Pericles <Pericles@insat.com>:
>On one side, an urban public space which pretends to transparency and an
>horizontal mix of water and sand on the other. All there is to do is to
>try to fit in, to be part of the show for there is no place to hide, no
>place for intimacy, no shadow, no margins, no TAZ.
but remember Morgan Garwood <mgarwood@inch.com>:
>so the direction of fit is "world to map", the world is changed
>to look like the plan, or it can be the other way around... like a
>geological survey map that gives precise elevations, the direction of fit
>is "map to world".
(...)
>art too is a mapping problem...
(Pericles') jean-philippe halgand's intuitions (i like to think of his
remarks in that sense) to look the other way from the city, at the seaside
for 'cover', concluding that all one has to try is to 'fit in' echoed MG's
'directions of fit' ('world to map' and 'map to world'). Fitting is a test.
Art sometimes makes uncommon things (and people) 'fit', but art isn't
'mapping' nor a 'problem' (I agree with AS). Some strategies fake fit: they
are disguises. Some strive to misfit, to break change: they're accidents.
When there seems to be no place for intimacy, no margins, no shadow, it
means you cannot think of any disguise or accident to bring about, in order
to face conditions on the map or in the territory, or between them. Map and
territory do not inform each other and you're left clueless.
Pericles <Pericles@insat.com>:
>There is something wrong with the map. So there is with the territory.
>What i mean is that using Korzybsky's sentence or Deleuzian concepts
>just doesn't work . They are not appropriate and don't operate.
Disguise or accident are operations primarily useful when you see no
shadow. The shadow is never mapped out. The territory is informated,
unstable: a place to hide can turn into center stage at the switch of a
link. Korzybski and Deleuze hide in the folds of maps, they're shadows. You
don't want to hide in.
>Since i "master" a website and work with other artists to help them to
>shape their projects, i have always faced the same problem, which is not
>especially an artistic problem : what is an information space, what is
>its spatialty ? Has this question a meaning in this "context"? Can it be
>visualized ?
'What is (an) information (space)?' is a recent and central question to any
kind of cultural articulation, particularly since the Internet/www gained
public access and brought among other things the benefits-beyond-commodity
of email, lists, news groups, and uhm, not to forget, websites. To me
however any visualization of information as spatial is a red herring. Bits
of information _do_ need spatializing (they need 2d, 3d, '4d' --
interaction -- articulation) but the topographical mapping efforts that i
saw weren't mapping the information, but the Internet/www. As if i would be
interested 'where' information that is of interest to me 'resides' in a
network. I want reference, style, trains of thought, intuition... as well
as matter-of-fact data on projects, people. So individual bits of
information come to me 'mapped' if one wishes (I would prefer to say
'designed'). The relation between them is relevant as their refinement,
their ecology. It's the old whole-beats-sum-of-the-parts argument, except
that the whole is no object or artifact, not even a collection, or ever
finished: it's the recipients attention span. The recipient even preferably
maps/designs his own bits of information, from parts that drag along
valuable reference that shouldn't be lost in the bricolage process.
So seek no information space, seek no cover. Test information habits with
people. Spot disguises and accidents in the flow of information. After all
not all information outside the Net is mapped/mapable either. Some is
experienced very much on site and remembered there, most of it washes up
from conversations, readings, chance meetings.
>When browsing the Web, the only thing you watch is the flatness of your
>computer screen with its light coming from within. Which means images
>have the status of signals, no contemplation possible.
I watch information events that I contemplate in the context of my
interaction, per visit. I do save material for further investigation,
revisit sites regularly, print stuff out to read offline or share with
others. In short: information ('browsing the Web') happens in contexts.
But: current (browsing) software doesn't really support gathering let alone
sharing of information. It's a pervasive media/publishing model. Bookmark
business as usual. Artists developed their tools in the past.
>And "virtual space" just doesn't mean a thing.
Virtual space is a backdrop to the bachelor's party, like any old space
Jouke Kleerebezem Amsterdam
PS
Major information cul-de-sac from Morgan Garwood:
>But, I make reference to suck.com, mainly because I think they
>express ideas so similar to my own that it is easier to have them think
>those ideas for me than to have me think them.
-------------------------------------------------------------
a forum on spatial articulations, perspectives, and procedures
texts are the property of individual authors
for information, email majordomo@forum.documenta.de with
the following line in the message body: info blast
archive at http://www.documenta.de/english/blasta.htm
or http://www.documenta.de/deutsch/blasta.htm
documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
-------------------------------------------------------------