Move: Radical the biopolitical era, discipli- and the leisure industry, or lie modernism as much as as offering landlord-friendly rywhere. The artist has be- Art and the Regenerate City. Mute: ne meshes with techniques applied to pseudo-democra- preserving its achievements ways to occupy the growing come both aider and objector London, 2010. Print. Conlin, Peter. “Slack, Taut and of the body converting ‘care tic ends by developers and in the face of junk-space de- ‘slack space’ of cities as to regeneration, but also the Snap: A Report on the Radical In- of the self’ into portals of in- commissioning agencies, or velopment – seems to lack market demand fails, pro- ultimate capitalist subject, cursions Symposium.” Mute. August trusion and introjection, and used ultimately to eject the definition and hence trac- viding cheap security ser- what Agamben names the 2009.
Mapping the difference between the official version of the siting of Mapping the layers of personal and institutional engagement and “Bower” and the exclusion of a broad public in the process. investment in experiencing “Bower” - current aesthetic theorizations exclude or flatten the dense diversity of human interaction with public work. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 6 Urban Public-Interfaces The Right to the City: Reclaiming the Urban Landscape by Art and Activism
◆ In the countries of uncontrolled spread of out- away from any crossroad. cation showed a total of 81 Kulunčić (Croatia) focuses of the Government building). former Eastern Europe, door advertising has created This regulation, however, billboards and city-lights in on four topics chosen by the They showed an abstract, the collapse of socia- problems so serious that the is rarely followed. The fact just one city block. If this is workers themselves - work- non-representational image lism and the subse- city authorities were at one that billboards in Skopje are any indication of the overall ing conditions, life in work- (aggregated from Google quent onset of neoli- point considering banning far larger and much greater situation, then Skopje is de- ers’ hostels, poor nutrition search images associated beral capitalism have huge billboards around the in number than the regulati- finitely congested with out- and separation from their with news titles, thus infu- resulted in a massive city square and reducing ons allow has created a host door advertising, to the point families. Employing a tactic sing advertising discourse transfiguration of urban their number in the streets of problems for citizens, of semiotic saturation. of overidentification and fo- with covert political content) public space at the near in the centre of the city, ranging from decreased vi- Reclaiming public space cusing on what Michael War- and a website address www. removing most of them to the sibility on the main roads ner terms “counterpublics”, public-space.info, with the hands of commercial Artists in post-socialist coun- periphery (which, in itself, is and intersections to physical that is, of those subaltern idea of attracting passers by interests. tries are trying to reclaim this a move loaded with issues of injuries (and even death) to segments defined in opposi- to visit the site where they public space in an attempt ZORAN POPOSKI social inequality). However, unsuspecting passers-by. tion to a “dominant public”, could learn more about the to transform everyday urban Skopje, Rep. of Macedonia this has not happened yet. In an attempt to perso- Kulunčić’s city lights in the issue of privatization of pub- experience by rewriting the My research showed that nally identify the scope of streets of Ljubljana explore lic space. The aim was to body of the city with mes- billboard licenses in Skopje the problem, I decided to both the stereotypical portra- create conditions for public sages other than those ema- Examples include the prolife- are awarded through a ten- focus on a city block in the yal of Bosnians in Slovenia, deliberation and democratic nating from the centres of ration of outdoor advertising der process with five-year centre of Skopje, as an indi- as well as present their poor discourse in the public sphe- power, capital, and privilege. that destroys the character licenses awarded to two cator of the overall situation. living and working conditi- re, where citizens who are in- In a series of citylights which of natural and historic ur- companies, for a total of 400 I took photographs of all ons to Slovenians. formed, active, rational and form the project Bosnians ban landscapes, commercial billboards. However, that billboards within that par- In Living in Media Hype knowledgeable can engage Out! (Workers Without Fron- events that restrict access to number has obviously been ticular block, noting down (2002), Sašo Sedlaček (Slo- in communicative action and tiers, 2008), developed in parks and squares, the design surpassed. According to me- their (estimated) size and venia) researches the pos- communicative rationality, collaboration with three mi- of retail kiosks and store- dia reports, the city authori- location. I think it’s safe to sibilities of living in bill- defined by Jurgen Habermas grant workers from Bosnia fronts in and around public ties estimate that at present say that the administration’s boards and other outdoor as “non-coercively unifying, employed on the renovation spaces that does not respect in Skopje there are over 600 estimates are far too conser- advertisements. With their consensus building force of of the Museum of Modern the local context (sending billboards. Most billboards vative when compared to the enormous sizes and access to a discourse in which partici- Art in Ljubljana, Andreja a signal that it no longer re- are located on the main stre- actual number. My identifi- electricity, for the artists bill- pants overcome their at first presents the local commu- ets, primarily in the centre of boards are in a way perfect subjectively biased views nity). Instead of public space the city. The proliferation of for inhabitation by different in favor of a rationally mo- where people interact freely, billboards can be attributed social groups. This kind of tivated agreement” (315). without the coercion of state to - among other things - housing could exist in a sym- Furthermore, the project was institutions - the productive, the low fee advertisers pay biotic-parasitic relationship funded with a grant spon- constantly remade, demo- for their placement. The between the host (billboard), sored by corporate money. cratic public space - there communal fee for putting up providing living space and The project is still ongoing, is space for recreation and a billboard is less than $40 a electricity, and the guest en- nowadays in the form of pub- entertainment where access year - the price of a one-day gaging in different types of lic debates and round tables is limited only to suitable black-and-white ad in a daily activities inside the adver- on the issue with the aim of members of the public, “a newspaper in Macedonia! tising space. This project involving an increasing num- controlled and orderly retreat On the other hand, the price calls to mind Henri Lefebv- ber of stakeholders. where a properly behaved of renting a billboard ran- re’s disctinction of how ur- public might experience the ges from 250 to 1000 EUR ban spaces often start as “re- This particular project spectacle of the city” (Mit- per month. Despite such low presentations of space”, but was informed by the chell, 51). The image of the fees, many billboards have through its use people appro- series of billboards, public thus created by this been placed illegally. There priate it, socially produce it posters and banners pseudo-public space is one are even claims in the media into “representational space” installed in public inner- of the public as passive and that as many as half of all (39). Spatial practices, con- city spaces in Eastern receptive, where the poten- billboards in the city have no cerned with the production Europe and South tially dangerous social he- license. The maximum allo- and reproduction of material America which form the terogeneity of the multitude wed size of billboards is 12 life, rely on representations project Alternative Eco- has been homogenized. The square metres, but according of space and representational nomics, Alternative So- public is turned into the ideal to media reports they are spaces to provide them with cieties, in which Austri- consumer, and public space often bigger than 15 square the spatial concepts and sym- an artist Oliver Ressler is thus reduced to a commo- metres. Bigger billboards bols/images necessary for reclaims the means of dity, making the privatization require a construction per- spatial practices to operate. outdoor advertising to by commercial interest the mit from the Municipality, In my own project Ab- present alternatives to new public space. but most of them lack such stract Politics (2008), I in- the existing social and Advertising in Skopje a permit. Jumbo billboards stalled my work on a couple economic system. As an illustration, in Mace- on buildings should be pla- of billboards (3x4 m in size donia’s capital Skopje, the ced at least 3.5 meters abo- Zoran Poposki, Portrait of a Cultural Worker, Skopje. each) on the busiest streets In large and visible type, ve the ground and 8 metres of Skopje (one right in front Ressler’s billboards appeal
Researchers from media theory, HCI and interaction design MEDIA SCREENS have been involved in the analysis, design and evaluation of AmbientNEWS originally targets the newsroom space large displays in public spaces. These studies have focused on of a broadcasting company. It mimes recent news and social aspects of urban screens and how interaction evolves developing stories from the web and visualizing the online news landscape related to the topics journalists in different public contexts. Artists have also explored experi- are working on. The temporal evolution of information is Interface mentally the potential of large urban screens as interfaces that shown by a dangling flowers animation, which repre- can trigger emotional response, enhance communication and sents the continuous flow and development of the topics promote reflection beyond purely aesthetic qualities. by causing the flowers to emerge, grow, proliferate While insights from these different disciplines are very va- petals, or vanish subtly in response to changes in the Design for luable in themselves, they still do not provide a comprehen- online news landscape. sive framework for centering the design of public interfaces on increasing their potential for discovery and engagement Shared Spaces with content beyond the initial fascination. Exploring cross-disciplinary strategies by com- Towards a more affective relations- bining scientific and artistic design knowledge and hip between people, places and infor- practices may lead to more engaging urban media, mation which could promote and sustain a more affective relationship between spaces, the people inhabiting them and the related information. NINA VALKANOVA (excerpt) Read full article at http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Urban 7
Zoran Poposki, Abstract Politics, 2008 to questioning existing po- its own, a tactic operates in by critical dialogue, increase tions in public deliberation wer relations and offer alter- isolated actions, takes ad- the necessity and the urgency and discourse. natives that would be “less vantage of opportunities for alternative discourses to What is the Potential hierarchical, based on ideas and depends on them, reac- the official one dominated of direct democracy and in- ting immediately. Tactics are by advertising. And this is for Interactivity with volve as many people as pos- characterized by mobility, where public art, of the ac- sible in decision-making pro- speed, and smaller goals. De tivist or politically engaged Works cited: Façade Media? cesses”, as the artist explains Certeau likens it to poaching: type, can offer powerful re- De Certeau, Michel. The Practice on his website. Rather than “It must vigilantly make use sistance to the power struc- of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Print. ◆ unidirectional information of the cracks that particular tures, both through its cri- Habermas, Jurgen. The Philoso- When we today stand at a bus designed to promote con- conjunctions open in the sur- tique of commercial abuse phical Discourse of Modernity; Moral station or sit in a metro or when we sumption, these billboards veillance of the proprietary of public spaces as well as Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, walk through the city, we mostly are intended to serve as a ba- powers... It creates surprises through refashioning the ur- 1990. Print. sis for discussion over what in them... In short, a tactic is ban landscape beyond the Lefebvre, Henri. The Production have at least one technical device kind of society is desired an art of the weak” (37). old spatial hierarchies and of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. with us, our mobile phone. Print. and should be created by the Realizing public space segregation. In this, political- people living in it. ly engaged public art comes Low, Setha, and Neil Smith, eds. Christian Rhein The new economic practi- The Politics of Public Space. New The approach taken by close to realizing the ideal of ces of reappropriating and York: Routledge, 2005. Print. these art projects is the one public space –an arena where Mitchell, Don. The Right to the restructuring public space, Michel de Certeau calls a citizens meet to confront op- City: Social Justice and the Fight for The smart phone as our permanent companion, or a new coupled with the absence of Public Space. New York: Guilford tactic. Without a place of posing values and expecta- part of our body, is in this sense not only an extension of a truly public sphere defined Press, 2003. Print man, like McLuhan said, it is an expansion of private life in public. The meaning of “home” changes; home is no longer implicitly connected to a special place. This “De-Territorialization” or “De-Limitation” of home through new media and through the immediacy of interpersonal actions over long distances make a physi- cal presence no longer necessary. We could see this de- limitation of privacy in public space in a negative way, but if we want or not, “social life in the 21st century is increasingly life lived in media cities”, as Scott McQuire says. “The old television set has morphed from a small- scale appliance – a material object primarily associated with domestic space – to become a large-scale screen; less a piece of furniture than an architectural surface resident not in the home but in the street outside”. Both, permanent public media like façade media, ur- ban screens or out of home-displays and temporary pub- lic screens installations, as for instance, those for soccer championships, lead to new forms of public viewing. But what influence do these forms have on public space? How can pervasive media change its dynamic?
(excerpt) Read full article at http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 8 Urban Public-Interfaces
Gormley claimed that One & With an allowance for a British artist Antony Gormley at the Other offered “a ‘composite breach of the rules, then, the- opening of his art installation One and picture’ of Britain” (Higgins, re were 2,401 plinthers. To Other at the ”fourth plinth” at Trafalgar 1). Is such a picture viable ask if this matters is to ask Square in London. The work consisted One, in a period of global mass whether the composite pic- of 2,400 randomly selected members of communications and migra- ture of the nation depicts a the public who each spent one hour on the plinth between 6 July and 14 October tion, or in a city in which society that is defined accor- 2009. more than 300 languages ding to the rules of represen- are spoken every day? In the tation, which extend those last year of the New Labour of the public monument as a Other regime, did 2,400 individu- device by which citizens are als represent such a divided reminded of the values they and complex society? The are required to uphold (in ef- work’s effort at coherence fect a device for social con- was tested in the opening trol as well as an ordering of and ceremony when, as the artist public space), or whether a and the mayor of London more direct, unlicensed par- made speeches to the press, ticipation might carry a con- “a white-haired middle aged tent of diversity more akin to fellow”, Stuart Holmes, jum- the nation as it is, which may ped unannounced onto the no longer be a nation at all. the plinth holding a poster: “Ban A further question is tobacco and actors smo- whether Gormley, as the king. One billion deaths this project manager who made century!”(ibid.) He asked for the initial proposal, secured a microphone but was told required permissions, and Same he should have brought his found funding for the work, own. The mayor and artist retained its authorship, imp- carried on, punctuating their lying that the work remains The public as monument speeches with polite requests situated in an aesthetic ter- on monitors in the nearby to Holmes to come down so rain; or allowed its determi- National Portrait Gallery, Gormley’s international sta- hour, day and night, for 100 that Rachel Wardell (aged nation by participants (which supplying these to the press, tus framed the project . Yet days. The 2,400 occupants 35), a housewife, could take seems unlikely outside the but otherwise retaining con- its aim was to state identity MALCOLM MILES of the plinth – plinthers – her place as the first official licensed system of the ballot trol over their use. Or was – a socio-political, economic were selected from more plinther, holding up a poster by which they were chosen, One & Other reality tele- construct which is instru- than 34,500 entries follo- for a children’s telephone and by which they appeared vision, its global audience mental in determining que- wing a national invitation. Antony Gormley’s participa- help-line. in random order), or was able to contribute to as blog stions of belonging in a time 1,210 were men and 1,190 tory art project One & Other himself the tool of the spon- which carried only positive of mass migration. If public were women, aged from 16 took place in the summer of sor, Sky Arts, who screened or at worst neutral messages? monuments are designed to to 84. Applicants could do 2009 on the empty fourth images produced from a produce social ordering, was anything within the law, and Which one, plinth in Trafalgar Square, web-cam in the square (the One & Other a reinvention were not required to sub- London. A different person only good images available), Ties that of the monument to promote mit a plan. Gormley applied which other? occupied the plinth each screening them in real time a picture of a nation whose twice but was not selected. Bound? Mapping the Unmappable, Knowing the Unknowable
◆ Recent discourse sed opportunities have foste- spatial and temporal com- a sense of meta-cognition. spectives. Further, these are These are concerns raised recognises the city as a red disparate groups overlap- plexity render it unmappable The experiential in contrast malleable and permeable, by practitioners and theo- multi-layered construct, ping across multiple spaces. and hence unknowable. The is marked by graphic mecha- shifting and evolving de- rists, who have called for a whether as the “layered This multi-layered condition danger is of course that the nisms that convey intimate pendent upon the subject’s reconsideration of traditional city” or “many cities in is not a predetermined ab- subject falls back into totat- and immediate spatial expe- viewpoint and underlying praxis, and new “techniques one city”. solute, static, homogenous lizing conceptualisations. rience, notably as encounte- attitudes and values. No to- that engage time and change, or singular, but rather con- While recognising that we red through vision or touch. talizing nor fragmentary re- shifting scales, mobile points ROBERT BROWN structed, changing, heteroge- can’t map or know the city While also using the pictorial presentation therefore can of view, and multiple pro- neous, and operates at mul- in toto, in order to operate and diagrammatic, the pri- truly capture and express grams.” (Allen, 40) tiple scales simultaneously. in this context we need some mary intention is to simulate the manifold interactions oc- Constructed practice Nor do these layers exist as mechanism that allows us to the richness of the actual ex- curring between people and Further deliberations ran- As Denis Cosgrove suggests, distinct stratum; rather they frame the city as a space of perience of place. place accumulated over time. ge from considerations of though it is impossible to re- interrelate, with overlaps, simultaneous multiplicity, This dialectic, while of- Like comparable observati- the nature of social space present all spatial-temporal gaps, adjacencies, conflicts, and from which one can both fering useful frameworks wi- ons on the fluidity of culture, through perception as occur- conditions, mapping as a connections and fusions that construct knowledge and thin which to operate, poses actions and events within the ring through a series of filters. tool allows us this illusion. exist or lie potent between carry out subsequent action. significant limitations. Inhe- city are not part of singular (Borden; Lefebvre) Evol- He further contends that it them. Secondly, the conventions rently exclusive of the other, condition, but rather exist as ving urban histories echo provides a fertile way of This conceptualisation af- that we have inherited are more significantly each fails multiple strands which are in these pluralistic readings, as knowing and representing fords a joined-up approach based on a Cartesian geo- to engage with the multipli- a constant state of flux. do emerging discussions in the world. The goal of the to the city’s making. This at- metry – one that is fixed and city that the city represents. A wider conceptual fra- ecology and landscape ur- mapping as proposed here, titude, grounded in commu- singular. What are needed The panoptic overview tends mework is needed in which banism. (Czerniak; Girardet; i.e., palimpsest, is not howe- nity development and urban are new tools that will ena- toward reductive visions, to formulate discussion. Huyssen) Each understands ver a singular representation. regeneration, recognises ble us to operate within the prioritising selected view- Yet in so doing we are con- the city as comprised of a Rather, it embraces and aims that synergies are achieved city’s dynamic nature. In this points and marginalising fronted by a vast plurality, a plurality of layers formed to give presence to plurality, through a multi-layered ap- paper I will consider these others. The immediately ex- challenge echoed by Frede- by cultural, ecological, eco- and so intrinsically engages proach. (Brown) Such prac- questions, drawing upon re- periential meanwhile is frag- ric Jameson in questioning nomic, political and social not only with spatial form tice echoes other emergent cent work from the Univer- mentary, limiting connectivi- whether a comprehensive actions, agents, forces and but more ephemeral conside- shifts towards ‘pluralistic’ sity of Plymouth Master of ty between individualising knowledge remains elusive. structures. Within this con- rations of meaning perspec- and ‘organic’ strategies for… Architecture design studio to narratives. Each equally fails text traditional notions of the tives. This is not however urban development as a ‘col- explore a praxis of multipli- to engage fully with the tem- city as a collection of people so much a matter of getting lage’ of highly differentiated city called palimpsest. poral; their depictions are How then to make inhabiting contiguous space any supposed reality “right”, spaces and mixtures, rather static, delimiting their vali- sense of this condition and having common con- Inherited practice but is more of a process of than pursuing grandiose dity. Such a representation and articulate some ac- cerns are suspect. What was Urban representations have knowledge formation; that plans based on functional zo- “automatically freezes the cessible account? once spatially constituted historically operated within a is, it is a way of ‘constructing ning of different activities.” flow of experience and in so locally has been subject to dialectic of the strategic and forms of knowledge that can (Harvey, 40) doing distorts what it strives significant shifts in connec- experiential. The strategic How can we build upon cope with multiple realities.’ Working within this con- to represent.” (Harvey, 206) tivity brought on by physi- is characterised by pictorial this to generate a field (Kahn, 289) dition presents however In juxtaposition, place is cal and virtual networks of representations and diagram- in which we can act and There are several aspects two notable and interrelated subject to multiple interpre- exchange; concurrently, both matic drawings, enabling which will inform the key to the process of map- challenges. Firstly, the city’s tations from multiple per- mobility and diverse, disper- a panoptic perspective and design process? ping in Palimpsest. First is NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Urban 9
in the 1820s after clearance nation-state as counter to portment and the pleasures to more” is unsustainable; ar- of dense habitations seen private interest. The nine- be gained from regularity and guing that “It is through art by the authorities as dens of teenth-century liberal state order” (21) in Tate’s press in that we communicate what crime – to purge the social sought to improve the lot of the 1890s. To admit the lo- it feels like to be alive.” But body of its dirt. I wonder if the deserving poor, both for wer classes, he adds, stated a whose culture? the antics of the plinthers philanthropic reasons and to fantasy of “a mixed audience In “Cosmopolitan Ur- also purged the site of so- prevent insurrection. Ander- at ease with itself, variegated banism: a love song to our mething more subversive: son reads this a shift to the and occupied”(23). Was One mongrel cities”, Leonie San- contested space masked by state as community of com- & Other: a picture of a na- dercock writes, “We all grow dressing up and having fun. mon cause, bound by com- tion at ease with itself, de- up in a culturally structured Jonathan Jones, The Guar- mon ties: “regardless of the sperately denying the pres- world, are deeply shaped by Works cited: dian’s art critic, wrote that actual inequality and exploi- sures driving it apart? Was it, and necessarily view the Anderson, B. Imagined Communities. London, Verso, 1991. Print. One & Other was not “a ce- tation that may prevail […] it an oblique re-run of Mat- world from within a speci- Arnold, M. Culture and Anarchy. lebration of the creativity of a deep, horizontal comrade- thew Arnold’s argument that, fic culture.”(47) She adds, London: Smith, Elder & Co, [popular ordinary people [… but] a di- ship” (7). The fantasy was when a nation’s ties (such “some form of cultural iden- edition] 1889. Print. minishing, isolating image of enforced in a proliferation of as common faith) unwind, tity and belonging seems Belsey, C. Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Ox- the individual’ when ‘people public monuments and me- only culture has the agency unavoidable” and that cul- ford University Press, 2002. Print. will try anything to get their morials: personal loss was to bind? For Arnold, art’s va- tures, in the sense of beliefs Bird, J. “The Spectacle of Me- voices heard”(Jones). To me, subsumed in national mour- lue was universal; faced with and practices, can be critical- mory”. In Michael Sandle [exhibition it seems the isolation of each ning, as were personal stories insurrection, the state turned ly revised from within (ibid). catalogue]. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1988. Print. plinther (in web-cam images in the national narrative. The to culture. Arnold wrote, Similarly, from theatre studi- Gormley, A. “Art’s lost subject”. against the grey façade of greater the uncertainty, the “the whole scope of the es- es, Catherine Belsey argues The Guardian, 13 February, 2010. the National Gallery) rende- more monuments tended to say is to recommend culture that culture is the structure Accessed on-line at 12 April, 2010.
an analysis within differing third key aspect is the use of onwith hree primary aims: In other areas where Russian embraces the simultaneous nises that any approach car- thematic and/or attitudinal narrative. firstly, to explore the city as a signage and text was found, multiplicity present there. By ries with it a certain bias; as viewpoints (i.e., various lay- multi-layered representation. fewer cars and of lesser va- bringing together distinct ob- Corner observes, “how one ers within the city). Though Stories help us to Secondly, to test the means lue were present, and the servations, and working with “images” the world literally this focus can have limitati- remember and make by which we represent this building frontages were in a them through juxtaposition conditions how reality is ons if uncritically conside- sense of our experi- construct. Thirdly, to frame noticeable degree of disre- and a narrative framework, both conceptualized and sha- red; it does enable a more ences in time and place, discussion for later project pair. This condition not only they prompt us to look again. ped.” (153) incisive view and can also the wider forces at play work (not discussed here). reflected pro-Latvian gover- Manoeuvring around any reveal hidden conditions, and those places them- This exploration maps and nment strategic policies, but singular, reductive formal Palimpsest does not whether dormant, margina- selves. tests how the city’s different equally revealed the extent to representation and attributed mean to deny that the lized or neglected. A second layers synthesise, overlap, which the underlying intenti- meaning, they direct our fo- city is ultimately un- key move is a juxtaposition They make accessible pat- touch, reflect, displace, and/ ons had permeated through cus to the linkages between mappable and unkno- of these individual map- terns, linkages and contin- or erase each other. In one even to non-government layers of time and place. wable as a totality, pings. This operation’s intel- gencies that inform the re- recent project sited in Riga, related actions and spatial Some conclusions but rather that the city lectual roots lie in Edward de lationship between personal students investigated specific conditions. Another study of In positing Palimpsest, what consists of a multipli- Bono’s arguments on lateral thought, action, experience neighbourhoods reflecting the medieval Old Town une- is proposed is not some uni- city of narratives, each thinking. It offers an enga- and memory, and broader, particular approaches to- arthed a similar convergence tary theory or ‘new meta-di- composed of a range of gement of seemingly known shared narrations. Most sig- wards city planning in place of the cultural, economic and sciplinary category’ as Greig performances, perspec- information and phenomena nificantly, these stories can at the time of their inception. political. Most notable was Crysler warns us against. tives, processes and with a fresh perspective, and be mapped, revealing bound- These were examined within a coalescing of “tourist-fri- Rather, it shares more in relationships. is particularly useful ‘as a aries, trajectories, intersec- a framework of ecological, endly” shops, restaurants and common with de Certeau’s way to restructure existing tions and fields occurring in political, socio-cultural and bars, officially sanctioned by It acknowledges that these notion of tactics, i.e., a cal- patterns of thinking and pro- time and place. (Potteiger and socio-economic layers. Two the government tourist board, at times coalesce and at other culated action in the con- voke new ways.’ (de Bono, Purinton) The use of multiple neighbourhoods investigated with “suggested” tourist times conflict in place. The text of a terrain that already 11) As he further suggests, media plays a distinct role in are briefly discussed here. routes. Seemingly omitted intention is to explore how exists, in which it is but just this approach raises aware- this mapping, including film, One study of the gridded from the authorised narrative these layers relate, and the one of many different ope- ness of alternatives, inclu- photography and writing 19th Century Jugendstil “new were the inhabitants of Riga, potential their convergences rations. It is also critical to ding those that may not be to record the diversity and town”, revealed convergent whose connections with the and divergences offer as site highlight that the working so obvious. Juxtaposition flux that marks inhabitation and divergent strata of cultu- area were limited to acts of of design. Ultimately, it is methodology proposed is not equally owes a debt to dis- of place. Various digital and ral, economic, political and consumption (whether as not about defining some sin- a positivist model. Echoing course on “unlearning” and graphic techniques further social forces, less strategical- buyers or sellers). Together gular vision, but rather ‘the Marc Treib’s critique of “transformative learning”, support this juxtaposition; ly planned but no less present these conditions reveal a primary aim...is to pull out Ian McHarg’s Design with which enable an exposition this creative play affords a within the current landscape. shift from a once-diversified the positive threads which Nature methods, analytical of the constraints and limita- simultaneous manipulation In some areas an overlapping city fabric to a singular space enable a more lively appre- overlays might help to reveal tions of our existing attitudes at both strategic and tactical of high levels of car owners- of tourist, leisure and retail ciation of the challenge of certain criteria but they do and ways of working. Mo- levels, allowing various per- hip and high car values, a consumption, reflecting the space.’ (Massey, 15) not autonomously generate reover, it aids us, as Saskia mutations and possibilities to predominance of Latvian and city’s long-term strategic subsequent design strategies. Sassen might suggest, to re- be revealed. English signage and even agenda for the Old Town. Works cited at Nor is this approach inten- veal the connections of the Palimpsest is the subject menus, and well-refurbished These two projects reveal http://darc.imv.au.dk/ ded to reveal some sense of seemingly unconnected. The of an on-going investigati- street facades was identified. an urban conception that publicinterfaces an absolute truth. It recog- Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 10 Public-Interfaces
The utopia of art is a correlate of citizen-based utopia. This utopia of art is a utopia of possible communication, a utopia of ‘cultural communism,’ or at any rate of the cultu- ral community. The world is not irremediably split between the most civilized and the most uncultivated precisely because there exists this formal universality of judgments Art of taste. Yves Michaud Sensus Communis and the Public ◆ Drawing upon the social groups appropriate for vated precisely because there communication, that is, in the this faculty. The decisive communis is not a fact is only analyses of French phi- themselves different forms exists this formal universa- Kantian sense, in a principle point for de Duve is that re- a fact in the empirical, verifi- losopher and art theo- of artistic representation lity of judgments of taste.” of sociability and community gardless of whether sensus able sense, de Duve remarks. rist Yves Michaud and (141f.). The aesthetic que- (146). that is not based on religion, communis exists as a fact, we What we must not do, de the Belgian art theorist stion of criteria of taste arose Thus, the judgement of the nation, national language, ought to suppose that it does. Duve contends, is to conflate Thierry de Duve, this because of the plurality of taste signifies that the world family, commercial interests History has taught us to and confound Auschwitz as a article is an investiga- the public’s judgements of is shared, a common, and ae- etc. But the community can- think that sensus communis fact of reason and Auschwitz tion of the potential and taste and the confrontations sthetic experience reinforces not be founded on such an is definitely not a natural as a fact of nature. The em- topicality of the Kan- of these in the public sphere. the equality of citizens po- imaginary principle: endowment of humankind pirical fact of nature is that tian concept of “sen- Kant’s Critique of Jud- stulated elsewhere. and therefore must be a mere Auschwitz did take place. sus communis”. This gement is a response to this Art continues to be pre- regulative idea: we have rea- The fact of reason is that suggests one possible question in that it seeks to The program of Kant sented as a source of lised the “fact” that we do Auschwitz ought never to teoretical framework for provide rational foundation and the early aesthetic legitimation and motiva- not possess the faculty of have happened – “Auschwitz discussing community, for those types of universal thinkers was a tion able to reenchant spontaneously empathizing never again,” the moral law publicness, and public claims arising from aesthetic democratic program. social life – but it is with the human in us all. The reads. This is the reasoning interfaces. judgements. What is commu- merely a mirage. name of the demonstration of behind de Duve’s claim that nicated in the judgement of This utopia of art has now this lack of empathy with the sensus communis does not JACOB LUND taste is, in Kant’s own words, come to an end, Michaud One can imagine the im- human in us all as a “fact” exist, but it ought to exist. “the mental state in which we claims. Kant formulated his portance of being attentive is Auschwitz (On Negativi- According to de Duve are when imagination and un- program in the context of to other more modest and ty). But, the fact that sensus sensus communis refers to Taking a historical approach derstanding are in free play”. the utopia of citizenship by less lofty forms of legitima- Yves Michaud detects a crisis What is actually communi- giving the concept and the tion and motivation. The cri- in contemporary art, or rather cated is the communicability reality of a public sphere sis of art raises the issue of in the concept and represen- of feeling, so to speak, that of communication around new concepts which have to Encyclopedic tation of art, and speaks of is, the effect the free play artworks a theoretical form be formed in order to think “The End of the Utopia of of the faculties of cognition and a rational foundation through radical democracy. Art”. In this, he understands – of understanding and ima- (149). Kant was not very (156) Public the sensus communis to form gination – has on the mind. concerned with the artworks Contrary to Michaud a part of the utopia of art Aesthetic communication is in themselves; the most im- Thierry de Duve defends – in ◆ which refers to a universal the universal communicabi- portant was the establish- a more analytical approach Broadly received of production, organi- human community of taste. lity of a feeling we all know ment of communication in – the belief in or principal and frequently quoted, sation of labour and Today, there are no univer- through the very nature and the aesthetic experience. hope for a sensus communis Paolo Virno’s A Gram- the crisis of the public sal aesthetic criteria, and art free play of our faculties. It Aesthetic experience should even though it only exists as mar of the Multitude sphere. in reality only gives rise to is, in other words, a process not be reserved for an elite an idea, or a presupposition. has become a primary entry point to an un- relatively small and limited in which everyone partici- of refined connoisseurs lea- When passing an aesthe- LARS BO LøFGREEN communities of taste. Any pates, an inter-subjective ving the lower classes to tic judgement, for example derstanding of current group and any individual is community. their uncivilized crudeness, “This rose is beautiful,” or changes in the means endowed with a right to pass Michaud’s aim is to draw excluded at the same time “This urinal is art,” or “This a legitimate judgement of ta- out the implications of Kant’s from political freedom and code is art,” we say “you ste, and this occasions a mul- theory for what he refers to equality. The utopia of art is ought to feel the way I feel, ticulturalistic fragmentation as the utopia of art. a utopia of communication, you ought to agree with me”. of taste. In other words, the The Critique of Judge- democracy and civilization: According to de Duve, Kant idea of the communicative ment addresses in particular it is integrated in the program understood better than an- function of art and a univer- the question of communi- of an education (Bildung) of yone else that this call on the sal community of taste has cation and intersubjectivity: humanity into sociability other’s capacity for agreeing been challenged by a demo- The passing of a judgement (ibid.). by dint of feeling is legitima- cratic generalized pluralism of taste is an aesthetic act, in But, according to Mi- te. Thus, the faculty of taste or multiculturalism that does which the person affirming chaud, already in the nine- is only important in so far not profess to the ideal of a the universality of his or her teenth century the utopia of as it testifies to a universally universal community which sentiment goes beyond his communication turned out shared faculty of agreeing, was a cornerstone of modern or her ego and merges with to be an illusion. Under the namely sensus communis – art and of Kantian inspired others. It is a passage from influence of capitalist and it is not important in itself. aesthetic theory. “I” to ”we”. According to democratic development the (“Do Artists”, 141). The utopia of art appea- Michaud this intersubjec- enlightened and public criti- De Duve sees sensus red at the same time as what tivity should not be given cal sphere of the eighteenth communis as a kind of cos- Michaud calls “the utopia of an ahistorical character, but century became the sphere mopolitanism that is not fou- democratic citizenship”, of should instead be seen in its of public opinion as well as nded politically, but aestheti- equality and liberty. They historical context, namely of the division between clas- cally. Therefore it would be were both established along the French revolution and the ses and social groups (151). illegitimate to actually found with the emergence of the idea of freedom and equality Even though art appeared to the cosmopolitan state upon concept of a public and a amongst the citizens: The provide the principle of ae- it, “because an actual aesthe- public sphere in the second formal universality of judge- sthetic communication, in tic community extending to half of the eighteenth cen- ments of taste and the social reality no one agrees. Eve- all world would be a mon- tury. According to Michaud communication that sup- ryone is sure of the universal ster.” (“The Glocal”, 685). the democratic and capita- ported them not only anti- relevance of his or her expe- For the existence of sensus list societies since then have cipated the coming equality rience, but no one is able to communis as a fact cannot developed around these two which was the actual future convince any one else when be proven, and civil society utopias together with that of of the utopia of democratic they disagree. In reality the cannot be be constructed on labour. The public came to citizenship, it actually par- Salon exploded into a series the basis of the faculty of play a new mediating role ticipated in its realisation: of competing salons, and agreeing. The only actually in the previously “private” “The utopia of art is a corre- the aesthetic community existing fact is that we pass relationship between the ar- late of citizen-based utopia. is characterised rather by aesthetic judgements and that tist and the commissioner This utopia of art is a utopia disagreement. It turns out to we do this by dint of feeling, of the work. “The public”, of possible communication, be a myth, Michaud claims. and that we, at least impli- however, has from the outset a utopia of ‘cultural commu- Despite different attempts to citly, claim universal assent never been statically defined; nism,’ or at any rate of the obstruct the reality of this di- for these feelings. To Kant it is produced by different cultural community. The sillusionment, utopia is truly it does not matter whether conflictual discourses with world is not irremediably dead. According to Michaud taste actually is the faculty Martin Howse performing which different sectors of the split between the most civi- art stands for a motive for of agreeing of all humans, or Psychogeophysics public identifies – different lized and the most unculti- believing in sympathy and whether taste merely signals in Aarhus 2010 NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Art 11
For a long time, the fact that nothing binds the reader to his paper as much as this avid impatience for fresh nourishment every day, has been used by editors, who are always starting new columns open to his questions, opinions, protestations. […] Kevin Carter, Landscape-Portrait, The reader is indeed always ready to become a writer, that is to say, someone who Gateshead, UK (2007). describes or even who prescribes. Walter Benjamin Photo: Karin Coetzee. - see next page a faculty of global empathy, »We need art in order Works cited: and in spite of his profound de Duve, Thierry. “Do Artists to retain that glimpse Speak on Behalf of All of Us?” Diar- pessimism regarding human of hope that religion or muid Costello and Dominic Willsdon, nature, Kant saw that we politics can no longer eds. The Life and Death of Images. cannot renounce the idea, the promise, let alone gua- Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2008. 139- undemonstrated postulate, 156: 141. Print. rantee.« de Duve, Thierry. “The Glocal that we humans are endo- (de Duve, 8). and the Singuniversal: Reflections on wed with sensus communis Art and Culture in the Global World.” without renouncing our own The question that is still beg- Third Text 21:6 (2007). 681-688: 685. humanity, and that aesthe- Print. ging to be answered in this de Duve, Thierry. On Negativity in tic judgements are the place context is whether it is still Kant’s Third Critique. Lecture given where we automatically possible – and advisable – to at the annual conference of The make this postulate. This argue for some kind of sha- European Society for Aesthetics in small hope is the only one, Udine, Italy, May 29, 2010. red feeling and community de Duve, Thierry and Lund, Kant is ready grants us – in our present state of affairs, Jacob. “‘The Glimpse of Hope that “and it is not much compared i.e. in a late capitalist biopoli- Religion or Politics can no Longer with the promises made by Promise...’ An Interview with Thierry tical society of control? And de Duve”. The Nordic Journal of the many utopias born out of if it is: Which works and in- Aesthetics. 36-37 (2008-2009). 6-10: the Enlightenment,” de Duve terfaces are able to provoke 7. Print. remarks (“The glimpse”, 7). and facilitate such a sensus Michaud, Yves. “The End of the In Kant the hope stems from Utopia of Art”. Bartomeu Mari and communis? Jean-Marie Schaeffer, eds. Think the fact that human beings Art: Theory and Practice in the Art are inclined to see beauty in of Today. Rotterdam: Witte de With, nature. In de Duve natural 1999: 131-156. Print. beauty is replaced by art:
Virno’s use of this concept, of unity-seeking mediations and D’Alembert from 1747 Striking is here the lack Howse himself presents tance of artefacts as singular, however, is not without its and dialectics is a project of to 1758 (where D’Alembert of any mechanism of exclu- confusingly as a “practical non-synthesisable, objects. issues. In particular, Virno’s continued relevance. leaves the project) and com- sion. Everything is poten- investigation of urban ge- The particles are a mass and reading of the multitude as In characterisation it is pleted in 1773. The paradox, tially relevant, the categories ophysical archaeology and points in all, but one direc- an absolute rather than as a project resting on the be- however, is here neither the are provisional, and the only spectral ecologies”. This se- tion. a figure of approximation, lief in the possibility of true relationship between the edi- thing putting an end to the cond agenda follows not just seems problematic (40). In translations. A project resting tors, nor the 26 years in the otherwise infinitely recursive from the setup, but also from As such, and on this doing so, little room is left on the power of representati- making of the Encyclopédie, project of analysis and de- the staging of the event itself. level, Martin Howse’s for any possible dialectics on and metonymic relations. but rather the apparent dis- scription, is the steady pub- Imminent before the practice holds an intere- between the state of things A belief made into system crepancy between the intent lication of volumes pushing walks, Howse spends a great sting take and commen- that are to come and the state where widely diverse politi- and the scope of the project. the editors from letter to let- deal of time presenting the tary on how the public of things that already exist. cal stances are trusted to be Looking up the word ency- ter and finally draining the equipment and the interface. interface might look The following is an at- represented fully in the ac- clopaedia in the Encyclopé- financial resources. Confronted with clear rea- like from the viewpoint tempt to read a dynamic out count of the elected member die, this paradox becomes dings from previous walks, of the multitude, this of this concept. Using two of parliament, where compli- apparent (my emphasis): Read in the light of numbers increasing and second enlightenment examples, displaced in time cated misdeeds of the indivi- “We will say only one these discrepancies, the decreasing, it is clear that project. as well as focus, the aim here dual are trusted to be trans- thing about this ordering Encyclopédie may very something is indeed being is to point to some general lated into rightful execution considered in connection well be the true project measured. But just as vocal Not with the abandonment of characteristics of opposition by a legal system. In short: with the whole encyclope- of the multitude. and clear as he is about the reason and discernability as a within this concept. a belief in the consistency of dic material, which is that data measured, how it is sto- consequence, but as a display When parts don’t fit language itself. True, these it is not possible […] to in- A project where the indivi- red in the ram of the devices, of the difference between are all examples that can be troduce as much variety into dual particles holds a prim- copied onto his laptop and deductive and inductive rea- One often tends to forget contested. But pointing to the the construction […] into acy over the whole, where then transformed into well- soning. Representations are that there are two sets of en- many exceptions and examp- all the parts of its distribu- abstraction from the singular shaped curves of a graph, as either broken down or made lightenment thought emer- les of the limits of represen- tion, as the encyclopedic article to the whole of the silent is he when it comes impossible, metonymic rela- ging out of the 18th century. tation, conversion and trans- order allows. It [the order] Encyclopédie exists only in to the questions about what tions are brought into questi- Two ways of distributing lation in current society and might be created either by the means of a register, and exactly these readings hold on and abstraction made dif- knowledge, two sets of orga- pulling out the scepticist’s relating our different kinds where the acceptance of non- of significance. This lack of a ficult, in a process where the nising theoretical and practi- argument, would here be to of knowledge to the various integratable elements, omis- purpose is by no means made singular part always holds cal philosophy, two projects miss the point. The point is faculties of the soul (this is sions, uncertainties and frac- up for during the walks. De- primacy over the whole and for the education of man, two here not that every part can the system we have used), tions are a primary condition. vices are handed out, but the interface is reduced from notions of the public sphere, magically fit, be translated or by relating them to the little direction as to their use transparency to a cause for publicity, Öffentlichkeit etc., Unreliable interfaces into or be represented by the entities they take as their ob- is given and it is thus up for concern. two sets and not one. Taking place in random, ur- whole, but rather that there ject; and this object may be each and everyone to try out The one of these two, is ban locations and aimed at in the attempt to make these one of pure curiosity, or a their own interpretation. At the one that is easy to re- non-specific, non-guided ex- translations and representati- luxury, or a necessity. […] It play is here not just the pro- member. The one born out ploration of the area around, ons manifest, is a clear pri- is therefore impossible to ba- duction of random observati- of an increased engagement the work of Martin Howse, macy of the whole over the nish arbitrariness from this ons, but rather an intensified with rationality, and trivia- does more than to just follow part. This primacy is the in- broad primary distribution. sensibility towards the near lised in Kant’s Beatwortung in the line of the situationist heritance of the first project The universe offers us only surroundings. Scribblings on der Frage: Was ist Auf- practice of psychogeography of enlightenment. individual beings, infinite in the walls of old barracks, gar- klärung (1783) with the al- and the dérive. Although Now, the second pro- number, and virtually lack- bage on the street, signposts most in constitution written Howse’s practice of psy- Works cited: ject emerging out of the en- ing any fixed and definitive and open electrical wiring Diderot, Denis. ‘Encyclopedia’ credo: “Sapere aude! Habe chogeophysics comes with lightenment is a project of division [43]; there is none are all being tried interpreted The Encyclopedia of Diderot & Mut, dich deines eigenen neither the bold manifestos d’Alembert Collaborative Translation the opposite. A project re- which one can call either the through devices blinking and Verstandes zu bedienen!”. In nor full blown ideology of Project. Translated by Philip Stewart. sting not on processes of me- first or the last; everything is sounding off with no appa- Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Of- short, it is a project engaged The Situationist Internatio- diations and dialectics (i.e. connected and progresses by rent consistency. fice of the University of Michigan Li- with solving the deficiencies nal, it does provide an inte- they play a role, but a less imperceptible shadings; and The experience of the par- brary, 2002. Web.
of our concern (in this case Hybrid Public Art Practice digital media) are mere ve- Why We Should Be hicles of culture, meaning, ◆ The overarching aim of my research is to perspective, ideology; in explore how production of a public art that short they reflect our own combines both traditional and digital art practi- concerns or the interests of ces may lead to a revised conception, a hybrid ‘Discrete’ in Public a fractured, complex society. public art practice, that is inclusive of the physi- We do not merely see cal and virtual as both site and material for the PHP code in its own way or creation of public art works. witness a search engine pe- object oriented ontology – Encapsulation and the Private ruse data; we would rather KEVIN CARTER lives of Objects interpret it as an interface that affords communication this affords less of an inter- antithetical lynchpin of con- between a human witness In producing practice based research my aim is the de- ◆ It is admirable to face as such, but more of a temporary Philosophy. and communicative infor- velopment of a ontology of digital practices that might, demonstrate that the distinction between one bo- As Meillassoux succinctly mational output. We would when synthesised with particular public art practices, ex- strength of the spirit undary and another. The pro- puts it, correlationism is the rather see it as an attempt to pands methodologies and methods available to artists and transcends the laws of blem becomes bigger when idea that ‘we only ever have address the ideological con- practitioners working within a public art practice across mechanical nature, but we consider the bolstering of access to the correlation bet- notations inherent within online and offline sites. I would like to think about the this program is idiotic if ‘culture’ onto the interface. ween thinking and being, the form of executable code possibilities that social media platforms appear to offer, matter is not at all ma- Surely it is human culture and never to either term con- that society produces and is and discuss, with reference to two examples, concerns terial and machines are that has special access to a sidered apart from the other’ ‘captured’ by (or as Richard that have arisen from the production and consumption of not at all mechanical. specialised domain of mea- (5). The speculative mode Rogers recently called ‘back- these works. “What we could call ‘art’ in the context of (Latour, 124) ning here? Or at best a post- of enquiry is to access the end politics’). Web 2.0 is certainly what most reinforces our belief in the ROBERT JACKSON human one? properties of reality, mate- These positions rely on potentials of the connected multitude, in its possibilities We should consider that rialism in-itself or objects of the correlationist attitude that for the free production of critical thought and new life.” in the last number of years, enquiry, without succumbing the inherent reality of things (Prada) Continental and Analytic to a subject always-already can never be disclosed and Arguably examples of this free production might in- There is a strong case for Philosophy has undergone a relating to it. Arguably cor- the world of digital media clude the Google mashup of British National Party (BNP) suggesting that in our con- major revision on a number relationism has been with can only ever operate for-us, membership data that was created after a BNP members- temporary epoch, interfaces of unfashionable issues. If philosophy since Kant, but not for itself. The paradigm hip database had been leaked into the public domain via play more of a fundamental we were once spellbound by it has leaked into many di- of interface plays a particu- Wikileaks. The works creator, Ben Charlton, in discussion role than ever; to consider discourses, social practices, sciplines in many guises, not larly ambivalent part in this with his peers on Twitter, converted the data and uploaded the countless mediations texts, language and the fini- least studying media and its argument by siphoning off it to a Google map, creating a spatial representation of of digital programs, col- tude of human epistemology, vicissitudes. Perhaps corre- platforms, software proto- BNP membership, filtered by postcode, upon a rendering lective groups, corporate then today’s scholars choose lationism exists in its most cols and objects by way of a of the real space as represented by Google maps. More re- fundraisers, phone apps, to orient their thoughts to- potent form as the interface representative intention. cently, the C.H.R.I.S. website and related Facebook page mobile platforms and social wards the independence of between human minds and As a referent, we should made use of a database of convicted pedophiles to provide practices, is to consider many reality itself (Bryant, Har- the mirror of culture. note Andersen and Pold’s an online resource where users could view convicted ped- interlocking communicative man, and Srnicek, 13) In the forthcoming pub- introductory premise to In- ophiles living in their area. The dataset is compiled and systems and assemblages. Of the recently disbanded lication The Democracy of terface Criticism: Aesthetics kept up-to-date by the sites author Chris Witter and users But why should we sug- collective ‘Speculative Rea- Objects (forthcoming, 2011), beyond the Buttons, in so of the site. The impetus for the work resulted from the UK gest that interfaces have lism’ (a group comprising the philosopher and Media far as their investigation of government’s abandonment of their own plan to publish a played less of a role than of the philosophers Quentin Theorist Levi Bryant coins the interface does not stop at similar database due to concerns about vigilanteism. they do now? This is not a Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, the view, ‘Malkovichism‘ the computer’s surface but In thinking about these works through the rubric of historical interjection, but Iain Hamilton Grant and as influenced from the fa- it progresses; “...beyond the Kwon’s models of public art practice both artifacts might an ontological one. Digital Graham Harman), it is Me- mous scene in the film Being buttons and reaches ‘back’ be understood as indicative of the “Art in the public inte- interfaces may allude to bo- illassoux’s criticism of the John Malkovich. This view into history, and ‘through’ to rest” model, Kwon further divides this model into three undaries between data and anti-realist term ‘Correlatio- pertains to an ‘erasure of al- the human senses and per- main methods: 1. Communities of ‘Mythic Unity’; 2. flesh, nature and artifice, nism’ which has become the terity’, such that the objects ception, ‘behind’ the concept Sited Communities (Existing); 3. Invented Communities platform and software; but (Temporary/Ongoing). In locating these works »I would argue that within a tradition of public both relate to the third art practice I am not trying definition – “Invented to claim them as public Self-Service Broadcasting Communities (Tem- artworks, or attempting porary/Ongoing)” – a to resuscitate a moribund reenacttv.net method that is reliant public art practice within upon the practitioner the novelty of new tech- ◆ The interface can be David Joselet suggests that yeurs” (4). This has further forming a community nologies, rather it is to see interrogated in terms of through the act of feedback, potential as an open circuit of collaborators around if there is a correlation the potential for active as producers and viewers of if the work itself adheres to the production of the between certain historical participatory audiences the ubiquitous media of new Umberto Eco’s principles of artwork; a community public art practices and a to evolve at the site(s) television, we can “learn the the Open Work, where “every that may be already vernacular use of social of new television. system and counter it – make reception of a work of art is existing or specifically media. Thinking about Further, it can be exami- noise” (171). He sees this both an interpretation and a set up to produce the these examples from a in- ned how this evolution as a viral act in a potentially performance of it, because work.« formation design perspec- is closely aligned to open circuit, reminiscent of in every reception the work tive, it is interesting to note that Charlton withdrew the technological develop- Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt takes on a fresh perspective map soon after its publication due to fears about mispla- ments and tools that (or alienation effect) in terms for itself”(4) Webcam image processed ced vigilanteism resulting from the efficacy of the dataset, might engender ‘free of its political activation of Mash-ups and similar acts the receiver where, in rela- of resistance can be seen as through collaborator Gary which it might be argued, was one of he reasons that the cooperation’ and then Millard’s 30 line emulation C.H.R.I.S. website was first set up in the first place. collaboration, ‘eman- tion to the political point, (s) key acts of agency and affect software. This will be used With my own work Landscape-Portrait [see page 11] cipating the spectator’ he is “conscious of the social (Gray 2008) and a new type for the reenactment from 133 this replication of the efficacy of market research was (Rancière), and creating situation that gives rise to it of ‘flow’ sited at the intersec- Long Acre. challenged by the use of non-objective data collection agency and empower- and desirous of acting in or- tion between the DIY tools techniques. Post-code based demographics are derived ment. der to transform it” (Ranciè- such as Wirecast, Ustream, from objective datasets, produced from census data. By re, 8). Where Brecht’s thea- Stickam etc and prosumer reenact early television attempting an inversion of the questions used by the cen- PHIL ELLIS tre audience is akin to the culture. experiments and seeks sus questionnaire, for example asking “How do you get new television audience is Such a bricolage of ideas to interrogate the public on with the people you live with” as opposed to “How in the availability for activa- of collaborative/cooperative, interface of new televi- many people do you live with?”, a subversion is produced Inherent in a convergent cul- tion – the former through the open, networked, viral parti- sion and opportunities at the site of the data construction, corresponding to Kris ture, the possibilities mul- removal of the fourth wall cipatory flows are the struc- for self- service broad- Cohen’s observation that “whoever makes data makes the tiply for active participants and the latter through the re- tural and thematic under- casting; specifically the publics that data purports merely to describe.” to act as both ‘semionauts’ cognition of user production pinning of the forthcoming reenactment of The Man Landscape-Portrait can be seen as a critique of this de- and tactical media practi- in the interfaces of new te- reenacttv.net arts practice with the Flower in his mographic viewpoint by offering different views of per- tioners to exploit the poli- levision. Rancière proposes contextualized by this area of Mouth by John Logie son and place, which are then juxtaposed with the reducti- tical tensions between em- a Brechtian media exchange new television as self-service Baird with the BBC in ve portraits provided by demographics, problematicising powered viewer/users and “without spectators, where broadcasting. 1930. their unquestioning use, for example in the formation of the needs of the broadcast those in attendance learn strategies responding to business, social and environmen- industry to ‘monetise’ the from as opposed to being se- reenacttv.net harnesses The reenactment will fa- tal planning. viral feedback, exemplified duced by images; where they the collaborative nature cilitate active engagement in such tactics as the mash- become active participants of webcam chatsites to with the material of the play Read full article at http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ ups of remediated broadcast. as opposed to passive vo- through the residents and NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Art 13 of the interface, ‘down’ into Instead of focusing system, or it can be autono- Programming paradigm, and not just with the enquiry Nothing is really transfor- the machine, ‘out’ into soci- on the multiplicity of mous like the system itself” alongside Abstraction, Inhe- into mechanical entities, but med, but instead it is radi- ety and culture” (10). interfaces surrounding (5). Both scholars seek to ritance and Polymorphism. of units within all sorts of cally composed. In the 2004 We should note that at human culture, Harman underscore the discrete rea- For a system to be conside- complex phenomena. piece Kieler Sockel, (2004) first glance, only one fifth of launches a challenge lity of units and objects, both red object oriented it must be Finally, how does the in- at Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Slo- their investigation actually to the humanities; what as ordinary things or com- discrete. Non- OOP systems terrelationships between tawa placed the museum’s delves ‘beyond the buttons’. relations are occurring plex, abstract and conceptual do not have the luxury of en- units impact on artworks sculpture collection on bes- The intention here is not to between the discrete structures. For Bogost, the capsulation, and as such mo- - especially those that befri- poke plinths made from their disregard the human senses, objects that we often merging of computation and difications of data structures end computation? Perhaps, a office equipment – heads perception, history and cul- occlude? ontology into an aggregated can be accessible from any starting point would denote a resting on bins and cabinets. ture, but to remind ourselves unit framework is pitched part of the program, making re-appropriation of artworks For the museum, this led to that in reality, it is not ‘just’ Rather than accounting against the usual understan- bugs and glitches an almost that intend to visualise hu- a rather ambivalent position these points that are worth for Javascript keywords, ding that digital expression certainty. OOP’s dominance man use within different where it had to purchase ob- pointing to. To start off with, LCD displays, ethernet utilises systematic, network is closely related to Graphic visualisations. Mary Flana- jects that it already owned. it would perhaps be better to cables and API’s as tools that thinking. Although Bogost User Interfaces (GUI’s) for gan’s famous work Digital Configurability is not suggest the alternative stan- society use to communicate makes it clear that, this very reason. Minimise Unconscious (2000) high- strictly the domain of com- ce; interface is not a concept. (or miscommunicate), Har- ...the relationship between buttons, XML files and enti- lights the already evident putation, but the domain of Of the original four thin- man thinks the humanities units and systems is not a re SQL databases are objects correlationist attitude. But units. Although it has been kers that comprised Specu- should offer speculation on binary opposition [...] Unit- composed of more funda- instead of the application noted by commentators lative Realism, it is Graham these objects themselves and operational structures might mental objects, with an equal mining unconscious human (Chilver, 37) that Slotawa Harman who is currently in- their own boundaries and fi- also reaffirm systematicity, intrinsic structure. use, consider the interface subverts conceptual art’s fluencing some media scho- rewalls. even if they deploy the most Encapsulation is the no- we witness – the application composition into something lars into pursuing the specu- Those of you will already discrete types of unit func- tion that objects have both that mines the system it thri- radically contingent, I would lative enquiry, and with one be aware that the term shares tions. [...] The difference public and private logics in- ves on. The hidden layers of argue that it offers a specu- discrete reason that relates to two thirds with another pa- between systems of units and herent to their components. hard drive brought forward lative transgression onto the interface. radigm, perhaps even more systems as such is that the But we should be careful from the mines of encapsu- interface of objects. Unlike many thinkers closely related to interface; former derive meaning from not to regard the notion that lation. who wish to subvert cor- Object Oriented Program- the interrelationship of their private information is deli- But even contemporary relationism from the inside, ming (OOP). Even though components, whereas the lat- berately hidden from view, conceptual art can express Harman suggests that, on- this computational paradigm ter regulate meaning for their certain aspects of the object the configurable. The Ger- Works cited: tologically speaking, the re- has many key differences constituents.” (4) are made public and others man artist Florian Slotawa Andersen, Christian Ulrik and Pold, Søren Pold. Eds. Interface lationship between a human between a speculative en- This key ontological in- are occluded by blocking off is well known for his trans- Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond the user and an entity is different quiry, it holds one key si- sight sets the groundwork layers of data. The encapsu- gressionary re- contextua- Buttons. Aarhus: Aarhus University only in kind from any other milarity; Discreteness. for analysing media as a lated data can still be related lisation of objects. For the Press, 2010. relationship. The interface Perhaps the American vi- complex set of discrete con- to, even if the object itself work Hotelarbeiten [Hotel Bogost, Ian. Unit Operations. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. between human and browser deogame scholar Ian Bogost figurative units, and not as a fails to reveal it. Works], (1998-1999), Slo- Bryant, Levi. The Democracy of is different only in kind to a is the most vocal media theo- totalising system that regu- Interfaces reliance on tawa painstakingly reconfi- Objects. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities USB stick and its interface to rist to advocate Object Ori- lates and orders to one prin- OOP does not just reach the gures units within European Press, 2011. hard drive or even an inter- ented Ontology. Alongside ciple alone. Whilst its use has visible practice of moving hotel rooms and documents Bryant, Levi. Srnicek, Nick, and Harman, Graham, eds. The Specula- face between laminate flo- his own forthcoming publi- been considerable in video- and operating folders, pro- the outcome. The interrelati- tive Turn. re.press: Melbourne, 2010. oring and trainer. cation (Alien Phenomeno- game studies (it is after all, grams and browsers, but also onship of the room is recon- Chilver, John. “Contingency & Harman argues for an logy, 2011, forthcoming), he an approach to videogame reveals the inherent inter- figured into an operation and the Paradox of Composition: Florian ontology that suggests spe- criticism), its framework has faces between computational then it is put back into its ori- Slotawa.” In Art Papers. Vol.32/No.5, also cites Harman’s work in Sept/Oct 2008: 32-37. culating on different kinds his first book Unit Operati- been sorely lacking in resear- objects themselves. Other ob- ginal position, as if nothing Latour, Bruno. We Have Never of interfaces between ob- ons (2006). This is a reply to ching digital aesthetics. jects adhere to the interfaces happened. The discrete en- Been Modern. trans. Catherine Por- jects themselves. It is what his own version of the ‘unit’ Immanently connected of objects without the need to capsulation of the objects ter. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. he terms an Object Oriented which is “a material element, to our speculative notion of understand their complexity. are not exposed but adjusted Meillassoux, Quentin. After Ontology. a thing. It can be constitutive object interface is encapsula- The Malkovichism view that contingently. Chairs lie on Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity or contingent, like a buil- tion, one the four properties public arena reflects human mattresses and doors prop of Contingency. trans. Ray Brassier. ding block that makes up a given to the Object Oriented activity needs to be flattened, up tables alongside walls. New York: Continuum, 2008.
The prototype interface for reenacttv.net
workers of Long Acre Lon- that potentially “transforms don, Baird’s studio from them into active participants where the play was first bro- in a shared world” (Ranciè- adcast, as well as the parti- re, 11). cipatory audience – opening The dialogic process bet- a dialogic relationship bet- ween participants and con- ween past and present tech- temporary and historical nologies and conditions as television systems, in terms fully participatory authors of technologies and uses (the and actors. political and social implica- In the spirit of a ‘free co- tions of the user-producer), operative open work’, the aligned with their modes user is free to create whate- of distribution and recep- ver flow they choose to cre- tion, allow for a critique of ate with the work, hence the the contemporary position authorship of this artwork is of broadcasting through the problematised. The artwork process of reenactment. can be articulated as part of “growing online participa- tion and content provision” and the artist can be descri- Works cited: Gray, Jonathan. Television bed as what Trebor Scholz Entertainment. London & New York: calls a “cultural context Routledge, 2008. Print. provider, who is not chiefly Joselet, David. Feedback: Televi- concerned with contributing sion against Democracy. Cambridge Mass. and London: MIT Press, 2007. content to her own projects. Print. Instead, she establishes con- Millard, Gary. Early Television figurations into which she Techniques. 2010
SOUND iPublic Interfaces The Interface and
◆ Musical management can be understood as a way of controlling personal moods, bodily enegy levels and the experience of public space. the Machine NINA GRAM ◆ This article exami- chanical musical instrument, interface as being something motion and transmitting for- The iPod user can make the tedious urban commute more nes the relationship build mostly from vintage that is in-between the user ce” (Onwubolu, 364). Trans- entertaining and captivating, or he can simply create a li- between the machine Meccano parts. The instru- and the machine? Maybe mission seems to be the key stening space in which time seems to pass a bit faster. and the interface in a ment is driven by a steam we should try to define the word, to move energy from As such the iPod user often has an agenda when adding media archaeological engine that provides the interface in a broader sense one part of the mechanism to a private soundtrack to his experience of a public urban perspective that hop- whole machine with energy. and look into similarities another, a kind of perceptual space. [...] When controlling ones personal experience in efully will point towards A way of interpreting this and points of rupture in the exchange between the most public the listener seems to find himself in a space that is the physicality of the instrument would be to point relationship between the in- rudimentary elements of the not entirely either private or public. [...] The term ipublic machine, in contrast to towards the instability of the terface and machine. If we machine. should indicate the ambiguous spatial character of the mo- the symbolic ordering entire mechanism, which is for instance turn to interface Trying to implement this bile listening space. I acknowledge the fact that the users that is prevailing in the extremely noticeable, and theory, engineers distinguish perceptual exchange into often feel as though the mobile music creates a private li- current understanding displays and reflects the phy- between user-machine inter- a philosophical content re- stening space through which they can experience and stage of interface. sicality of the machine to an face and machine-machine quires the introduction of their surroundings. Nevertheless, it is important to emp- extreme degree. Everything interface (Zielinski, 54). pre-Socratic philosopher hasize that this staged experience is a result of a synergy MORTEN RIIS is imminently about to go Besides the interface de- Empedocles and his theory between the music and the surroundings – between the pri- wrong, a cogwheel that jams, finitions found in (Ander- of perception. vate listening space and the public urban space. According a screw that loosens itself, a sen and Pold, 9; Cramer and Zielinski and Empedocles chain falling of, water run- Fuller, 149) one in particular to David Beer, the iPod user ‘tunes out’ of the public space It is stated that “in the case Empedocles theory of per- ning out, the loss of steam comes to mind: “An inter- as he turns on the music. I would like to expand this idea of computers, interfaces me- ception is built upon the pressure, gas running out. face is a contact surface. It and suggest that the listener constantly tunes both in and diate between humans and notion in which all objects One could state that this is reflects the physical proper- out of the private and public realms, and I believe that it is machines, between machines is constantly emitting ‘ef- physical and mechanical ties of the interactors, the exactly this ambiguous shift between a private and public and between humans” (An- fluences’ (streams of minute glitch music, but in contrast functions to be performed, frame of mind that constitutes some of the attraction of the dersen et al), so the interface particles). These, flowing out to its digital counterparts, and the balance of power and mobile music player. The term ipublic interface indicates should be understood as so- from objects, are essential to Steam Machine Music que- control” (Laurel and Mount- the possibility of being situated in a private and a public mething that is in-between the explanation of percep- stions the whole practice and ford, xii). space at the same time. [...] the user and the machine, but tion, and consequently these conceptualizing of machine This contact surface cor- The architect Rem Koolhaas presents another more I propose a deeper understan- particles will emit from the music in a historical perspec- relates well with the expe- general description of this complex spatial dichotomy as ding of the term interface, perceiving organ and go to tive that points to the fact that rience of interacting on a he describes it as a contemporary tendency caused by the something that can be seen as the pores of the object of machines always have been ‘cogwheel level’, but by media: tentative mini archaeology of perception. Perception is one malfunctioning, they have examining some rudimen- the interface, which tries to such instance of interaction always broke down, there tary definitions of what a avoid the political and social between bodies, and takes I think we are still stuck with this idea of the has always been a ‘real’ phy- machine is, interesting si- aspects of the phenomenon, place if and only the efflu- street and the plaza as a public domain. I don’t sical mechanism that chal- milarities emerge regarding to focus on a more rudimen- ences are of a shape and size want to respond in clichés, but with television lenged the predetermined the essence of the machine as tary and philosophical un- appropriate to the receiving and the media and a whole series of other inve- functionality of the machine. the modification of motion. derstanding of the machine pores. Thus to perceive an stigations, you could say that the public domain From the simplest lever to and interface. This media object is to receive from it is lost. But you could also say that it’s now so the complex and un-trans- archaeological perspective When working with this effluence a kind that fit the pervasive it does not need physical articulation parent modern computer, the draws heavily on the ideas steam machine, that is organ of perception (Long; any more. I think the truth is somewhere in bet- core functionality of the ma- outlined in Zielinski’s Deep free of the traditional Parry). ween. (Rem Koolhaas) chine is the modification and Time of the Media, but ini- interface metaphors of Zielinski interprets the distribution of motion and The iPod understood as an ipublic interface with certain tially, the reflections on the the graphical user-inter- theory of Empedocles energy. As Kittler claims in controlling qualities seems to represent that ‘somewhere interface originate from my face in modern compu- through a media-technolo- relation to the constant focus in between’. The private soundtracks become tools for own artistic practice with ters, many questions gical perspective in which on the symbolic meanings staging and making sense of our experiences in public music machines as a compo- arise, questions about the effluences is interpreted and relationship between the space. In referring to Steven Felds notion of acoustemo- ser and sound artist, in which where the interface in a media-heuristic under- symbolic user-interface and logy (226), which refers to the epistemological qualities of especially the piece Steam starts and the machine standing as a theory of the the computers functionality: acoustics, the iPod becomes an interface for making sense Machine Music questions the begins. perfect interface (53-54). He “All code operations, de- of and staging public space. role of the musical interface. states: “The porous skins are In the steam machine one spite their metaphoric facul- I will argue that the inter- ubiquitous; they are a ma- could claim that all is machi- ties such as ‘call’ or ‘return’, Read full article at http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ face is what lies at the core terial element of all things ne, and that there is no inter- come down to absolutely functionality of the machine, and people and thus move face because of its strong fo- local string manipulations thus, something physical that with them. Every person and cus on functionality, but then and that is, I am afraid, to to some extend is impossi- every thing has received this Touched Echo – a feel of a Ghost again, I - as a performer - still signifiers of voltage diffe- ble to make perfect, because gift” (55). The constant quest interact with the mechanism, rences”. Furthermore, engi- of its physicality. The inter- for the perfect ubiquitous MORTEN BREINBJERG starting and stopping various neer Robert McKay states in face can be regarded as so- interface resembles in many elements of the machinery 1915: “A machine modifies mething that utterly defines ways the theory of Empedo- based on compositional and and transmits energy to do Hereby sound represents the essence of the machine: cles, but this quest is an uto- Sound unfolds in aesthetic choices. But this some special work” (3). And the presence of an absence, to modify and transmit mo- pian dream that will never time and disperses in interaction happens at the “A machine is an assemblage something that is and is tion and energy. happen, thus “[…] because space. It arrives from ‘cogwheel level’, thus, there of parts that transmit forces, not, something more than Machine and interface it is perfect [the interface], a distance and resona- are no handles between core motion and energy in a pre- a spirit but yet without a building it will never be pos- tes in the body of the The media archaeological functionality and symbolic determined manner. […] A body. In short a ghost. sible” (55) - an account that listener. music piece/performance messages; so, how does that machine has two functions: I discuss the urban art in many ways resembles the Steam Machine Music con- relate to the definition of the transmitting definite relative installation Touched Echo by German artist Thomas Ki- sists of a home-made me- theory of Wittgenstein and son in order to reflect upon the ghostly nature of sound and how echoing sounds of the past, in this case the sound of the allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945, in- terferes with both private and public life, with reality as history (known, objective and factual) on one side and as something lived (remembered, recalled and experienced) on the other. The relationship between the remembered and the known, between the subjective experience and the historical fact that Touched Echo touches upon, echoes to- day’s political debate of this incidence as an act of war or an act of terror: A debate that concerns a haunted place, the land of a ghost.
Read full article at http://darc.imv.au.dk/publicinterfaces/ Machine-machine interface, taken from (Leupold Fab IX) User-machine interface, taken from (Smith, 414) NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Art 15
Pictures of Steam Machine
Works cited: Andersen, Christian Ulrik , and S. Pold. Interface Criticism: Aesthetics Beyond the Buttons. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2010. Print. Andersen, Christian Ulrik, Geoff Cox, and Jacob Lund. “Public Interfaces - Background”. Aarhus: University of Aarhus. 4 Jan 2011.
Illustration by Chad McCail Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 16 Art Public-Interfaces
The photo shows Claude Shan- that only those methods that non (US) during the 3rd World need to be accessed outside Computer Chess Championship the object are ‘public’. In ef- that was staged in the course fect an interface is the public of the Ars Electronica Festival face of a (set of) processe(s). 1980. Credit: LIVA – Linzer Veranstaltungsgesellschaft mbH Therefore one can argue that whilst interfaces offer parti- cular functionality, they also spite enormous strides for- imply making other kinds of ward in technology since interaction impossible, hid- Information Theory was at ing away the workings wi- the ‘cutting edge’, its legacy thin the black box. is one of literally millions of interfaces based on its redu- Interfaces then, act as ctive logic. At this scale, the filters blocking out cer- question of what is noise and tain messages, whilst what is signal, what is an ap- privileging others for propriate spectrum of possi- relay. bilities to be communicated, and how signal and noise is If there is an informational differentiated is thrown into quality to contemporary cul- stark relief, drastically alte- ture, then it might be not so ring our experience of tech- much because we exchange nology, culture and biopoli- more information than befo- tics. re, or even because we buy, Marx’s notion of ‘real sell or copy informational abstraction’ (found in his commodities, but because “Fragment on General In- cultural processes are taking tellect”) explores the notion on the attributes of informa- that material means can em- tion – they are increasingly body ideas, social relations grasped and conceived in and so on. This can occur in terms of their informational very direct un-technological dynamics. (Terranova, 7) ways but technology does Whilst encapsulation is a this overtly. Even today, the function of Object Oriented operational logic of software Programming specifically, does not seem to stray far and interfaces in general, it Noise at the Interface from Shannon’s assertion is Information Theory that that it should be programmed first provided a way for any The fundamental problem just the one which will ac- systems (telephone networks ◆ The notion of noise to “operate for each possible message to be translated into of communication is that tually be chosen since this is in particular), but clearly occupies a contested selection” from “a set of pos- digital ‘information’. It is as of reproducing at one point unknown at the time of de- developing a means to deal territory, in which it is sible messages”. Interfaces ‘information’ that human re- either exactly or approxim- sign. (Shannon, 1) with information digitally framed as pollution operating within the overall lations are most effectively ately a message selected at In ‘A Mathematical The- has impacted far beyond this and detritus even as it system (both at, above, and subsumed in technology, and another point. Frequently the ory of Communication’ initial remit. The issue of makes its opposite a below the level of the Gra- therefore as information that messages have meaning; that (written in 1948), Claude signal strength is about over- possibility. phical User Interface) set ap- they become subject to the is they refer to or are cor- Shannon outlined a way in coming noise, reproducing a propriate types and ranges of filtering and relay processes Andrew Prior related according to some which any communication message despite interference interaction and input. of interfaces. Whilst Infor- system with certain physical might be encoded mathema- that may intrude within a Moving briefly beyond mation Theory is intended to or conceptual entities. These tically, stored numerically communications system. the scope of Information operate at a micro level, en- semantic aspects of commu- and decoded back into its Thus noise is fundamental to Noise is always defined in Theory to focus on the cha- coding the constituent parts nication are irrelevant to the original form. Information the concept of Information opposition to something else, racteristics of the interface of messages (such as letters engineering problem. The Theory developed out of this Theory and predetermining even if this ‘other’ is not qui- itself, one might invoke the or waveforms); one might ar- significant aspect is that the to encompass the mathema- an appropriate spectrum of te clear. I am interested in ex- process of ‘encapsulation’ gue its logic results in a kind actual message is one se- tics and the material means, possibilities to be commu- ploring noise in the context within Object Oriented Pro- of scalar symmetry whereby lected from a set of possible the electronics, logistics nicated (through resolution of ‘the interface’ and draw gramming (OOP). Encapsu- operations at a macro level messages. The system must etc. Its initial focus was on bandwidth, and encoding), a historically on information lation allows objects to hide of communication mimic its be designed to operate for strengthening signals for the necessary stage in defining theory which defines noise their internal methods such reductionism (such as the in opposition to signal. each possible selection, not improvement of mass-media what is and isn’t noise. De-
CURATING especially when taking operate. By proposing to this concept is most useful tion initiated in response to place with the use of think of the curatorial system when considering how net- early attempts of limiting socio-technological as an interface I want to ana- worked art or curatorial pro- open and free access to free networks, my proposi- lyse how curating is a prac- jects engage with the issue of software, is an example of Interfacing tion here is to think of tice on the edge – as it preca- the commons – not just as a the latter. What’s interesting curating as facilitating riously balances between the subject but as a practice in is that it organises access to forms of collaborative struggle over and appropria- common. resources through the use of production which, when tion of the commons it faci- The Free Software move- free software licenses (GNU the Commons taken together, are part litates. ment, peer-2-peer networks GPL) and at the same time of some common yet From the abundance of va- or Amazon’s Mechanical propagates certain practi- Curatorial system as a form of unenclosed activity. rious definitions of the com- Turk are examples of diffe- ces of engaging with free production on the edge mons, I want to start from the rent approaches to processes software which ensure free- Specifically my focus is definition of the commons that create social and capital dom to run, copy, distribute, Magda Tyzlik-Carver and forms of state control as on the ways in which im- articulated by Massimo De relations. At the same time study, change and improve. exerted over WikiLeaks site material labour is mobilised Angelis in an interview for e- they fall under two catego- As such, the Free Software in recent months, are only in such a context. What Laz- flux. He recognises three ele- ries described by De Angelis Foundation or indeed the the Western examples of zarato says about immate- ments which are part of the as two sides of the same coin. Free Software movement At the beginning of the se- struggles over what is consi- rial labour has been applied commons where “the third Enclosures, argues De Ange- in general, is an example of cond decade of the twenty- dered to be a common good, to the field of curating and and most important element lis, are a “continuous cha- a social process that creates first century the commons curatorial systems (Krysa). in terms of conceptualising racteristic of ‘capital logic’” the commons, and an inter- in these cases education, are everywhere. Or to be knowledge, and information. Relevant here is Lazzarato’s the commons is the verb ‘to and “a force with totalising face that frames the forms precise, the struggle over the We can observe an in- description of immaterial la- common’ – the social pro- drives that exists together of contact that have to be commons, as well as the ide- creased interest of art and bour as “the interface” which cess that creates and repro- with other forces that act as engaged in order to access ological appropriation of the curatorial projects in the links it to the “immaterial duces the commons” (An limit on it” (60). He says “it those resources. A similar concept of the common by commons as a subject (Car- commodity”, enlarged and Architektur). The concept of is either capital that makes capacity of organising forms the market, is all around us. penter; Dragona; Pelhjan and transformed by the process ‘commoning’, which De An- the world through commo- of interaction is a feature of Movements such as edu-fac- Biederman). of consumption. It is exactly gelis takes from Linebaugh’s dification and enclosures, or a curatorial system. And my tory or a recently launched that place of intersection and Magna Carta Manifesto, I it is the rest of us – whoever argument is that exactly this project of co-research, Uni- transformation where many understand as referring to that ‘us’ is – that makes the faculty makes it possible to Starting from the as- nomade2.0 , current students curatorial systems using so- constantly negotiating and world through counter-en- think of a curatorial system sumption that curating struggles in UK to protect ac- cial technologies in the pro- learning how to share and closures and ‘class struggle’” as an interface. is always linked to cess to free education, or glo- duction of events, situations produce common resources. (61). Certainly a project like So what is a curatorial some form of colla- bal discontent with methods and forms of knowledge, And it is in that sense that the Free Software Founda- system? Firstly, we need to borative production, NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Art 17 example of a call centre), not mean that on the one hand the of new noise, embodying conservation; […] to design only resembling it at the le- possibilities to manipulate outdated assumptions, giving a glitch means to domesti- Curating as vel of metaphor. content multiply drastically, realized form to fragmented cate it.” (Menkman, 6) Information & Semantics whilst on the other encapsu- schema. Nevertheless, whilst Interfaces are arbiters of lation of the interface easily broken or obsolete interfaces noise and signal. Their in- (Public) Interface to Digitality brings to media, obscures the restrictions and may represent dislocated fluence when operational is and relations mediated by boundaries of functionality. knowledge, once repurposed toward standardization, and technology, a leveling effect the Art Market The filtering tendency of the they also offer the possibility when broken towards frag- in which all becomes infor- interface therefore has a ho- of bricolage and revitalized mentation and dislocation. ◆ mation (which in terms of The article explores the expanded concept of mogenic, normative result on meaning, outflanking homo- Their ubiquity demands at- information theory, means public interface by establishing a link to the field our experience of media by geneity even in the act of re- tention, scrutiny and chal- bits of information – binary of curating, in particular curating in the context reducing the breadth of pos- petition. lenge. In “Glitch Studies digits, 1’s and 0’s); and as of technological systems (or what commonly sible interaction into prescri- The recent interest in Manifesto”, Rosa Menkman such all becomes subject to is referred to as ‘online curating’) and the art bed choices through a kind glitch art, whilst part of a argues that only through fo- the assumptions that deter- market. of aesthetic quantization. In long tradition of the aesthe- cus on failure as process, ra- mine digital information. combination with the pro- tic possibilities of chance, ther than outcome, can such JOASIA KRYSA Once media are encoded as pensity toward repetition un- failure and openness, is in tactics overcome the norma- information there is little on- derwritten by media as infor- one sense a response to the tive trajectories of culture tological difference between mation, such homogeneity is suffocating, self-correcting and economy. Attali’s metap- The suggestion is that curatorial and technological appa- sound, text and visual media, magnified manifold. hydra of informational dyna- horical noise is often misread ratuses combine to reveal detail on the art market and its or for that matter software. mics. Beyond the repetition to equal signal noise - inter- inextricable link to capitalist logic that is ever more adap- In 1949, Warren Weaver of information, the norma- ference, distortion, dissonan- ting itself to the demands of the immaterial economy. The suggested adaptation of Sh- Filtering is not only re- tive qualities of the inter- ce – yet, all these prove to be article speculates on how the curator can be understood as annon’s signal/noise opposi- levant to the signal that face are a result of filtering, as pliant and accommodating an interface between the public and the art market and in- tion to account for ‘Semantic gets through – every- quantizing the breadth of vessels for commodification deed the broader immaterial economy that lies behind it. Noise’, his assumption being thing that isn’t input is possibilities through which as consonance, harmony, Perhaps this has always been the case, but the significance that mathematics could over- bypassed as unaccep- interaction can occur. Glit- clarity and so on. The trouble is that new paradoxical models of curating exist for online come not only problems of table, creating a kind ches and failures overcome with difference is that it im- contexts that both affirm and contest its logic. engineering noise but also of modulus situation the seeming inevitability of plies an eternal connection to those of semantic meaning - whereby non-compliant systemized communication. the very thing it negates. allowing technology to faith- input is automatically ”In an art world dominated by the curatorial” Nevertheless, even such fully communicate a messa- recast as NOISE. – states Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the chief strategies as these have the Works cited: ge without itself modulating Noisy Tactics curator of the forthcoming Documenta 13 – “to potential to be derailed. Attali, Jacques. Noise – The Poli- the meaning. This notion of a One obvious way around tical Economy of Music. Minneapolis: act without a pre-defined curatorial plan offers a Glitch as an aesthetic is al- transparent technology over- this normative effect is to University of Minnesota Press, 1985. possibility to both repeat the network of connec- ways recuperable, moniti- Cascone, Kim. “The Aesthetics looked the notions of real ab- go beyond, or beneath, the tivity of the digital age, while also reflecting on sable. Whilst this is by no of Failure - “Post-Digital” Tendencies straction and the encapsulati- interface – beyond with ac- its shortcomings and implications from a critical means the fault of aesthetics, in Contemporary Computer Music”. on processes of the interface, tions that break or subvert In Computer Music Journal. 24, 4 viewpoint”. the role it has come to play the way in which the design it (for example, through cir- (Winter 2000). makes this trajectory to some Cascone, Kim. “The Failure of The online environment is also dominated by the curatorial process must necessarily cuit bending); beneath it by extent inevitable. Aesthetics”. Share Festival. Lecture. in much the same way albeit in new forms, but it can be premeditate the role and fle- invention of new interfaces
L’or et le plaisir. Prenez ces deux mots comme une lumière… Gold and pleasure. Take these two words as a light… Capital Honoré de Balzac The Creative Public: Democratic or Productive?
◆ In the mid-90s Yves This tendency is found in emphatically perceived as ty for instance defines these on quite a sophisticated le- this problem a bit too much. Michaud pronounced a quite elaborated form in a creative praxis in its own recursive public as “publics vel and thereby “propose But this is, of course, not to “the end of the utopia Charles Leadbeater’s book right, meaning that we are concerned with the ability to changes by actually creating argue that these interventions of art”. entitled We-Think: The Po- now faced with a discourse build, control, modify, and them” (222), while every- and practices are not sym- wer of Mass Creativity (co- that almost completely blurs maintain the infrastructure thing else is being dismis- pathetic, interesting, impor- Jan Løhmann Stephensen authored with 257 other the distinctions between pro- that allows them to come sed as “just talk” (58). Or as tant or any of those things. It people), as well as in Tapscott duction, consumption, and into being in the first place Kelty also puts it: “the only is just to say, that recursive & Williams’ Wikinomics democratic citizenship. and which, in turn, consti- argument that convinces is publics like those of Free By this he was referring to (2006) and Macrowikino- The de-alienation tutes their everyday prac- working code” (58); hereby Software are not and perhaps the waning of a historically mics (2010). But perhaps through co-creativity tical commitments and the defining technology/free should not be perceived as – significant understanding most obviously it is found in Another aspect of this histo- identities of the participants software – and by implica- as Kelty suggests they might of a privileged relationship Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth rical overcoming of certain as creative and autonomous tion: (productive) creativity (23) – great role models. In between on the one hand: of Networks (2006), in which core problems of Capitalist individuals” (7). The role of – as a “more powerful po- other words, it seems like it art and its discourses; and so-called “social production” Modernity, has to do with human creativity in all this litical argument because ‘it is the part about democratic on the other: “the utopia of or “commons-based peer that cluster of ills, which is thought in dual terms: it is works’” (92). citizenship, which has the democratic citizenship”. Ac- production” is thought to have often been subsumed both the means, that is: what Here, especially one que- least weight in the prevailing cording to this belief, art was have had a profound trans- under the concept of “aliena- constitutes and maintains stion seems pressing: Does utopias of creative produc- thought to have a particularly formative effect on not only tion”. this recursive public through this insistence on these ad- tive publics. benevolent influence on in- markets, but also on the re- “running code”, dodging vanced and often highly The first kind of aliena- Works cited: terpersonal communication, alm of human freedom (both tion supposedly done away the restraints of proprietary technical, infrastructural on a political and individual software producers, IP-law, aspects of Free Software re- Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of and was thus perceived as with now, by way of the in- Networks: How Social Production “a correlate to citizen-based level). Although the term sistence on these collabora- attempts at state regulation, ally constitute such an open Transforms Markets and Freedom. utopia [...] a utopia of pos- “creativity” itself does not etc. But in this conception of invitation, as it is often made New Haven & London: Yale Univer- tive, co-creative aspects, is, sity Press, 2006. Print. sible communication, [...] quantitatively speaking ap- of course, social alienation. recursive publics, creativity out to be, that makes it plau- pear all that central, Benk- is also the end, aim or raison sible to speak of it in terms of Boltanski, Luc & Chiapello, Eve. of ‘cultural communism,’ Which in essence, at least The New Spirit of Capitalism. Lon- or at any rate of the cultural ler nonetheless insists that in the Marxist tradition, is d’être of the whole “enter- “publicness” at all? don: Verso, 2005. Print. community” (146). Howe- the core of the networked fundamentally thought to prise”. I, for one, must admit that Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits: ver, looking at the actual information economy is the I actually find these software The Cultural Significance of Free spring from the second kind Software. Durham & London: Duke state of affairs, even when combination of nonmarket of alienation, that this dis- It is thus a fundamen- issues pretty complicated to University Press, 2008. Print. it comes to judging or di- production and the democra- course on specific practices tal part of the social comprehend, and can only Leadbeater, Charles. We-Think: scussing art, “the aesthetic tization of creativity (425). claims to overcome, name- imaginary of the Free begin to imagine how others, The Power of Mass Creativity. Lon- community” – that is: the He furthermore emphasizes less new media-interested don: Profile Books, 2008. Print. ly: the alienation of labour. Software movement as Marx, Karl. “Economic and Philo- contemporary art world – ap- that the type of social rela- Which then ultimately is a recursive public that citizens will find themselves sophic Manuscripts (1844).” In Writ- pears to be nothing but “skir- tionship the commons-based closely interrelated to man’s it liberates the creativity deprived of meaningful ac- ings of Young Marx on Philosophy and Society. Easton & Guddat, Eds. mish and strife” (151). Given peer production processes alienation from himself and of its users and – per- cess. Here, the publicness of this the coupling between art initiate get their “social va- these publics to a troubling New York: Anchor Books, 1967. his truly human function, haps especially – its Michaud, Yves. “The End of the and democratic discourse lence by... the shared ex- his so-called “species being” own contributors. extent seems substituted for Utopia of Art.” In Think Art: theory and citizenship seems rather perience of joint creativity the closed circuits of net- and practice in the art of today. (Gattungswesen). The over- Bartomeu Mari & Schaeffer, Jean- far-fetched, Michaud argues, they enable” (374-5). And at coming of which especially What makes these recursive works, adding to the often the end of this, Benkler, of publics differ from the public discussed digital divide a Marie, Eds. Rotterdam: Witte de thus announcing the end of since the 60s – inspired by With, 1998. Print. its reign. course, interlaces the creati- the reappearance of the early sphere in the Habermasian “creative divide” as well. So Stephensen, Jan Løhmann. Ka- The reports of the death vity performed in social pro- sense is at least to facts: 1) one might, in fact, wonder pitalismens ånd & den kreative etik. writing of Karl Marx – has Aarhus: DARC, 2010. Print. of this utopian idea could be duction with the rise of the routinely been portrayed as that a substantial part of its whether Kelty’s anticipatory so-called “networked public publicness is devoted to the defense against critiques like Tapscott, Don & Williams, greatly exaggerated. In fact, being equivalent with the Anthony D. Wikinomics: How Mass it would rather seem that this sphere”, which is explicitly “creative praxis” or similar maintenance and consolida- the ones just raised – that Free Collaboration Changes Everything. utopian coupling has been described as a phenomenon tion of its own infrastructure; Software “can also exclude, New York: Portfolio, 2006. Print. concepts, as if the Romantic – Macrowikinomics: Rebooting restored in recent years, alt- “attenuating, or even sol- belief that – in the words of and 2) that it is not only con- just as any public or public ving, the most basic failings cerned with the constitution sphere can” (310) – is not Business and the World. New York: hough in a somewhat trans- Matthew Arnold – “the exer- Portfolio, 2010. Print. formed form, which now of the mass-mediated public cise of a creative activity is of autonomous individuals down-playing the extent of is marked by discourses on sphere” (465). the true function of man” (in the tradition of Enlighten- “networks”, “collaboration”, This last phrase is, as al- also perfused Marx’s critique ment thinking of the public “projects”, and not least: ready mentioned, a recurrent sphere, democracy, etc.), butEdited by Christian Ulrik Andersen of alienatedEdited labour by Christian as some Ulrik Andersen & Søren Bro Pold Andersen Christian Ulrik Andersen, associate professor, theme in the introduction creative ones as well. This& Pold “creativity” (which appe- Inke Arns kind of implicit counter ide- Aarhus University. Research interests include
Interface Criticism Aesthetics Beyond Buttons Interface Criticism ars as a “stand in-term” for Draganaof these Antic ideas& Matthew of Fuller “participa- al. This is a theme which is last aspect has a number of game interfaces and textual interaction in relation Aesthetics Beyond Buttons to the public sphere. “art”, one might say, with an Mortention”, Breinbjerg “produsage”, “social frequently found in the wri- consequences for the access emphasis on its productive Christophproduction”, Bruno “collaborative to and openness of these Søren Bro Pold, associate professor, Aarhus Geoff Cox tings of HerbertFrom the screen Marcuse, of our laptops, and from the ubiquitous aspects, rather than those re- creativity” etc., namely: the publics, and raises a number Univer sity. Research interests are interface Florian Cramer Erich Fromm,portable and devices, Cornelius smart phones, and media players, to the lated to reception and taste). celebration of these as a suc- of questions concerning the aesthetics and criticism in electronic literature, Lone Koefoed Hansen Castoriadis,embedded just to computation mention in clothes, architecture and big urban cessful cure for a number of actual publicness of these net art, software art and digital culture. This new discursive figura- Erkki Huhtamo a few, and screens,which interfaces constituted are everywhere. They are simultaneously tion also includes the third Jakobmajor, Lillemose societal ills of Moder- a central demandingtrajectory our attentionin the and computingpublics. quietly in the Henrik Kaare Nielsen background, turning action into inter-action, and mediating
grand utopia around which nity – especially, of course, countercultural,our experience anti-capita of and relations- to the social and environ- the Western democratic so- Sørenof Capitalist Bro Pold Modernity. One What seems to be hap- Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen list/work discoursesmental. But how canof aestheticsthe respond to this, and how cieties have developed since crucial aspect of this has to period. Givendo interfaces this historyset the scene it for artisticpening practices? in these recursi- the 18th Century, “the utopia do with the degree or level Interface Criticism is not anotherve design publics manual but is a critical that one’s is hardly muchinvestigation of a for surprise, readers interested in the aesthetic, cultural of labor” (135-40), which of activity which is being that these ideas of “collec- democratic access to like the other two utopias assumed, emphasized, and and political dimensions of interfaces. With contributions tive creativity”,from leading “mass researchers crea within- andthe field, “speaker’s the book covers a rights” edited by christian ulrik andersen has also been in a profound no doubt often exaggerated. wide range of aesthetic expressionswithin – including these urban screens, recursive tivity”, “co-creative labour”, & søren bro pold crisis, especially since World This should obviously be wearable interfaces, performances,publics games, net-art, varies software accor - etc. now becomeart, and sound endowed art, and discusses how new cultures evolve War II and in particular the seen in contrast to the pas- with huge political and so- ding to one’s ability to 1960s. siveness of the consumer- around, for example, open source or live coding. cial potentialsThe within volume critically quite investigates a actually the aesthetics contribute of inter- to citizen previously associated Today, this new coupling broad rangefaces of indiscourses. ways that transcend the theiconic surfacemaintenance of the graphical of their Interface forms a hegemonic vision with the fall of the public user interface and goes beyond theinfrastructure buttons. Ultimately . of what might be termed the sphere at the hands of com- Recursive the’publics’? book develops interface aesthetics as an appropriate “creative productive pub- mercial mass media once These themesparadigm are for also a critical work discussion- A of thecriteria computer. of performative lic”, which as a general rule suggested by a broad range ing as a subtext in more criti- citizenship, one might say, Criticism
is presented as the historical of theoreticians from Adorno cally inclined contemporary where the worth and isbn 9788779345041 impact overcoming of a number of and Habermas to Guy De- texts like for instance Chri- of one’s voice becomes clo- Aesthetics Beyond Buttons problems and ills, pointed bord. Now, even the act of stopher Kelty’s analysis of sely related to one’s ability to out by previous critiques consumption is increasingly the so-called “recursive pub- perform the privileged kind of capitalism (Boltanski & thought of in not only far lics” of the Free Software of praxis within these pub- aarhus university press Chiapello; Stephensen). more active terms, it is also movement. In Two Bits, Kel- lics, namely: to “run code” NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Capital 19
Alexei Shulgin & Aristartk In short, we will Chernyshev, Commercial Protest, point to the following Mediaobject (2007). tendencies guided by Credit: Electroboutique. Electroboutique:
1. The recuperation of critical art by design and the market, which Electroboutique answers to by recu- perating the commer- fordable prices (like Sony)” cial aesthetics and – which they show and sell at rhetorics galleries, festivals, museums and on-line often installed 2. Fractures between in a shop-like environment the immaterial and (Chernyshev and Shulgin). the object or between The intention of the project software and hard- is to create opportunities at ware in the art market galleries and museums for and in the general new media art, which have economy – in this often neglected it because case handled and of technical difficulties, and highlighted by con- its immaterial character that structing object-ba- makes it difficult to exhibit sed software art. As and sell. Furthermore, many such Electroboutique of the Electroboutique works smuggles software also perform a humoristic art into the art world and poignant criticism of the disguised as artistic (art) market and the relations objects. between art and design. more contemporary tenden- One of these pieces is cies, but we hope you get “Commercial Protest”, the general idea: Art has the which is a flat TV-screen potential to simultaneously equipped with a live question and develop the camera contained in a economy. There is a straight shopping cart showing line from wowPod to iPad the captured images and to the future sculptu- – e.g. images of the red and visually attractive Digital Art and Culture viewer – as company entertainment centres from logos. Apple that will replace our TVs and HiFis, or from It is obvious, also from its Commercial Protest to the presentation that it is a criti- narcissistic self-promotion After Industry? cism of consumerism, which through ones iPhone and is paradoxically packaged as the many branded platforms Towards aesthetic business studies a nice, fairly priced art object on Web2.0 (just start watch- for galleries and collectors ing how portraits mix with Søren Bro Pold & that break apart, contain to the market and economy production process in a way who can see themselves as brands and logos on an ave- Christian Ulrik paradoxes or contra- is part of the artistic develop- that might help elucidate how live logo portraits. The irony rage Facebook page…). As Andersen dictions in relation to ment and innovation, but this art can function as a probe is of course an integral part already Piero Manzoni de- business? also means that art becomes for investigating change. of the art work where the monstrated with his Merda ‘about’ the economy in a Media technological revolu- artist realize that “criticism d’Artista in 1961, which was When art is combined with In many ways this seems more direct way. How should tions lead to fractures in the in art becomes an aesthetic 30 cans of artist’s shit sold at business we often see rather to be the drive when net-art we interpret this, how do we art works and -history, which category and eventually ac- the equivalent price of gold, traditional, mainstream and becomes web design or soft- learn from it, and how do we make the deep “Tendenz” vi- quires itself the features of the artist is the modern day some times even pre-modern ware art invades the app sto- develop aesthetic business sible (II.2, 752). In this way, a consumer project” (Shul- alchemist making artificial view on aesthetics far from re. Furthermore, when cultu- studies? the normally hidden, deeply gin in Obukhova 128), and gold. However the smell of the ruptures of contemporary ral content industries such as In order to look into this, layered fractures, constellati- as such, critical art becomes it, or its non-existing tradi- art and aesthetics. A central the music industry are in cri- we first need to introduce ons or contradictions become a brand in the art market. tional use value, also casts example would be the con- sis and their business model a few theoretical concepts observable if probed by art. However, it is not only iro- a critical light on the virtual cept of experience economy is deteriorating both new and from early Marxist art theory, In continuation of this it nic but also a comment to a foundation of our money- as Joseph Pine II and James major acts bypass the indu- because here we can find po- is important that art seeks situation where software art based capitalistic economy. H. Gilmore launched in the stry by doing the marketing sitions that discusses how art a conscious, reflective and is not accepted by the large The main point is to focus on late 1990s. If one looks at and distribution themselves can potentially play a critical, critical exploration of its institutions that still need how art develops an artistic Pine and Gilmore’s concept using the web and social net- constructive, progressive, if economy and media. Con- objects though the experi- economy and thereby reflect of aesthetics it borders on works. Instead of an industry not revolutionary, role. In the trary to the view on art and mental and experiential di- critically on the current eco- the escapist and is characte- of major record labels hand- 1930s materialist art theore- aesthetics promoted by Pine mensions of software have nomy while developing al- rized by immersion and pas- ling the relationship between ticians such as Georg Lukács and Gilmore we should look become an important part of ternatives. As Shulgin puts it sive participation. Their head artists and audience, this and Walter Benjamin were for art which focuses on the the market, e.g. in smartpho- himself: “Contemporary art guidelines are “Theme the becomes part of the artistic discussing how the change fractures that reveal deeper ne app-stores. Much com- has got one more function. It experience”, “Harmonize work defying industrial stan- in the base or “Unterbau” of tendencies (Tendenz) when mercial design is driven by finds out the possible borders impressions with positive dards and forming instead reproduction technologies doing aesthetic business stu- innovations in art, however, of consuming.” (Shulgin in cues”, and “Eliminate ne- less standardized and indu- affected the superstructure or dies. Or, in other words, as especially in the copy-paste Obukhova 129). gative cues” (102-103), and strialized relations between “Überbau” of culture, econo- suggested by the quotation culture of new media, often their primary examples are artists and audiences. In fact, my and thinking and how art from Balzac [page 18]: Fol- the artists do not get a share Disneyland, Las Vegas and the business model, inclu- could respond to this. Lukács low the money; if not to col- of the revenue. In the line of Works cited: Hard Rock Café. ding how to finance, market, analysed how Honoré de lect then to see which new Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte this, Electroboutique openly Schriften. Werkausgabe. ed. 12 vols. distribute and profit from the Balzac’s Illusions perdues is routes it takes and to observe copies concepts from art Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980. However perhaps art’s content, becomes part of the a novel about the commodi- the creatures and creations it history, including Russian Print. most valuable contri- artwork and it becomes part fication of literature and the passes by. Constructivism, media art Chernyshev, Aristarkh, and Alexei capitalization of the mind Let us start our aesthetic Shulgin. Electroboutique. Ed. Gallery, bution is not the icing of the artistic statement to in the traditions from Nam XL. Moscow, 2008. Print. on the cake or the question common models. (“Geist”). It is an example business studies and look June Paik or Jenny Holzer, Lukács, Georg. Georg Lukács aesthetic harmonizing Instead of arguing that art of a conscious, artistic ex- briefly at some relevant art. but also from design icons Werke 6 - Probleme des Realismus of contradictions, but might be a means to serve ploration of a new discourse Under the concepts “Me- and re-launches them as new III - Der historische Roman. Neuwied und Berlin: Luchterhand, 1965. Print. exactly the opposite: economic ends, we should economy, exploring how dia Art 2.0” and “Electro- art works – a good example Obukhova, Alexander. “Criti/ the ruptures, disrupti- ask whether the economy material changes influence boutique” a group of artists is the huge distorted but still Pop (Electroboutique, Chernyshev, ons, clashes and break- could in some ways poten- the formal conditions of the including Aristarkh Cher- functioning iPod, wowPod Efimov, Shulgin).” Ed. Art, Moscow downs – all the ways tially become artistic? artwork (II 474-89). nyshev and Alexei Shulgin or the various distorted re- Museum of Modern. Moscow: XL With his concept of “Ten- have made a series of art Gallery, 2008. Print. that contemporary art Aesthetic business stu- makes of television. Pine, Joseph, and James H. explores things, situati- dies denz” (tendency) Benjamin works – each produced in a Of course many other Gilmore. “Welcome to the Experience also argues for a formal rela- “limited number of copies Economy.” Harvard Business Review ons and constellations Consequently, art’s relation examples could be made tionship between art and the (like Ferrari)” and sold “at af- pointing towards these and July-August (1998): 97-105. Print. Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 NYHEDSVISEN 20 Capital Public-Interfaces Public Interfa(e)ces
◆ If language is beauti- reconceptualisation of pub- where action and words have point is emphasised in the is evident in speech and ac- also something that performs ful, it must be because licness. She states (in The lost their power (to echo current attack on Universi- tion in that it both represents actions? For Christopher a master bathes it - a Human Condition, written in Arendt). ties – although of course this the capacity for equality and M. Kelty, again referring to master who cleans shit 1958) that the political realm To put it differently, in is part of a broader neoliberal distinctiveness (176). To Arendt, the free software holes, sweeps offal, arises out of acting together, Christian Marazzi’s writing assault on public services, Arendt, action is bound with movement is an example of and expurgates city and in the sharing of speech and on the relations between the welfare system, and the expectation of the unex- emergent and self-organizing speech to confer upon action. In Paolo Virno’s economics, language and af- public education. Moreover, pected that results from the public actions. Underpinning them order and beauty. work, further recognising the fect, there is little hope for Berardi is invoking general sameness and uniqueness of this is the sharing of source (Laporte 7) linguistic and performative effective action when people intellect and the social func- human plurality leading to code, rooted in the history of dimension of capitalism, this have become incapable of tion of intellectual labour, the creations of publics and the UNIX operating system Geoff Cox is emphasized because of maintaining concentrated at- what Virno refers to as the counter-publics. The politi- and its precarious position the relative ineffectiveness tention on the same object “know-how on which social cal realm arises in this way, between the public domain of political action today. He for a long time. Extended productivity relies” (64). The out of acting together in this and commercial enterprise In the article, I develop a laments the current depoli- to intellectual and social be- point is that intellectual la- way, but crucially this is ex- characterized by the parallel critique of pervasive techno- ticisation of action, which havior, Franco Berardi calls bour is no longer separated pressed as a collective acti- developments of free soft- logies in terms of what they explains the current “crisis this a catastrophe of mo- from general conditions of vity, preempting Virno’s de- ware and open source in the expurgate from the public of politics, the sense of scorn dern humanism, where we labour; that there is no longer scription of the many tending late 1990s. The history re- realm. The proliferation of surrounding political praxis no longer have sufficient at- a separation between ordi- to common affairs. flects the paradoxical forms privatized social network- today, [and] the disrepute tention spans for love, ten- nary labour and intellectual mentioned earlier in which ing platforms and current into which action has fallen” derness and compassion. As activity that was once con- technology’s social poten- developments in cloud com- (51). Can the same be said of language and affect become sidered to be of a superior Publicness is tial has been captured. More puting have profound conse- publicness? increasingly economicised, kind. Aspects of socialism expressed in pa- optimistically, the cultural quences and are characteri- What is at stake for Virno social attention is captured and general intellect are in- significance for Kelty is cap- sed by the commodification is clear, that “if the public- with dire consequences in corporated into what Virno radoxical forms tured by the term ‘recursive of social intellect. ness of the intellect does terms of the subjectivities calls the “communism of ca- public’ to account for the not yield to the realm of the being produced (and this is pital” (110). In other words, and actions ways in which the public is: Publicness has public sphere, of a political the terrifying effect of the so- the social potential has been But what of communications “vitally concerned with the space in which the many can called attention economy). stolen from the public realm technologies more specifi- material and practical main- largely fallen tend to common affairs, then According to Berardi, only and commodified. cally (given the context of tenance and modification of into disrepute it produces terrifying effects” the autonomy of intellectual Again, Arendt is inferred addressing the interface), in the technical, legal, practical, (40). Proprietary technology labour from economic rule through her assertion that as much as software can be and conceptual means of its There has been much recent arguably plays a significant can save us from the forces publicness should be under- seen to represent both ex- own existence as a public; it interest in revisiting Hannah role here in distancing spe- of capitalism (or ‘semio- stood in terms of plurality pression as in speech or wri- is a collective independent Arendt’s ideas in relation to a ech from affect in a situation capital’ as he calls it). The not singularity per se. This ting (or word and deed) but of other forms of consti-
of the society of control. Michael Hardt and Antonio ve abilities and language, but nation state’s political sove- Control is now everywhere Negri. The two authors ex- also the body and the senses reignty in favour of different and is no longer only exerci- plicitly refer to Deleuze’s create value. ideas of networked power. The sed in the delimited space of control society thesis in their 9/11: Sovereignty and After 9/11 the Italian phi- disciplinary power. analysis of the transition to imperialism losopher Giorgio Agamben The institutions of the di- a new kind of sovereignty These different analyses analysed George W. Bush as sciplinary society which De- transcending former national equipped us with useful the sovereign who declared a leuze’s friend Foucault ana- actors in a new transnational means in the mapping of the state of emergency. The war Control lysed are today in a state of network capitalism, called control society but all of a on terror was thus understan- crisis. The closed spaces are Empire. According to Hardt sudden something happened: dable as a generalised state falling apart and the produc- and Negri, the nation state of emergency where the so- tion of subjects has acquired has lost much of its former vereign suspends the law and a new form, it has become importance and has been Confronted with 9/11 it creates ‘empty holes’ where fluid, Deleuze writes. Now superseded by a stateless seemed as if Deleuze’s undesirable subjects are pla- Society normalisation is no longer empire existing everywhere description of the ced deprived of juridical and restricted to the closed room and nowhere. This new glo- wavelike movements civilian rights. The national of the institutions but take bal sovereignty has no ter- of power and Hardt and political community is ac- place everywhere. ritorial limits and functions Negri’s diagnosis of the cording to Agamben con- Deleuze’s sketch-like like a decentralised power global factory without stituted on the exclusion of After analysis has been hugely in- continually transforming walls paradoxically people that are refused the fluential for the way postmo- the world to a smooth space appeared to be too fine status of citizens. The Ame- dern or late capitalist society of desires and investments meshed. rican Guantanamo base on has been mapped by critical where it is not possible to Cuba is the prime example theory. The text has been distinguish between politics, Suddenly George W. Bush of such a space of exclusion/ 9/11 important for a certain post- economy and culture. The made all the decisions. The inclusion. Here the US presi- structuralist and post-marxist arrival of this empire has to invisible micro power struc- dent detains more than 500 analysis of how power has do with developments within tures and internalised mecha- people that have not been become ever more decentra- capitalism. Today the capita- nisms of interpellation were trialled or convicted of any ◆ Twenty years ago Gil- no longer operate by con- lized and is now no longer list means of production no replaced by a sovereign who crime. The sovereign power les Deleuze published fining people but through in any straight forward sense longer needs the nation state decided to launch an indefi- has simply excommunicated the short five pages text continuous control and in- connected to easily locatable system – in which the geo- nite war against evil. them, reduced them to what »Postscript on Control stant communication.” (174) institutions and exerted by political competition took 9/11 and the war on terror Agamben terms naked life, Societies« Deleuze’s text describes how centrally placed actors but place and was regulated – in constituted a real challenge a biological body emptied of the institutions of the modern is rather spread out in extre- order to function. Today pro- for the Deleuze-inspired ana- political content and exposed Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen disciplinary society withers mely complex structures and fit is no longer only made lyses that seemed capable of to the force of pure political and are replaced with a new networks where it is not pos- at the factory and cannot be critically accounting for the power. Agamben’s account kind of control that is no lon- sible to excavate the origin or measured according to the changes going on in how the of Bush as the sovereign who Deleuze’s text is an analysis ger rooted in these instituti- place of power. individual worker’s working highly developed societies makes the decision of sus- of the arrival of the control ons but is spread throughout A long row of books has day. Production has become were governed but now post- pending the law had a great society that according to him the social body. As Deleuze drawn on Deleuze’s short a part of life taking place as a 9/11 looked uselessly post- analytic as well as polemical is replacing the disciplinary phrases it the striated space text. One of the most in- kind of bio-political produc- modern or overly optimistic relevance and it effectively society. “We are moving to- of disciplinary society is re- fluential ones is Empire by tion where the communicati- because they prematurely destroyed the idea that it is ward control societies that placed by the smooth space had skipped the notion of the NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Capital 21 tuted power and is capable The intervention of Domi- The desire for clean lan- open to further transforma- technological development of speaking to existing forms nique Laporte, in the History guage, as well as clean cities, Publicness of tion – this is what used to be in similar terms. of power through the produ- of Shit (first published in sublimates shit and demon- the intellect is a referred to as expropriating ction of actually existing al- French in 1978), is to ve- strates an expression of new the expropriators. Kelty de- ternatives” (3). rify that modern power is biopolitical forms of control political issue scribes the radical possibili- For Kelty, the collective founded on the aesthetics of over subjectivity (inclu- ties of “argument-by-techno- But perhaps all is not al- technical experiment of the the public sphere and in the ding the bodily functions of logy and argument-by-talk” together expurgated. The Free Software movement is agency of its citizen-subjects speaking and shitting) and (58), and this seems to be paradoxes around these de- an example of a recursive but that these are conditions one where the market is so- exemplified by the work of velopments are also evident public that draws attention to of the management of human vereign (rather than the State Telekommunisten. Taking as counter-publics emerge its democratic and political waste. He insists that in pa- or King). Can we say the the Hegelian move from in- Works cited: in parallel with rather more significance and the limitati- rallel to the cleansing of the same of clean code, and that itself to for-itself further, via Arendt, Hannah. The Human messy intentions. For in- Condition. Chicago: University of Chi- ons of our understanding of streets of Paris from shit, the kinds of technologies that class consciousness or class stance, Dmytri Kleiner/Te- cago Press., 1998 [1958]. Print. the public in the light of the the French language was are found on the streets (in- for-itself in Marx’s adapta- Berardi, Franco ‘Bifo’. Precarious lekommunisten’s Thimbl is restructuring of power over similarly cleansed of Latin stalled in mobile devices and tion, Virno combines it with Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the a free, open source, distri- pathologies of the post-alpha gene- networks. The intervention words to establish official such-like) are similarly clea- Gramsci’s concept of the or- buted micro-blogging plat- ration. London: Minor Compositions, is to extend a definition of a French without “foreign lea- nsed? Is it that the technolo- ganic intellectual to charac- form. It uses common server 2009. Print. public grounded in discourse nings” (according to an edict gies made available to us are terise “mass intellectuality”. Kelty, Christopher M. Two Bits: software called Finger and (as with Arendt) - through of 1539). Both public space simply not shit enough? The interlinking references the Cultural Significance of Free adapts it to the principles of Software. Durham: Duke University speech, writing and assem- and language were cleaned Service-based platforms help to assert Virno’s line the open web, the publicity Press, 2008. Print. bly - to other legal and tech- and policed in parallel, as (or so-called cloud compu- of argument that the public- stating: “The most signifi- Kleiner, Dmytri. Thimbl. Telekom- nical layers that underpin the purification requires submis- ting) provide an example of ness of the intellect is not a munisten Collective, 2010
A recursive public is vitally concerned with the material and practical maintenance and modification of the technical, legal, practical, and conceptual means of its own existence as a public; it is a collective independent of other forms of constituted power and is capable of speaking to existing forms of power through the production of actually existing alternatives. Christopher M. Kelty
socio-political transforma- A business enterprise like tion, proposing more flex- Napster managed to attract ible viral actions as relevant the will and the energy of responses to the ubiquity many activists to follow a When Art Goes of capitalism. The strategy cause with a deep commer- of disruptive innovation as cial purpose. Napster was a model of artistic creation able to get so many follow- becomes a challenge for the ers because it managed to re-invention and rewriting absorb their values turning Disruptive of symbolic and expressive them into its business. It was codes. a business, which decided On Social Imaginary and not to follow the moral or- The A/Moral Dis/Order of Recursive Publics Recursive Publics der shared by its “recursive As Kelty pointed out in his public”, the one given by the Tatiana Bazzichelli The Cultural Significance of nomy. Public interfaces are opportunity to create politi- investigation about geek economy of monopoly. Nap- Free Software (2008), analy- contextualized through the cal criticism, while the act of communities and what binds ster opened a (new) cycle of zing the consequences of dis- analysis of disruptive actions generating a/moral dis/order them together, “geeks share appropriation of values and This article reflects on the ruptive dynamics both in so- in collaborative networks, becomes an art practice. This an idea of moral and tech- ethics, moving them from notion of recursive publics called underground artistic showing that the vulnerabili- analysis questions the meth- nical order when it comes the so-called underground proposed by Christopher M. networks and in the business ty of networking dynamics in odology of radical clashes of to the Internet; not only culture to the business field, Kelty in the book Two Bits: context of the digital eco- recursive publics might be an opposite forces to generate this, but they share a com- just like many of the new mitment to maintaining that generation of social media and Web 2.0 companies have ”Neoism Manifesto”. From A Neoist Research Project (2010), ed. N.O. Cantsin, London: OpenMute order because it is what al- lows them to associate as a been doing since the middle recursive public in the first of the 2000s. place”. What Kelty defines as moral and technical order, It demonstrated that the which could be easily re- idea of social imaginary lated with the hacker ethics as cohesive moral order even if Kelty prefers the term could be disrupted, and “geek” to that of “hacker”, is the change could be a common social imaginary done exactly by being about technology and the In- strategically a/moral – ternet. Geeks share a moral thus adopting values imagination of the Internet, that were apparently which lives through hard- in contradiction to its ware, software, networks and own set of relations and protocols, and which shapes practices. everyday life practices. This explains how today it might be reductive describ- The geek community is ing network dynamics only a recursive public since trough a singular point of it works on developing, view, and that not only the creating and maintai- notion of moral order, but ning networks, and at also the one of a/moral dis/ the same time it is the order might be a valid per- network and the social spective to analyse recursive infrastructure it main- publics, both in the busi- tains. ness and in the technological Geeks speak and argue about field. topics, which they directly A/Moral Dis/Order as an create and bring to existence: Art Practice therefore, they are the devel- An example of a strategy of opers of their own social im- disruption as a method of aginary. political criticism beyond But even if Kelty’s con- clashing of moral orders, cept of recursive public adds is given by a Neoist prank a new layer in the analysis of which followed an interven- social imaginary – since it is tion by Alexander Brener and not only interpreted as a sha- Barbara Schurz at the Club red background but as a tool der polnischen Versager in of creation and autonomous Berlin, during the rebel:art development – the concept festival in 2004. This inter- of “social imaginary” still vention shows that the no- has to be questioned. Descri- tion of social imaginary as bing the imaginary shared a comprehensive order of by geeks, Kelty brings the values is not always effective example of Napster’s col- to interpret collective dyna- lapse and its battle against mics, especially referring to the musical industry. A battle underground communities strongly supported by hack- that work staging a meta- ers and geeks worldwide, critique of themselves. Even who found a common goal if the idea of sharing moral expressed by the openness of orders and social imaginary information, the freedom of might be effective for explai- exchange and the right to use ning the activities of some decentralised technologies independent groups (as Kel- in opposition to monopoly. ty demonstrated), it becomes This is one possible way to questionable when refer- analyse the matter; but if we ring to groups that practice adopt another perspective, negation, appropriation and we might discover a different cooptation of their very own meaning. values as a form of art. When NYHEDSVISEN Vol. 1, No. 1, 2011 Public-Interfaces Capital 23
Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and free soft- ware advocate, Oslo, Norway, Contributors 23 February 2009. Photo: Anders Brenna. Christian Ulrik Andersen (DK) is chair of Digital Aesthet- ics Research Centre, Associate Professor in Digital Design at Aarhus University, researching games and digital urban living. Tatiana Bazzichelli (IT/DK) is active in the Italian hacker community, founder of the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism, PhD Fellow at Aarhus University. the act of disruption becomes was running away after re- Brett Bloom (US/DK) is an artist who works with the art art, it reveals the weakness ceiving threats from Brener, group Temporary Services and senior lecturer at The Jutland Art of a mono-dimensional op- a member of the audience Academy in Aarhus. position as socio-political suddenly stood up, claiming Morten Breinbjerg (DK) is Associate Professor with a resistance. And, at the same to be the director of the fe- PhD in computer music aesthetics at the Department of Infor- time, it might open the path stival. Brener and Schurz’s mation and Media Studies, Aarhus University. for more invasive and effec- response was an egg in his Robert Brown (US/UK) is Associate Professor in Archi- tive interventions in the field face, met in turn by screams tecture, Master of Architecture, Programme Leader, School of of art and politics. from the audience and de- Architecture, Design and Environment, University of Plymouth. The rebel:art festival in mands for them to leave. Berlin brought together un- Brener and Schurz now sto- Kevin Carter (UK) is an artist and PhD fellow at the Univer- sity of Westminster, London. derground activists and art- od there visibly surprised ists, apparently connected and embarrassed, slowly rea- Geoff Cox (UK/DK) is a researcher in Digital Aesthetics as together under the notion of lizing having been fooled by part of the Center for Digital Urban Living Research, Aarhus University, Associate Curator of Online Projects, Arnolfini, Bris- “rebel art” and the topics of an imposter, who explained tol, and adjunct faculty, Transart Institute, Berlin/New York. culture jamming, hacktivism, his actions simply: “Because media art and urban inter- I am Monty Cantsin and I Tobias Ebsen (DK) is a PhD fellow within Digital Design at ventions. Among them, Ale- love you”. Aarhus University. Phil Ellis (UK) is an artist and lecturer in BA Media Arts, Pro- xander Brener and Barbara Disruptive Actions Be- Schurz were giving a lecture, gramme Leader in BA Television Arts and the forthcoming MA tween Art and Business Media Convergence at the University of Plymouth (UK). “Texte gegen die Kunst”, un- It is not a case that such an to acknowledge the strategy This is the challenge for art- Nina Gram (DK) is a PhD Fellow at the Department of der the heading “Demolish artistic act of disruption of being constructive and ists and activists who want to Aesthetics and Culture, Aarhus University researching Sound Serious Culture”, also the came from Monty Cant- destructive at the same time. deal with networking in the Mobilisation in Urban Space. title of one of their books. sin, the open-pop star of the Innovation becomes possible configuration it has taken to- Rui Guerra (PT/NL) is an artist and lecturer in The Nether- Alexander Brener, origi- Neoist network, Neoism by disruption and disruption day, ruled by corporate mod- lands, involved in open source culture, and initiator of self- nally from Kazakhstan, but being “a parodistic –ism”; becomes critical when it is els of profit. Not clashing organized communities such as INTK in Utrecht and unDEAF in internationally known as a a subculture that constantly transformed into an art form. against them, but developing Rotterdam. Russian performance artist, negates itself and whose within them, while chal- Anthony Iles (UK) is a writer based in London, editor of become popular in the art definition is constantly dis- lenging them critically – and Mute online and quarterly print magazine, and a regular con- field for the act of defecat- puted – this constant dispu- The point of departure ing in front of a painting by ironically. tributor to current debates about the urban regeneration around tation being still another side is to apply the concept the London 2012 Olympics, flexible architecture, indeterminacy, Vincent Van Gogh at the Mu- of the Neoist art practice. of disruptive innovation participation and regeneration. seum of Fine Arts in Mos- “The best product of Neoism in the art field, and at cow and for drawing a green Works cited: Robert Jackson (UK) is an arts practitioner, writer and PhD is anti-Neoism” is the favo- the same time to open Alexander Brener, B. S. “Anti dollar sign on Kazimir Ma- Fellow for the Kurator/AST Research group, researching early red aphorism of the Neoists, up a critical perspective Technologies of Resistance”. In Euro- computer algorithmic art, generative art and mainstream Ameri- levich’s painting Suprema- a detournement of a famous to business. Art Web Magazine. 13, Fall 2010. can art criticism from 1960 to the mid 1970s.