technological determinism in media art

Armin Medosch's master thesis on technological determinism in media art is super interesting, dealing with core issues of media art. available here

an io9 post on John Whitney + Douglas Trumbull filed under Retro Futurism

IBM System/360 Mainframe (1968) VS Monolith (1968)

"Star Gate" sequence by Douglas Trumbull
from 2001: A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick (1968)

from i09 in their wonderful Retro Futurism category comes a reblogged Media Art Histories connection. this connection traces a few points of contact between John Whitney's DIY cam machine, his experimental film Catalog, Douglas Trumbull's Star Gate sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Monoliths (as alien/alien technology) and the mainframes of IBM (as similarly monolithic tools in an artists' residency program at IBM)...

"In the late 1950s, animator John Whitney (perhaps most famous for assisting Saul Bass to create the opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) built a mechanical analog computer using the mechanisms from several WW II anti-aircraft guns. He used the resulting “cam machine” to produce short experimental animated films, releasing a demo reel in 1961 under the title Catalog. 2001 special effects artist Douglas Trumbull saw Whitney’s Catalog and was inspired by the artist's slit-scan technique, using it for the animated sequences in 2001. According to writer William Moritz, Whitney submitted “a proposal for a monolith as a computer-generated effect that would have looked different from anything else in the film. He was turned down.” Nevertheless, Whitney became IBM’s first artist-in-residence in 1966, and is considered one of the forefathers of computer animation."

"How a War Surplus Anti-Aircraft Gun Helped Inspire 2001: A Space Odyssey" - Lynn Peril (1:00 PM on Thu Aug 14 2008)
http://io9.com/5037142/how-a-war-surplus-anti+aircraft-gun-helped-inspire-2001-a-space-odyssey

Magic in Early Modern Europe and the Fire-Farting Rabbit

http://www.sil.si.edu/silpublications/dibner-library-lectures/2002-Grafton/Grafton_2002.pdf

"Modern scholars often note that early engineers did not supply formal working drawings of their devices, but represented them in real time, functioning, in a way that did not give away their secrets but could appeal to patrons. Fontana, however, makes a superb exception to this rule. It’s true that he didn’t show how to make my personal favorite among his military devices, the Monty-Pythonish fire-farting rabbit."

excerpt from the text of Anthony Grafton.

magnetic tape museum

http://www.useddlt.com/magnetband_story1.0.html

Diigo, a Social Annotation tool

"The name "Diigo" is an abbreviation for "Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff."

Diigo (dee'go) is about "Social Annotation". By combining social bookmarking, clippings, in situ annotation, tagging, full-text search, easy sharing and interactions, Diigo offers a powerful personal tool and a rich social platform for knowledge users, and in the process, turns the entire web into a writable, participatory and interactive media.

The social annotation service introduced by Diigo allows users to add highlights and sticky notes, in situ, on any web page they read. Imagine a giant transparency overlaying on top of all the web pages. Users can write on the transparency as they wish, as private notes or public comments. And they can read public comments on the transparency left by other readers of the same page, and hear their "two cents" and interact with them."

http://www.diigo.com/

Zotero, a research tool

"Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. It lives right where you do your work — in the web browser itself."

http://www.zotero.org/

Media Matters Seminar @ argos

"the Media Matters Seminar: overview" (written by Barbara Dierickx) of the Media Matters seminar held @ argos featuring Chris Vastenhoud (PACKED), Alain Depocas, Agathe Jarczyk + Christoph Blase is online + dealt w/many issues relevant to MediaArtHistories such as archiving, preservation, restoration, collection + documentation Media Art:

http://argos.xio.be/blog/?cat=7&paged=2

+ video is available here:

http://argos.xio.be/blog/?p=50

PrestoSpace

PrestoSpace, which focuses on "Preservation towards storage and access. Standardised Practices for Audiovisual Contents in Europe." will hold their final workshop in Rome on the 21 & 22 of January 2008:

http://www.prestospace.org/

Magic and Technology

This is a good overview on the history of magic and technology, about time when they were indistinguishable or when the borders were still blurry.

http://www.sil.si.edu/silpublications/dibner-library-lectures/2002-Grafton/Grafton_2002.pdf