Check-in: Archive Bomb

Archive Bomb met Tactical Media, whose manifesto shares some desired qualities with the concept:

• involved parties manipulate media "in a continual process of questioning the premises of the channels they work with"
• activism characterized by mobility and flexible response (hit-and-run). The ability to move through different entities of "vast media landscape without betraying their original motivations"
• results are "temporary reversals in the flow of power"
• "an aesthetic of poaching, tricking, reading, speaking... Clever tricks, the hunter's cunning, maneuvers, polymorphic situations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike."
  

This match revisits the concept of artists being new archivists. Beeld & Geluid (B&G) can be the supplier for material for such interventions, and can facilitate participation on three levels:

1. insider
   B&G can allow the broadcast system to be hacked. In a context where A/V will already be setup, for example an event in a public square during museum night, B&G can ensure the "back door" through which underminers can participate.
   
2. hacker
   A team of archivists, dedicated to showing multiple perspectives can use the system themselves, as they are most familiar with the state of the collection. They could assume an anonymous identity, with a hidden link to B&G (Kounter Beeld en Geluid?).
   
3. mentor
   B&G can encourage or participate in interventionist workshops, with specialized knowledge of broadcasting and A/V archives. Cooperation with historians could also be possible. (Hooray multi-disciplinary collaboration!)
   

Amalgamated Concept #1: historic re-enactments tying into current events
B&G can set up a platform that works with activists for the purpose of exposing patterns in media or social commentary, such as with the methods listed above. Through a combination of performance and A/V bombs, the public can be confronted with past events:

• Purely analog (ex: performance troupe that translates a hate crime into a staged conflict on the train)
• Augmented flashmob (ex: streaming old broadcast on the speaker system in addition to participants with previous instructions)
• Techie dream (a disposable projection grenade: looks like a soda can, but it releases smoke onto which a one-time projection is displayed). While the "grenade" is still a few steps away (compact portable projectors are available, but definitely not disposable), a "landmine" could also be implemented: the material and structure are there, but detonation is triggered by a coincidence.

Amalgamated Concept #2: puzzlehunt
B&G can expose its archive through a pervasive game, such as an urban puzzlehunt. Teams of gamers sign up to solve rounds of puzzles - in this case media riddles could be featured, but in a public space context. Drawing from of the texts in "Space Time Play," this could be an ideal set-up:

• Pervasive games mix everyday tangible space with closed information spaces. The rules and information network (game space) intertwine with the city space (play space).
• "Temporary autonomous zones" are created by roleplay. In these zones willing players create a new set of rules, when imposed onto innocent bystanders, question implicit social interactions.
• Because the real environment is used, there are real consequences. This removes the safety bubble of traditional play (where one can safely explore "what if" and what one cannot do in real life), but it also offers elements of psychogeography to come into play. The city itself can be enhanced by the game by encouraging players to see it through new eyes or to uncover stories to drive us.
  

B&G would curate the material used for puzzles, and gather data as done currently through web-based games. Material costs (if mobile-projection gadgets are to be used) would be more safely covered. The element of surprise still strikes non-participating passerbys, and they can also be used as part of the game. An element that could be interesting from the MIT Mystery Hunt is that the winning team wins the right to organize the following year's competition (rules, hints, everything).

An interesting part about creating these puzzles is to make it such that a Google search does not solve it. A good team could solve all puzzles to the end in about 48 hours (or that is a target). This is an example in which one deliberately tries to make the information not available, for a reasonable purpose.


Points for moving on:

• Does the theoretical framework need more work?
• Could storyboards of potential puzzles be a starting point, then see what happens when this game context is removed?
• Is B&G's role clear enough such that the concepts are appropriate for them in particular? (Does it make an "appropriate" use of the content of their archive?)

********************************
New Readings since last time:

1. Gregory Sholette - Dark Matter
   Raises discussion on the creative realm unrecognized by the institutionalized art world (and its importance), why it may not be accepted, and its connection to political art.
   • "What stabilizes the borders of the elite art market is the routine production of relatively minor differences."
   • Importance of connecting "'unblocked' moments of working class fantasy with the history, or histories of actual resistance to capital, patriarchy racism and nationalism. Rather than a smooth, linear narrative," it assembles "a montage of 'historical fissures -- crises, war, capitulation, revolution, counterrevolution."
   • Describes interventionist art groups that design objects of intervention as well as workshops that encourage this behavior.
2. David Garcia & Geert Lovink - The ABC of Tactical Media
3. Rui Guerra(!) - It's Not That Kind, guerilla projections & other projects that empower individuals to intervene with public spaces
   

To Read (mostly from INTK):

1. Gregory Sholette - The Interventionists: User's Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life
2. Krzystof Wodiczko
   Nowadays public space is occupied with the displaced, members of a nomadic culture. These spaces should be reclaimed as agoras for statements and discussion.
3. Claire Bishop
   Participation in socially engaged art
4. Markus Miessen - The Violence of Participation
5. Chantal Mouffe - Artistic Activism and Agnostic Spaces
   Urge "for radical democracy of agnostic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion, ‘...there is no possibility of society without antagonism’; indeed, without the forces that articulate a vision of society, it could not exist."
6. Michael Naimark - Arts Lab
   Proposal for a hybrid arts center and research lab
   

Round 03: Chance Interruptions

The approach being taken to bring the archive closer to its audience:

Interrupt daily routine to bring a higher awareness of the current situation and the archive.

To varying degrees, concepts in this direction impose archive fragments on a random audience. There are those who look to the past to learn, or to reminisce, and there are those who do not. As the present is a result of the past, this approach gives more power to the archive: it does not wait to be initiated by an interested user.

background principles

• An archive is a collection of fragments. Digitization of its content aids fluidity of presentation and makes interaction with the archive more dynamic, and allows for new connections and interpretations to be made.


• The technology that we have developed seemingly independent of the Supernatural now makes qualities of it even closer. (E.g. invisible forces, quickness, mutability)


• Changes in one's routine, whether or not by chance, create a higher awareness of the current/"normal" situation.


• Over text, audiovisual material is already communicating closer to the people. Sound and moving images were what we perceived before written literacy. Outside its original context, AV material can trick us into thinking it is current.

Three initial concepts are defined to explore these principles. They all take place off-site, but differ on who is curating the information. Beeld & Geluid is used as an impartial provider of content.

archive bomb

• Guerilla warfare model: quick, temporary, anonymous broadcasting in public spaces that may produce chaotic results.
• Archive fragment bombs are detonated without explanation: less information forces the audience to lay their own interpretations.
• This is a one-time event. The effects are imposed on the memories and interpretations of the surrounding people.
• Can comment on current situation using historic locations and political/cultural/religious events. Can be used as a way to take back broadcasting.
• Curation by the people? If it were Beeld & Geluid, does it have an obligation to remain neutral?

shadecast

• Visual podcasts are broadcast on public train sunshades.
• Geyser model: known location, but when it is triggered is not explicitly expressed. Spurts are short, appropriate for commuters of varying periods.
• Can provide more information on the places passed on the train, but it could expand to have a visual radio feel.
• Competition over broadcasting space filters out different parties who are interested enough to make a coherent podcast.

connect the dots

• Running chicken model: finding meaning amongst randomness. Letting chickens (or people) run freely, the results of which reveal a new meaning.
• Input locational data to be interpreted by the tag system of B&G. The system functions as a Supernatural power, giving a different meaning and overview that people cannot see as clearly.
• Results of this are displayed in public locations; while the location is static, the information fed to it is now dependent on the surrounding people.

Another question arises: what is the effect of these ways of (re)broadcasting?

preserving process

NYT article on the issues of preserving digital archival data @ Emory University. One interesting thing to me was that they recreate what an author saw on a screen (a draft, including applications that would allow annotation).

The first digital forensics lab also opened last summer at Stanford's library:

Michael Olson, the digital collections project manager at Stanford University, said that the only people who really had experience with excavating digital information were in law enforcement. “There aren’t a lot of archives out there capturing born-digital material,” he said, referring to the process of extracting all data accurately from a device.

Robot Poetry

ROBO POEMS TELLS THE THOUGHTS AND STORIES OF A DISENCHANTED TECHNO-BEING - A ROBOT LOSING HIMSELF IN THE SPACE AND PEOPLE OF LOWER MANHATTAN, NYC.

Micro-radio poetry embedded around NYC.

Reading: Ritual

Update from my end on the research. Some notes from Erik Davis's "TechGnosis" that apply to the Ritual category:

• The speed & mutability of current technoscience times evokes supernatural qualities.
• Technology has "demystified" the world, but this mysticism is actually hiding in cultural, psychological, and mythological areas. It comes back as well, perhaps without our knowing (ex: how Christian myths have framed technological/economic growth)
• ICT shapes the human self by encoding thought & experience. Partially reconstructing this self and world leads to new interpretation. These constructions of our reality consist of (1) form (medium, crafted/constructed) and (2) content (transmission of mind & meaning). This content can be further divided into two parts: soul and spirit. Soul is analog, continuous, and entrenched in social context. Spirit is characterized by clarity and discrete signals (digital).
  
• People are now cut off from their analog souls by science & technology, and try to recreate it with these digital versions - technology is not a mere tool.

The "Great Divide" from Latour's "We Have Never Been Modern" is also mentioned: nature and culture were once interwoven and indistinguishable (ex: how an Inuit experiences his dreams and hunting the following day), but the Modern Wall has wedged itself in between. Now culture is struggling to develop independently of nature, through new technologies, even though these spiritual needs are re-manifesting themselves.

Also starting to read up on Debord's "Society of the Spectacle," and the Situationists, don't know exactly where this will lead.

reading day

As Spring Cleaning happened last week, the closAR team borrowed some books from the V2_Library to read on Mono Monday.

As I was reading "space time play," one point I found interesting with pervasive gaming was the loss of the safety zone. Real consequences ensue in this real space, taking away some of this free exploration that happens in virtual gaming space. It reminds me of Apter's reversal theory regarding anxiety and excitement and also on safety zones based on their fears. The rules of engagement of a game help make up the boundaries of this world in which it is safe to explore (or play) these alternate realities.

Perhaps play theory will be more useful at a later stage of concept development (and perhaps we can use it to assess the play quality of other B&G game initiatives). Will bring in some resources if it is of interest.

Round 2: Shamanism & Sacrifice (Connie)

The Shamanic Ritual concept examines the ritual of accessing information beyond one's immediate grasp. Requesting answers in the past was a significant ordeal: an invoking sacrifice, fasting or hallucinogens to attain visions, or significant group effort facilitated by the "chosen." With information today so easily at one's hand (or pocket), the humbling restriction of not knowing or remembering is lost.

While enlightenment will always be phenomenological, what AR can bring to this new interpretation is a uniform "vision" to be interpreted by a group.

The direction is to induce an immersive, storytelling and role-playing experience for group access of the archive. A signature interaction from the past would be carried through, perhaps a "modern sacrifice." The initial vision is for this to take place either on-site at Beeld & Geluid, or at a special event.

Instead of forcing this interaction on all queries, perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to come up with questions that would merit this modern sacrifice. A fun idea a friend and I did once was to ask only other people for answers that would typically be asked of Google, and on the flip side, to ask Google fuzzy, ambiguous questions (ex: "What do you think of my love life?").

Round 2: Archive Bomb (Connie)

A la "War of the Worlds" broadcast fiasco, the Archive Bomb concept aims to raise awareness of

1. broadcasting and its power over people's perception of the truth
2. Beeld & Geluid and its archive materials
   

Archive material is imposed on everyday life in public spaces in a guerrilla warfare style. The effect should be explosive: surprising, disorienting, unexplained, and temporary. A bit of chaos stimulates reaction.

The bomb doesn't wait for people to discover the archive. If one is fooled by mis-information, meta-thoughts on broadcasting may occur (Who is projecting what message, for what reason, and to what end? What is truth?). The experience is short and less immersive: the consumption metaphor here would be snacking on a pretzel that was thrown at you.

An anonymous group of B&G bombers would be ideal, either akin to the fictional members of Gorillaz or to flash mob organizers. The ethics of hacking or pranking could be investigated to avoid terrorism. Constructing a bomb requires exploration of the archives.

Further elaboration and investigation are needed in several areas:

1. Motivation (Can it survive outside a game context, or the safety of an event?)
   
2. Current possibilities of implementation (mobile projection, multi-sensory expression, disposable?)
3. Material to be exposed. A suggestion was that a commentary on current events could be made by exposing material from other times with similar conditions. It would be great to be more dynamic than projecting old buildings or reliving old stories, a la Tijdmachine project in Rotterdam.
   

analog AR

As touched upon in the previous post, people have been augmenting reality way before there was this fetish for computer vision.

Here is Where: a project that rediscovers (lackluster) physical locations through historical accounts. New York Times article that describes the project.

“It’s sort of a reverse scavenger hunt,” he said. “Trying to find things that aren’t there.”

Other things to look at could be shamanism or other rituals in which people initiate this accessing of information that is not there. (Often this refers to the physical perceptible reality.) More to come.