A process of miscommunication

Sending visual files back and forth with minimal instruction save the file name itself contains an inherent amount of miscommunication. What is content when miscommunicated, and is this not what lies at the core of all communication, be that visual or otherwise? We attempt to navigate each other’s realities and experience of reality while contributing our own interpretations and thoughts upon a theme. A process of production built on such foundations acknowledges this subjective dilemma from the outset. The viewer encountering such pictorial manifestations resultant from this communicative process should be advised that they are nothing more or less than the struggle for meaning and comprehension within various conversations.
The utilization of electronic communicative media in this instance is a consolation for the absence of phenomenological discourse due to insurmountable barriers enforced through geographical distance. Yet such consolations offer a potential liberation from the need to collaborate physiologically with each other, freeing us from the prejudices induced by appearance and behaviour.





Communicative action: a collaboration

1) An attempt to move beyond the decorative superficial functionality of the program.
2) Through this project of collaboration a negotiation is required.
3) Once placing the mobile phone upon the scanner bed we remove it from the real into the virtual.
4) What was once a fetishist object will be transformed through human / program action into a fetishist artwork.
5) Although the phone belongs to the world of objects, it is also a container for an abstract form of communication. It works therefore it is good.
6) The phones chosen have already been abandoned in favour of newer models and become therefore the detritus of society.
7) In its very nature technology is an abstraction of human experience, thus rather than being an entirely passive observer of this process a reflective intervention is called for.
8) All the programs available through the computer software have their origins in the history of art.
9) Emancipation through technology is a concept beyond realisation in its totality. However, it is possible to form new perceptions based on a reciprocal engagement with it.
10) Until human intervention technology remains abstract. It remains for individuals to expand the boundaries of new technologies.
11) Socially, the promise of greater freedom through technology is seen to be a myth as our individual lives become increasingly fraught and limited time-wise. A compromise reached through the process enables creation to take place with limited resources: space, time and finance.
12) We see a crisis in human communication with the main protagonist being technology.
13) In communicating using the image via the program and the Internet a beginning of a new visual language drawn from a multiplicity of languages is revealed.
14) The image reached through an abstract process is itself abstraction. An abstraction not based on modernist myths of higher truth or metaphysics but on collaboration and integrity between man and machine.
15) Human imagination finds itself pitted against the program.
16) In dematerialising the object and then its image the ultimate failure is built into the finalised abstraction, as it returns to object and takes its place in the material realm.
17) In anticipation of this failure we feel its ideal is reached when viewed within the site of communication (Internet) or as projection in real space, given a site of presentation in the material realm.
18) Through this process of abstraction their remains inherent, a utopian sub-plot.
19) All technologies are neutral; it is only with the deployment or intention of outside agencies or bodies that it can have a positive or negative dimension.
20) In considering the implications of our action it becomes apparent that a philosophy of technology is necessary.
21) Through the process of communication our minds are active in contrast to the passivity of our bodies that mimic the given technology.






Art as society

The making of art is seen as a form of individual expression. To take a tour of art history is to visit a succession of individuals upon whom the status of genius has been conferred. In retrospect even such figures as Sol deWitt and Joseph Beuys, advocates of an art beyond personality have become icons in themselves. This myth making that takes place between the artist, the work produced and the audience is a process greased by a plethora of ‘keen capitalists’- agents, gallery owners and critics. The system at large aligned to individual ego is a powerful seducer, ultimately the market place, no matter how elitist will win through.
How then to create work which is truly social? Perhaps it is a utopian concept in itself given that the social body hides a rotting core.
Collaborations are one such means of bypassing individual ego. This however is looked upon as an indulgence, or at the very least a secondary issue in the production of art. Collaboration involves sublimating individual drives and desires over the course of the project. What if the project itself is the sublimation of the individual for the good of the group? Is it possible for the group to expand and yet retain certain fixed rules of collaboration?
Any form of social body develops through a hierarchical process; there will always be individuals with whom the action of power is played out. The power to make and expand governing rules, the power to veto elements considered undesirable to the social project. This naturally makes any form of collaboration problematic for the individual, however, the ability to negotiate and compromise are personality traits highly prized in forging this particular aesthetic.






Thoughts on the technological sublime

A new order may emerge with its own myths and narratives embedded within the circuit boards and virtual spaces of machines and global networks.

Technology is the new nature, that is to say it is perceived as natural. Notions of the sublime, which once applied to the natural (physical) world, can now be applied to the limitless unknown potential of virtuality.

In the presentation of something unpresentable, technology masks the void within a familiarised formula. Its repetitive nature has already been absorbed by the populous at large through the logic of scientific time applied through time and motion.

The technological superhighway mimics physical highways as a cultural construct. It places a premium upon speed, performance and productivity at the expense of creativity or the random event. It is the unexpected or accidental that defines the human within each of us.

As these information and communicative technologies become increasingly pervasive there is a danger that future generations, having been nurtured under its spell and conditioned through institutions will no longer search for a technological sublime, instead settling for an existence of functional banality.

I believe it is quite correct to hunger after a certain quality of life. Food, clothing and shelter are necessities, beyond that lies the potential for creative thought and practice. To explore the possibilities within the technologies which mediate our daily lives.

It is the job of artists to be at the forefront of investigation regarding the potential of technology. To tease out the unexpected: to open new avenues of thought and investigation: to discover the true pleasure and horror in a reciprocal relationship with the machine.