Critical Intelligence in Art and Digital Media

Can digital art practice do more than propagate technical progress and provide affect stimulus in estheticized production-cycles? How can cultural intelligence work to provide an informational context
for others and apply technologies of the imagination to tell another story?

Konrad Becker
reposted from Nettime
(this is a draft posted on the list serve Nettime. Especially for Nick and Stacey and others working with dispersed social media/visualization tools-- what kinds of reflections can 

The creative imperative has become a dominant force. With culture as an economic engine in post-industrial societies, artistic practice diffuses into business practice and the realm of the Creative Industries. In the shift of the economic focus toward a dematerialized value creation, innovation cycles of planned obsolescence and estheticized experience design turn into standard market models.
In creative cities job profiles demand "creativity" for even the most mundane tasks. Dreams, of everyone being an artist, turn into nightmares of internalized gouvernmentality.

Just as Situationist tactics have been appropriated for advertisement, Tactical Media concepts of the 1990's are now Public Relations and viral marketing standards. Dissent is easily appropriated in the new
spirit of capitalism and todays critique is tomorrow's business. Creative Industry appropriations of estheticized boutique activism offer affective relief with a maximum of inconsequentiality. While
effective strategies of resistance and critical interventions need to
build on an understanding of the past, the change from disciplinarian
institutions to a society of control transformed the playing field.

In new control regimes the traditional disciplinarian modes of
preconfigured enforced categories and educational indoctrination
give way to the fluid mining of cognitive response and reaction
flows. Electronic networks and intelligent materials weave into the
fabric of social space and into infrastructures of urban places.
Embedded in ambient Big Data intelligence, proprietary protocols
and orchestrated devices exploit the individual. Density and speed
of digital networking veils paradoxical effects of increasing
fragmentation, segregation and asymmetric relations.

Not merely tickling cultural taste buds but providing a critical instance of reflective intellectual work, artists as agents of intelligence demystify the power of media over matter. New forms of collective practices that intervene in processes seem more interesting than past models of individual genius. A practice that offers a
critical technical intelligence and a critique of representation
by mapping the flows of ideas and power is necessarily based on
cooperation. Are there forms of cooperation outside a creative class
and a digital proletariat modeled on ecstatic internet bubbles?
What are models of critical artistic practice in a fluid field of
post-Fordism? What are potential roles of cultural agents in societies
saturated and structured by powerful communication technologies?

The Contingency of Illuminated Music

Some thoughts on Todd's sound/light interaction piece.

I documented this (poorly) on my phone:

The setup is simple enough: a single, bare lightbulb mounted to a stand, a flight box with a portable amp/speaker, a 1/4" cable, and an iPad. What belies this gear is an interaction between the digital and the analog, between sound and light, operated by hand and at the subject's discretion of position. And it is here that I think a very interesting intersection occurs.

Sound, generated by the iPad, operates the light, that fluctuates voltage based on the sounds volume. Pitch didn't seem to have an immediate effect since the light was varying in degrees of brightness, louder sounds made the light brighter, a lower volume sound was dimmer. In turn, the iPad's sound is affected by the light.

This is a convergence of light waves and sound waves. Sound waves, much longer and "slower" than shorter, much "faster" light waves, is a interesting example of the way in which these two properties or "states" can and do interact. While both can reflect, refract, be diffused and absorbed, light travels through a vacuum while sound requires a medium to emit through. In this piece, the interaction between both is brought to attention and they become dependent on one another.

How does this question musicianship? This is an "instrument" that can be played. The performer's proximity to the light, ad as it seemed from the demo performance, angle and direction of approach also seem to affect the sound output. These positions could be mapped and recreated, and performed according to a score, with the intent of creating a unique sonic and visual effect. With experiment and practice one could come up with an interactive light-and-sound instrument that, depending on the options with the audio software on the iPad, be almost limitless with possibilities.

What are some of the "dependencies" about this piece? The light depends on the sound for activation, but he sound is also dependent on the light as well. Are both balanced? Is there one quality that might have a value or advantage over the other? Which one starts it, or how is it started? Is there a "primer" of some kind like the bulb on your lawnmower engine that you push in order to prepare the engine for its first step of combustion.

A larger deployment? A field of these lights mounted with enough room to move between them, and a map or other process to follow to create a sound and light "symphony". Perhaps the lights are arranged in a matrix, so the performer could have better access to a field of lights that, for example, where of a different wattage or type than the others. I assume that a frosted 60w incandescent bulb would have a differet affect on a light sensor than a clear 200w lamp; or fluorescent or halogen or mercury vapor or any number of light-emitting bulb.

Could pitch be represented by color (like a multi-led)? I've been looking into LED and Arduino-controlled devices. The possibilities for multi-color LED are extensive. Does this iPad and software react differently to colored light? Part of a Net.Art project I'm working on this semester has to do with local weather data and the creation and composition of colors based on this changing data. How might Todd's piece behave if the light source was colored, or maybe always changing colors?

How does this piece intersect the analog with the digital? This is an excellent example of how the analog (light, sound) interact with the digital (processing of both of these signals). Like I've said it provides an intersection, a crossroads where the two media meet, and they then rely on eachother and constantly change based on the gesture of the performer. Even in this stage of its development, the possibilities for the use of a piece like this are clear and, happily, without definition.

Response To Nick's Work

This response is being posted on behalf of Ryan due to technical difficulties

The response to Instagram has been overwhelming not only on the consumer side but to the academic mind as well. It seems that I haven't had class this semester at some point in the hour we end up talking about Instagram. I believe this be for two reasons, one, the social network side of the app and two, the nostalgic filters and how they function in our current culture. For myself the interest the lies in the social networking aspect of Instagram. It's the ability to share ones thoughts and views through the use of images and apply a filter to either obscure it or heighten it. Slowly but surely more and more artists are using Instagram as a database in making art, whether its mixing a single image with multiple filters till the image is no more or appropriating images from Instagram by doing simple word searches. With regards to Nick's work he took an approach that I have yet to see when making art in the context of Instagram.

            When I first started looking at Nick's four images, all four images looked to be bad light leaks from the camera. The images where very small about the size of a medium format negative. Which is the actual size of an Instagram image. So at first I thought they were contact prints and it wasn't until Nick said they were from Instagram that I became more aware of the intent of the images. By looking at what was in front of me I would of never thought these images where from Instagram. They looked like photographs I use to take with my Holga camera with the mixture of whites and oranges in the images. Nick grouped his four images into two double sided glass frames with black edges, each frame had two images in it with the images stacked vertically upon one another. For myself framing the images this way treated the images like precious objects that are to viewed almost on a scientific level. What I mean by this, it reminds of going to museums and viewing the large butterfly’s that are collected for research. When I think of Instagram, I think of it as a large database of images of ones lives in images and don't think this type of framing works with images taken or made on Instagram.

             When thinking about Instagram and how it functions as an application on a smart phone I had to go back and read Lev Manovich “The Language of New Media” specifically chapter two. It deals not only with GUI (graphic user interface) but also the function of cut and paste. The filters in Instagram are really the same as the filters in Photoshop, click and paste. A person just doesn't have the options to get into the detail of the image but one can download or purchase filters for photoshop and those filters will work the same as in Instagram. Instagram's filters are a cut and paste function but where people come to a divide seems to be the labeling of the filters which goes into the nostalgic language of photography. To myself the labels are really nothing more than apart of GUI of Instagram. It's how the filters make the photo look and feel that draws my interest and how amateur photographers choose to use these filters.

            Ultimately I feel Instagram is about the continual building of a database of images that is taking place all the time and what we can draw from the images. In regards to Nicks work I think there have to be more images and what I mean more, is hundreds of images. This I feel would show the simplicity of the filter and how nostalgia can now be easily applied. Nick could keep the same basic image and simply remix it over and over but how those images would be displayed could be thousands of images laid upon the floor. 

Response To Darren's Work

This response is being posted on behalf of Ryan due to technical difficulties

In looking at Darren's images the first thing that caught my eye was the contrast of the black borders to the actual images. With images being behind glass I could see myself easily in the image from the mirror effect. Every image was horizontal in a vertical frame which I also found very interesting. With the size of each image I had to lean in to view the detail of the photograph which made my reflection even more apparent, asking the question of where I belong in this subject matter? I don't know what types of frames Darren is thinking of using for this work but glass with no type of frame dedge is something I really liked. In that, most frames that I see around images these days really deter from the image, even if a simple black frame was used with this work the image would become a frame within a frame. The subject matter in these images frame themselves and adding another frame I think would take away from the work. By not having a frame and using the glass also allows myself to easily go from one caption to another.

            The captions flowed really well together I don't remember from class if Darren arranged these images in any particular order. There were only a couple of miss spellings from what I saw but that can be fixed up quick. I was more interested in the use of text and what font was used. Through the use of white text and the black and white imagery the overall group of photographs had an editorial feel, also by having them laid out in a single row made them look like the were getting ready to go to print in the morning newspaper. Although, I became in thralled with Darren's use of the blind field not only in the images but in the use of the text.

            The last photograph in the row the text read something about a monument being out of the actual frame of the photograph. This was the first photograph that I viewed during the critique and left myself in a little bit of wonderment. This wonderment though left me wanting to go to the next image very quickly. I'm not sure if this was a good thing or bad thing because I don't remember the image that well except for there was a tent in it. I believe this to be one of the difficulties of using text with photographs. People always seem to gravitate towards one or the other, so they both have to work on a give and take system. The other image that I remember the most was some where in the middle of the row and the people on both sides of the photograph where almost out of the frame. A man was walking out of frame with a cell phone to his ear and he was an older gentleman. I thought this one spoke to more of what of is going in that moment and what is happing outside of the frame itself, like we are missing what is really going on or that we should be hearing what is going on.

            With regards to the future of Darren's project I want to see more use of the blind field not only in the use of imagery but also with text. I looked for several resources to help Darren to further his project and the only one that applies that I have is a book called “Porn Studies” by Linda Williams. This book is actually written by her graduate students and in this book there is an essay on Andy Warhol's movie “Blow Job”. It is all about the use of the blind field. I have this book also if anybody would want to barrow it or I can scan the article as well.    

Critique of Krista's piece

At the first glance, Krista’s photographs remind me of Jerry Uelsmann’s works. Especially these two (on the right). I was impressed by the vitality comes out from both of their works, The combination of organic plants and human body makes me think of the mysterious relationship between human and the nature. However, Jerry’s pieces mainly choose one organ instead of the whole human body, the human part always is always enlarged and looks stable and peaceful.  That is also the impression I got from the left photo of this series, that one looks more peaceful and a more harmonious relationship that the human has with the nature. When I read this piece, I read from the right to the left, and viewed this order as showing a progression. For the right one, I felt it showed a struggle that the woman is making and then from the right one I saw a beautiful result came out from this struggle.  In the right one, we can tell that the woman is fighting against something on her wrist, her  facial expression speaks about the pain that she is suffering, and since her wrists are still tangled together, I can feel a strength on that part, which makes me feel the invisible power that she is fighting with is a strong power which is equal to a human’s limits.

For the man’s picture, with his knees on the ground, the gesture looks more like nurturing something instead of fighting against something. Maybe that is the reason that many of us thought the right one can express the idea of pain more. Although that may not be her original intention, I still think the mixture of human and other creature is very interesting, For visualizing the pain, probably the man’s gesture can look more unnatural and uncomfortable. His body can be twisted and maybe there are vines tied around his body and he tries to get himself out from it? Or maybe the thing grows up from his body should look more dangerous and sharp, such as a thorn. I think I would feel painful and uncomfortable if I see a thorn grows from a someone’s body. Then it will be more obvious the two elements (the plant and human) run counter to each other instead of one is cultivating another.

I like the texture on the surface of the image, which helps me establish an association with pain. However, I prefer the cracks only appear on human body instead of on the whole picture, so it suggests that the body is undertaking the pain. The human body becomes a battlefield for fighting against physical pain. Maybe a simpler way is to use real properties, like put mud on the body, in order to make the body differentiates and stands out from the background.

In the discussion, Alexa and I mentioned that we can “hear” sound from these still images. Probably an audio element can be added into this piece. If the image is made by two layers, the audience need to tear the first layer to see what is underneath, the upper layer can be made of material that makes very harsh sound. Or the image itself has a rough surface, the plant is not only framed in the picture, but also pierce through the paper, points to the audience. Silvia also suggested that the color of these images can be darker, these photos now are in beautiful light setting and pleasant looking, probably the experience that viewers get from them can more uncomfortable, so that the viewer kind experience some torture as people in the pictures are going through.

Dou Wei-Xiang Xiang Sheng

Here is the wikipedia page of the musician Dou Wei and an introduction to the album Xiang Xiang Sheng ( Live On), actually it was done by his band Mu Liang Wen Wang.

I can't find a way to upload a mp3 file here, I tried to make a mov file and upload it but failed. Probably will send the piece by email.

Alexa’s Performance Piece

 When she was recording, I sit very close to the camera, I couldn’t control myself thinking whether I will be in the frame and I tried to avoid that. The camera raises our attention to the way we performance ourselves in everyday life. Although this may not be the main theme of the piece, but many of her works do capture the moment when people are exposed in front of camera. In my notes, there is an interesting question we asked in the class: when does the performance start? When she projected the video and sit in front of the screening, she was making the performance. But before that, did she do the same thing as she showed in the video? The line between daily life and performance is blurred. Such a “performance” is going on everyday in everyone’s mind. Just like the camera drive my attention to being aware of my behavior, the whole piece reveals subconscious thoughts going through our mind. It fit so well when her thoughts are projected to other people’s faces.

I also like the way the camera was set up; the position provides an angle and distance that makes it (she) being disconnected to the group.  The disengagement enhances the gap between the world outside and the subconscious world, also makes it looks like a surveillance camera, observing human behavior without involving with that. When she was sitting in front of the screen and observing the past (on the screen), I can’t stop asking is it a naked eye looking at the past now or is it seen from a camera’s eye’s point of view. Is the past being reproduced through the camera or by the performance that involves a human body?

The overlapping of multiple tracks in the audio successfully reproduced the subconscious thinking process. There are also many possibilities to present it in different ways. In my experience, when I think of something, I will be distracted by something else for a while and probably go back to the original thoughts, or maybe I will go along with the new thoughts and old ideas will fade away or sometimes I don’t even think about any thing and the time I realize it I will find that I forget what I was thinking just now. All these could be possibilities to present this piece or some ideas for future work. Likewise, maybe there are some other ways to visualize or reproduce the stage when we think, such as use body movement to create certain energy to type words on the screen instead of using audio. This is just a random thought came out of my mind. I think randomness can also be a point to explore this topic, because it is hard to control what we think, and how thoughts are developed in the subconscious level. This is why this piece is so persuasive and familiar to us.

Relating to her previous works, her female voice adds a layer of gender critique on it. In the voice over, she talks about grooming her hair when she is anxious. I ‘d like to connect that to Silvia’s make-up series, which also contains several performance pieces in it. The idea of make up is a way to disguise in the society as a female by masking and beautifying facial expressions. What Alexa’s voices points out here is more related to body language, but they both speak to female’s reaction to social anxiety or maybe the gap between self expectation and their social profiles. I think they both succeed in critiquing on this issue by using their female bodies or voices as artists.

Generation X

http://joeclark.org/dossiers/GenerationX.pdf

Mike Kartje's Three Performance-Videos

Mike’s three short performance videos from the week before last provided a couple of really interesting intersections for me, in terms of some of the things that I’ve been thinking about in my own practice.

Although they were not specifically identified as such, I think it is possible to read all three of Mike’s pieces as scores, of a sort. This reading is based on the fact that the performances are specific, pre-determined, and somewhat absurd. A reading like this gravitates away from what I’ve previously understood scores to be defined (as pieces in which the directives are explicit). In the case of Mike’s recent work, the motivation behind the content was not always easy to ascertain. In all three videos, however, it was clear that the content was pre-planned and not coincidental. A lot of early scored performances, including Fluxus work, relied heavily on the use of titles—and sometimes existed in text-form alone  (I’m thinking of Yoko Ono’s instructional paintings, but there are plenty of other examples).

I’ve been thinking a lot about the experience of watching someone else perform a score—a very different thing than reading a score. And I’ve been thinking about what Dwight Conquergood writes in his foundational essay, “Rethinking Ethography”:

Ethnography’s distinctive research method, participant-observation fieldwork, privileges the body as a site of knowing. In contrast, most academic disciplines, following Augustine and the Church Fathers, have constructed a Mind/Body hierarchy of knowledge corresponding to the Spirit/Flesh opposition so that mental abstractions and rational thought are taken as both epistemologically and morally superior to sensual experience, bodily sensations, and the passions.

I think that the viewer gains a distinct kind of knowledge from performance—an awareness of others, and of other experiences that isn’t accessible from reading a title alone (which is not to say that one approach is better than the other, but that they are different.)

When Mike performs, I see him as an individual performing scores that Mike Kartje wrote, whether he is silently riding a bicycle (as in the first video), or when he admonishes an unknown person (in the second video). By this I mean to say that Mike’s presence seems implicit in all of these pieces (including the third one, in which a bag billows against the wall in an empty hall.)

The second video felt particularly successful and compelling to me perhaps because the performance seemed to allude significantly to “otherness”— but also, of course, because this kind of performance is perhaps the toughest kind to pull off, and Mike seems to be particularly adept at this. I do, however, feel that a bit more direction would have allowed me to better appreciate this piece.

The first and third video also would have benefited from a bit more indication of intent. In the first piece, I was unsure how to read the content of the piece within the information that Mike had offered prior to the critique (including Derek’s work as an example of inspiration, and the desire to work with modern male identity—which I think is a fascinating subject, well-suited to video performance/ scores because of their emphasis on performance in communication and perhaps the absurdity/ futility of such performances.) At any rate—I’m not sure what the bike ride back and forth or the bag blowing on the wall elicits from me, in terms of asking me to think about how I experience the world. This isn’t to say that both weren’t enjoyable to watch—they were—or that I felt that they needed to function as a metaphor, or that they didn’t illict a variety of associations—but that some sort of direction would have rounded out my reading.

I’d definitely recommend the Fluxus Workbook http://www.deluxxe.com/beat/fluxusworkbook.pdf and The Theater of the Absurd http://www.amazon.com/Theatre-Absurd-Martin-Esslin/dp/1400075238 (or something like it) to pretty much anyone, but these were two texts that came to mind immediately during this critique.

I really like the direction that this work is going and look forward to seeing more of it.

Call for Entries

MICROSCOPE Gallery is seeking film, video, and new media submissions of all types and formats as wells as live expanded cinema or film/video performances for one-day event of programs. Works under 15 minutes (screening) or 30 minutes (performance) and completed during the past year are preferred. NOW What: open call LINK

Analog Microphotography

This image is 1mm in diameter. It was made in 1858.

Green Porno

by Isabella Rosselini

Susan Sontag Book

For those of you interested in the writings of Susan Sontag...
Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

“The only difference between human beings is intelligence.”

The Awkward Transitions of Disneyland!

"The Awkward Transitions of Disneyland!" looks at the way that the designers of Disneyland managed their space-constraints when butting up one themed area against another (comparing this with the much more spacious, and relaxed, transitions in Walt Disney World).

Eugenia Maximova (again)

I posted a brief introduction to Eugenia earlier in the semester and now she has a new project - a crowd funding campaign in order to support the book publishing of her project about the Balkan peninsula: “Kitchen Stories from The Balkan”. Here is a short video of her discussing the project...

Baudrillard on the Parks.....

Forward:  It just may be the way my mind works, but understand abstract theoretical concepts like those of Baudrillard are not my favorite thing to do- however I do find it very useful in clarifying how Baudrillard actually is existing within our world today.  This helps clarify his thoughts on simulation and simulacrum. I hope you get a chance to read this if you were having issues understanding some of the reading.  It doesn't address the reading directly, but applies the concepts to natural space, in particularly the parks idea/nature preserve idea.  And through that avenue you may be able to understand Baudrillard better in the context of your areas of research and interest. 

How would Baudrillard view our national parks systems?

Baudrillard establishes for us an understanding that our perceived lives are an ever changing, exchanging swirl of real, realish, and outright not real experiences and objects. How would a Baudrillardian lens frame up the natural spaces that we have created in America in the form of the National Park and other federally and state held lands? This type of evaluation begins with the role the wilderness myth has played in defining what natural space is, or rather supposed to be, the execution of those mythological ideals within the preserved space of the park system and how each results in an ever-increasing multi-layered cake of simulacra.

The beginnings of the national parks system reaches back into the nineteenth century. The rise of existentialism, the nation's expansion westward, and the pictoral depictions of natural space created by the popular artists of the Hudson River School all contributed to the elevation of natural space beyond our material interactions. No longer was wild, or non-urban, space a bowl of resources for the new industrializing nation to pillage for profit. It was revered and described as being sublimely beautiful, divinely inspired and greater than all man made things because of its natural aesthetic qualities and purity of space. These sentiments and ideals are communicated in the writings and visual works of the era.

Other sources for romanticizing and elevating natural space is found in the westward expansion of the nineteenth century and the birth of the dime store novel. This popular form of cheap literature told, retold, and embellished many stories from the American frontier. This tradition of aggrandizing human-frontier interactions continues today in cinema within the western genre.

In telling and retelling these western themed narratives and in the way natural space was written about and depicted by existentialists and the Hudson River School artists a pattern of expectations and assumptions are created when man interacts with nature. This is established over time and with repetition of exposure. Both repetition and persistence over time are in abundant supply for the genre of literature, film, and visual media even today. Western tropes, such as the moral cowboy who survives all the both man and nature can dish out, have obscured a more “realistic” view of out role within natural space and how interactions between the individual and the natural world traditionally occur. This obfuscated, but actual relationship we have with natural space is replaced, in a very Baudrillardian sense, by the representation and ideas that the western/wilderness has come to represent.

This is a method of replacement and changing of the real into a simulacra an hyper-real space occurs that Baudrillard describes in Simulation and Simulacra. This simulacra is created through a process of exposure and acceptance over time so that the new simulacra is now intertwined within the everyday and indiscernible from the original. Another example of this process in can be made with commodity objects. The drink coffee represents, or is intimately connected with, its botanical origins. Coffee is a drink made from a bean, grown on a tree, then made into a drink. With the numerous outlets for caffinating one's self, retailers, like the international brand Starbucks, now are the origins of your morning pick-me-up. How often has the phrase “Want to get some Starbucks” being said in conversation? The object desired is coffee, but because of prolonged exposure to the brand and mediated existence of the object, it is no longer identified as coffee, with its associated organic origins, but with a white cup with green logo you get from the peppy barista at the corner Starbucks.

Human-nature interactions are no longer based on our physical interactions performed, but the expectation established by persistent and prolonged exposure to the wilderness myth contrived within an idyllic space – fiction.

This simulated identity for natural space is presented in our National and State Parks,and federally held and protected lands. In their untouched state all these natural spaces are found to be lacking a specific attribute, it would not be far off to call that attribute supernatural, even. It cannot attained by urban space, and can only exist outside of it, and requires human influence to fully bring it to fruition. These areas must be constructed and changed by man to be more natural than they were originally found to be. Meandering trails, walkways, streams, paths, visitors centers, restrooms and campsites are all added to these spaces to enhance our experience. This is an attempt to reshape the landscape in the image of the bucolic descriptions of the existential poets and the renditions of natural space found in media. Man's influence introduces urban elements within the found landscape; then abandons the found landscape for a manipulated one. One with better views, clear paths, safer walkways, and a less likelihood a visitor, heaven forbid, interact with the space in a non-designated way. The found views from atop a mountain range do not live up the mythological views we would have seen in the past according to the poets, painters and photographers of the idealized bygone era. The solution: reshape the space to better embody that nostalgic description that has been used for comparison.

The process of nostalgia replacing the “real” is also outlined by Baudrillard. “When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes full meaning.” The auto-touring phenomena of The Great Smokey Mountains National Park is an example of where this type of modification occurs. The scenic roads and pathways that crisscross the smoky mountains of the Appalachians do not allow for such grand vista as historically described. The perfect view is obscured by nature. Trees block the sunset view and forests blur the rolling majesty of the fog covered mountains. To surmount these inconveniences designated pull-off and observation points are created along the auto-touring routes. In front of these observation points the forest has been clear-cut and tamed for the needs of the park-goer so that they may see the best embodiment of the natural that the wilderness myth provides for us.

As these spaces are engineered the ways in which these spaces are manipulated draw attention to the simulacral quality of the space itself. The way these spaces are created and performed establishes a necessary conflicting relationship between natural and urban. The largest of the manipulations are derived from how society has named and identified these places of natural wonder. Dino Felluge, of Purdue university, summarizes the phenomena Baudrillard uses to distinguish between the “real” and the simulacra. One of these phenomena is “urbanization” according to Felluge. Urbanization is the result of man's domination and near complete control over space. In direct opposition to this control are non-human processes found outside of urban and populated areas. Because we deem them important they must not become merely “natural,” but also “protected” spaces. This according to Felluge “defines the space in direct contradistinction to an urban 'reality'.”

An escape from the urban industrialized space is a long standing tenant of the wilderness myth. The woes of urban life drain the essence of man, he must, then, return to nature to seek his remedy. The confusion between the real and the simulacra experienced by today's society as a result of proliferation of simulations and their ability to fool society through intertwining themselves in intimate proximity with the “real” results in an inability to distinguish, at times, their difference, according to Baudrillard. The corrective measures for this undiscernability is to label and point out the natural, or the more natural, according to the park or institution. These are the steps and processes the precipitate the aforementioned auto-touring vistas, areas of the park set aside and marked with signage indicating its naturalness and beauty, it realness in opposition to the urban.

Another blog to look at....

All,

     I wanted to pass along this find: a blog geared toward educating graduate students on the academic market, getting jobs and succeeding post grad school.

This particular post deals with the authors observations on the top 6 ways grad students shoot themselves in the foot by acting like grad students POST.

I gave it some other parts of the blog a quick look and seems pretty interesting. Hope y'all will agree.

Another Vote For Fahner

I really think Fahner Hall is a great idea for the show.  The more I ponder this topic, the more I feel as if everyone would have something they could contribute to this space, but that is just an assumption.  I already have a few ideas of my own, however, until a "topic" is decided upon it's difficult to pursue any hardcopy thoughts of an actual piece.

I believe that the show would really be beneficial on a Thursday evening.  By hosting this on a weekday, we would be more likely to catch the busy traffic of the SIUC campus walking by, and we would not be interfering with Film Fridays or other special Friday night events that many in this class are active participants of.

As far as a topic is concerned for the show, as I have said multiple times, I still enjoy the topic of "Light".

My two cents.