Local Color XVI -- Domestic

(...not strictly Santa Fe, but close enough...)  

 Cops: Man hit wife with toilet tank lid

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - An Albuquerque man is accused of attacking his estranged wife with a toilet tank lid. Police say Arthur Ruiz got into an argument with his wife Wednesday morning when she came to pick up their young kids ages 2, 6 and 8. According to the victim, Ruiz had a party the night before and they were fighting about it. Ruiz then allegedly tossed her phone in the toilet and grabbed the tank lid and hit her, cutting the back of her head. The kids were not hurt.Police also found out Ruiz had teenagers drinking at his party. He was arrested for that, aggravated battery and child abuse.

Drive This Google

this morning's, ok ok, early afternoon's, view from the top of my driveway

I now command my Google Driverless Car to take me to town for lunch...

On the other hand it took just one adventurous adClick to get this image to appear on every web page I visit, so life is not all bad:

http://www.revolveclothing.com/DisplayProduct.jsp?product=WARE-WX20&utm_campaign=Tellapart&cvosrc=Retargeting.Tellapart&utm_medium=retargeting&utm_source=display&source=Tellapart

Etantdonnes WhateveR™ Manages My Day

Posts are coming hard and fast here...I'm sure it won't last...But...

I recently saw mention of Google Now being the latest must have app. It purports to coalesce all the needs of the busy new economy executive into one convenient package on your device. It's probably a godsend for your typical globe-trotting urban Google Employee™, so I started imagining how it might help me get through a typical day. I couldn't sleep until I got this all down on magnetic bits:


At 7 AM WhateveR™ wakes me to announce that American Airlines flight 2798 is boarding at the Santa Fe Airport. Maybe I can get a glimpse of it taking off...Nope...missed it again...

If I had needed a boarding pass for that flight it wouldn't have been printed because my old printer is attached to a Windows 2000 desktop that doesn't support the Media Transport (With Added DRM!) Protocol. No matter, at 7:38 AM WhateveR™ pings my cell phone with an apology for the failure and offers to print a voucher for the Google Chrome Operating System that won't run on the computer in question because it has less than 1Gb of RAM. It also prints, on the printer at my Fire Station, a coupon for a new printer.

After I get up I check the weather. It is 65˚ and balmy in Sunnyvale, CA. After finding the Change My Location button hidden under the Follow the San Jose Giants ad, I get the options of New York, London, Dubai, Shanghai, and Other. Clicking on Other and navigating the droop-down-menus I find last night's weather for Santa Fe, NM. With a little more poking around I get it to update and admit that it is indeed mostly sunny outside. I change to degrees C with the simple click of the button next to the temperature display.

My friend Ken's birthday is next month. Mine was last week. WhateveR™ hopes I had an

!Awesome Time!

After breakfast WhateveR™ notifies me that there's some traffic on Old Las Vegas Highway and encourages me to drive on out there and have a look. Included is a helpful map:

I check the weather again and find that it is 28˚ F with light snow in El Dorado, KS.

Later I am notified that, in ten minutes, I could be having lunch with the Fire Department in town. A map of Santa Fe Springs, CA is provided. In current traffic it should take 12 hours and 26 minutes to get there. And BTW, while I'm at the Fire Station I should check to see if the guy who was supposed to order new printer toner ever did it and if that little popup window is still popping up up every few seconds? And here's a coupon for toner for my old printer. Click to <CANCEL>. Then enter <QUANTITY>. Would you like to review your purchase? <CONTINUE>.

The appointed time to walk out to the mailbox comes around.

No packages are going to arrive today. One came yesterday but the driver left it in the middle of the driveway and the meter reader ran over it. WhateveR™ is sorry that it only just remembered that.

The walk counts for a good bit of exercise on my monthly cumulative, but the activity total does not include moving my tenant's bicycle out of the way so I can disassemble a portion of the garage storage system in order to verify that I really can't find that part for the kitchen sink that I thought that I still had after WhateveR™ discovered the scanned receipt in myGoogle Documents.

The markets closed mixed. Would you like to login/create a myGoogle Finance account? <CONTINUE>

WhateveR™ reminds me that I could go to dinner at one of four restaurants within 5 miles of Old Las Vegas Highway and that I (still) have no mass transit options for getting there. It does however provide another map:

One of the four offerings (B) closes at 3pm but I cannot convince WhateveR™ of that fact. Nor can I cause it to ignore another of the selections (D) which appears to be a private catering business. So they both show up as options every day around this time.

A fifth possibility is fielded: a Hotel with a four star restaurant in Las Vegas, NV. In current traffic it should only take 9 hours and 14 minutes to get there. Would I like to Change My Location? <YES> <NO> <MORE>

I am then reminded about that Art Opening for which I got an announcement last week. It was yesterday. Also, my latest New Yorker issue is stuck in a Post Office delivery eddy between Kansas City and Albuquerque for which I might have collected ten frequent flier miles on the credit card that I cancelled last year. And, did I receive my weekly sales flier from Bed Bath and Beyond:  <YES> <NO> <MORE>?

After dinner WhateveR™ notices that I have yet to leave the house and offers to broker a car rental for me.

First World Re-Gifting

Been a long time here...lots going on...in my mind...mostly of no interest to the world at large...but...the holiday spirit has taken hold...so...

Amongst the soon-to-be-excruciating deluge of snailmail crap, I recently received a giftalog from worldvisiongifts.org which offered me the chance to send a cute furry bunny rabbit to some un-specified-but-probably-third-world-personage(s) for only $19 (plus, undoubtedly, tax and license) :

Since I am still in the process of recovery from the March loss of my rabbit-companion, Bonbon lil'Bubba Badbunny, I am somewhat sensitive to their presentation in the world.

Now.

I'm sure this charity means well. Based on vetting by various online adjudicators they even seem to be doing pretty well  -- OkOk, 53 out of 70 and 3*s is the lowest in their "highly-rated" category on Charity Navigator, but they are after all a "Christian humanitarian organization", and I guess Jimmy Carter would approve, so it can't be all bad.

But...

In the accompanying text is the statement, "Not only is this a way to feed hungry children..." which sorta-kinda sidesteps the actual-fact-of-the-matter that little Kenyatta's gleeful smile here is not the result of having found a life-long companion, but more likely because he/she is looking forward to a nice stew and a pair of furry moccasins.

And pretty much the same, maybe minus the moccasins, goes for happy Maria's piglet too:

This catalog offers me so many ways to share the wealth of sheep, goats, chickens, and partridges in pear trees while never once admitting that most of those pear trees are destined for the killing floors within months if not days of receipt. This is of course the way of the world, and feeding children is a more noble cause then coyotes, but...can't we just face the gdm facts once in a while? Do I really need to abuse the concept of cute mammal companionship to convince little Sally to forgo her next GTA-FuckBall upgrade so some distant, theoretical, Kenyatta can have one decent meal? And some nice shoes?

Maybe that's the only way it will work...

... finally ...

!!Bed and Beyond Barf Honors Duchamp!!

For the 100th anniversary of his ground-breaking new-media work the latest catalog offers:

I'm not sure exactly what one should buy three of in order to create exactly which look but I have to give them props not due to NYMoMA for the recognition. I couldn't find this Special Look at their online presence, but at least they have other Bicycle Wheel art for the massahs:

Local Color XV -- second world problems

Beaver Causes Internet And Cellphone Outage In New Mexico

06/28/13 01:46 PM EDT

(via the HuffPost)

TAOS, N.M. -- Officials have finally identified the culprit behind a 20-hour Internet and cellphone outage last week in northern New Mexico -- an eager beaver.
CenturyLink spokesman David Gonzales told The Associated Press on Friday that a hungry beaver chewed through the fiber line last week. He says the biting evidence was discovered by contractors who worked to repair the outage.
Officials say more than 1,800 Internet users were affected by the blackout. The number of cellphone users without service during that time is still unknown.
CenturyLink owns a fiber-optic cable that runs from Taos to Interstate 25.
The cable carries wireless data for many residents around Taos County.

---

 I've had a few instances of bunny-driven internet outage, but they were all fairly local...

Currents 2013

The third annual large scale installment of our only non-coyote/sunset art event (instantiated by the master impresarios of Parallel Studios, on a much smaller scale, in 2002) is drawing to a close at El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. It is billed as an International New Media Festival and contains work loosely categorized as Installation, Single-channel/Animation, Multimedia Performance, Experimental Documentary, and Web-based. There were partnerships with other venues, galleries and schools, and a number of panel discussions, performances, and presentations. A full listing can be found here:
http://www.currentsnewmedia.org/currents2013part.html

So...What is New Media then?

The go-to wikipedia has this, somewhat impenetrable, definition:

New media refers to on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation. Another aspect of new media is the real-time generation of new, unregulated content.

Most technologies described as "new media" are digital, often having characteristics of being manipulated, networkable, dense, compressible, and interactive. Some examples may be the Internet, websites, computer multimedia, video games, CD-ROMS, and DVDs. New media does not include television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications unless they contain technologies that enable digital interactivity.

the main definitions come from:
Flew, T. (2002), New Media: An Introduction
and
Wardrip-Fruin & Montfort, ed (2003), The New Media Reader

In the context of the Currents' categories we have:

• Installation -- Almost entirely multi-projection or multi-media video with sculptural elements. There was one example of non-digital art, but it did use an electric motor (counting an opening night performance/installation which used electricity only for illumination, there were two), and two more which used digital thingies but no video;
• Performance -- Theatrical video with sound components, the one un-electric performance/installation on the opening night (plus the sans-digitalis sculptural installation which was mainly a performance as well), and one piece comprising a live performer with user input via video;
• Single-channel -- Stuff you could see at home, i.e., good old movies, albeit often open ended and/or non-narrative, also including web-based applications.
  

Notice that there is some disjunction between Wiki and Currents, especially in the non-interactive Single-channel and non-digital Performance aspects. To my mind New Media should include Installation and Performance as conceptualized in the latter 20th century. Thus I would argue with the more narrow Wiki definition but not enough to open the can'o'worms required to edit it.

So lets just call this a Video show.

As such I was fairly disappointed.

Full disclosure: My entry to the show (a tip'o'th'hat to the exactly 100-year-old original New Media work) was declined because, while it was "interactive", it didn't even use electricity. None-the-less I helped install the show (if you liked the lighting, in some places, thanks), and will help dis-install it because, in the larger context of Art Santa Fe, these guys are Doing Gods Work.

Life is Short. Video is Long

While touring the show I began a discussion with a friend who will probably be writing the review-of-record (this posting is to establish a time-stamp on just who has plagiarized whom). She said (something on the order of), "I wish I had the artist(s) standing next to me to explain things." And herein lies the rub...

To appreciate any art one needs some background knowledge. By virtue of growing up in our culture this sort of knowledge is, nearly, innate when viewing, say, representational painting. Portraits and Landscapes automatically make sense, thus we can quickly move on to how much we like the treatment of the subjects. With a little more cultural inculcation one can even have the same appreciation for abstract painting, up to and including (for many of us) the Ab-Exers.

However, Video Installation has a much shorter and diverse history. Most of us don't have the background to appreciate the advances made by a particular piece. (...I am going to be gracious and assume that the artist's themselves know that which they are advancing...).

A corollary of the innate knowledge argument is that we quickly recognize whether we are going to get something out of spending time with an Old Media work. It has a Hook which makes us willing to invest. I will gladly spend minutes standing, or better sitting, in front of Monet's Water Lilies (yeah, yeah, that's just me) or Dali's The Persistence of Memory. And I was once able to spend long periods with Duchamp's Large Glass -- back when I could remember the various after-market commentaries on the Green Box Notes.

So the trouble with New Media then is two fold. To start with, we are not sure what we are looking at; and then, it takes time to figure it out. Some work has a visceral hook and many of us may be willing to invest a moment or two more.  But it often takes longer. Much longer.

Truisms, Not

Video Art has its roots in the 1960s and much of it was originally driven by the hallucinations, culturally and visually, of the period. A number of pieces in the Currents show hark back to this with psychedelic feedback, ever expanding mandalas, and fractally twirling multiple-images. This generally makes me nauseous philosophically, and sometimes physically.

Quite a number of others take a stab at New Media with multiple Old Medias, using many screens, son-et-lumiere, or, often, all of the above. Gratuitously. Many of these installations had headphones, which could easily be ignored, for the son part. Some did not.

There are also projections onto or into stuff. One onto an existing painting. I'm not really clear on why.

There was one swarm driven piece where ants crawled to your outline over a background-still of the ground. OK. Good. I wonder if I could introduce you the 2001 Swarm Development Group?

Then a new human-interface comprised of a 3x6 foot sheet of stretchy material onto which a pattern was projected. When you pushed on the material a piano played. It had one degree of freedom for about 20 sqft of interface. The (probably synthesized) piano sounded quite nice if you like noodle-music.

Another new interface used a head-mounted EEG sensor to control a video projection. Ostensibly. I was not able to get it out of a tight loop alternating a blurry ocean rescue with a slow aerial track of the Manhattan skyline that always stopped just before I could pick out the hotel where I last stayed.

And one video-game installation which purported to produce a psycho-analysis. I could not get myself out of the second room.

Those last two disappointments can certainly be credited to my lack of inner complexity.

But on to the truisms..these were both important absolutes when first established however they now need updating:

The Medium is -- not the entire -- Message

and

The Personal is -- not always -- the Political

Much of the content, as such, in the show fails in this update phase. Come on folks. We need to move on.

Also: In the interim between leaving school and being canonized, Post Modern jargon doesn't help your cause.

I attended two of the Panels:

 

Art and the Legacy of Artificial Life

This panel discussion was peopled by friends and was right up my alley so I prepared a manifesto in order to be argumentative. Fortunately all it took was a pointed question to get them to (mostly) agree that the system's behavior, rather than its artifacts, are what is of real interest. Maybe I get a point for being conciliatory. One the other hand, none of the panelists has spoken to me since.

New Media: Arts & Sciences

Presented by the 1st Mile Institute's Scientists/Artists Research Collaboration program, this was a series of video and in-person (plus two skype-presences) talks. Out of 18 video/talks there were: one artist-naturalist who is observing the sky in ways not quite done before, Heliotown; two holographers who use sciency tools to examine the nature of light and perception; and one art/science duo who made a juicy data set it into a pretty swell web page, Wind Map. Otherwise it was cool-visualizations that might have once seen an artistic hand or cool-technology that artists might want to use sometime. So, for the most part, no real collaborations were used in the making of this event.