February 2005
An imaginary scenario for an arts academic.
1. Start a web based project.
2. Write it all in HTML, building links as you go, an architecture, perhaps some graphics.
3. Keep at it.
4. Possibly solicit or invite content from others.
5. After two years look at your project/'book'/site and enjoy the contribution you have made to knowledge.
6. Realise all this content would make a great book.
7. Apply for research funds so an assistant can pull all the content out of the HTML, format it, get it designed and then off to the printer.
8. Do all of this again in another two years as the next lot of new content is added.
An imaginary scenario for a computer scientist (or a computing
humanities academic).
1. Start a web based project.
2. Determine the outcomes and specifications.
3. Build it all using XML, XSLT, etc.
4. Build it so that the architecture (both the surface architectures of site navigation and the depth architectures of cognitive structure) are database driven (like a Wiki, for example).
5. When it is time to go to print run a simple script that generates a printer ready PDF (via ConTeXt for example).
What are the differences?
In scenario one old methodologies are used in all parts of the production of knowledge. Knowledge in this model is, in spite of the best intentions, constrained by the linearity of production, authoring, and publication. It is also inefficient (it is slow to print, slow to author, and expensive to get the content out into anything else). This is dead media. Or old media, if you prefer. What is dead is not the book, but the methodologies.
In the second scenario a data structure is developed that is transposable to multiple contexts. It allows ease of publishing and redistribution. It automates authoring and editing and dissemination. It also allows epistemological structures to emerge within the work itself in the activity of writing the work. This is not an economy of labour (a quantity), it is a changed and different practice (a quality). Wiki's are one of the best examples of this latter practice: link structures in Wikis express knowledge. These link structures emerge in the act of Wiki writing, no where else.
Flickr.com is another example of this practice. What is 'squaredcircle' (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/squaredcircle/)? Imagine a similar project on 'refugees', or 'border'. Imagine a similar project that used text. Or audio. With a system or peer review.
The world is full of books, organisations, conferences and affiliations producing knowledge on the model of dead media. Particularly in that part of the academy interested in new media research. Fibreculture could participate in this on these terms. Or it could take seriously the network qua network. This begs a lot of questions: what constitutes 'knowledge', are there new or different knowledges available (see Lisa Gye's post of November 24), do these systems provide a way between administered versus open networks? (How do wikis organise? Why? Blogs? )
Should Fibreculture reproduce the known, in its organisation, structure, and practices, or offer an alternative? Why? If there is an answer to that then I'd suggest we might be in a better position to think about how.
cheers
Adrian Miles
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What surprises me about Adrian's mail is his apparant lack of experience how books are produced. The key word which is missing is both scenarios is editing. Knowledge for me is edited, curated information. The book is a fairly traditional but still powerful form to 'condense' online contexts. A lot of work of today's book production is going into selecting material, doing copy editing thus raising the overall quality, the density of the offered discourse and arguments of the authors, or the group of authors. This work also gets done for online journals. In Adrian's scenarios there are only technical standards that we have to choose from. That's a somewhat narrow techno-determinist view on matters. The editing work needs to be done anyway, no matter what medium we work in, no matter if the data are presented as a pdf, print on demand, are offered in 'old' html or go off to a book publisher. Despite the growth in quality of spell checkers I do not see how machines can replace this work as it is highly contextual and intellectual, and not to forget: poetic. I highly depend on copy editors and wish to erect a monument for them. Their work often remains invisible, like that of translators but we all know sense their incredible importance.
Geert
Three Answers to the Question: What is Future Art?
I. Leaders of future art institutions will have to be truly multi-disciplinary and multi-platform. They will reconcile local, regional, national and global flows of creativity. Future art will be both individual and collaborative--incollaborative - in fact, it will be hard to distinguish the two. In order to get there, dominating/prevailing categories such as 'visual arts' and 'contemporary arts' will have to be abolished. These are cold war terms, invented to compete with neighbouring forms of artistic expression. What will count is quality, aesthetics and above all, a critical approach to society. The locality will be able to synthesize interests in art as objects and the ever growingrapidly expanding variety of networked, mediated forms of expression.
II. There is a growing tension, not to say open rivalry between art forms and their institutions. This canmainly be blamed largely on the outgoing post-war 68-generation and their greedy carrierism that is now aimed at maximazing their superannuation. Their collective metamorphosis from progressive and experimental to a defensive, conservative attitude is phenomenal. Why should most of the funding these days go to opera? Can somebody please explain this? Why should techno and 'urban culture' be left to the market? There is, for instance, no philosophical ground to distinguish so-called contemporary from so-called new media art. They have so much common ground. The successful integration of 70s and 80s video art into the artistic mainstream is a good example isand a hopeful sign. Perhaps Luhmann and Bourdieu can help us out here. Art struggles these days can no longer be understood in metaphysical terms because they primarily grow out of petty politics. Art can only be understood within institutional contexts. Even the market plays a secondary role. Most art historians and critics are useless to inform us about these underlying tendencies, because they are part of the existing system and only reproduce existing tensions and confusions.
III. The true potential of new media art will lie in its ability to disappear. New media arts is a Hegelian project, aimed at its own transcendance. It is not a goal in itself, even though it obviously has self-referential tendencies, like all activities in society. In the short term, new media arts sets outaims to discover the inner logic, standards and architectures of new technologies, but that process can only last for a while. The phase of experimentation will necessarily come to an end. Its findings will dissipate in society.
Geert
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