Lisette Gonzales reviews a book of essays by Matthew Fuller that examines the way we are programmed by software.
HD stands for Haute Densité (High Density) but also for Harley Davidson, for this is the brand of my very European designed Sportster XR 1200 bike, made in Milwaukee, WI, USA. While riding it I will film journeys from my home (Montreuil) to the Cartography Department at the National Archives (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine) near Paris, France. This motorized sign-writing journey is showed by video, enriched by the background reading of a text discussing Jorge Luis Borges’ "On Exactitude Of Science" from A Universal Story Of Infamy (1951). In this text Borges uses the tale genre to reflect on the relation between maps and the territories they represent, and eventually raises the question of the relation between Art and Technique, Science and the empirical world. I'm continuing the idea of genuinely «writing by riding» because my ride won’t be determined by the need to reach a location point, like a GPS could help me to do it, but to draw on the map of the city letters that will make words. Through this process the motorbike becomes a pen which allows me to write directly on the territory. (Source: Luc Dall'Armellina)
HD pour Haute Densité (High Density) mais également pour Harley-Davidson car ma moto est de cette marque, fabriquée à Milwaukee, WI, USA, c'est un modèle Sporster XR 1200 à la géométrie très européenne. C'est sur elle que j'ai filmé un parcours depuis mon domicile (Montreuil) jusqu'au département des cartes anciennes des Archives Nationales (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine). C'est par la vidéo qu'est rendu ce parcours, augmenté, en filigrane, par la lecture (simultanée en français et en anglais) d'un texte venant sampler et discuter celui de Jorge Luis Borges « De la rigueur de la science » dans l'Histoire universelle de l’infamie/Histoire de l’éternité, p. 10-18, Paris (1951, 1994). Dans ce texte l'auteur se livre sous la forme d'une fable, à une réflexion sur le rapport de la carte et du territoire, et pose finalement la question des rapports des arts et des techniques, de la science et du sensible. Je poursuis ici l'idée d'une écriture par le trajet, non déterminé par la nécessité de rejoindre un point donné comme un GPS nous aide à le faire, mais en dessinant sur la carte, des lettres formant quelques mots. La moto devient dans ce protocole, un stylo qui me permet d'écrire sur le territoire. Rapporté à la carte des lieux, elle « dessine » littéralement les lettres des mots qui prendront sens au fil du déroulement de la performance. (Source: Luc Dall'Armellina)
Luc Dall'Armellina : texte, programmation, lecture // Léon Deutschmann (clavier) & Blaise Dall'Armellina (batterie) : musique // Virgile Dall'Armellina : traduction du français vers l'anglais. text, programs, reading : Luc Dall'Armellina // musique : Léon Deutschmann (keyboard) & Blaise Dall'Armellina (drums) // translation from french to english : Virgile Dall'Armellina
"The Broadside of a Yarn: A Situationist Strategy for Spinning Sea Stories Ashore", by J. R. Carpenter, reflects upon The Broadside of a Yarn, a multi-modal performative pervasive networked narrative attempt to chart fictional fragments of new and long-ago stories of near and far-away seas with nought but a QR code reader and a hand-made print map of dubious accuracy. The Broadside of a Yarn was commissioned by ELMCIP for Remediating the Social, an exhibition which took place at Inspace, Edinburgh, 1-17 November 2012. The Broadside of a Yarn remediates the broadside, a form of networked narrative popular from 16th century onward. Like the broadside ballads of old, the public posting of The Broadside of a Yarn signified that it was intended to be performed. Embedded within the cartographic space of this printed map are QR codes which link to web pages containing computer-generated narrative dialogues, performance scripts replete with stage instructions suggesting how and where these texts are intended to be read aloud. As such, these points on the physical map point to potential events, to utterances, to speech acts. The stated intention in creating this work was to use the oral story-telling tradition of the sailor’s yarn, the printed broadside and map, the digital network, and the walk-able city in concert to construct a temporary digital community connected through a performative pervasive networked narrative. Through the process of composition the focus shifted away from the temptation to lure people on walks through a city tagged with links to stories of the sea, toward a desire to compel people to collectively speak shifting sea stories ashore. This paper reflects critically upon this shift, toward an articulation of The Broadside of a Yarn as an collective assemblage of enunciation.
The purpose of this map is not to guide but rather to propose imprecise and quite possibly impossible routes of navigation through the city of Edinburgh, along the Firth of Forth, into the North Sea, into the North Atlantic and beyond into purely imaginary territories. This map was created through an engagement with the Situationist practice of dérive. [...] During a series of walks undertaken in Edinburgh in May 2012, regardless of the number of times that I set out towards the sea, dérive led me instead into museums, libraries and used and antiquarian print, map and book shops. The breadth and variety of this bookish drifting is borne out in the imprecision of the resulting map of influence. My own photographs and line drawings mingle with scans of obscure details of old maps, city plans, pamphlets,
navigational charts, coastal guides, guidebooks and other printed ephemera gleaned from intermingled map–chart, reading–walking, drifting–wandering.
Like the printed broadsides of old, the public posting of The Broadside of a Yarn signifies that it is intended to be performed. Embedded within the cartographic space of the printed map are QR codes that link to smartphone-optimized web pages containing computer-generated narrative dialogues. [...] Most, although not all of these, are intended to serve as scripts for poly-vocal performances, replete with stage instructions suggesting how and where they may be read. Thus, these QR codes constitute points on the physical map that point to potential events, to utterances, to speech acts.
F2F might seem retro to you. It struck me as very 1991. The idea of a hypertext that is heavy on the text seemed to lose its charm as soon as images, moving animation, video and sound could also be included. One of the downsides to the speed of the evolution of hypertext, is that whole possible genres and subgenres were not given the chance to grow. What happened to the web-film-essay? Well, it never happened. Sure, there are some text-book-market CD-ROMs and the like that do something similar, but they use video more as mere illustration. What about a film essay that would incorporate the mystery the moving image rather than try to compete with it? What about utilizing images and sounds that potentially resist the text? What about playing with the clips like a video artist would?
F2F gravitates towards Deleuze's theories of framing and the face, and brings into alignment filmmakers who, unwittingly or not, deconstruct the face. But it also spins off into links on Robert Smithson, mirrors, Issey Miyake, creative urbanism, Max Ernst, romance . . . . One of the plusses about doing this essay in hypertext form, is that it allowed me to incorporate or even memorialize various ambivalences I had while writing these ideas down in linear form. There were clearly at least two essays that could come of it all. But, rather than pairing up with one and bumping the other off, we're all still here.
"The city's relation to the face, the major trope of which is 'the faceless crowd,' is productive of one of the great cliches of the movies. . . ."
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PING uses a telephone menu system to distribute active commands to participants who call in using cellular telephones. The choices made by the caller when navigating the telephone system produce directions for physical movement through the city.
PING comes out of psychogeographical inquiry, which focuses on the study of the effects of the environment on the perception, behaviour and mood of individuals. PING is intended to explore the interface between disparate fields such as situationist thought that focuses on subjective mood, generative psychogeography which introduces algorithms as a way to inspire movement through urban space, existentialism, and the interpolation of digital metaphors onto physical, analog space.
(Source: Author's description from project site)