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All Raise This Barn by MTAA

All Raise This Barn – a group-assembled public building and/or sculpture.

“Artists MTAA are conducting an old-fashioned barn-raising using high-tech techniques. The general public group-decides design, architectural, structural and aesthetic choices using a commercially-available barn-making kit as the starting point.” -MTAA

Eric Dymond: Could you give me a brief history of MTAA?

T.Whid: Mike Sarff (M.River of MTAA) and I met in college at the Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, OH. We both separately moved to NYC in 1992 and started collaborating as MTAA in 1996 first on paintings and then moving on to public happenings and web/net art. We’ve been collaborating since, showing our work via our websites at mteww.com and mtaa.net. We’ve earned grants and commissions from Creative Capital, Rhizome.org and SFMOMA and shown at the New Museum, 01SJ Biennial, the Whitney Museum and Postmasters Gallery.

ED: The All Raise This Barn project uses one community to design and another to construct. Barn raising is itself a communal activity, drawing out the best in people and providing a place of sustenance for the Barn owner. How did you come to use a Barn Raising as the central performance subject?

M.River: From the start, Tim and I have been interested in how groups and individuals communicate. How do we speak to each other? What rules do we use? How does communication fail or how can it be disrupted? What is the desire that engines (TW: controls?) all of this – and so on. This interest in exchange is what attracted us to the Internet as a site for art in the beginning.

Along with communication as text, speech or image, we like to use group-building as a method for working with non-verbal communication. We’ve built robot costumes, car models, aliens and snowmen with large and small groups. It’s a type of building that is intuitive and open to creative improvisation. This kind of intuitive building is heightened by placing a time constraint on the performance. In the end it’s not about the end object, which we always seem to like, but more about the group activity.

So, at some point we began to think how large can we do this? A barn-raising seemed like the next level. It’s bigger than human scale and contains a history of group-building. Barns also have a history of being social spaces. Your home is your world but the barn is your dance hall.

ED: Did you envision it as a community event from the beginning?

MR: Yes. An online community, a physical community and a community that overlaps the two.

ED: It’s a hybrid work that draws upon some important conceptual precedents. The instructional aspect takes Lewitt and turns the strict instructions he uses upside down by allowing online decisions to drive the design. Did you find the responses to the online polling surprising?

MR: Yes and no. Like the other vote works we have produced, Tim and I set up how the polls are worded and run. So, even though we try to keep the process as open as possible, the nature of how people interact is somewhat fenced in. Even with a fence, people will find a way to move in strange directions or break the fence. It’s not that we think of the surprising answers as the goal of the work, but it is an important part of the process.

ED: There is also the performance aspect which I find exciting. The performance from both events are well documented. Were there any concerns regarding the transfer of the polls instructions to physical space?

MR: We had the good fortune of doing the work in two sections. When Steve Dietz commissioned ARTBarn (West) for the 01SJ Out of the Garage exhibition, we spoke about the sculpture as a working prototype for how a large pile of lumber could be group-assembled in a day with direction from Internet polling. From this prototype we then had a model for how to go about ARTBarn (East) for EMPAC.

All Raise This Barn (West). Sept 11, 2010 - San Jose, CA.
All Raise This Barn (West). Sept 11, 2010 – San Jose, CA.
All Raise This Barn (East). Oct 1, 2010 - Troy, NY.
All Raise This Barn (East). Oct 1, 2010 – Troy, NY.

Tim and I had a few loose ground rules on how to approach the translation. One was that we would leave some things open to the interpretation of the crew. Another was that both Tim and I had our favorite poll questions that we tended to focus on. It was impossible to do everything as some polls conflicted with other but some details liked ghosts, dripped paint and open walls seemed to call out to us.

Kathleen Forde, who commissioned ARTBarn (East) for EMPAC, spoke about these details as where the work became more than the sculpture. The small details held the whole process – material, design polls, and performance together.

ED: I think this comment on the details is right. On first glance there is a fun, open appeal to the work. But when you look at the overall project and how the different phases are tied together it becomes really complicated in the mind of the spectator. There are also different definitions of spectator in this work. The spectator who answers the poll, the spectator on the net who is grazing through the documentation, the ones who engage in the physical construction and those who witness the completed barn. It’s not a simple piece when we perform a detailed overview. Did you think about the various types of spectator that would spin off the project? Were the possible roles for the spectator considered after the fact or were they part of the planned concept?

MR: The “ideal spectator” thought first came up for us in a project called Endnode (aka Printer Tree) in 2002. For this work, we built a large plywood Franken-tree with a set of printers in the branches and a computer in the trunk. We then built a list-serve for the tree as well as subscribed it to a few list-serves. When people communicated with the tree, the text was printed out in the exhibition space. At first we talked about the ideal viewer as one who communicated with it online and then saw that communication in the physical space or vice versa.

Detail, filling the paper of Endnode (aka Printer Tree). November 23, 2002. Eyebeam Atelier.
Detail, filling the paper of Endnode (aka Printer Tree). November 23, 2002. Eyebeam Atelier.
Front view of Endnode (aka Printer Tree). November 23, 2002 during the Beta Launch exhibition. Eyebeam Atelier.
Front view of Endnode (aka Printer Tree). November 23, 2002 during the Beta Launch exhibition. Eyebeam Atelier.

Now I feel that the ideal spectator hierarchy is not as important and possibly limiting. Each experience should be whole as well as point to the larger aspects of the work. People can come in and out of the work on different levels. You voted. You followed the performance documentation. Are you missing an experience if you did not build with us or see the results? Yes, an activity is missed. Can you experience that activity thorough documentation. Somewhat. Are you going to have a better understanding of the work. Probably not. Even for me, some aspect of the work will not be experienced. In Troy, they are programing it as a meeting place now that is it is built.. When they are done with it, they will dismantle it and rebuild it elsewhere as a work space.

I say all this even though it is interesting to me that a work can move in and out of levels of viewer experience. I’m not sure as to the draw of it yet but I do not feel it is about an cumulative effect.

TW: Since Endnode I’ve always liked the idea of an art work that exists in multiple (but overlapping) spaces with multiple (but overlapping) audiences. With our pieces Endnode, ARTBarn and Automatic For The People: () there are 3 distinct (but overlapping) audiences: the online audience, the audience in the physical space and the (select few member) audience that experiences the entire thing.

Poster for, Automatic for the People: ( ), conducted from November 8, 2008 to February 7, 2009
Poster for, Automatic for the People: ( ), conducted from November 8, 2008 to February 7, 2009

ED: It’s that opening of possibilities that makes this ultimately a networked piece on many different levels. I find the idea of two barns, a few thousand miles apart yet linked by common purpose really intriguing. I’m talking about the whole set of experiences, not just the physical space of the barn. There’s a collapse of Geographic distance for the community and a richer experience because of that. Was the project conceived as two distinct locations or was that a fortunate turn of events?

MR: Fortune. Kathleen Forde, commissioned ARTBarn (East) for EMPAC then Steve Dietz commissioned the beta version for the 01SJ “Out of the Garage ” exhibition. Everyone liked the idea of the work arching across time and location. We all also liked the idea that the materials would be reclaimed after it stopped being a sculpture. For me, the reclaimation of the materials to use for a functional structure is the final step of the work.

ED: As the final step, the reclamation removes the common space where the community currently shares the sculpture. Does this mean you are going to use the online documentation as the artifact, coming full circle to where the piece began? Is it important to you that the communal memory will share this role?

TW: Yes, the documentation is the artifact. The barn structure or sculpture itself had been conceived as being physically temporary from the beginning.

ED: Thanks to both of you for your time and for this work.

An Interview with Patrick Lichty Part 1

Patrick Lichty, renowned conceptually-based artist, writer, curator and activist. He has exhibited internationally since 1990. Featured image: taken by Anne Helmond.

Adventures of a Networked Explorer.

Introduction.

Patrick Lichty is an individual who seems to be like a non-stop engine. A hungry human being, engulfed in a prolific journey of constant exploration, whether it be making artworks, writing, activism, curating, collaborating, researching or teaching; he’s deeply involved and engaged in media arts culture. Since 1990, he has pursued art and writing that explores how we relate to one another through technology and how we relate to it. This includes art, media, and computer technology. “Media are one of the “glues” of civilization, and this glue is as fundamental in representing all aspects of society, culture, and interpersonal relations. I explore this through critical theory, conceptual New Media art, and performance/social intervention.”

Lichty also works in almost all forms of Digital 3D – Animation, VR, Fabrication, Physical Computing. Translating the work for display through video, animation, live installation, electronics, virtual reality, physical computing, robotics, digital fabrication and imaging. As well as realising virtual works into traditional forms such as plates for print, paintings, expanding the focus of his work in a broader context.

Lichty’s work, concepts and practice do not rest in one place, it crosses over into many areas of creative production. By getting his hands dirty with the medium of technology, with its relational aspects. The spirit of the work goes beyond singular catch phrases and one-liners, adding complexity and value which only media art and its ever widening scope can demonstrate.

It’s big art with big ideas, interwoven with micro levels of human emotion, asking questions about life and more. This two part interview aims to clarify some questions I have been wanting to ask Patrick Lichty for a while now, so hang on and lets see what happens…

Start of Interview:

Marc Garrett: You have been deeply engaged in the creation of net art, networked art, media art and related activities at various levels, whether it has involved you making it, writing about or curating it. What inspired you to choose which is, now unquestionably, one of the most contemporary and expansive forms of creativity, in the first place?

Patrick Lichty: This is a question that has come up repeatedly. “Why did you choose (what is now called) New Media, or the intersection between society, technology, and culture?” It is really a matter of examining my native culture, which has been that of technological culture. I was raised by an artist who gave me my first electronics set at the age of 8, and my first computer by the age of 17, while raising me on a steady diet of science fiction. I was a child of McLuhan; growing up in the electric networks on a diet of very hot media. However, I do also paint, and when I think it’s appropriate, I also do use traditional media. In short, I speak this culture because it’s my native language.

MG: To kick off this interview I thought it would serve our readers well to discuss your work from a perspective of themes. Over the years, exploration through your practice has crossed over into many different disciplines and fields. So lets begin with Psychogeography. To those who are unfamiliar with this practice, the most well defined and serious use of it was in 1955 by Guy Debord: “a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities … just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape.”

“Of all the affairs we participate in, with or without interest, the groping quest for a new way of life is the only thing that remains really exciting. Aesthetic and other disciplines have proved glaringly inadequate in this regard and merit the greatest indifference. We should therefore delineate some provisional terrains of observation, including the observation of certain processes of chance and predictability in the streets.” Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Guy Debord

Patrick, one of your projects which springs to mind, is a work called SPRAWL “…an exploration of the suburban American landscape, examining the macrocosmic issues related to suburban expansion by considering the microcosmic issues of the experiences of a bellwether area of the US: Stark County, Ohio. In navigating the landscape you will view over thirty panoramic photographs of sites that are now forever changed by the area’s development as well as interviews on video and historical documents which create a map of the larger social landscape of the surrounding community.”

A complex and involved project. What inspired you to examine the ‘suburban American landscape’ in such a way, and how long did it take to complete?

PL: In talking about Debord’s definition, I’d like to talk about my own interpretation of the idea of Psychogeography. If you consider the word etymologically in contrast with Debord’s meaning, you can say that it should not be limited to the urban landscape, but the relationship of human interaction with any landscape. From this, we move out of the city to any relation between community and space, which is my interest, and I like to term as a practice of ‘land use interpretation’ to borrow Matt Coolidge’s (CLUI) term. All of my work in this range, from SPRAWL to the three projects in varying stages of completion (the Hulett Project, Ghosts of Adak, and SPRAWL 2011) come from a personal observation that expands to a macroscopic discourse through the larger exploration/research of the space.

Image: Web Interface of Sprawl
Image: Web Interface of Sprawl

SPRAWL began as a 3-year personal investigation of my own distress about suburban sprawl in the late 1990’s near my home town, and linking this to the larger national conversation regarding sprawl at the time. For reference, I was born in nearby Akron, Ohio – the subject of Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders song My City Was Gone, which describes the colonization of an industrial city and its countryside by sprawl and shopping malls, so if SPRAWL has a soundtrack, that would be it. I began SPRAWL in 1998, as a series of panoramic photographs of various sites near my home, with just a vague impression that they were a cohesive body of work. Also, the idea of nostalgia for the pastoral farmland of my younger days seemed far too simple to be satisfying, so I knew there was something to it. So, when the Smithsonian American Art Museum put out a call for works dealing with landscape online, I felt this was a fantastic place to really explore this idea in a larger context. Then they offered me the commission, the project went from a set of 32 panoramas to a hyperdocumentary in about three solid months of production, including travelling back to Ohio from Louisiana, interviewing, doing on-site footage, and performing historical research.

What I think is important about SPRAWL is that it’s ‘sensable research’, in that it managed to manifest the ideas I had about this problem, learning a lot more about community ecology, allowing the articulation of a microcosmic issue in macroscopic terms. In more personal terms, it allowed the development of my question of social issues related to my concern with the understanding that my perspective was only one of many, and from examining a multitude of perspectives, I could learn what the larger issues were, and create a discourse with a larger community.

MG: On your website, for the Ghosts of Adak there is a statement of yours, saying “My father and I have something in common. He was born in 1921 and spent 2-1/2 years in the North Pacific campaign on Adak Island in the Western Aleutian Islands in Alaska. I have heard about it since 1962. So I went there for 10 days. And I found him all over again.”

I also visited another site to find out about the community living there, and on this site called Alaska Tracks. Ned Rozell writes “Adak’s having a tough time, and the community of about 200 people in the mid-Aleutians has been struggling since the Navy pulled about 6,000 people out in 1997. It’s got a feel to it now like the Love Canal area of Niagra Falls had in the 1980’s, like everyone took off and left a few ghosts behind.”

How was your 10 days stay there and what did you learn?

Do you have a clear idea of what this project will become? Also, I noticed that it is part of an artist residency program at Eyebeam R&D Atelier NYC. How do you intend to present this work, in a space, on-line or something else?

PL: That’s a book in itself, and probably will be, which is part of your next question. First, why – My father is nearing 90, and for most of my life, he had gone on about this “place” that he had been for a period of time, and recounting endless stories about it. No place else had that sort of impact on him. Does not talk about Seattle, or San Francisco, or even Chicago (all places he had spent time) like that. I also think that as he is nearing 90, and in that he and I have a very strong bond (actually both Lodge brothers, if you can believe that), and I wanted to know about him in the deepest way possible, and probably in so doing, learn about myself and the site. But then, that fits the process.

The issue with Adak is that it is a tremendously complex place even before I overlay my own emotional architectonic. It was the site of the Northern Pacific campaign of the United States versus Japan during the Second World War, mainly as a diversion from Midway. I had made a deal with the CEO of the facility to exchange the photos for a room, a 40-something Niigata-born guy with petrochemical ties, whose father might have been my father’s enemy, and ideologically, probably was mine, but the personal nature of the trip put that on hold. There were a lot of external and internal conflicts that I had to navigate just to get there.

Image: part of the project The Ghosts of Adak
Image: part of the project The Ghosts of Adak

In short, Adak is currently the remains of the Adak Naval Base and surrounding facilities, which is basically a minor port, petrochemical storage facility, a fishery, and home of the westernmost airport linked to the Continental US, further west than Hawaii. If you rent a car, you rent one of the trucks a local offers, the gas comes from the tank farm, and the ‘hotel’ is a number of duplexes that the residents rent out to visitors. There is a General Store, a cafe at lunchtime, and the old VFW becomes the tavern for dinner, offering an entree or some microwaveable snacks along with a full bar. You sign a disclaimer to absolve the Corporation of any liability if you encounter black mold, fall into an old stairwell, sinkhole, run into an old unexploded shell, etc. I’m speaking a little darkly about this place, but it’s pretty rugged with radically changing weather, frequent earthquakes, and they’re still cleaning up the old artillery ranges.

On the other hand, it’s one of the most amazing places to be. It’s right at the edge of civilization, a volcanic arctic island withn no trees and some of the most amazing wildlife you’ve ever seen – eagles, otters, seals, birds. I can see why my father talked about it so much.

One other thing of note is that while doing the project, I’ve run into all sorts of people who have served, lived, or even been born there, as there was a 6,000-person family facility. On the plane from Minneapolis to Anchorage, I ran into an airline pilot who had just been on a caribou hunt there, and he gave me his GPS information and a lot of pictures. On another trip, I ran into a woman who was born there. It was unbelievable.

What did I learn? I learned about a history that few remember, I learned about my own history and how it affects me. I also learned about the local culture, its history, how Alaskan culture meshes with corporate interests to create a lot of the issues seen in mass media. There isn’t a lot of concern for the area from the locals, and actually the Military was doing a decent job with the cleanup. From a more personal level, I also came to understand that everything is transitory. Art, culture, society, all ephemeral in terms of a mountain. Human beings don’t matter very much to a volcano, but definitely the other way around.

When I was walking on the western (uninhabited) side of the island, I had napped on some tundra and realized I didn’t have my GPS or keys – all my keys. I knew where I slept, and I leave my keys in the car a lot. The worst that could happen was that I would have to walk 5 miles into town in a cold drizzle, get Jimbo the Constable to let me into my car and get the truck in the morning. In the end, I learned that if it isn’t a landmine, it’s not that big of a deal.

“Do you have a clear idea of what this project will become? Also, I noticed that it is part of an artist residency program at Eyebeam R&D Atelier NYC. How do you intend to present this work, in a space, on-line or something else?” This is really tough for me – no, I don’t have a clear idea yet because it’s so hard to frame. It probably needs to be a book, but it isn’t going to be done for a couple more years. I’d like it to be a hyperdocumentary like SPRAWL, but not in the same way. Also, I think it would make a great presentation, and the images are really beautiful. As I mention, it’s terribly hard to frame this project, and I think it should be allowed to be large.

MG: Let’s talk about a piece you created with The Yes Men. As many in the know, know – and of course those who have fallen foul to the Yes Men’s activist-pranks; they are legendary cultural saboteurs. They have impersonated World Trade Organization corporate spokespersons, including Dow Chemical Corporation, Bush administration spokesmen on TV, at various business conferences around the world. In order to demonstrate some of the mechanisms that keep bad people and ideas in power. Focusing attention on the dangers of economic policies that place the rights of capital before the needs of people and the environment. They have more recently become more known to a world-wide audience for The Yes Men, a movie.

Could you inform myself, and readers about the mock industrial video ReBurger and how it came about?

PL: Right. The animation work for The Yes Men is a strange beast, because it came from previous work for a group called RTMark, from which some of us came from to do Yes Men, which is well documented in the two movies. Again, the process for these animations, which I later edit into industrial videos is also an odd one. Usually, when there is an intervention (and I have sometimes appeared in person), Mike will give me a call and say something like, “Hey Patrick, we have this idea for this, for that company…” In this case, it was an idea for recycling feces for the Third World, and not much beyond that general concept. At first, I was thinking of translating dietary fiber to textile manufacture, creating a suit that would look like S**t, but shortly thereafter, brainstorming created the McDonald’s parody. I knew it was going to be shown at Plattburgh College, but beyond that, I didn’t have much context. So, that’s where my process in context with the larger presentation sort of diverges. Mike, Andy and Matt were developing the presentation, and I started in on the simple metaphor of eating shit. In short, I get some basic ideas together, and then produce the clips (not the full industrial video).

Image: Screenshot from ReBurger, watch video online
Image: Screenshot from ReBurger, watch video online

Beyond that basic joke, it’s really just exaggeration – the idea of an international infrastrucure for the collection of post-consumer waste, the branded toilet, and the special product names, like “McDung”. The scene that seems to get people is the one of the Ronald McDonald Colostomy Machine (the paste dispenser) as it creates the brown coil of reprocessed waste and then presses it into nice patties. For me, this is the use of pure literal metaphor, and maybe that’s why it works. Maybe it’s because it stands for a corporation that offers “choices” for healthy eating that few choose, and McDonalds willingly contributes to the obesity and illness of billions. In my opinion, ReBurger just tells the truth.

Screenshot from ReBurger
Image: Screenshot from ReBurger

But the reason why people like the video is also a reason why it was a real problem for the sale of the movie at Sundance 2003. Although it was obvious fair use, many in the film industry were also buyers looking at the movie. Mike Bomnano told me that the legal departments of the movie companies were trying to determine the degree of risk of satiring McDonald’s, complete with branding. This was obviously Fair Use under US Copyright, but again, the possibility of an egregious law suit could have happened. In the end, McDonalds decided to ignore the piece, which was great, since I believe it’s one of the stronger Yes Men pieces.

MG: In the UK, June 1997, the infamous McLibel Trial (mcspotlight.org) came to an end. The case was between McDonald’s and a former postman and a gardener from London, Helen Steel and Dave Morris. It ran for two and a half years and became the longest ever English trial. “…Helen and Dave decided that they would stand up to the burger giants in court. They knew each other well from their involvement in community based campaigns in their local North London neighbourhood and felt that although the odds were stacked against them, people would rally round to ensure that McDonald’s wouldn’t succeed in silencing their critics.” The defendants were denied legal aid and their right to a jury, so the whole trial was heard by a single Judge, Mr Justice Bell.

“The verdict was devastating for McDonald’s. The judge ruled that they ‘exploit children’ with their advertising, produce ‘misleading’ advertising, are ‘culpably responsible’ for cruelty to animals, are ‘antipathetic’ to unionisation and pay their workers low wages. But Helen and Dave failed to prove all the points and so the Judge ruled that they HAD libelled McDonald’s and should pay 60,000 pounds damages. They refused and McDonald’s knew better than to pursue it.” Mcspotlight.

I can imagine that McDonald’s were considering their past experience, with cases such as the McLibel Trial. “The legal controversy continued. The McLibel 2 took the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights to defend the public’s right to criticise multinationals, claiming UK libel laws are oppressive and unfair that they were denied a fair trial. The court ruled in favour of Helen and Dave: the case had breached their rights to freedom of expression and a fair trial.”

For your project 8 Bits or Less, in 2002, you wrote a brief statement which I am assuming must be about your own condition, saying “An artist who has become blind (whether physically or ideologically) has resorted to viewing his world through the prosthetic devices that constitute his sense, like cell phones, and wristcams. The result is a distorted landscape that considers Situationist theory, surveillance culture, identity, and alien abduction.” Can I begin by asking why this statement came about and then what part of the project you feel communicates or is expressesed most successfully?

PL: First on the matter of ReBurger, I think that the smarter entities know not to react, but that isn’t always the case. Perhaps the ones who have been burned, now have a smarter PR team.

8 Bits or Less is a series I did that was influenced by several things.
Image: 8 Bits or Less, 2002

8 Bits or Less is a series I did that was influenced by several things. For many years, I had felt that as technological artists we are slaves to “innovation”, which is merely an exciting word to stand in for the commercial upgrade path in software and hardware. This set of videos addresses my dissatisfaction with the notion of verisimilitude in regard to techological art, or the “big ticket” piece. Ever since the late 1990’s my response has been to either get by with just enough aesthetic polish to make the work believable/legible, or to willingly embrace a low rez/grayscale time. The lo-fi grayscale is not the same as 8-Bit, which has 256 colors and refers to early personal computing and video games. Perhaps it is closer to my passion for Slow Scan television (a 1970’s video modem technology in which a frame is transmited every 7 seconds) or my position of eschewing resolution and color depth as a form of intransigent aesthetics. In addition, the fact that the frame rate is at most 3 frames per second, and was shot with a Casio Wristcam at one frame every 1.5 seconds was also my homage to Muybridge, mainly in terms of the grayscale and serial qualities of the video. Beyond that, and the fact that each video consists of about 900 frames, all hand edited, perhaps 8 Bits or less is more about my politics about the technological industry and personal differences with New Media and technolust.

On the personal side, 8 Bits or Less is an allusive fable having to do with the fact that I have been blind a couple times in my life, but this blindness can translate to the fact that for a period of time I felt that I had immersed myself in my studio for long enough, that I saw the world primarily from my screen. Therefore, although I had been visually imparied for part of my life, much of which has been fixed by having cataract removal in 1999, I still felt that there was a metaphorical blindness caused by society’s use of mobile devices, the existential distorions of 24-hour cable networks and the Internet. Therefore, the series (if you listen very closely) incorporates a mix of postmodern theory and hyperbolic statements about aliens, obscure jokes about bits and nybbles, surveillance culture and the abjection of low fidelity.

What I think is successful about it is that it holds together at all, or that it engages the viewer without necessarily relying on leading edge technological conceits, but perhaps using the wristcam aethetic is a conceit in itself. Antoher aspect that I have enjoyed about it after five or six years is that it is a really hallucinogenic series of pieces. But then, I think this is the point that Gibson made about cyberspace that has been expanded on by the Baudrillardian mediascape and the Internet – the consensual mass hallucination (facilitated by mass communications).

———
Watch 8 Bits or Less series. Images link to videos online.

A wristful of bits. Found on DVlog.

A wristful of bits. Found on DVlog.

8 bits or less. Found on DVlog.

8 bits or less. Found on DVlog.

http://www.dvblog.org/movies/04_2007/lichty8bit/closevision.mov

Close vision. Found on DVlog.

Big thanks to DVblog for 8 Bits or Less images & video links.
http://dvblog.org/

Brazilian Velvet Gold Mine

Neptune is Brazil’s most powerful supercomputer. With the name of a God, its 16.2 trillion calculations per second, distributed through 256 servers with octo-core processors, are specially designed to help to model the nomadic structures of ocean currents and the surface of the deep-sea floor. With this ocean topography, it will chose the best place to install 150 million dollars of pipes, or risers, through up to 2000 meters of water, 2 kilometers of solid rocks, and then at least 2 kilometers of a fluid layer of salt submitted to intense pressure, and open a 1 cm diameter hole over 100 billion barrels of crude oil and natural gas on Tupi1 oil field2, liters of black oil that can make Brazil become the 5th largest producer in the world, overtaking Kuwait’s production. You may be asking yourself what does this has to do with art.

With this ocean topography, it will chose the best place to install 150 million dollars of pipes, or risers

Since 2005, a series of radical conferences has taken place around Brazil, organized on a discussion list. The organic group of dynamic gatherings of these conferences call themselves Sub>midialogy – the art of re:volving knowledge logos by practices and disorienting practices by the immersion in sub-knowledge. Always moving through the countryside and remote regions of the country – and with very small initial support from Waag Society for Old and New Media, conferences have taken place at Campinas (2005), Olinda (2006), Lençois da Bahia (2007) and Belem (2009). At these events one could lay on the floor to listen to a passionate talk by Etienne Delacroix, join well-known Brazilian new media theorists to receive a collective electroshock, join in debates about public policies with Gilberto Gil’s advisor and friend Claudio Prado or just take a deep swim in natural rivers with the most important artists in the country. Many participants were international and national activists, artists, media practitioners, policy developers and government employees that showed up their face on those festivals. The talks and debates could happen anywhere at any time and many performances took place during each event. More than a simple meeting of friends to relax and enjoy while they discuss and work, this series of conferences were fundamental in the development and implementation of many of the governmental programs on social inclusion using new technologies and free software for media production, so-called “digital inclusion”. Many of those practices, theories, methodologies and platforms were developed with the ideologies, discussions and practices of Sub>midialogy in mind. And Brazil became a leading nation in these initiatives worldwide.

Sub>midialogy conference

The obvious interest of the Brazilian government regarding the Tupi oil field arose in 4 different proposals: the first one changes the oil, gas and other fluid hydrocarbon exploration and production systems in the country from a Concession System – where the company responsible for exploring pays royalties over the extracted product – to a Share System, where the production is shared between government and the company that explores the reserve. The second project creates a Public Company called Brazilian Company on Oil and Natural Gas Management (Petro-sal) responsible for the administration of exploration on the same model as Norway. The third project gives the Federal Union the right to transfer exploration from Petrobras – until now the only Brazilian oil company – in change of money or public titles. And the 4th proposal creates the Social Fund that will support social (health, education, habitation), environmental and technological projects. It is important to note that only last year Brazil became a net energy exporter, mostly because of its aggressive push into sugar-cane ethanol and hydroelectric power. “All of a sudden Brazil is emerging as an energy power,” said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington focusing on Latin America. “Everything they have developed, from soybeans to sugar to oil is suddenly working. They have had amazing luck.”

Petrobras tradition of funding social and cultural activities puts it in the honorable position of the Industrial Sector Company that most invested in this field, investing R$ 205 million (around 70 million pounds) in theater, buildings restoration, cinemas, movie production, dance and even supporting actions from the Ministry of Culture from Brazil. Here, we should consider that a Brazilian cultural funding company gains discounts of up to 4% on their Annual Incoming Tax. All the selected projects to be funded should conform to the cultural policies of the Company and the objectives of Petrobras Cultural Program. This year, and for the first time, Petrobras opened a public call for projects on festivals of digital culture. And Sub>midialogy conferences were selected to be supported with 200 thousand reais (around 68 thousand pounds).

Petrobras Cultural Program funding

The selected project aims to develop 3 different Sub>midialogy conferences around Brazil, to be hosted at Arraial d’Ajuda, Baia de Paranagua and Mirinzal, touristic paradises almost unreachable for Brazil’s population. And it starts with some important challenges. First of all, and most important, is that for the first time this series of conferences will have major financial support. How will the collective that organizes itself through discussion list and wiki pages survive the well-known crises that shocks many cultural groups and organizations on their first big money support? The second issue is how these radical media and political practitioners will negotiate with the paternalistic and elitist machinery of support of the hated oil companies. And, at last, but not least, what ideas and practices will arise during these three editions of Sub>midialogy that will keep running this source of creativity on theories and practices on new media and politics?

We can have a clue. It is very well known in Brazil that resistance is the secret of joy. And vice-versa. We expect that different practices and ideas on sustainable development can emerge. We expect important and frank discussions and debates on socio-cultural-ecological issues. We expect to see art performances that inspire a new global order. We expect to see if ideas can still be tools of subversion of cultural traditions in the world. Of course, you are all invited to join in and help with your ideas and practices to use Neptune, the supercomputer, for a more noble mission.