Study quotes from references on digital media, telematics, atmosphere, climate, immersive arts, scenography, time and space:
the twin phenomena ‘immediacy’ and ‘instantaneity’
‘the primacy of real time, of immediacy, over and above space and surface is a fait accompli and ushers a new epoch’
21st century in connection with the absolute speed, is the ‘invention of a perspective of real time, that will supersede the perspective of real space’
the cyberspace did not yet encompass: ‘that of contact, of contact-at-a-distance: tele-contact’
‘A Fundamental Loss of Orientation’ /‘to exist, is to exist in situ, here and now, hic et nunc’ - it is being ‘threatened by cyberspace and instantaneous, globalized information flows’
‘disturbance in the perception of what reality is’
‘loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world’
‘there is no such thing as globalization, there is only virtualization’
‘instantaneity-everything now happens within the perspective of real time: henceforth we are deemed to live in a “one-time-system”’
‘if history is so rich, it is because it was local, it was thanks to the existence of spatially bounded times’
‘real time superseding real space’
“glocal”- local+global : local has become global, and the global has become local
‘such a deconstruction of the relationship with the world is not without consequences for the relationship among the citizens themselves’/ ‘nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else’
‘no information exists without dis-information’->‘choking of the senses’
Writing about telecommunication and telepresence,
These technologies collapse the physical distances, uprooting the familiar patterns of perception which grounded our culture and politics
Small Optics (3)
Big Optics is real-time electronic transmission of information, “the active optics of time passing at the speed of light”
If information from any point can be transmitted with the same speed, the concepts of near and far, horizon, distance and space itself no longer have any meaning
Every point on Earth is now instantly accessible from any other point on Earth
Big Optics locks us in a claustrophobic world without any depth of horizon
Virilio asks us to notice “the progressive derealisation of the terrestrial horizon,…resulting in an impending primacy of real time perspective of undulatory optics over real space of the linear geometrical optics of the Quattrocento” (4)
He mourns the destruction of distance, geographic grandeur, the vastness of natural space, the vastness which guaranteed time delay between events and our reactions, giving us time for critical reflection necessary to arrive at a correct decision.
The regime of Big Optics inevitably leads to real time politics, the politics which requires instant reactions to the events transmitted with the speed of light, and which ultimately can only be efficiently handled by computers responding to each other.
Film - collapses distances, bringing everything equally close and destroys aura * as well as video conferencing
To Virilio- film became part of the human nature, the continuation of our natural sight (Small Optics)
-in contrast to Big Optics of instant electronic transmission
Electronic transmission function as a two-way communication (5)
Via telepresence, she can also be “present” in these locations. She can affect change on material reality over physical distance in real time *interactivity
‘Progressive diminishing and finally complete elimination of something which both writers see as a fundamental condition of human perception—spatial distance, the distance between the subject who is seeing and the object being seen’. —> 인간, the betweeneness* (6)
Distance becomes responsible for creating the gap between the spectator and spectacle, for separating subject and object
Distance allows the subject to treat the Other as object; in short, it makes objectification possible
Distance guaranteed by vision preserves the aura of an object, its position in the world
by Juhani Pallasmaa
in Christian Borch (ed) Architectural Atmospheres: On the Experience and Politics of Architecture, Basel: Birkhauser Verlag. 2014.
by James J. Gibson
“ecological psychology”
How do we see the environment around us?
How do we see where we are in the environment?
How do we see whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going?
optical or acoustic, or haptic, etc. patterning that would best correspond to actual perceiving in the world no longer seemed like stimulus but information
‘structured energy that was information about environmental sources’
I should get back on Part II The Infomation for Visual Perception
‘Poetry is a metaphysics of the moment’, Vertical time
‘He defines the poetic moment as the “principle of an essential simultaneity in which the most scattered and disunited being achieves unity’ / discontinuous and disruptive
‘”Real” poem signals a stopping of ordinary clock time, introducing instead a dimension of “verticality,” in depth and in height’
“Reverberation” from Poetics of Space (1957)
‘Sensible simultaneities invoking deeper metaphysical correlations that cannot be experienced in chronological time’
‘Vertical temporality- examples in Joyce’s Ulysses or Proust’s Remembrance of Times Past
‘past and future are rein scribed in a timeless moment’ —> evokes imagination*
Buddhist idea of the empty moment as a free detachment from the horizontal cycles of samsara, as in the famous Heart Sutra—“form is emptiness, emptiness if form”
Emptiness is not empty but fuller than the greatest fullness itself : another deep ambivalence conjured in the eternal instant.
Poetic instant- ‘imagination is the well-spring of ethical as well as poetic values’
Poetry has ‘no interest in time as duration that dissipates echoes. It seeks the moment. ‘
‘He defines the instant as a sudden burst of consciousness calling for an acute act of attention.’
‘One experiences the instant, he claims, as an act of concentrated will; and will is to be understood as a radical moment of decision that is simultaneously a deep moment of listening’
‘The instantaneous time is far removed from the clock time of everyday life. It is the moment of the transformation of forms’
‘Bachelard’s phenomenology of the instant involves a radical ethics of empathy’
‘The self for Bachelard, as for Buber, is less a substance or cogito than a dynamic relation to the endlessly surprising other. Bachelard’s philosophy of the instant takes the form of a phenomenology of relations understood as sympathy, reciprocity, and surprise’
‘In the poetic instant, in short, the temporalizing horizons of “before” and “after” dissolve to reveal a bare inaugural moment. This is the moment when a lighting bolt of cosmic time traverses personal time in a fire of intimate intensity’
‘Death of linear time is reborn as vertical time’
‘Mode of reverie, that attitude of attention which combines will and decision with a deep receptivity toward an incoming gift’
“Time can be reborn but it must first die” -L’Intuition de l’instant
(2)
‘Sloterdijk wants to emphasise spatiality as the determining ontological characteristic of humanity’
‘A new conception of the human as inherently relational and spatially determined: a being in spheres’
‘Bubbles can be seen as an accurate morphological metaphor for the basic structure of human interaction’
‘Creating our living environment’-> ‘reconceptualising humanity through spatiality’
Sloterdijk analyses the spatial relationships between the human and its technological world through architecture, urban planning and environment
“Foams (2016) “
‘Due to the increasing level of global interconnectivity, and the rapidly rising population, we have shifted into an epoch in which all human actions are determined, and potentially limited, by their proximity to other humans’
=> metaphor of a ‘foam’ / separated by easily collapsable thin walls
(4)
Latour’s actor-network theory => ‘all entities in the world-from nanoparticles to bodies, groups, ecologies and ghosts - are constituted and reconstitued in shifting and hybrid webs of discursivee and material relations’ = meaning the social must only be seen as a relational network of actors and actants, both human and nonhuman, who act within it, and not as an object of study in itself
(5)
‘Atmospheric conditions act as the determinations of our spatial relationships with one another’
“While networks are good at describing long-distance and unexpected connections starting from local points, spheres are useful for describing local, fragile, and complex ‘atmospheric conditions’” (Latour, 2011, 471)
(6)
atmosphere=>not just the air we breathe but ‘a sphere of existence which acts as a ‘life-support’ system containing within it a multiplicity of elements of which the particulate matter in the air is merely one’
-> can relate to the climate crisis which incorporate technical, social, empirical, and ontological nature of the spheres we exist within
by Gernot Bohme
atmosphere- communicates a feeling to us as participating subjects (2)
powers to affect the subject / tendency to induce in the subject
making -> manipulating of material conditions, of things, apparatus, sound and light
Can we make atmosphere?
=> “setting the conditions in which the atmosphere appears” / generators (4)
“How space is occupied, how atmospheres become elemental and induce specific affective responses, how atmospheres are engineered (performed) to direct or trick our hearing, seeing, and sensing” (3)
by sodja lotker & richard gough
‘Everything we do and almost everything comprehend scenic formation - landscape, site and setting - but also a way of constructing the physical, perceptual and emotional environment of/for the event’ (3)
‘There is no such thing as an empty space (as once proposed by Peter Brook (1968)) - every space is an environment, is already resonant; it has its character, a psychology and a memory and, if nothing else, little invisible scars.’ (4) => 여백
‘The space performs even before the actor walks across it. The character of a space is the way that it positions us and spaces our actions’
‘Scenography is the many-layered environment of a performance that creates spatial contexts and activates positioning’ -> looking happens with the whole body
‘Scenographies have power over us they, command our attention and affect our emotion.’
‘Integrate the two spatio-temporal strands into a unified structure’ (5)
playfully and insightfully arrests time through space (on stage) evoking a kairological (as opposed to chronological) sense of time (on stage)
“the expressive organization of space”—a practice of daily life and a fundamental of communication and being human
In East Asian paintings, the concept of Yeobaek serves as a pictorial device that allows the phenomenon of a constantly changing "process" to be captured. Without incorporating Yeobaek, which represents the principles of space and time working together, it becomes challenging to depict the realization of this dynamic phenomenon on the canvas.(306)
The empty spaces (Yeobaek) serve as open windows that enable communication and flow. (306)
Empty space (Yeobaek) is never a static or stagnant space; it is a vibrant space imbued with the essence of vitality, characterized by "spatiality that encompasses temporality." It is a space that contains a sense of energy and dynamism.
Considering the concept that nothing is a fixed substance and is subject to constant change, when we examine the spatiality of empty space (Yeobaek), we find that it is never a static space. Instead, it is a space characterized by "spatiality that encompasses temporality," possessing a vibrant energy and dynamism. (315)
In East Asian thought, placing significance on what is unseen rather than what is seen is a common philosophical perspective. It acknowledges the importance of the invisible and intangible aspects of existence. This perspective recognizes that there are profound meanings and influences in the realm beyond what is directly visible or apparent, emphasizing the interconnectedness of the visible and invisible realms. It encourages a deeper understanding and appreciation of the subtle forces and underlying principles that shape our experiences and the world around us. (316)
empty space (Yeobaek) can be considered one of the greatest inventions in East Asian painting, serving as a visual language of silence and a sculptural form of breath (316)
‘The application of Yeo-Baek (‘void space’)’
‘The ineffability of Do’
‘Yeo-Baek or the void is something ‘depicted without the act of depicting’’
It is ‘never a fixed, stationary space, but one ‘of dynamic, ever-changing nature, filled with energy’’
Technique of Hong-Woon-Tak-Wol: leaving the moon itself untouched by only painting the surrounding space of the moon
‘The visually empty space in aesthetic sense becomes no longer ‘empty’’
‘Breezy, fluid, and open feelings to the painting, but also expresses the philosophical notion that each object is not separate from the space or other objects, and that everything, including the space, is all interconnected’
‘What kind of perceptions are provided by such an experience of real time?’
‘modern media is under siege by real-time technologies’
‘the real-time electronic transmission of information, particularly the “twin phenomena of immediacy and of instantaneity,” brings pressing problems to the fundamental condition of human perception’-by Paul Virilio
‘Cyberspace is one such example of where the notions of immediacy and instantaneity chracterize its effect on human perception. It is based on telecommunication, which is the real-time elctronic transmission of information’
‘Virilio mourns the destruction of distance. He warns of the progressively diminishing and disappearing fundamental condition of human perception, the distance between the subject who is seeing and the object being seen’
‘the loss of distance can be directly connected to the loss of distance for reflection’
‘the relative clam, relative slowness, and relative distance seem to provide us with time for reflection’
‘time for reflection … gives them chance to interpret, think about, and reckon with the sense of oneself and the world’ → connect the concept with fudo
Relationships between space and time ruled by the concept of simultaneity
-cubist painters
Shrinking of distance was measured (globalization-imperialistic occupation of space) -> once the space is colonised, the second phase of globalisation capitalism takes possession of time
Now cyberspace supports our imagery and perception of time
Time is nowadays “a surface, a skin, a hyper-surface’ in which different moments can be reached with a click, that breaks off linear time
‘The sense of time and space has been ‘torn’ from its field in what amounts to a nihilating moment, a moment of ‘no place’, of utopia or, more precisely, as a denial of time and space’ (3)
Time=> ‘It is with days and nights and their divisions that we associate it, and likewise also with internal feelings or absence of feeling, and with movements and states of rest’ (7)
‘The alternation of day and night and our experience of it becomes a sign of the change in the way we are ‘human’ (7)
Time => ‘movement between accidental characteristics of things’ (8)
‘Visible and the invisible’
‘This is what the teletechnolgies of real time are doing: they are killing ‘present’ time isolating it from its here and now, in favour of a commutative elsewhere that no longer has anything to do with our ‘concrete presence’ in the world, but is the elsewhere of a ‘discreet telepresence’ that remains a complete mystery’ ** (19)
‘Emergence of a new conception of time, which is no longer exclusively the time of classic chronological succession, but now a time of (chronoscopic) exposure of the duration of events at the speed of light’ (3)
‘To the passing time of the longest durations, we now add accordingly a time that is exposed instantaneously: the time of the shortest durations in the realms of electromagnetism and of gravity’ (4)
‘The ether of ‘time-light’ being in no way analogous to our usual calculation of duration and geophysical span’ (4)
‘Time-light whose depth dissimulates the very density of time’
‘Without a distant horizon, there is no longer any possibility of glimpsing reality’
‘Idea of the real in the age of the speed of light’ is eradicated (6)
‘Meeting at a distance, in other words, being telepresence, here and elsewhere, at the same time, in this so-called ‘real time’’
‘Immediate selection, instantaneous telepresence.’(10)
‘To define the present in isolation is to kill it’ -Paul Klee
teletechnologies of real time are killing ‘present’ time by isolating it from its here and now, in favour of a commutative elsewhere that no longer has anything to do with our ‘concrete presence’ in the world, but is the elsewhere of a ‘discreet telepresence’ that remains a complete mystery. (10)
Real-time interface
Home shopping, working from home, online apartments and building: ‘cocooning’, as they say. The urbanization of real space is thus being overtaken by this urbanisation of real time’ (20)
‘How can we really live if there is no more here and if everything is now? How can we survive the instantaneous telescoping of a reality that has become ubiquitous, breaking up into two orders of time, each as real as the other: that of presence here and now, and that of a telepresence at a distance, beyond the horizon of tangible appearances?’ (37)
‘With the real-time transmitting and receiving power of the various signals alienating the nature of time distances, the active optics of electromagnetic waves exploits the depth of field, the very reality of our own world to the point of reducing it to nothing, or next to nothing, thereby leading to a catastrophic sense of incarceration now that humanity is literally deprived of horizon.’ (41)
‘How can we ignore the risk mankind runs of losing our own world? How can we but fear now a profound sense of being shut up in an environment deprived of both horizon and optical density?’
Global ‘real time’ of the information superhighways - breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement
Lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy
by Kevin Walker & John Fass
De-Computation: Programming the world through design by Kevin Walker
computational thinking has four steps: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and design. Simply put, this means breaking something down into manageable or meaningful components, then remaking it in another form or making something new from it, based on an analysis of the parts. De-computation provides a way of applying these categories specifically to design practice
(3)
De-computation is intended to shift focus from devices and systems to computing as a process undertaken by people, plants, places and other things. We define computation as broad set of cultural practices driven by a belief that algorithms can shape behaviour, opinions and actions, in opposition to 20th century notions of computers as monolithic, fixed devices. De-computation thus incorporates a view of computation different from its usual definition, one that encompasses non-digital life, microscopic and astronomical processes, and poetic data exploration.
De-construction - break down the problem, research question, dataset into smaller parts
Pattern recognition - ‘patterns can be highly abstract-the rhythms of human behaviour for example, pattterns of play in a game, circadian rhythms, or turn-taking in a conversation.’
Abstraction - Whether a pattern in the data or an innovative way to address the problem or research question, this can be then generalised in order to make some statement / encourage thinking of ‘abstract’ as in fine art-for example in terms of simplified shapes and colors; the less something resembles some specific thing in the world, the more it communicates across categories / abstraction becomes an expressive means for generalising in surprising domains
Construction - this is manifest as a nonlinear system, which accounts for unknown functions as variables, and in which the outputs can vary proportionally from the inputs;; the examples shown in the Figures illustrate a variety of outputs possible from a comparatively small set of inputs.
Our broader intention is to exploit the systematic ways of thinking found in the natural sciences, in ways that enable experimental outcomes which cannot be fully predicted due to randomness and variation introduced particularly through the use of physical materials and processes. De-computation thus strives for a balance between research-led practice which proceeds from data and a set design brief, and the kind of practice-led research more common in fine-art contexts, in which materials exploration leads to unexpected outcomes.
de- computation maintains a contextual and critical perspective.
it takes a broad view of personal, social and physical contexts, continually questioning the problem or task in relation to these. Here, De-computation overlaps with user experience or interaction design, with its focus on contexts of use (Kaptelinin and Bannon 2012). But it goes further, to interrogate how a design product might impact a user’s cognitive load (Sweller, et al 1994), or society at large. Might it add to or subtract from visual or noise pollution – or indeed the environment and climate change? Is the product really necessary, or alternatively, is it something that can be used to critique some aspect of contemporary society?
De-computation is thus about using the algorithms and systems of design process and method to question the influence of computer algorithms and digital systems, as well as the designer’s own assumptions.
De-construction - investigative journalism similarly operates around narrative conventions, but in an inverse direction to science, it often starts with ‘a story,’ then seeks to collect data (in the form of interviews or documentary research) to provide multiple viewpoints / clearly stating who, what, where, when, how, and especially why, acts as an effective design principle / journalistic stories can be regarded as de-constructed and re-constructed representations of events
Pattern recognition - We believe that spotting patterns in data is, however, a subjective process of interpretation, whether undertaken by humans or computers (which are programmed by humans) / one constant factor is time, which consistently flows linearly in one direction, and if two datasets can be separated by time, this aids in analysis
Abstraction - we can abstract rules from nature to apply to other types of systems
Construction - analogue materials
We thus advocate a reverse design process applying computational thinking to real-world phenomena in order to reveal and critique this,
by Kevin Walker
Information is now seen to underlie biology, physics and chemistry as well as computation, and as a focal point it enables a redefinition of design from the perspective of natural systems.
Taking this view, what we refer to as things (microbes, companies, galaxies) are systems and processes— poetically and temporally-bound confluences of other things. Therefore instead of referring to discrete things, it makes more sense to think about how things connect with each other, of causes and effects. As in relational design as described above, meaning is found in the connections. According to Barad, ‘Space and time are phenomenal, that is, they are intra-actively produced in the making of phenomena; neither space nor time exist as determinate givens outside of phenomena” (Barad, 2007, p. 383).
This illustrates design as a system with a subject and object, with two-way feedback mechanisms (what Maturana (1997) calls recursive interactions, or what Barad (2007) calls ‘intra-actions’) occurring between them and on a level of descriptions (language) and actions. Feedback takes place not only between designer and audience on these levels, but also between the conceptions of the designer and his or her own actions, and the audience’s conceptions and actions.
In a quantum system, the scientist as subjective observer would be placed on the left, and the object of study on the right, wherein observations are mediated by tools, which indeed are seen to influence the described outcome. An important difference between science and the arts, however, is that science observes existing phenomena in seeking objective truth, whereas art and design exists to create new things in seeking change —in an audience or in broader terms.
Artistic experimentation with tools and materials can lead in unexpected directions. Similarly, taking a systems perspective means ceding some control and agency to the system, operating at different levels, and acknowledging the designer’s subjective role within a system—not least the technological, social, political and economic systems we live in. But we feel that this is where innovation arises: in the connections and feedback between designer and audience, language and action, information and experience; and between disparate fields of study.
Science was called natural philosophy
New communications technologies challenge ancient ideas about time, distance, and space
Technology is seen as “knowing how” / Science is seen as “knowing why”
Technology - ‘his attempt to subdue or control that environment by means of his imagination and ingenuity in the use of available resources’ (13)
Information Arts can be seen as an investigation of these moving boundaries and the cultural significance of including techno-scientific research in a definition of art
Artist/scientist- ‘substitute a self-created world for the experiential one, with the goal of transcendence’
In “The Contribution of the Artist to Scientific Visualisation”- Sorensen describes artists as “organisers of large amounts of data” ; “people who find unusual relationships between events and images”, “creative inter disciplinarians”
-‘artists push the limits of technologies, bringing them to previously unattained goals’/‘original and new…something beyond the known boundaries of the information base’ (19)
“How Engineers Lose Touch” (24)
‘Successful design still requires expert tacit knowledge and intuitive ‘fee’ based on experience’
Walter Benjamin “Works of Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation” : technologies such as photography and cinema decreased the importance of presence and “aura”
‘Questions of materiality and corporeality are critical for artists working with new technologies. The imaging, communications, and information technologies they work with are key facilitators of this mediated world.
The end of timelessness
‘The loss of “aura” in technologically reproducible work (30)
by R. Lyle Skains
the creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge
’Creative artefact is accompanied by a critical discussion of the significance and context of the claims, and a full understanding can only be achieved through the cohesive presentation of the creative artefact and the critical exegesis’
-’creative act is an experiment designed to answer a directed research question about art and the practice of it, which could not otherwise be explored by other methods’
theoretical: practitioner-researcher is exploring research issues and problems
conceptual: artists give form to thoughts in creating artefacts that become part of the research(often to understand the creative artefacts themselves)
dialectical: explores the human process of experiential meaning-making: how we connect to other minds through the middle-men of artistic media
contextual: practice is an effort to bring about social change
‘Creative research questions are often inseparable from artist identity, experiences, and culture’
Serendipity- ‘a process of making a mental connection that has the potential to lead to a valuable outcome, projecting the value of the outcome and taking actions to exploit the connection, leading to a valuable outcome’ (90)
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