Social Space Project, Phase 1- Jon Chambers

Line Graffiti (Working Title)

Graffiti has been one of the most aesthetically transformative forms of public artwork, or criminality, that has emerged in the last 40 years. It has changed the urban landscape and social space from dull, blank canvases to sometimes beautiful swaths of color, concept and design (although I think of tagging as a different category). In Chicago, you can’t buy spray paint, and there exists a clan of “Graffiti Blasters” that take to the street and claimed to have blasted over 1.6 million instances of graffiti vandalism. According to the City of Chicago’s website, “Graffiti is vandalism, it scars the community, hurts property values and diminishes our quality of life.”  How many of these 1.6 million instances were brightening the community? Graffiti has even become part of the art institution, with artists like Banksy, Margaret Kilgallen, Fab Five Freddie, etc. showing in esteemed museums and sold at auction houses. Who owns the urban landscape, the city or the people who live there?

            This project creates “graffiti” kits and consists of a material that would come with instructions on how to form different patterns along the lines of bricks. I chose bricks as the specific form because they are ubiquitous as building materials, create patterns, and have a dull, boring color. A standard brick will be used as the unit of measurement to create the patterns and instructions that are distributed with the kits. For instance, when creating a pattern, the first piece of material would be laid across, lets say, 6 and a half bricks. From that first piece, count four rows down from the right edge, then lay another piece over a certain number of bricks, and so on. Of course, once in the hands of a potential consumer or user, they can do whatever they want, but the true form of this piece would emerge from these instructions.

            The aesthetics of the finalized pieces take cues from conceptual art (Sol Lewitt), the architectural line, and color pallets from graffiti art. These simple lines, especially the corner design, accentuate the form and material of the building, and play with the public’s perception of perspective. As one would move around the corner, the lines would gradually change shape, something they may not notice with the dull color of bricks. This gradual change makes the building dynamic, a sort of animation or sculpture. I haven’t come up with a package design or distribution method, but a technique I was thinking about would be using the Internet. The potential user would then simply download the plans and use wheat paste. This distribution method would be free and open sourced, which would be more characteristic of graffiti. I was also researching tape or decals that could stick to the surface of brick. Using printouts, the lines wouldn’t be as shiny or clear cut as the tape or decals, but the they would be environmentally friendly. There are many bricklaying styles that could be formed into different designs, so in some cases, the design might be sight specific.

Here are two concept sketches:

The kit element of this project will consist of a box with the ingredients in it. I have included the templates of the box, the graphics that will be pasted around the box, and a drawing of what the box will look like when constructed. There is also an image of what will be in the kit, although the specific instructions haven't been planned yet. The paper won’t be dispersed in rolls, as I will cut strips to length. I’ve found rolls as cheap as $5. I will also create a simple website for the project where you can download the plans for each piece and submit photos of installed projects. Keeping with the ethics of graffiti culture, there needs to be a website for people who don’t want to buy the designed kit, and a broader culture may form through the submitted photographs. I have also included an image of what the website may look like. 

Research Project - Phase 1: Chaz

Possible working titles:

Comfort Situation

or

Autonomy Bag

There is no blanket federal policy of the public consumption of alcohol in the United States, instead alcohol laws are determined by regional authority. Although a state legislature has the ability to create state-wide rules for alcohol consumption, few make such state-wide policies and often alcohol policy is derived from very specific micro-polities. Policy is often determined at the county level, but it is not uncommon for the ultimate rules to be determined by the city, town or even village level. It is a rare category of American legislation which is allowed a wide spectrum: one village may be under complete prohibition, while the next town over has several liquor stores and public houses. Often these neighboring alcohol situations create cross-pollination creating a consumptive eco-system even though contrasting values are expressed by the public policy placed on the differing community. In this way public alcohol policy offers one perspective on the cultural conditions and human relationships in very specific localities. Public alcohol consumption laws can be seen as reflections and expressions of cultural ideas and boundaries, as well as actively enforce and influence behavior in social space. The lack or presence of alcohol in public space, private space, or "third-spaces" has a real impact the subject's and collective's relationship to, and behavior within, space.

In personal experience I have been incredibly struck by the stark difference in human performance between the public spaces of Chicago and New Orleans. Statistically Chicago is rated a as a far more alcohol-consuming town than New Orleans (per-capita). In fact it consistently ranked in top-placements of American alcohol consumption by various sources. Yet, New Orleans is famous for its carnival oriented culture even though statistically less alcohol is being consumed. More important than the statistical comparison is the comparison of how people relate to space and each other when public alcohol consumption policy is on either extreme of a spectrum: Chicago allowing no open containers in public (not counting exceptional public spaces contained by specific delimitations in space and time), while New Orleans allows the free carriage of any drink up and down any street. (In both cases I am comparing the policy of possessing open containers as a pedestrian, in both locations it is of course illegal to carry alcohol in the passenger compartments of automobiles.) In New Orleans the presence of this manner of alcohol consumption leads to many radical pairings of humans interrelating that might not occur in a space that does not afford such consumption, create visits to and behaviors in locations that one might never otherwise, and of course may cause the problematic decisions, behaviors and pairings which can get a subject into trouble. Chicago on the other hand, and its policy of confinement certainly do not curtail the consumption of alcohol but do engender, it could be argued, alcohol influenced behaviors and relationships with also take on a confined quality. This results in the less carnival-esque character of alcohol consumption in Chicago, but does can create an intensity of relationships and community, in in constrast personal isolation, especially in winter months.

In order to delocate the character of these contrasting spaces, and perhaps make a temporary hybrid space of these examples (and possibly others) my project endeavors to exploit a well-known, yet infrequently exercised exception in the blanket prohibition of open containers in Chicago: the "Brown Bag" law. In what has always struck me as a somewhat arbitrary gesture of legal appeasement, a Chicago citizen can legally carry an open container if it is properly wrapped in a brown bag. But with this legal work-around comes cultural biases and class distinctions which for the most part discourage the practice, or at least keep the brown bag practice a far cry away from the carnival streets of New Orleans drinking culture.

This project consideres altering the the conditions of social space, and the human behavoir therien, by embracing the concept of the brown bag rule, while altering it spatially and structurally. If the visual attention of the brown bag in public engenders neither the radical comradery of New Orleans or the intensified drinking relationships of Chicago, perhaps an inversion of what is contained can provide an atomized unit of both. By containing not the beverage, but a small social situation itself within a brown bag, hybrid, radical, and ephemeral social spaces could be engendered through use of very modest materials.

Partially inspired by the methods of the Situationist derive, I propose a portable kit which could quickly deploy or collapse a space for two participants to enjoy an alcoholic beverage, contained within a brown paper structure, within any public space where it would not otherwise be possible to do so. The kit would allow the pair to wander freely through public space, stop to deploy the structure and drink, pack up and continue wandering again. The aim is to alter the experience of many social spaces which would not be normally experienced with the consumption of alcohol, as well as create temporary autonomous drinking zones to ensure the inclusion of the inter-personal imporance of consuming alcohol.

To keep the rigor, thoughtfulness, and legality of this exercise on the level, use of the kit would be strongly prohibited for those under the age of 21 (or of legal drinking age in any locality where the kit is used.) Furthermore a strong guideline of moderation would be emphasized in the design of the kit; the brown paper rule works around the open container rule of Chicago, but public drunkenness laws in Chicago and other localities are another thing altogether.

Here are some initial sketches of what this kit/structure might look like. The first is a box design with legs that telescope and rotate inwards toward the top of the frame. Brown paper is extendable from all sides via rollers attached to all four sides of the frame top. A handle on one side of the frame is used to carry the structure when it is collapsed like an light ironing board or guitar case.

The second design is more tent-like. The kit consists of two parts 1) a lattice which can be collapsed into a walking stick, and a brown paper covering which can be folded into a pouch. The covering is cut to the form of a tent so all you have to do is place it of the lattice and fasten its corners down somehow (method for this is not yet decided.)

The third and perhaps most convenient design doesn't use a frame at all. Instead it is simply a gigantic brown paper bag which is placed upside-down on top of the two drinking participants. The bodies of the participants themselves act as a frame to prop the bag up, with enough space between the two to enjoy beverage and conversation. Optionally, participation could wear should mounts which could hold the bag above their heads, in case supporting the bag with the head is not comfortable.

View 1: Bag Exterior

view 2: bag interior

view 3: bag interior with optional shoulder mounts

Response to The Slow Design Principles and Autonomy, Participation, And

Autonomy, Participation, And

The first half of Claire Pentecost's article is a sardonic indictment of the museum-gallery-art complex, clearly evoking the themes and imagery of Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube and Robert Smithson's Cultural Confinement. In defining the idea of artistic autonomy as the "special privilege to be free from the demands of utility or any substantive connection to social, political, or economic reality" Pentecost is highlighting the paradoxical cost of achieving autonomy; in producing work that adheres to the rules and requirements of the "clean white room", the artist is, in fact, allowing their output to be subsumed for the social, political, and economic motivations of the host institution. In some ways, the concept of artistic autonomy as a goal seems prescient, as the realization that the reward of autonomy for high performance has only recently begun to gain traction amongst other commercial sectors (as illustrated by RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us).

The crux of Pentecost's argument is that the goal of autonomy is ultimately counterproductive; her use of the automobile as symbol of autonomy, described in opposition to "the inconvenience of coordinating our needs and desires with a larger populace," demonstrates that autonomy‐at least as defined through the lens of institutional validation‐actually leads down the path of solipsism and isolation from society in general.

Pentecost's use of language in "the idea persists that an aesthetic encounter can change consciousness" can be read multiple ways; is she betraying skepticism about the popular notion of the function of art, or  is she expressing hope that it truly can be realized in spite of attempts to codify success as freedom from  social, political, and economic conditions? Her answer, in the second half of her article, is revealed to be the latter.

Without issuing a manifesto or declaring a Movement, Pentecost effectively outlines an aesthetic that engages the tension between autonomy and participation rather than the requirements of the white cube. In the form of "restructuring participation", she highlights a philosophy of art that is oriented around the bottom-up production and dissemination of knowledge by the unempowered, rather than the embrace and reinforcement of the top-down status quo.

Why would an artist aspire to restructure participation in this way, which inherently requires involvement in the interests of a larger populace, rather than the attainment of their own individual autonomy? The illustrations that Pentecost uses all support at least one of the twin pillars of restructured participation and the distribution of information. Her own Visible Food project, and Natalie Jeremijenko's How Stuff is Made are crowdsourced knowledge bases constructed about commercial processes without the coordinated investment of commercial interest. Nance Klehm's urban agriculture education‐"imparting a vision of abundance where the untrained eye sees generalized green"‐is the closest Pentecost comes to describing her proposed aesthetic in established terms of connoisseurship, but still meets the dual criteria of inviting the local participation for the purpose of spreading knowledge. The Yes Men, while not necessarily involving broad participation from local groups, subvert the information dispersal mechanisms of established commercial media to highlight information that industry and capital prefer to keep hidden. Pentecost suggests that it is through the pursuit of the equalization of information that the aesthetic experience truly can change consciousness. In challenging the "systematic ignorance" that typifies the information age, artists can win autonomy from the "groups who benefit from pervasive opacity and myopia", rather than the appearance of autonomy awarded by an institution.


The Slow Design Principles


The purpose of Carolyn Strauss and Alastair Fuad-Luke's The Slow Design Principles is stated to be an attempt to describe a method of re-imagining the design process in order to achieve the goals of increasing sustainability and environmental responsibility. The mechanism they propose is the use of six "slow" principles for the collection of evidence to evaluate the design process. But how rigorously is the objective defined? What are the criteria against which their evidence is measured? How is the process itself designed to be evaluated?

Some of the works cited by Strauss and Fuad-Luke as examples of the different principles caused me to pose questions that I am not sure they adequately answer in their document. In Franinovic's "Recycled Soundscape", the structure of the project invites people to participate so that "under-observed phenomena of a locality are re-revealed", but are those revelations captured, or does the information simply walk off when the people move on? Is that a desirable goal in and of itself, or is it a missed opportunity to inform the design process? Julia Lohman's sheep stomach lamps in Flock highlight "under-valued" materials that are derived from animals, but how does that relate to the wide variety of animal by-products that are already used in non-obvious ways? Natalie Jeremijenko's How Stuff is Made and Claire Pentecost's currently defunct Visible Foods project are both good examples of projects that seem to be interrogating the hidden production chain behind consumer products, but are they intended to become resources that tie into Slow Design in a systematic way?

Perhaps the issue is that the efficacy of Slow Design principles cannot yet be determined because they are too new and relatively unknown. In contrast to the criticisms and questions I have with the outline of the Slow Design principles, I do think the process could yield valuable results; the Milkota exercise was quite interesting because it highlighted the numerous ways in which the concept of product design can be expanded to include social and environmental impacts in an integral fashion rather than treating those concerns as external to a commercial interest. It will be interesting to see if and how the Slow Design principles are adopted by the emerging class of interaction (or user experience) designers, and if the tenants of Slow Design can be applied to larger industrial projects, such as the design and manufacture of infrastructure or public transportation.

Benjamin Keddy: Reading Response 2 & 3: The Slow Design Principles / Autonomy, Participation, And

Reading Response 2: The Slow Design Principles

In their discussion of "The Slow Design Principles", Carolyn Strauss and Alastair Faud-Luke, encourage a greater consciousness of the potential impact of the individual on the greater social ethos. Implicit in its name, the "slow" movement positions its socially progressive approach as a contemplative response to the excess and waste that stands as the myopic standard in the Western capitalist mode of production. The approach of slow design as "predicated on slowing the metabolism, of people, resources and flows" promotes social activism through while embracing the following six design principles: Reveal, Expand, Reflect, Engage, Participate, and Evolve. These principles motivate the designer to explore channels of production that promote a heightened social awareness and positive attitudes toward environmental sustainability.

The text is contextually related to the Jeremijenko and Bratton reading as extension of the discourse about creative production as a tool for both social development and action. The reading sights the work of other practitioner’s who exemplify adherence to specific principles as they embrace the ideological premise of this movement. As was the case when formulating a response to Situated Advocacy: Suspicious Images, Latent Interfaces, while I personally agree with the movement to build a higher social consciousness of environmental issues that The Slow Design Principles supports, both articles strike me as a somewhat self-congratulatory as “how we do it right, and how you can to” approaches to combining creative production and environmental activism. Through the discussion of the work produced by the designers that adhere to these guiding principles, Strauss and Faud-Luke promote the conceptual exploration of these ideals as design successes without inviting significant critique of the aesthetic and conceptual validity of the work. This then becomes more a discussion of the process, and principles involved in creative production rather than a discussion of the product itself. Although they are discussing “design” rather than “art” (two terms that obviously cannot be used interchangeably), some of the descriptions, while successfully conveying the socio-political premise of the work, seem to lack the critical depth needed to justify the work as artistically relevant. The essence of the writing is that of “essential practice” that presumes that adherence to the guiding principles as itself crucial to the creative integrity of the work.

To exemplify this point, I consider one of the examples that the authors have included in their discussion of the “Engage”(ment) principle— the design of Human Chair by Martin Ruiz de Azua. Ruiz de Azua constructs a “human chair” out of human participants whom choreographically sit “on each other's knees, propped one on top of the other in friendship and fragile dependency”. While it seems clear that the point of the “collective minimalism” inherent in this group activity is to depict a particular symbiotic element of social unity, I find the description of the product as a “precious gift of immaterial substance to our over-material world” that the text describes it be as sententious. While promoting a concept of collective support as a positive social ideal, the work strikes me having no more creative integrity than the “trust fall” http://www.ropesonline.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64:exploring-the-trust-fall&catid=95:challenge-course-elements-and-use&Itemid=64 that many of us have perhaps experienced in our youth at summer camp. The text offers little discussion of this work beyond that of social engagement, “amity and fun” – elements that are perhaps imperative as a foundation of cooperative social discourse, but do not engender a nuanced discussion of artistic merit.

Reading Response 3: "Autonomy, Participation, And"

Claire Pentecost explores the notion of a “shared autonomy” as a mode of creative production that contrasts the historically accepted norms if institutional artistic exhibition in her article entitled "Autonomy, Participation, And". She argues that the current the protocol for exhibiting in our established museums, galleries, and other institutional exhibition venues employ amounts to a restriction of creativity, that challenges the definition of autonomous artistic production, with the both an ideological and physical compartmentalization relative to form of work that the artist produces. If creative production can be encapsulated by the object, created by an individual (as is regularly the case in painting or sculpture) it possesses the formula required to be more readily accepted as work that can be easily exhibited by the institution. It has taken the form of work that can be easily digested by an expectant audience who, through the conventions developed through the historical rise of our artistic institutions, are already conditioned to make sense of this work through the limits of the creative product. In a critical commentary on the confined mode of production that an association with such institutions mandates, Pentecost states “Our work will be called autonomous. The autonomy in question refers to the perceived freedom of the forms we have used, and the alleged freedom of the motive ideas justifying those forms. It is their special privilege to be free from the demands of utility or any substantive connection to social, political, or economic reality, which are deemed dreary by comparison. Conditions notwithstanding, it is part of our job to express or perform freedom as it is tacitly defined and valorized by our culture”

Her position describes the freedom of autonomy as a myth that we as artists readily embrace “because in every way we are starved for validation”. I agree with this position entirely. In the context of explaining the problem of institutional acceptance, I also agree that “what may or may not be up for reinvention in the process are the terms of the encounter and the constitutive definition of aesthetic” but also feel that, beyond her examples of the shared autonomy that seems to support the premise of her position, she has not adequately explained what this definition new of aesthetic should be. As socially and environmentally laudable as the work of Salvation Jane or the Yes Men may be, what defines them as artists? Relative to the Yes Men’s brand of activism, do their interventions amount to political theater, performance art, both, or neither? How does the answer associate them as artists? Is an artist any free-thinking person mobilized to social activism in their production? In terms of what is produced and how, is there a cut off? Has the definition of “artist” been diluted through its ongoing historical re-definition to still be relevant? Is this terminology a relic of an artistic legacy that should be abandoned for something more nuanced, or should it be so ubiquitous as to be applied to any practice that includes a creative way of problem solving as part of its product?

In reference to the AD502 course I am taking entitled, Extradisciplinary Explorations, Brain Holmes refers to the course title in the context of modern art as an “ambition to carry out rigorous investigations on terrains as far away from art as finance, biotech, geography, urbanism, psychiatry, the electromagnetic spectrum, etc., to bring forth on those terrains the ‘free play of the faculties’ and the intersubjective experimentation that are characteristic of modern art.” http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2007/02/26/%EF%BB%BFextradisciplinary-investigations/

This perspective seems to suggest that “intersubjective experimentation” can be taken as the product itself. Under this assumption the experimental process can be as much the product of the artform. But then are there specific attributes to the process that define it as such. John Cage’s 4”33” silent piano piece is much about the the process of spanning time in relativity to the object of established value with a consciousness of negative space and our traditional acceptance of music as a linear movement.

Written by Cage as a silent musical piece, it was not produced through the collective of a "shared autonomy". Although this well know work was afforded the luxury of a venue as a musical form in the abstract, it at the time it was created hardly conformed to the conventions most accepted by the institution. In performing the piece on the traffic median in Harvard Square, Cambridge Cage becomes a participant in a shared autonomy as a listener, sharing the same experience as the audience member greeted by the spontaneity of ambient street noise. http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/mla000318-john-cage-performs-4-33

Although Cage was admittedly a lover of noise, he has written much the value of silence- a nod to the activist spirit and the slow movement with a consciousness of the need to reclaim the the absence of space that exists between things in our sound saturated modern society.

Autonomy, Participation, And - Tiffany

Claire Pentecost's "Autonomy, Participation, And" describes the titular concepts as a performance, an exercising of freedom that extends beyond what she calls "the typically individual location of freedom and material well-being" but toward a shared autonomy. She challenges us (as artists, since she's addressing, I assume, art students) to an awareness of our place in the culture-making food chain, how our participation extends toward others. In the more provocative section of the article, she identifies an institutionalization of widespread ignorance that causes a disassociation between peoples and economies; she likens this ignorance of wide swathes of information as a severe stunting of any achievement of real autonomy.

I was particularly impressed with her assertion that the artists who remain ignorant continue to promote ignorance to the wider public. Though she doesn't name names, there's a hint that this is a condemnation not to be taken lightly. Each example given seems to expand to a global audience, specifically targeting consumption and distribution - everyone is implicated in some way. The final questions she raises can just as easily condemn as reveal, first focusing upon the artwork at hand, and one's own place within its scope ("If autonomy is the object, what do you want to do with your autonomy?"). She describes a difficult, uncomfortable practice, its payoff relying upon whether or not you're optimistic about what we might call "making a difference." It leads me to ask if these institutions that supposedly block knowledge actually exist, or if this assumption is simply a result of the overwhelming number of individuals that succumb to apathy because of the sheer volume of information. Christien Meindertsma's cataloguing of all the uses of a slaughtered pig (TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/christien_meindertsma_on_pig_05049.html), indexed and catalogued in a book, is only one example of breaking this information down to bite-sized, beautifully graphic-designed bits - but are we able to direct the audience what action is to be taken from there, without simply depressing them and leading them right back to ignorance and apathy?

Slow Design Principles - Tiffany

The directors of slowLab, Inc. (slowLab.net) approach the designation of new design principles in a manifesto-esque manner, outlining the need for more evaluation in terms of the development of new design practices; specifically, they intend to guide the field toward more sustainable practices, whether socially, culturally, or environmentally. This new "evaluative tool," they contend, is outlined as a 6-point principle guide (not 'absolute truths') to open discussion toward experimentation. "Slow" forms a whole methodology that includes a more careful, deliberate process of creation, one which seems to work upon the metaphor of biological physical/cognitive growth and development either as an individual or as a species. Each of the principles - REVEAL, EXPAND, REFLECT, ENGAGE, PARTICIPATE, EVOLVE - is accompanied by various examples, serving to create a field of inquiry within which new design experimentation might fall.

SlowLab's principles achieve a level of generalness that allows for almost every example to fit into many categories; for example, Olivier Peyricot's "Slow Rider" is also demands a level of engagement from an audience, reflects upon its constituent components and the history/evolution of transportation. Also, along with this level of generality, much of the examples seem to work beyond elements of design, but in any social practice - be it pedagogy, art, etc. The principle entitled "REFLECT" has much in common with any artwork calling for a certain meditation upon an object and its "memory," an idea expounded upon by Sigfried Giedion in Mechanization Takes Command, as well as Space Time and Architecture. Also, works by artists such as Janet Cardiff often explore how memory and complex histories can be embedded, and then communicated through objects; her piece "To Touch" is a particularly compelling example of this (http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/totouch.html).

However, the generalness of the principles can also lead to a lack of specific direction, particularly in why and how to engage the public. What is the difference between "ENGAGE" and "PARTICIPATE"? Are we communicating to a distinct group of individuals, or are we attempting to engage them in a particular way? Is all participation and engagement useful? Is the simple commodity-consumer relationship considered "participation"? Speaking of the consumer relationship, Katrin Svana Eythorsdottir's "Chandelier" might reflect upon preciousness and ephemerality, but in designing an object destined to fail and produce an even higher speed of consumption seems to go directly against a "slow" design ethic. Perhaps another principle addressing the speed of consumption should also be added?

Response 2 - Daniel

The Slow Design Principles

In their essay "The Slow Design Principles," Strauss and Fuad-Luke attempt to convey a way of considering social and environmental responsibility while also demonstrating a multi-layered beneficial strategy to negotiating the creation of objects and spaces. Their main totem is the literal slowing down of objects. By various strategies they limit, extrapolate, and introduce reflective consideration to inhibit the current waste-based form of production/consumption.

I found the primary section very thoughtful in that the authors introduce many real-world examples (already implemented and succeeding), while also conveying that not one single strategy is the correct option. Several approaches are cited. One can pare down objects to their cores through interaction and material use in a meta self identification. There can be the expansion of current behaviors by taking known objects and altering how they are situated in the world and how/why we use them. Particularly interesting to myself is the idea of object and a representation of a living being. By bestowing our own experiences and memories upon an object we enrich that object beyond its material form. Designers are asked to also be aware of materiality in the sense of nontraditional materials and processes keeping in mind the social aspect of designed objects and spaces. Community involvement and locational responsibility are also a strong suit of slow-design. One of the most interesting aspects of slow-design is acknowledgement of material life spans. Restriction of material doesn’t have to be a voluminous concern, if one only considers the life of the continuance and durability through reappropriated materials.

Slow design, while obviously concerned with how the object/site is produced and considered also looks into the institution and socio-economic environment in which they exist. By a process of reinvention, consideration (pre, present and post existence) and reconfiguration the objects we make can have a web-like effect on the industries and communities they come in contact with. In conclusion slow design is not some revolution in materials at the forefront of technologies and green innovations of industry. At it’s core lies an approach of thinking about our current options for production and material in regards to sustainability and use management. We have in our possession a set of tools and byproducts that can be used in conjunction with socially responsible actions.

Autonomy, Participation, And

In her essay Autonomy, Participation, And Claire Pentecost attempts to question the role of art and artists in a society that is continually promoting financial and cultural independence. She questions if there is not another form of independence. It may be one not of a single cell but existing more macro in scale; what larger forces (social tissues, organ (systems), and organism) can achieve.

She wonders at one point is the general role of the gallery simply pervasive notion that art is doomed to only reference it’s forefathers (and a very few foremothers) from the 1950’s and 60’s? Is the only option a regurgitation of the same icons and language, resulting in a stifled form of creation and subsequent lack of experience. “So we wonder why what we see in the rooms is so tame and yet construed as innovation even when it replays the innovations that came and went decades ago.”

She then questions the role of the artist in this passing era. There is a new world we are living in, and in a non-participatory fashion at that. Where fundamental questions about where the source of the things we consume, produce and experience both come from but also go after we exhaust them. So it is a role that demands enlistment if you are an artist, “If artists are as ignorant as most people, the structures of participation they offer audiences reproduce existing feelings of paralysis and powerlessness and ultimately contribute to prevailing cynicism about any kind of participation at all.”

She goes on to cite several artists that envelop themselves in the current modes of what we consume and glean, through socio-cultural injection. She also cites the Yes-men as a strategy to undermine the channels that we choose to represent us in facets that we believe require professionals and experts (Media Sources, Politicians, Economists). I think this troupe does and amazing job of subverting these institutions. She goes on to beg the question, “Why don’t more people replicate the strategies of the Yes Men to steal moments of participation in the fortress of power?” and lists several hypotheticals. I believe there is a smaller class of people/artists that can fit into the shoes on the level of the Yes-men. The are variances of defiance that most can participate in that are not so aggressive. Having an objective filter to the media we consume, actively choosing which companies we patronize and support of business of healthy ad campaigns.

I believe most everything about participation, social consciousness, and active voice are imperative to foster a community that evens the level between its richest and the poorest. To make a simplified statement I believe it is the role of artist or activist to lead instances of change (with the help of any comers) and to resist through thoughtful editing of what is oppressive/lacking responsibility.

Reading Responses 2 & 3

Autonomy, Participation, And

Claire Pentecost calls in to question our accepted understanding of autonomy as an artist. Her suggestion is that the majority of artists seek to develop their individuality and identity within the white walls of institutionalized gallery spaces in a way such that the perceived state of autonomy is no more than acceptance into that institutionalized group, thus nulling the assumed state of autonomy. The act of autonomy is just participatory in a larger established setting. She then proposes the idea of autonomy as a truly new or separate entity which encourages participation in ways that contribute to a community and work outside of white-wall spaces. Essentially the argument seems to be of “autonomy as status” vs “autonomy as contribution.”

I think it’s an excellent point to consider. The revolt against an established hierarchy in art is nothing new - every movement in art is in some way this very reaction. But artists and, for lack of a better word, technologists are converging more and more, allowing for greater contribution - be it as action or statement - to the world. In this manner the gallery space will naturally give way to public space or personal devices as a location for experience and feedback. It does go back to questioning the artist’s initial approach to art - are you setting out to create an object to be inspected or an experience to for others participate in?

Going back to Jeremijenko & Bratton’s article, it’s easy to reference the “data-smog” works that Bratton speaks of, where these otherwise beautiful works that look as if are interfaces but are really just beautiful displays of information, gallery worthy works. But the whole process can be opened up to participation - where is the data coming from, how is it being parsed, how does the visualization make sense of the data, and who gains from the information the work portrays? If the data is of concern to the artist, how do they address where the work is seen and who it impacts or informs?

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the technology and process of creating informative data work. I know I do it. But addressing some of the simple questions that Pentecost poses at the end of the article are excellent ways to help guide a project before you even start.

“What is the artist participating in and how?

What is the invitation to others and at what point in the process is it issued?

Has the paradigm of the aesthetic encounter been redefined?

What seems to be the objective of the participation: is it to enhance the prestige of an artist or

cultural institution or does it aspire toward a substantive experience for participants in their

own lives?

What are the possible outcomes of the participation?

Is it likely to change our relationship to participation itself?

If autonomy is the object, what do you want to do with your autonomy?”

Slow Design

Strauss & Faud-Luke propose slowing down the entire design process in order to fully explore the context and implications of an object. “This process of careful and continuous (self-) questioning challenges the designer to reach for the core of design and her/his role as a designer.” (p. 3) They break the design process into a series of points to contemplate: reveal, expand, reflect, engage, participate, & evolve. Each of these points is a method for the designer to consider or reconsider an object in context of its intended, implied, or perceived use in relation to the entire process involved in its creation, its reflection upon that process, and its reflection upon the user (or the user upon it?).

I can’t help but think that this is what design is supposed to be, and that maybe it’s not a paradigm shift but a call for recognition of wide-spread design practices as “fast”, “rapid”, or “immediate” design. I don’t think that this is a striking new revelation in terms of design process, more so it is a reminder that we as consumers often inform the design process in terms of rapidly changing desires (not necessarily needs), which in turn informs again the consumer, and this cycle of a high output, quick turn around production just becomes the standard as we progress into ever tightening turns of the spiral until it is just design for now. So I will append my previous terms with “now” design.

I am reminded of The Long Now Foundation, a group that is dedicated to spreading the idea of long-term thinking. They have developed a mechanical clock that will run without electricity or maintenance for 10,000 years and a chime mechanism for it which will toll once an hour without ever repeating the same pattern. Included in the assembly is a “rosetta disc” which has engraved upon it every known language as an archive of communication in human history. It is unfortunate that we need such projects to re-inform humanity of the idea of long-term thinking, but we are better to have it than not. So too with the idea of “slow design”, and with a continuation of such thinking and action we may stand more of a chance of understanding all design as “slow design” without the need to emphasize “slow”.

Responses - Strauss and Fuad-Luke, Pentecost

Slow Design - Strauss and Fuad-Luke

In this piece Strauss and Fuad-Luke enumerate the principles of a design ideology which is meant to foster a significant impact on design sustainability. The principles included are very thoughtful and can demonstrably widen a designer's perspective to consider the systemic impact of the objects they create. But overall I feel like creating a list of commandments like this is perhaps a top-down kind of way to create social change. I absolutely acknowledge that they say that they aren't not rules per-se, only guidelines. But I'm slightly wary of when a set of ideas for solving a problem gets a bit slogan-oriented. It could make it more tempting adopt a marketable/fashionable label like "slow" rather than be focused on the systemic problems on hand. The style that the piece is written in reminds me of Andrea Zittel's "raugh" design ideology which I heard her discuss at a talk at the MCA last year. I'm going to have to paraphrase but she explained that she made up rules like "raugh must be comfy" and "raugh must look messy" as both a way to make fun of design ideologies but also to be able to enjoy the kind of Strauss and Faud-Luke might have in creating and implementing a design ideology. As for the examples, it seems like a lot of the objects offered are conecptual works which contain a critique coming from a slow design perspective, yet are not substitutions for everyday design processes and therefore everyday design objects. A modified car which is designed to move slow and doubles as a bench probably isn't going to replace cars, but only make a critical statement about cars. Still, I don't want too sound cynical. If reviewing these bullets creates a wider conceptual net for designers to make objects within than this is all well and good.

Autonomy, Participation, And - Pentecost

In this piece Claire Pentecost critiques and casts suspicion on the percieved autonomy that professionals in the art world supposedly enjoy. She suggests that this autonomy art figures possess may only function and occur within pre-established conventions and spaces where potential trangression or social change can be contained or compartmentalized. This way a power structure can afford critique and free thinking without having it necessarily interrupt the general slow of power within that strucutre. I understand this skepticism and the desire to make students particularly mindful of how convention can curb your efforts even in a field where were have the impression we can do anything. As an example, there was an event at the MCA last night which was framed as an open dialogue between the institution and its audience about diversity and inclusion. But this discussion was built upon the conventions of the panel discussion so that the only distinguished voices in the discussion were ones that the MCA had chosen. Although there was "Q and A" at the end of the event, it felt like a brief concession. The audience raised thoughtful yet critical questions that didn't seem particularly well attented to. Besides an excellent talk/performance by Hennesey Youngman, which did have moments of trangression which would normally never make it to that kind of platform, it could stand as an example of an institution pre-empting critique by placing it in an appropriate and containable context. For an discussion about inclusion, very few seemed to be included.

On the other hand, when thinking critically about the containing-power of convention I'm reminded of the importance of inflexible "stupid" systems that was brought up in the dialogue between Bratton and Jeremijenko last week. We need some degree of convention to establish the flow of communication in the first place. If we abolished it entirely we would even have agreed upon standards like language to begin communication in the first place. But seeing the event last night reminded me of the importance of keeping these conventions wide; to have them only pre-determine communication in the least amount possible. There is an institional way to evaluate institutions as well as a open one, which might try a more open standard of power relations with no enunciated center.

Two Responses - Jon

The Slow Design Principles

Carolyn F. Strauss, Alastair Fuad-Luke attempt to propose a new way of thinking about the sustainability of designing objects and even thinking about the products one buys, calling it Slow Design. There are six fundamental principles to their practice: Reveal, Expand, Reflect, Engage, Participate, and Evolve. They claim that these aren’t absolute truths, but rather a guide, as there isn’t an industry standard or practice that looks at environmental impact of goods.

In the over materialized world, these concepts could have a great impact on design, if the design community would care to take up these practices (I can’t image the process would create cheap goods). The three that I felt were the most important were reveal, reflect and evolve. Revealing where ones goods come from can really change the way people think about a product and possibly change their awareness of what they buy. If they, the consumer, knows that the animal was tortured, or that their jacket was made in a sweat shop, and were confronted with images of this torture, usually the person would think twice about buying the product. Reflecting on a designed product also kind of ties in with the revealing. The examples that are used in the article show how an item can become obsolete or background noise, but yet form a significant environment in our lives. I think this concept could go further, as reflecting about the object could make the buyer think about the indirect relationship they have, through this item, to where it came from and what it cost the environment in the process. Finally, the example for evolve has a direct relationship to myself. When I was living in my house in Michigan, my wife and I were in the process of turning our yard into an edible garden and growing native plants. Most of the reason was because the grass was such a waste and that it was so much easier to maintain the yard when it is natural.

Dan Peterman’s work is a good example of engaging and participating in a community. ChicagoGround Cover is a piece made from tiles that are composed of recycled plastic. Dan creates a public space through recycling materials that may have been thrown into landfills.

 

Autonomy, Participation, And

Pentecost raises the issue about how artists want to remain autonomous and presents a new, less traditional way to do this. It is almost like she is saying that to be completely autonomous, the artist needs to work outside of the white space she talks about early in the article.  She seems to critique this art world, saying, “We can do our work wherever we want or wherever we can afford to do it. In the end though, what we do must be condensed into forms that fit nicely into clean white rooms.” (Pg. 1) So there are these art world preconceptions and conditions that we artists need to conform to. We are not too autonomous then. She says we want validation, have seen it in institutions, are nostalgic about this idea through viewing past art in museums, but there are too few places to be validated. But, “What if we are not interested in the typically individual location of freedom and material well-being, but would rather forge and foster a shared autonomy?” (Pg. 2) So the artist needs to break away from this system to achieve a collective, truer autonomy. This activism can form a new consciousness for the viewer and artist, therefore giving them a new type of autonomy.

One important thing to overcome is ignorance. She states that, “Despite the appearance of an overwhelming quantity of information, knowledge is guarded jealously by groups who benefit from pervasive opacity and myopia.” (Pg. 4) I’m not too sure I buy into this though. The information age has brought with it, yes I agree much more “stupid” distractions, but also much more accessible information to the population. One doesn’t have to be ignorant in this world. Maybe she is talking about how industries aren’t open about their practices, but she wasn’t explicit about this. The artist’s job is to then become the mediator through participation in culture and outside of the art world’s confinements.

I saw the Guerilla Girls speak a couple nights ago, and it reminded me of this kind of ignorance vs. activism. Even though the art institution has absorbed them, they started out, and remain, autonomous. They also educate the population by getting out and showing injustice in the art world and culture at large.  

Assignment 1: Response

Natalie Jeremijenko and Benjamin Bratton explore the dilemma of aesthetic presentation in pervasive data collection-- in the the discourse of eco-activism and individual empowerment in the context of the trend in data-centric production of new media art. The concept of "ubiquitous" aggregation of data through sensing techniques invites their analysis of the politics of both authority as it pertains to the element of the "missing expert" and of non-human objects as receptacles for meaning in the wider social construct. The theme of their discussion focuses largely on the dilemma of fact, what is taken as fact and by whom. They question the conclusions that such data presents, and who is responsible for the conditions and methods that lead to such conclusions. Although institutionalized control of data collection techniques may prompt us to question the integrity of the facts presented, Jeremijenko and Bratton convey an opportunity for the artist to present data as malleable, open source and non-expert. Jeremijenko's reference to "structures of participation" conveys an acknowledgement that there is a need to augment the relevance of these streams in the lives of the individual, while also providing the individual with a legitimacy as both an investigator and a change agent.

In her discussion of the interface, I agree with Jeremijenko's assertions that refining the aesthetic production as a means to present a compelling finding that resonates with the "everyman" has a better chance to further spurn advocacy both locally and more widely if such an approach is repeated through locales. Her engagement of the audience in the most visceral sense is what I appreciate most about Jeremijenko's works. She places the physical object in the center, as a force that must be acknowledged and questioned. In her piece No-Park she places the object in a public space of high foot and automobile traffic-- where the piece commands acknowledgment and invites the question "why". The invitation for questioning is thrust even more directly toward the spectator in her "tad pole walker" project http://www.ted.com/talks/natalie_jeremijenko_the_art_of_the_eco_mindshift.html (Video: start 3:23), in which tad poles are immersed in various water supplies and paraded through public areas as part of a study of water quality on tad pole development.

Although I applaud Jeremijenko's efforts to empower the public at large through education on how to transform the robotic dog into an instrument of data collection, I see the role of her as single source supplier as a problem. She is controlling the means by which data is collected for others in advising them, thus participating directly in the issue of data integrity. What if all of the sensors she promoted were not manufactured properly and thus collecting data that is inaccurate? Does the individual activist / artist / non-scientist have the means to question this? As her group is a singular entity with a mission, supported by a narrative, it participates as a political body-- a politicization that both Jeremijenko and Bratton imply would be best avoided with the effort to more effectively reach the average person.

In referencing work that I feel alludes to issues of environment and consequence more effectively is Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3606332/A-terrifying-beauty.html (The Telegraph: "A Terrifying Beauty") With the scale of its presentation, a cataclysmic sun hanging in their midst, the audience is forced to contemplate its meaning relative to our own existence-- a starkness that loudly calls for social mobility.

Reading Response 1 - Situated Advocacy

The article hits on quite a few important points, the first being that of data quality. It’s such an important topic yet it is easy to overlook in any visualization, especially when the viewer is unfamiliar with the process. A very close friend of mine is working on community-level environmental action programs in lower income Chicago neighborhoods and has told me that often the participants in their field studies do not understand the difference between weather and climate. If the target of environmental awareness has trouble discerning between macro and micro levels of information, it is probably safe to assume that little thought is even given to the source of the data and the implications of its quality in regards to the information they are being presented with. If the target audience is so detached from the data gathering process, how can the visualization of the culled information really have any meaning? Bratton hits on this idea in referencing the “beautiful ‘data-smog’ projects modeling ambient urban-environmental information in one way or another” that are essentially more works of art than deployable information systems. Not only can the source of data be called in to question here but also its presentation. Transparency and accessibility are key in conveying information to those unfamiliar with any subject.

Jeremijenko’s Environmental Health Clinic is surely a clever idea, especially by making use of the idea that doctors operate outside of politics. This addresses the transparency of information, but is it accessible? In terms of low-income neighborhoods, how likely is a resident going visit an Environmental Health Clinic? The issue is deepened further when Bratton & Jeremijenko talk about better datasets by way of the collection and submission of individuals. In areas of concern, how realistic is it to think that residents have access to computers, an internet connection, and the ability to install sensors? It’s a wonderful dream.

The ability to translate data to information, and to advise an action based on it is powerful. In Manual Castell’s “Rise of the Network Society” there is a major idea where the network (internet) allows for a horizontal power system - more smaller nodes can connect to, inform, and react to one another. This is in opposition to the vertical power structure, typical of most any governmental structure where there is top-down flow of information and orders. In the vertical system the lower tiers have less ability to effect the higher tiers, whereas in the horizontal system “power in numbers” takes precedence and the flow of data is more evenly distributed. To this Bratton & Jeremijenko are much aligned when they speak of greater numbers of data sources being gathered and submitted by non-political entities. The power is there, so how do we make it work? The horizontal power structure has edges when you bring it back to low income areas. It is in these areas where the vertical power structure is still at work because the horizontal system is inaccessible. Does the increase in data availability on the horizontal system further separate it from those who are under a vertical system? It’s a bit of a side-track, but it’s something the article has made me think about. It’s not just an issue of awareness, but of haves and have nots, of surveillance versus sensing, of making real connections that matter beyond social networking, and of trust in the power of the systems at use.

Daniel Bennett - Reading Response 1

In the their published series of conversations, “Situated Technologies Pamphlets 3: Suspicious Images, Latent Interfaces, “ Benjamin H. Bratton and Natalie Jeremijenko attempt to “explore the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism: how our experience of space and the choices we make within it are affected by a range of mobile, pervasive, embedded, or otherwise “situated” technologies." The impetuous of the discussion is how to reassign agency to various groups to collect, analyze and implement various forms of data.

The authors begin by noticing a flaw within the way data can be misrepresented in it’s display through various visualizations. The data itself at it’s current state is flawed, data that is presented “without asking how the data is generated, who collected it and under what conditions. That is, what does the data actually represent? The criticism of how the data is produced is left out.” The breakdown is that the majority of data sets (especially in health and environmental areas are only amassed when they are need for research to a solution. Having said this, the research is conducted by “non-experts” and the wrong agendas are being considered during collection. So as we dig we find the problem lies deeper than the visualizations of this data, or that the data is gleaned without proper consideration. It can go as deep as why/how the data is required and who sets this collection into action, those in position to say we need collection (which in itself colors the data before it’s even considered HOW to collect the data).

They identify the status quo of public agents that are elected (or are un/officially represented) by peoples or organizations that have an inherent agenda. The two identify this problem as a loss of participation in the choice of change/observance by electing someone to make a decision, saying that by voting you are giving up your right to affect a change in those decisions.

“Democracy of representation or representation of democracy.” Particularly Jeremijenko believes that those inhabiting the space should be collecting the data that affects themselves, “those with less purchasing power have less agency to affect the public space and act upon environmental issues that are immediately important to them.” She calls it a bottom-up approach. This data can be analyzed by the artist/analyst to mitigate what is actually being represented. “I have always defended both the amateur and the role of the artist in complex technical phenomena, in biotech [other field listed]” she says, which has a history in current art/action projects. Steve Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) have drawn attention to genetically modified food (Free Range Grain), genetic research and use among others. As a side, Kurtz stood trial and was acquitted because of his use of material.

Both Bratton and Jeremijenko believe there is an immense usefulness in having the public sector collect information. While I do think it is a crucial role the citizens of a locale perform, I believe it should first be organized and mitigated by an artist. This leads to a social trending that puts the research ahead of dredging through what a group of data is suggestion simply by initial analysis. This could be akin to a scientific method approach: hypothesize, predict, test, evaluate/improve, resolution.

An example of this “middle down, then back up” approach can be seen in research initiated by Microsoft called photosynth (TED talk, Important info @ 3:30). All the photographs on Flickr.com are tagged with metadata (informational data added to networked content). Photosynth marries these interconnected packets of content to form a much broader and complete view of our world. By another user linking to my content it then enriches my content itself. From these spaces purposed by artists, viewers can participate and see what is happening though action. This could be an example of as Bratton cites, “image of the collective …They are political images, and forms of “post- social” collective representation.” Through the collective we can both produce and observe what social trends are actually occurring.

An interesting check and artist could provide between taxpayers and legislators is one of ethical supervisor. An example of homeless-proof public structures could be altered, maybe instead of the homeless sleeping on benches as a problem, you could address the homeless population's struggles in your community.

Chaz Evans - Jerimijenko/Bratton response

In this conversation Bratton and Jerimijenko discuss the role and impact of ubiquituos computing on participatory democracy and environmental health. A central motif and question that they often coming back to is how do non-human objects have more agency in a "parlaiment of things"? Can this be achieved with more sensors on more non-humans reporting back more data, and then who collects, interprets, and has access to this data? For the most part the two of them, and especially Jerimijenko, advocate for a more decentralized collection of data where anyone can participate in the production of knowledge toward environmental health. Bratton is a little skeptical of this, as it sounds like a cliche open-source kind of ideology to him. Jerimijenko sticks to the importance of this open data system, but also suggests that the way to establish such an open data-collection system is through the actions of the artist as a "non-expert expert" who stands in for the everyman in a discussion with scientists.

I really like this article because there is so much to agree with and so much to jump in and start taking positions against, reading makes its own micro-politics between the conversants and the reader. But, Jeremijenko's position to me sounds self-contradictory in that she seems to like the idea of increased agency and a broadened base of participatory democracy, but this cannot come about without embracing a certain degree of elitism to bring this about. The everyman represents themself by letting the artist represent them. This doesn't quite make sense. Artists speaking on behalf of everyone is just as dubious as scientists doing the same thing.

But as contentious as that stance is, they both really bring it back around in a nice way when they discuss how the inflexibility of a system is what allows flexibility to flow through it. This I think I'm very on board with, and I also think may help defray Jerimijenko's artist-favoring comments. What I think they are getting at is you need to have some infrastructure, and its needs to work well, but it only needs to determine really low level decisions. This infrastructure of course would have some impact on its use, but perhaps with that little bit of autonomy taken away, a small possibly trivial group decision, a relatively open and variable system can flow through. To put this is far simpler and perhaps reductive terms a little organization goes a long way. This seems to resonate with Cory Doctorow's Siggraph keynote speech where he went about discussing a copyright system in very similar terms. We need copyright, but only a little bit of copyright that doesn't micromanage and speak for people it shouldn't. Once a copyright system gets too specific and begins to micromanage, it only priviledges those who established the system and no longer benefits those it was supposedly made for. This seems like a nice balance point on the scale of control. We don't have to be 100 percent anti-system or 100 percent modernist tyrant. We can take a little of the latter and get a lot of the former.

Reading Response 1-Jon Chambers

With all of this information that communities and societies can gain access to from remote sensors all over the world, how do we use this data for change and progress? Jeremijenko  and Bratton seem to think that this information can change the contemporary authoritative structure by giving access to “the people”; information that was until recently only afforded to scientists, or as they call them, “experts”.  This article starts out by critiquing data visualizations made from ubiquitous sensing as a mode for authoritarian representation. Jeremijenko states that “The criticism of how the data is produced is left out; unless this criticism is engaged, it doesn’t make for a meaningful visualization. If we don’t question how the data is made, we cannot make sense of it. Producing a nice diagram is not all that is required in making sense of something.” (13) By being able to gather and critique this data that is usually reserved for the “expert” community, people can change the power structure: “So we can have (and have had) environmental data collection, and we have a regime where most of the data collection has been done under these regulatory compliance protocols. And now we have the capacity to have this collection occur under alternate pro­tocols or through a different institutional framework, operating with different models of participation.”(20) They seem to think that it is the artist’s role to interpret this data into a meaningful interface for the community.

For instance, Jeremijenko’s project Environmental Health Clinic, prescribes her patients to change the way they live/behave in order to become healthier. She states an example about asthma, and that instead of pumping your child up with medicine, change the air quality in the environment. That sound great, and I suppose they could ride a bike instead of a car, but how can the individual compete with the corporation? They are the ones doing major polluting, so this idea of collective power through gathering sensor data doesn’t really do anything unless the power structure in society can change. Jeremijenko states that, “The capacity to contest, to be in the position to have an opinion, to question the evidence, is where these ubiquitous computation devices can really contribute.” (34) This could happen, but I don’t think through gathering data and showing that you have different data than the government or regulatory companies will change too much.

Later in the article, Jeremijenko states that, “There is a crisis of agency that may or may not be resolved by and/or attributed to the technologies of ubiquitous computing and sensing.” (38) She then goes on to talk about how environmental agencies are conflated with consumer dollars “with the responsibil­ity of your consumption”(38) I though this was great. Bratton then says, “And in that scenario, the image of the future is for data clouds to render on the sides of cereal boxes, where, for example, the transparency of their conditions of assemblage and “carbon footprints” become the discourse through which these objects display themselves to us as interfaces into a vast supply-chain.”(39) The image of being green or healthy is another interface sold to consumers. They then critique that the idea of buying into this corporate green movement image isn’t really doing anything and that one should question the motives of these corporations.  So again, there is a problem with the image of data.

Reading this article and thinking about how the world is becoming one big sensor, reminded me of the Pachube project created by Usman Haque. There are sensors from all over the world being fed into this database and anyone else can harvest this data. I do find myself asking the same questions in the article: why do we need all of this data and how can we make it meaningful? Is measuring the wind in China arbitrary? I will admit, though, that it is cool.

Response, Week 1: Suspicious Images, Latent Interfaces

Natalie Jeremijenko and Benjamin Brittan’s pamphlet “Suspicious Images, Latent Interfaces” introduces a critique of what can often prove a critique-less form of information gathering and distribution, including the current InfoViz craze. Both understand that data is never neutral, indicating both a bias of the source and its purveyor. They demand a criticality that assigns agency to all relevant parties, as well as a recognition of the political possibilities of the project. As Jeremijenko sketches some of her own hyper-critical and political projects, both she and Brittan challenge existing modes of representation through “computational media” (Brittan’s phrase) and attempt to delineate a practice that uses these tools to engage in an experimental political practice.

One of the greatest strengths of this conversation is the conviction of both the participants; this, of course, is backed by both Jeremijenko and Brittan’s practices, interventions into some of the greatest monoliths in modern society - for example, Jeremijenko’s The Environmental Health Clinic challenges deep-seeded beliefs embedded in the medicalization of society, where the environmental causes of “disease” are often ignored as the assumption indicates the functioning of the body as internalized and individual.

An unfortunate example of this, outside of the text, can be found in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago’s near southwest side. The Sun-Times ran an article this summer that indicated that this neighborhood has levels of lead that are 10 times the EPA safety regulations. According to relevant medical literature, lead poisoning is often a cause for concern amongst children of low-income families, as childhood learning disabilities and longterm health concerns often go unnoticed. In conjunction with soil concerns, the Fisk Coal Plant is responsible for making Pilsen one of the worst neighborhoods in terms of air quality, and has long been connected with the sharp rise in childhood asthma in that area.

The real test, it seems, is to turn the idea of what constitutes “truth” or “authority” upside-down, and to re-present the data in a way that turns a critical eye toward the producer and consumer. In addition, there exists a challenge to the viewer - there is a distinct provocation, or at least an opportunity, to act. For example, the Yes Men cultivated a hoax protest against a coal plant being built in a wealthy neighborhood: http://www.wbez.org/blog/justin-kaufmann/2011-04-28/yes-men-behind-coal-power-plant-hoax-south-loop-85804

This protest highlights their occupation of the Fisk Coal Plant entrance, where they resurrected their “SurvivalBalls” project about a year and half ago: http://www.babelgum.com/clips/4006996

The Sun-Times article about lead levels: http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/5979756-423/lead-levels-too-high-in-pilsen-early-epa-study-finds.html

The Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (P.E.R.R.O.) has launched their own website with information about the negative effects of the Fisk Generating Station: http://www.pilsenperro.org/coalpower.htm