Sunday, August 12, 2007

a Grethe Mitchell and Andy Clarke quote

"Mod art has sometimes been described, derogatively, as 'parasitical' as it relies on commercial videogames, but this description ignores both the practicalities and aesthetics of digital art in general. It, too, is reliant upon proprietary applications (such as Flash or Photoshop) and likewise has elements of appropriation (with or without manipulation) which although they have been around since Duchamp - if not earlier - have come into their own with digital technologies. Digital art presents inherent problems if judged by traditional aesthetic criteria (particularly those which emphasize 'originality', 'uniqueness' and 'the hand of the artist'). This does not mean, however, that digital art is invalid; instead, it means that the criteria of assessment need to be re-thought when applied to digital works (including videogame art).
So rather than regard mod art as 'parasitical', we feel it is more correct to describe it as a virus that produces mutations in its host. Mod artists have found ways to subvert and modify every aspect of the game. They have placed themselves in the game (as in Feng Mengbo's Q4U); they have turned games into abstract patterns (Jodi's Untitled Game series) or musical instruments (Julian Oliver's QTO); they have created virtual galleries (Fuchs and Eckermann's Virtual Knowledge Space) and recreated real galleries (Bernstrup and Torsson's Museum Meltdown series)."

from:

VIDEOGAME ART by Grethe Mitchell and Andy Clarke
http://www.transitiontradition.com/magazine_article.php?article_id=75

Saturday, August 11, 2007

an Anne-Marie Schleiner quote

"TM: As a game maker, artist, and teacher, how do think we can best prepare our students to engage fully with digital culture? How can universities best respond to the widespread popularity of computer games and to the increasing importance of online worlds? Put differently, how can we help our students to become better citizens in an information age?

AS:
I think we need to prepare students with both an interdisciplinary approach and a disciplinary approach. Gaming programs should integrate gender studies, film and television theory, computer science, sociology, digital art, and cultural studies into computer gaming curriculums, (and allow for different emphases.) We also need to discover what would be specific to a discipline of game design and gaming studies. Developing such an interdisciplinary and also disciplinary program would allow for a common language to be shared among programmers and artists, as well as informing gaming culture in general. There is much territory yet to be explored and we should prepare our students to better understand both the history and context of current genres as well as providing them with technical, visual, and conceptual toolsets for new areas of innovation."

from:

"Patched In: A Conversation with Anne-Marie Schleiner about Computer Gaming Culture" by Tara McPherson 2003
http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/technocapitalism/haptic

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Archaeology_Glossary.uri

http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Archaeology/98851.htm

field_data_forms.dfn

field data forms: printed forms used to record archaeological survey or excavation information. Special forms are frequently used to record artifact proveniences; features and burials; site locations and descriptions; and level-notes.

artifact.dfn

artifact: any manually portable product of human workmanship (see feature). In its broadest sense includes tools, weapons, ceremonial items, art objects, all industrial waste, and all floral and faunal remains modified by human activity.

replication.dfn

replication: the experimental reproduction or duplication of prehistoric artifacts in an attempt to better understand how they were made and used in the past.

off-site_data.dfn

off-site data: evidence from a range of -information, including scatters of artifacts and features such as plowmarks and field boundaries, that provides important evidence about human exploitation of the environment.

ostracum.dfn

ostracum: fragments (as of pottery) containing inscriptions. The singular is "ostraca."

Virtual Artifact

the "Virtual Artifact" entry on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_artifact

thougths about our workinprograss

for media art histories blog


ideas:
- continued work, work in progress, school magazine that develops, "lehrbuch", not about completion
- but: structure will develop / emerge over time
- little fragments
- stuff we find on the way to something else, that are interesting, but usually just kept in the favourite links and are never looked at again
- person who collects puts tags on it
- tags also develop over time
- other collectors can make suggestions to change or add tags

content / field:

- find stuff (websites, texts, images, multimedia assets, comment or write about it and add image (elaborated linklist)
- timeline, slowly, step by step
-- timeline of people
-- timeline of tools
-- general timeline??? (trends in culture/art, technology/science, society, philosophy, political reasons?)
- bibliography (theory and fiction) + filmography
- text excerpts, video excerpts, audio
- how and which production tools and skills are useful for working in that field, WS
(- like jon already did: interviews)



instruments / methods:

- define methods of / for media art histories
-- collect and comment useful tools
-- skills (reading, analyzing, collecting,...)


other thoughts:
- preserving, storing, describing, visualizing
- what could be an archeological approach, what is there to "dig" for, how can it be found and excavated?, fragments that might be important later (collect and keep)
- compare with herbologists?????????
- write down authors and describe in short words what they write about (title of books, articles, words used in index,...)
--> that way pile up important vocabulary and find out all different approaches
--> metadata that are assigned while data emerges
--> like types of persons, types of events, ...
--> if a MAH project, can we start with oliver's thesaurus? does that make sense? or should we start and develop stat as we go on?
--> can we do the project analogous to wittgenstein's sprachspiele? simple, clear, rules develop, not everything fixed from beginning?
- categories or keywords and how their use and meaning change over time (modewörter, zeitgeist)
- newsletter as a kind of monthly issue of the blog??? (like magazine: has special categories, so also our research is more focussed)
-- interview artists, theoreticians, people in preservation business,...
-- die schönsten neuenalten funde
-- thrown away
-- portraits of people / projects,...
-- calendar
-- mini-glossary to cut out and start a "zettelbox"
-- a "how to" --> compare to make magazine
-- arch. / pres. techniques and projects and collections in other fields and their goals
-- research on category (could be the stuff we have to do for krems anyway)