I apologize for my writing skills -- I am trying to find ways to
discuss issues that are often highly complex, media related,
time-based, spatial, emergent and experiential. This sometimes makes
it difficult for me to be articulate with words.
snip
I believe that the computer can enable new forms of communication,
inquiry and intellectual exchange. Often these forms grow out of
older forms as Jon and George point out. We might say that these
forms when recombined become a technological hybrid of past
communication forms. The potential I am talking about relates to
exploring these technological hybrids in different kinds of
computer-mediated environments. Research enables us to functionally
extend these communicative potentials through technological means.
This process is ongoing. The voice, the pen, the printing press, the
typewriter, the computer... all expressive vehicles of the human
intellect. Yet I believe the computer opens out some very interesting
possibilities that we are just beginning to understand. Both
scientific and artistic research related to the computer can be
beneficial to humankind.
As an artist I can bring a set of intuitions about how particular
kinds of computer-based environments might be made to function. Some
scientists might find my intuitions interesting and others not. As
George said, science can go on without me. Yet, coming to understand
the complexities of how meaning arises (be it poetic or
informational), how we store knowledge and/or the artifacts that
enable us to impart knowledge, how we can potentially operate on
language-vehicles (media-elements) in the service of
communication/knowledge acquisition, how we might reflect upon
different forms of information via the computer, how information
might be stored and/or made relational... all of these foci seem in
general to be valuable to both scientists and to artists interested
in the exploration of the potential uses of the computer.
In particular I belive artists can offer their intuitions related to
interface development, relational database development, sensing
applications, environmental computer-based meaning (virtual
environments), the anomalies of language, the singular or combined
exploration of media-elements (text, image, sound, music) as vehicles
of different forms of expression and/or communication. In terms of
artwithbraininmind, all of these research areas impact on
consciousness and meaning production.
This isn't some kind of art hype. It is a set of research areas that
I know a number of people are working on.
Some of the long term goals I find interesting are:
How can I use natural language to interface with a computer and to
operate on media-elements as a mode of expression and/or interaction?
How might computer-based sensing environments be used to enable
different kinds of functional operations related to information
manipulation (be they scientific or poetic)? How might deep
sub-micron chip technologies be used to focus attention in particular
environments that might enable one to bridge physical with the
virtual space in a meaningful manner? What will virtual environments
be like that are made possible through nano-computing? How might such
nano-virtual environments be used to augment consciousness and
intellectual exchange? What kinds of technological tools will help
enable exploration in the above research realms.
These areas of research have scientific validity. I am interested in
exploring artistic content in relation to these research realms.
Because I can already visualize how I might explore these research
topics in terms of "Recombinant Poetics", some scientists might find
it valuable or interesting to have a dialogue with me - others not...
A conference enables one to meet many people face to face, to share
ideas and to begin dialogues.
Best
Bill
>Using computer science to achieve artistic goals with virtual reality
>devices, as Bill wants to do, seems a perfectly straightforward use of
>science. But the only reason I would go to a conference on the use of
>computer-science to create VR Art is to see the art. Having no desire to
>do it myself, I have no interest in learning about the details of how it
>is done, as I have no interest in learning how a particular painter mixes
>her paint to acheive a given affect.
>
>On the other hand, I am suspicious of claims that make it seem like
>something of an entirely different sort is the point of the conference -
>the discovery of a new mode of communication that results from scientists
>and artist working together. I have no evidence yet that this claim is
>anything more than art-hype.
>
>- George
>
>Re: George's comments on the way Bill Seaman writes about his work ....
>
>I understand George's point, and it's true Bill's writing style at times
>makes, shall we say, only brief forays to the shores of clarity.
>
>But personally, I think Bill is working on stuff that is so far out in front
>of most digital/computer/VR work that it is difficult to find any language
>that adequately characterizes it. He is attempting to use computers and
>other technology as a vehicle of research to -- as he says elsewhere --
>"define an art practice where the subject of that practice is the creation
>of meaning", and I wish I could see more of it than I have been able to.
>And the key notion left out of George's summary is the unique forms of
>interaction demanded from the viewer / user of his work, which makes
>tangible the viewer's participation in the emergence of meaning in the VR
>environment, and where this participation is quite explicitly a reflective
>process.
>
>T. Woods
>
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