the machine?

Pythia - Woman - the broken machine

The Pythia (Greek: Πυθία), commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her propheciesinspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC. The last recorded response was given in 393 AD, when the emperor Theodosius I ordered pagan temples to cease operation. During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle in the Greek world. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greek world. The name 'Pythia' derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. The Greeks derived this place-name from the verb pythein(πύθειν, "to rot"), used of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous serpent Pythonafter she was slain by Apollo. One common view has been that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapors rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests reshaped into the enigmatic prophecies preserved in Greek literature. In the ancient Greece Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish that priests reshaped into the enigmatic prophecies. A lot of stories were written about kings of the Greeks demanding for negative prophecies to change when they were against their people ready to fight for their positive interpretation, as it was really important to have gods and prophecies on their side.

The content

Subjective interpretation

After spending sometime in a foreign country it was easier and more direct to realize the power and role of subjective interpretation. At first there was the feeling that as a lot of non-native speakers were around, including also me, trying to communicate, many times we were subjectively interpreting the words. Then I developed the idea further till I reached the subjective connection that each person can have with the world and more specifically with the world of art. But then, what if there is no other world except the one that is already inside everybody’s head? And then how can we reach reality? What about the truth? Where are the answers to everybody’s questions? Are there any answers? Is there anybody to ask? ASK ME!Especially at a time that internet has given the freedom and quick open access to everything and “googling” is such a common facility it has become even more difficult to rely to and trust answering…

At this point I was ready to move with my work.

Socrates-Truth Seeking

Socrates was blessed with a rock-solid belief in his role as truth seeker. Although he did not consider himself an educator, he devoted his life to spreading the truth among young men. He had complete confidence not in his own wisdom, but in the rightness of his mission. He felt he has been chosen by a god to spread the truth. However, his method, which was to pose questions rather than to provide answers, threatened the ruling powers in his city of Athens, who in turn threaten him with death. He loved Athens and its laws, but he regarded divine law higher. The drama of this as conflict made his ideas memorable, durable. By facing the death penalty head on, he demonstrated the idea of moral courage with the greatest force possible. For Socrates, seeking truth involved moral as well as academic training. He cared about "the quality of the soul." His main tenets, as set out by Plato in "The Apology of Socrates," were these: (1) that truth is not knowable by mortals but belongs to the gods, (2) that justice is at odds with worldly success, (3) that truth-seeking disturbs the status quo, and (4) that virtue requires courage and loyalty. Taken together, these four ideas form a whole picture that integrated spirituality, wisdom and morality in society. In support of the first idea, Socrates credited God (or sometimes "a god" or "the gods") with inspiring him to see truth. "God appointed me...I owe a great obedience to god." Although he was humble toward his gods, he was arrogant toward his fellow citizens: "It is my belief that no greater good has ever befallen you in this city than my service to my god." The oracle of Apollo had declared that Socrates was the wisest of men, and Socrates felt compelled to find out if this was true. After interviewing other "wise men," he concluded that his own claim to wisdom is based on the fact that "I am quite conscious of my ignorance."The other "wise men" do not respect god enough to know they are ignorant, that "real wisdom is the property of the god, and...that human wisdom has little or no value."

http://www.esc.edu/esconline/across_esc/writerscomplex.nsf/0/92DA3194438D022F852569EE00578E9F?opendocument

George Berkeley

“To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753).

As an idealist, Berkeley believed that nothing is real but minds and their ideas. Ideas do not exist independently of minds. Through a complicated and flawed line of reasoning he concluded that “to be is to be perceived.” Something exists only if someone has the idea of it. Though he never put the question in the exact words of the famous quotation, Berkeley would say that if a tree fell in the forest and there was no one (not even a squirrel) there to hear it, not only would it not make a sound, but there would be no tree. The good news was, according to Berkeley, that the mind of God always perceived everything. So the tree would always make a sound, and there was no need to worry about blipping out of existence if you fall asleep in a room by oneself.www.neatorama.com/2007/02/06/11-most-important-philosophical-quotations/

Through the history of philosophy there were a lot of ideas about the truth and reality. In peoples life it will always be important to built a concrete base of mind and thoughts development. Socrates was supporting his idea about valuing his ignorance as his wisdom! That is a strong view proving that in ones journey of life experience and knowledge the conclusion can be easily that there is nothing really there to find or that the more dip you dive in finding about the truth the more lost and undefined you can get!

Then Berkley supported his idea about experiencing ones subjective reality through his senses. That seamed such a strong belief about something can exist only if ones senses can detect its existence!

On the other hand what drives people to seek their answers may be the lack of safety, a sense of insecurity and instability and further more could lead them to seek the right person or machine to ask for the answers one cannot get by himself for himself. What about the characteristics, qualities, ways and structure of that “creature”? What about an ancient woman like a broken machine like Pythia?

The form

1. Interactive stop motion video installation - performance

2. The broken (woman) machine

The first sketch of the contraption that I designed was about a machine including, among others, a projection of the face of a woman. A black and white movie about a woman behind smoke moving her mouth like talking was the first idea. Then as I was searching about the particular face of that woman I started sketching a stop motion video to be projected on smoke… Ask me! Those can be the words to challenge one questioning. Then a built up system that is still in progress should support the structure. A sensor measuring the distance could make the stop motion video react to movement towards the machine. The next step is to work on the way the machine will be able to receive the question and produce an answer that it will no longer be readable but more abstract as there is no real need of a clear answer.

There are three ideas for sound researching:

a. already made answers in different languages to choose,

prepared properly to sound like whispering but not to really understand one listening.

b. programming to receive the sound of the question and transform it to an answer like sound deformed enough to sound different and new.

c. a performance of a person producing abstract sounds to support a real time answer to every question.

zel-contraptions.blogspot.com

Interactivity (and Response?)

“Look and feel”

Human communication is the basic example of interactive communication, which involves two different processes: human to human interactivity and human to computer interactivity. Human to human interactivity is the communication between people. Human to human interactivity consists of many conceptualizations which are based on anthropomorphic definitions. For example, complex systems that detect and react to human behavior are sometimes called interactive. Under this perspective, interaction includes responses to human physical manipulation like movement, body language, and/or changes in psychological states. On the other hand, human to computer communication is the way that people communicate with new media. A general model of human - computer interface emphasizes the flow of information and control at the human computer interface.

In the context of communication between a human and an artifact interactivity refers to the artifact’s interactive behavior as experienced by the human user. This is different from other aspects of the artifact such as its visual appearance, its internal working, and the meaning of the signs it might mediate.An artifact’s interactivity is best perceived through use.

The term "look and feel" is often used to refer to the specifics of a computer system's user interface. Using this as a metaphor, the "look" refers to its visual design, while the "feel" refers to its interactivity. Indirectly this can be regarded as an informal definition of interactivity.

During my time here I was also thinking about what Interactivity is and what it could offer to my work. Before that I was escaping two-dimensional art-works to find the third dimension more interesting as a statement towards life in space and time and now the idea of interactivity could help further to that direction. Interactivity can be everywhere with or without technology involving like a performance a software program.

An important issue I need to do research for and experiment with, finding and deciding for can be about which way that installation could be interactive. Moreover the decision of its final form is not yet to decide as there will be more to look for and find about. Two artists that can inspire me to go further with that project is Shilpa Goupta and Julien Maire.

Shilpa Gupta(b.1976) lives and works in Mumbai, India where she has studied sculpture at the Sir J. J. School of Fine Arts from 1992 to 1997. Gupta creates artwork using interactive video, websites, objects, photographs, sound and public performances to probe and examine subversively such themes as desire, religion, notions of security on the street and on the imagined border. She explores and expresses social issues in the age of globalization, sprinkled with humor and irony, in installation, video and net-based works.

www.flyinthe.net/about.htm

Julien Maires performances using proto-cinematic micro-machines both evoke and outdistance the illusions of the phantasmagoric projectionists of the pre-cinema. His intricate archaeology though seems not primarily concerned with retrieving the effect-ploys of optical illusion, but of reimagining the apparatus as itself as illusory, one in which the image and its operation are meticulously intertwined. In this sense, rather than allegorizing the image, Maire allegorizes the machine.

The scaled-up projections in his performances mimic those of the illusionists of the 19th century, but the images are less anecdotal than episodic, they provoke deliberation rather than sentiment, reflection rather than mere sensation. Rather than simply enlivening the image with transitory effects, Maire summons not the apparitions of ghosts, but the "ghosts in the machine", coaxing them into operation with minute mechanisms that donÕt render representations of illusion, but lay bare illusions. This subtle shift comes as a welcomed corrective to many so-called media archaeologists content to replay media rather than reinvent it.

Maires Demi-Pas (Half-Step) transforms the image machine into a time machine by evoking both mechanical and physical movements. The adapted projector of his earlier work becomes a computer-assisted one in this work. The "stepper motors" and the "half steps" of human motion are linked as the projected images establish a dynamic relationship between image and movement, sensation and narrative. By layering image and performed interventions into the projected scenes, the images and operations differentiate themselves spatially with perceived realities weaving in and out of perceptibility. Maires performances play in the interstices between machine and image and provoke a serious reconsideration of the "cinemaginary" interface.

"Half-Step" is a 20 min film consisting only of three dimensional projected objects : a collection of "Diapositives" or "projection modules" . They are constructed with laser cut ektachromes, motors, electrics and electronics devises, in order to animate the pictures directly inside the projectors , or to produce the movements by adjusting the depth of field (the focus is made on different layers of the slide).
"Demi-pas" is a projection using only still pictures, animated in a ameliorated magic lantern process and synchronized with sound.

Based on this experimental form of projection, the film narrates a tale that has an extremely simple storyline: one man's daily routine. "Demi-Pas" is a short film that constructs an everyday reality, thus highlighting simultaneously both the simplicity and the complexity of this reality.

julienmaire.ideenshop.net/project4.shtml

What fascinates me about those two artists work is that on one hand Goupta is using the web to deliver her ironic and strong view of her ideas, something I would really like to experiment with also. Then Maire through his work questions and challenges the value of media trying to make history run backwards faking it or skipping it or even playing with it.

History of New Media

Marshall McLuhan

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

A lot of ideas in McLuhans book supported my research and work developing also inspiring me further. There Marshall except of trying to understand the media is also referring to artists placement and function in society, which I have found very interesting.

In it he proposed that media themselves, not the content they carry, should be the focus of his study. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content and states that " a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence" He also tries to define some differences between hot and cool media and how one medium translates the content of another "the content of a medium is always another medium". New forms of media change the perceptions of societies any new technology (medium) is an extension of ourselves media that mediate our communication, their forms or structures affect how we perceive and understand the world around us. Also he develops the idea that each new form of media shapes messages differently thereby requiring new filters to be engaged in the experience of viewing and listening to those messages.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Understanding_Media:_The_Extensions_of_Man

Then in another book of his “The Mechanical Bride”, McLuhan turned his attention to analyzing and commenting on numerous examples of persuasion in contemporary popular culture. At this point his focus shifted dramatically, turning inward to study the influence of communication media independent of their content. But his famous aphorism "the medium is the message" (elaborated in his 1964 book,Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man) calls attention to this intrinsic effect of communications media.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

A lot of inspiration and further thought development derived from my studying of that book that helped me to have a new and better introduction in the structure and function of media in order to make better decisions of using.

Jamie O'Neil/ Kurt Weibers - McLuhan Remix

After a lot of years of McLuhans’ developing of thought, an other thinking artist found the need for further development of those ideas in order to fit also to the present. Jamie O’Neil in his performance as Kurt Weibers supports a new further idea about the medium that is the mix and the mix that is the message proving and comparing today’s sharing reality of the social media and trying to compare it with McLuhans idea about the medium that is the message. He supports that today we don't think we mix other peoples thoughts and that there is too much information (structuring the experiences). He then agrees with McLuhan that the presence is only faced by the artists and that originality is not what it used to be so now there is original and the transparent remix: the concept of identity. Those elements seem to me very important for my work and help my further development.

www.mcluhanremix.com

Marcel Duchamp

“The creative act is not performed by the artist alone. The spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”

Marcel Duchamp, from Session on the Creative Act, Convention of the American Federation of Arts, Houston, Texas, April 1957.

Duchamp worked on his complex Futurism inspired piece The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) from 1915 to 1923, with the exception of periods in Buenos Aires and Paris in 1918 - 1920. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship. He published notes for the piece, The Green Box, intended to complement the visual experience. They reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and a mythology, which describes the work. He stated that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erratic encounter between a bride and her nine bachelors. The piece is partially constructed as a retrospective of Duchamp’s works, including a three dimensional reproduction of his earlier paintings Bride(1912),Chocolate Grinder (1914) and Glider containing a water mill in neighboring metals (1913-1915), which has opened for numerous interpretations. The work was formally declared "Unfinished" in 1923. Going home from its first public exhibition, the glass broke in its shipping crate and received a large crack in the glass. Duchamp repaired it, but left the cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Duchamp

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Green Box) (1934) is a limited edition of notes on scraps of paper that details Duchamp's own explication of his masterpiece The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (1915–23). A compilation of the artist's creative thought process during the conception (while in Paris and New York) and execution (while in New York) of The Large Glass, it is an essential counterpart to the material work it describes verbally. Containing one color plate, ninety-three notes, and photographs and facsimiles by Duchamp, the green-flocked cardboard box—produced in an edition of 320—provides valuable insight into how Duchamp developed and arrived at his legendary mechanomorphic style. Though eachGreen Box is organized in no particular order, there is an obsessive and disciplined quality to this project, due to Duchamp's insistence that he himself reproduce each edition by hand. Duchamp viewed the contents ofThe Green Box as more than a mere guide to understandingThe Large Glass. Put differently, The Green Box was not a key to unlocking the secrets of The Large Glassbut, rather, a verbal version of the graphic masterpiece. For Duchamp, The Large Glass represented a compilation of his ideas rendered visually; The Green Box was thus the verbal complement.

www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2002.42a-vvv

The new art - conceptual art - trying to turn into a text visual art - new media - the interface

Finally it was really hard for me not to include Marcel Duchamp and his work that has been always inspiring me and always adding more to my thought and projects development.

That is how I would like to build a small conclusion of my writing mentioning his offer and legacy to new and conceptual art introducing a lot of new ideas for the artists’ generations after him. Through his big glass he introduced a kind of an interface that was for new media to use also. He also experimented with turning visual art into a text. I see a lot of elements of his thinking and working to always borrow for my personal work also especially as long as there will be always new different ways of reading his and others artists’ art to always find more…

Interesting sources

1. Julien Maire - demi pas

2. Understanding media - Marshall McLuhan

3. Marcel Duchamp - the interface

4. Jemie O'Neil/ Kurt Weibers - McLuhan Remix

5. Kaisu Koski - art and knowing

6. Shilpa Gupta - Critique of mediation through Art as Polycontexturality

7. Robert Mitchell and Philip Thurtle - Embodying Information

8. Sarat Maharaj - art and research

9. Deleuze and Guattari - Rhizome

10. The concept of Mind - Gilbert Ryle

11. The ghost in the machine - Arthur Koestler

12. George Berkeley

13. Socrates -Apology of Socrates

Aggeliki Tsekeni MFA IME FMI 161508022011