Archive for month: July, 2012

Digital Anthropophagy

Author: Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez

Abstract

The background of my Digital Anthropophagy theory comes from the “fair use” conundrum of the Information Age. One of my own art practices is to create films from found footage and openly exposed media online. I metabolize these materials into new contexts. In the creative process of this practice, in the age of the Internetworked Information Society as the producer of culture also engaged in remixing, offering a rich self-serving online buffet, I often thought of the Anthropophagic practices of some Brazilian indigenous tribes when they came into contact with their colonizers. The indigenous cannibal honorably eats the foreign in order to incorporate his strength, experiences and qualities and to see through the cannibalized foreigner’s eyes. But I find that in today’s digital culture, we unceremoniously consume the world around us in a globalized structure, thus quickly acquiring worldly references and spitting them out in a personal but also somewhat homogenized way. We have thus become both the cannibal and the cannibalized because of the wide and immediate access to information and the incredible reduction of time it now takes to consume that widely available culture. It no longer takes a passive person watching the ships arriving on the shore in order to consume what they might bring aboard, and conversely, for the colonizer in those ships to take away the riches they “discover” in far-away lands. Over five hundred years later, that exchange has now become cross-pollinated and more equal, and happening in an inhuman speed cycle. And the paradigm of power acquisition has now shifted from land ownership of colonies to ownership of information and creative property, especially engendered by the virtual world. This virtual world has started to disintegrate former imperialisms and push toward a “democratization of access” and “freedom of use” of information. And so I offer an analysis of Information Metabolism which drives human experiences. I hope that this theoretical essay furthers the discussion on “fair use” of media, leading to a simplification of global “fair use” cultural models and practice in the age of digital culture.

Vanessa Ramos-Velasquez

Make, Do, Mend and Hack (MDMH) the biotechnologies of the 3rd Nature

Author: Brian Degger

Abstract

A Paper on The Biotechnologies you already Live with, and the Ones you Should. We propose that next ecology sees it’s citizens embracing biotechnology from the point of view of having ‘the good life’.

There is already a group of pragmatic individuals(call them biohackers, or DIYBio geeks) that are imagining this future, where science and model organisms aren’t confined to the laboratory, but are free to live and enrich our lives. We play, grow and eat science. We use organisms on a small scale to support, to inform, to gain information from our environment. We use the old biotechnologies of fermentation and pickling, but are not afraid to consider mixing it with genetic testing and engineering.

The next ecology we deserve is the hybridization of heavy lifting industries (metal work/genetically manipulated organism production, cancer treatments, trauma medicine) with light self-replicating technologies(yogurt making, general fermentation activities, genetic testing). Reintroducing the affordable domestic biotechnologies to the public releases them from buying what is essentially free. Through this process we can decommodify food and medicine and learn skills that can feed us and keep us healthy.

This paper explores examples of where this is being used already, and where it could go in the future.

The very loud chamber orchestra of endangered species

Author: Pinar Yoldas

Abstract

Modern technology and culture has disconnected us from the rest of the world’s biota. Having built entirely man-made environments, we have distanced ourselves from the rest of the organisms on the planet. Having created the technology to control nature, we have alienated ourselves from the interspecies culture of mother earth . Feeling elevated, we have lost respect for other life forms, which have no less value than our own.

The VERY LOUD CHAMBER ORCHESTRA of ENDANGERED SPECIES is a collaborative art-science project, which explores the impact of environmental degradation on non-human animals. More specifically, it is a spatial data visualization and sonification project that aims to communicate environmental data on pollution, species and habitat loss to the general public in an engaging, non-technical manner. The spatial installation consists of skulls from various species. Each ‘cranial unit’ will be equipped with a servo motor and speakers and generate sound and movement in response to changes in the relevant data sets. By literally giving a VOICE to those whose habitats and lives are jeopardized by human activities, the project will initiate a subliminal emotional dialogue between viewers and the life forms that they often overlook. In essence, this project is an audible attempt to restore the dignity of other organisms that inhabit this planet and is an aesthetic amplifier of the negative consequences of our cultural choices. Alternatively, this project can be understood as a memento mori for those whose existence has been threatened, and a roaring wake-up call to the human race.

SONIC ECOLOGIES: Practice-led intersections of sound art, science and technology in global communities

Author: Leah Barclay

Abstract

The dramatic advancement of technology has truly cultivated a paradigm shift in how artists interact in both physical and virtual worlds. These changes have evolved and expanded our tools of expression but most importantly they have opened the ability to communicate at a higher level in an interdisciplinary context.

In a recent addition of Musicworks, Joel Chadabe stated that the current artistic practices of electroacousitc composers are rooted in the idea that new technologies, unlike traditional musical instruments, can produce sounds used to communicate core messages, including information about the state of our environment. He claims that we are all participating in the emergence of a new type of music accessible to anyone, which can be used to communicate ideas that relate more closely to life than those communicated through traditional musical forms. He believes we need to think of ourselves as “leaders in a magnificent revolution rather than the defenders of an isolate and besieged avant-garde” [1].

In a world where the catastrophic effects of climate change are rapidly becoming a bitter reality, there must be a role for sound in generating a shift in consciousness towards a sustainable future. The author explored this notion through practice-led doctoral research that involved conceiving and delivering seven original electroacoustic projects for dissemination in multi-platform environments. The divergent projects were created in cultural immersion, spanning from ambitious sonic explorations in the center of the Amazon Jungle to sounding the rivers of the world through India, Korea, China, Australia and New Zealand.

Throughout these projects it became evident that the environmental interconnectedness the western world has been seeking is still prevalent in many first nation cultures globally. These ancient knowledge systems argue that the process of simply listening to the environment could answer many of the world’s problems. This shares synergies with Attali’s seminal 1985 text where he refers to music as not just simply a reflection of culture but a “harbinger of change”. He states, “For twenty-five centuries, western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing. It is not legible, but audible” [2].

World leaders now looking towards the validity and possibilities of creative methodologies as tools for change, this presents both a challenge and an unprecedented opportunity for composers to gain a critical understanding of the situation, and take action in devising new processes for a sustainable future. Electroacoustic music, with the use of natural sounds, has a profound ability to ignite an awareness and connection to the environment. But is the role of the artist purely to comment on the crisis? To create awareness? Or can provocation extend beyond expression to create a behavioral shift in deeply engrained unsustainable ways of thinking?

This paper explores these questions and introduces Sonic Ecologies, a multi-platform methodology that could provide a framework to facilitate cultural change for a sustainable future. The core of this methodology pivots of a site-specific creative project embedded in a multi-layered community cultural engagement process. The research outcomes are introduced through three case studies of projects recently produced by the author in Australia and India and concludes with the conceptual design of Biosphere Soundscapes, a major international project developed with Sonic Ecologies highlighting the future possibilities of this model. These projects are ultimately acting as a catalyst and represent an unparalleled opportunity for artists reconnecting to the environment and taking action as agents of change in environmental emergency.

[1] Chadabe, J. “A call for avant-garde composers to make their work known to a larger public,” Musicworks, 2011. 111: pp. 6.

[2] Attali, J. Noise: the political economy of music. 1985, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

 

Logics of nature-driven technologies in a place Called America

Author: Gabriel Vanegas

Abstract

The incomplete and misleading version of American history built from a Western perspective and post-colonial Americans, with its neglect of the rich history of pre-Columbian civilizations, has led me to deep research of possible logics and media-archeological evidence, that will give us a more generous understanding of nature-driven technologies and media of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, prior to European contact.

Archeological findings involving megalithic architecture, transoceanic exchanges with Asia and Oceania; tactile method of writing with the Incas’ Quipus, the three dimensional geometry and mathematics of the Yupana Inca; nano-structured materials such as Maya Blue pigment, the Mayan calendar, highly accurate astronomy; and other technological apparatuses and advanced developments, evidence the existence of a highly advanced and sustainable cultural, social and environmental system, that may give us alternatives and ideas for a more stable relationship with our environment and technological developments.

Did the tribes of the 15th century developed this technologies, or did they inherit them from a lost civilization?