Rehearsals for muted films #2 reworks three Hollywood films with stories that were set against Hong Kong. The work for the visitor is a speechless excursions of projected text, which proposes new ways of seeing, listening and reading popular cinema while at the same time re-imagining the dialogue (or the lack of it) as an allegorical conversation about culture and identity. The three films are Love is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The World of Suzie Wong (1960) and Enter the Dragon (1973).
《Rehearsals for muted films #2》重構了三齣與香港有關的荷里活電影,包括《生死戀》 (1955)、《蘇絲黃的世界》 (1960)及《龍爭虎鬥》 (1973)。作品猶如一段沈默的旅程,被投影播放著的文字開啟觀眾以全新方式去觀看、聆聽及閱讀普及的電影,同時把三部電影中的對話重新想像為有關文化與身份的寓意性的對話。
Ip Yuk-yiu is an experimental filmmaker, media artist, art educator and independent curator. His works, ranging from experimental films to live video performances and media installations, have been showcased extensively at international festivals including European Media Art Festival, New York Film Festival, the Image Festival, VideoBrasil, Transmediale, Hong Kong International Film Festival and more. He is a founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative focusing on the promotion of new media art in Hong Kong. Ip has lectured extensively on film, video and media art. Currently he is Associate Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong where his recent works explore real-time and computational forms of cinema. His computational installation, Between the threshold of good and evil: film noir no.1 (Double Indemnity), was presented at the WMC_e4 in 2010.
map01 is an experimental visual exploration of procedural interference between transcendental functions.
《map01》是透過以數學中的超越函数為基礎所進行的一項電腦視學藝術實驗。
A few site views of the work as a self-evolving wall projection…
the original blue version of map01
In its original test run, the image was blue in tone, but the artist changed the color to yellow to pay tribute to the Umbrella Movement.
About Mike King
Mike King is a computational artist who works in a visual art domain. His works rely on computation to visualize abstract ideas, subverted scientific findings and imaginary procedures. His work Grapheme, on technostalgia,was part of WMC_e3 (2008).
Mike King 是以電腦程式創作的藝術家,主要從事視覺藝術創作。作品以編寫電腦程式展現抽象概念、顛覆性的科學數據及想像性操作。作品《Grapheme》於2008年文字機器創作集第三輯展出。
Autocomic#1 remakes the artist’s daily six-panel comic strips, Gei Ger Gaak Gaak, published in local newspaper Ming Pao. The stories and the plots are computer-generated based on several simple “rules” and “formulas” commonly found in the comic strip format. All the source materials are extracted from a library of graphics and texts that is built from the artist’s previous works.
While comic production has been greatly enhanced by the advancement of hardware and software in recent years, very few artists and scholars are aware of the potential computer could bring from the perspective of generative art. Comics can be seen as a form of rule-driven art if we closely study its language and its relationship with the form. I believe, with the rich histories of generative theory in the field of literature and visual design, the implementation of such principles and creative practices could pose a challenge to the existing storytelling tradition and it could establish a new platform for the discussion of the evolution of comics’ language in the future.
autocomic#1 is such an attempt to revise storytelling through rule-based algorithmic thinking. The process is based on an extensive study of comics’ unique language and basic elements such as image sequence, page layout, use of grid and theories of narrative. The creative process deploys images from the artist’s previous works which form the data set and library of , autocomic#1, a writing/reading system.
Justin Wong, comic writer and media artist, received his BA (Fine Arts) in Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1996 and his MA (Interactive Digital Media) in Ravensbourne College of Design and Community in London. After his graduation, he participated in the Ars Electronica award-winning web 2.0 project, Last.fm in London. Upon his return to Hong Kong in 2004, he taught at the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong, then as Art Director in an interactive media design company. At the same time, he began to contribute regularly to local newspapers as comic writer and illustrator. In 2007, he started his political comic column Gei Gei Gaak Gaak in Ming Pao Daily. His works include comics, graphic design, animation and interactive art. He is the Artistic Director of new media art group, the Writing Machine Collective, and lecturer at the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. For the Writing Machine Collective, Wong has contributed Typing Machine (Junk Mail Factory) (WMC_e2, 2007), Txt-Me-1st (with Hamlet Lin and Eva Schindling (WMC_e3 at Digitalogue, 2008), and computational animation, City Forum (WMC_e4, 2010).
黃照達,漫畫家及媒體藝術家。1996年畢業於香港中文大學藝術系,2002年於倫敦Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication 修畢互動數碼媒體碩士課程,曾參與創作於2002 年奧地利 Ars Electronica電子藝術節獲獎的 web 2.0網站Last.fm。2004年回港後於香港城市大學創意媒體學院出任導師。及後擔任本地互動媒體設計公司美術總監一職。期間開始替報章創作漫畫及插圖,並於2007開始於《明報》連載其漫畫專欄《嘰嘰格格》,題材以時事政治為主。除漫畫外,黃氏同時亦參與不同類形之創作,包括設計、動畫、互動媒體藝術等。現為香港新媒體群體 「文字機器創作集」 藝術總監及浸會大學視覺藝術院講師。曾於文字機器創作集發表過的作品包括,Typing Machine (Junk Mail Factory) (第二輯, 2007), Txt-me-1st (第三輯,2008,林耀邦、Eva Schindling 協作)及數碼併貼動畫《城市論壇》(第四輯,2010)。
Theorem 8 is originally a 3-channel video projection installation exploring the intersection of art and mathematics. It is made using a specially authored software that decomposes every frame in a movie using a fixed database of frames extracted from another movie. The project is based on the mathematical concept of orthogonal decomposition, used in many surveillance applications. Theorem 8, however, redeploys this surveillance technique for very different purposes, to “read” one movie in relation to a second movie. This project thus visualizes the abstract mathematical concept of orthgonal decomposition. The idea is to select a fixed set of frames from one movie and then allow every frame in another movie to make a shadow projection onto each of those frames. Every frame in the second movie is decomposed onto those various changing shadows. By mixing the different shadow projections, it is possible to achieve an approximate reconstruction of the current frame in the first movie.
With this mathematical technique, it achieves a superimposition of frames from two different films: Godard’s Alphaville and Witch’s Cradle, directed by Maya Deren. The two films were selected because their filmmakers used light and shadow as dramatic elements. Godard can be seen a response to the rise of cybernetics and information technologies. Deren and Duchamp were interested in abstract mathematical spaces. The title, Theorem 8, refers to the orthogonal decomposition theorem, which concerns the idea of an object in a higher-dimensional space projecting shadows onto a lower dimensional space.
Since technique of orthogonal decomposition are often used in surveillance software, the work aims to foreground, deconstruct, and liberate the computational aspects of surveillance technologies. Its underlying philosophy is that radical politics demands radical artistic forms. It also shows how surveillance method can be subverted as means of reading or decoding the cinematic tradition.
The research of Theorem 8 advanced from the artist’s previous research in works Gestus and Gestus: Judex (2010-2012), and Inflections (2010-2012).
Theorem 8 was orginally developed as a three-channel video installation, but it also exists in single-channel format, which can be screened with or without a short mathematical introduction, which is the version shown at WMC_e5.
Hector Rodriguez (WMC Research Director) is an experimental software artist whose work investigates the specific possibilities of information technologies to reconfigure our experience of moving images and our relation to film history. His work integrates video art with mathematics and computer science, exploring the tension between digital abstraction and cinematic representation. His work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), the National Science Museum (Seoul, South Korea), the Museum Friedericianum (Kassel, Germany), Siggraph Asia (Singapore), and the WRO Media Art Biennial (Wroclaw, Poland), among other venues. He was a jury selection of the Japan Media Art Award. His digital experimental animation Res Extensa won him the Best Digital Work Award in the Hong Kong Art Biennale 2003. He received Hong Kong Contemporary Art Award’s Achievement Award 2012 with his computational installation system Gestus. His theoretical writings have appeared in Screen, Cinema Journal, Game Studies and various anthologies. He currently teaches computer arts, film theory, and art/science at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong. His work Gestus-Beta was premiered at WMC_e4 (2010). He also conducted a 12-hour workshop series on interactive fiction using Inform 7 at WMC_e2, 2007, among other educational events at the various WMC exhibitions.
The True Story of Ah-Q, an algorithmic collage, C-print 2014
An English translation of The True Story of Ah-Q is read by an algorithmic process that highlights phrases from Lu Xun’s revolutionary work. The phrases selected are words that others have also written – that is, they have been found on the Internet in other documents not written by or about Lu Xun. As the work progresses, the algorithmic reader sends these phrases to search engines, showing how they can be read now, in real time. This networked re-reading, augmented with targeted advertising, images, and even censorship, exists within an algorithmic framework still little-examined in terms of its effects on reading, and, indeed, its control of free inquiry itself.
The True Story of Ah-Q (2014, Howe & Cayley), Connecting Space-HK (2014.10)
This installation is driven by the artists’ Read for Us (為我們看書) engine, in which an autonomous reader moves through the words of the chosen text, phrase by phrase, and then sends these phrases to a search engine, allowing the search engine to provide viewers with its own reading of the phrases (and also encountering occasional problems of access). A physical book, closed to us, is placed on the lectern nearby. The active digital reader is open to us in a new if now familiar way, within a culture of search and inquiry that is pervasive although still little-examined.
The Perceptual Reading Interface
Real-time screen-writing
We call the application visible on the large screen a Perceptual Reading Interface. The name derives from the area of attention within our visual field that shifts as we read a text on an inscribed surface. Studies have shown that we see only 30-40 characters distance around the central point of our focus. This interface presents a text in constant motion that preserves the phrase being read at the center of this focal area. Crucially, however, the interface provides its readers with access to a typographic neighborhood, a concept we believe to be central to traditional reading experiences and distorted by Internet services and mobile devices. We show the text in movement, but we also show an approximation of the words that would have surrounded our focus of attention had we been reading these words on a typeset page. This exploration of typographic neighborhood is crucial to The Readers Project, of which Read for Us and The True Story of Ah-Q are instances.
What the Perceptual Reading Interface reads
Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah-Q
The Perceptual Reading Interface moves our attention steadily through an English version of Lu Xun’s story. It reads up to nine words at a time, but chooses these phrases more carefully than may be apparent at first glance. At any given time, it only reads sequences of words that can be found in the indexes of Google Books not associated with Lu Xun (as far as our robots call determine). The reader first checks that other writers have also used each sequence of words in order to compose their own books and articles. As short sequences, therefore, these words are not unique to any particular person. They have also been composed by others and, in a sense, might have been written by anyone. Highlighted as they are, they form part of a commons of language that is (or was) more or less democratically maintained.
Reading with Google and other Censors
Algorithmic collage from The True Story of Ah-Q
The installation demonstrates contemporary modes of reading, contrasting these modes with those of the past and with traditions of ‘deep’ as opposed to ‘hyper’ attention. Network services and censors read, for us, this still important work of Chinese cultural and political critique. What happens when the phrases themselves, regardless of their associations with any particular writer are flagged as contentious by the indexed network services through which all of us now read?
About Daniel C. HOWE and John CAYLEY
Daniel C. Howe
Daniel C. Howe (http://rednoise.org/daniel) is an artist and critical technologist, whose work focuses on networked systems for image, sound and text, and on the social and political implications of computational technologies.
Daniel C. Howe (http://rednoise.org/daniel) 為電算科學博士及文學藝術碩士,是藝術家、作家、科技評論的批判學者。主要創作探索藉由網絡系統產生的圖樣、聲音及文字,及電腦科技的社會及政治涵義。
John Cayley
John Cayley (http://programmatology.shadoof.net) writes digital media, particularly in the domain of poetry and poetics. Recent and ongoing projects include imposition with Giles Perring, riverIsland, and The True Story of Ah-Q in the WMC_e5 exhibition. Cayley is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University.
John Cayley (http://programmatology.shadoof.net) 現為美國布朗大學文學教授,編寫數碼媒體,特別是有關詩學的範疇。近期正致力於與Giles Perring合作的項目「imposition」,還有「riverIsland」及在文字機器創作集第五輯展出的《阿Q正傳》。
A 3-screen automated projection runs 441 clips from swordplay films spanning across 1927-2011, exploring visual styles and spatial imagination in Chinese swordplay films and their possible origins… The codes of the artist’s former work, Door Games Window Frames: Near Drama (2012), are adapted to highlight the counterpoint relations of three image discourses, from the minimalist-constructivist view of the locomotive human body and tools and objects of swordplay to the most basic criteria of locomotion.
Vaulting Space, adapting the codes for my work Door Games Window Frames: Near Drama(2012), is an algorithmic combinatorial projection in 3 channels distributed in different parts of a room. Clips from 16 “wuxia pian” (Chinese swordplay films) are combined and projected on 3 horizontal banners (projected surfaces) hanged from the ceiling of 21:9 aspect ratio. The 3 banners, lying horizontally on parallel planes, are also orchestrated in such a way that the minimal actions form a visual chorus. The making of rules is comparable to counterpoints in music to govern the interdependence across the three image discourses (on 3 screens) and independence within each of the three image discourses. There is no big theory why the clips I cut up span across 1927-2011. But I certainly believe in the revelatory power of longue durée (long duration) as well as the excavational power of thinking moving images just for their surfaces. From epic-stories to micro-narratives, I have further descended onto the deconstructible level of action sequences to see how local capabilities of our body, limbs and joints have been subjected to the imaginary scores of vaulting and swordplay that comprise the most unique genre of Chinese cinema. On a broad level, Vaulting Space is a pleasurable celebration of the low-level visual/body mechanics and narrative components of swordplay in the form of a try-lateral polyphonic chorus. However, an under-current interrupts the image discourse of glorification every now and then — the monstrous and the tyrannical are the constant antagonists of swordplay heroes and heroines. Jianghu [the world of gallant chivalry of swordplay], after all, is a world of the outcast and the anti-establishment in a situation of no choice. Between allegorical ontologies and phenomenological engagement of swordplay processes, I am exploring the many possibilties of writing/reading, discursive formation and articulation.
Vaulting Space – site view @ WMC_e5, Connecting Space-HK, 2014.10
collage of swordplay components (21:9 aspect ratio)
Sources of the 441 clips 441 個電影碎片的出處
Film Title
Year
Director
01
西廂記
Tale of the Western Chamber (akaRomance of the Western Chamber)
1927
侯曜 Hou Yao
02
哪吒救母 (aka 哪吒蛇山救母)
How Nazha rescued his mother from the Snake Mountain
1960
黃鶴聲 Wong Hok-sing
03
如來神掌
The Young Swordsman Lung Kim-fei (akaBuddha’s Palm)
1964
凌雲 Ling Wan
04
武林聖火令
Moslem Sacred Fire Decree
1965
蕭笙 Siu Sang
05
大醉俠
Come Drink with Me
1966
胡金銓 King Hu
06
龍門客棧
Dragon Gate Inn
1967
胡金銓 King Hu
07
俠女
A Touch of Zen
1971
胡金銓 King Hu
08
忠烈圖
The Valiant Ones
1975
胡金銓 King Hu
09
楚留香
Clans of Intrigue
1977
楚原 Chor Yuen
10
倚天屠龍記
The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber
1978
楚原 Chor Yuen
11
射鵰英雄傳(下)
The Brave Archer 2 (aka The Legend of the Condor Heroes 2)
1978
張徹 Chang Che
12
山中傳奇
Legend of the Mountain
1979
胡金銓 King Hu
13
蜀山
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain
1983
徐克 Tsui Hark
14
東方三俠
The Heroic Trios
1992
杜琪峰 Johnnie To
15
東邪西毒
Ashes of Time
1994
王家衛 Wong Kar-wai
16
龍門飛甲
The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate
2011
徐克 Tsui Hark
Linda Lai 黎肖嫻
About Linda LAI
Linda Chiu-han LAI, Associate Professor in Intermedia Arts at the City University of Hong Kong’s School of Creative Media (SCM), is a research-based interdisciplinary artist. After completing her Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at New York University, she has sought meaningful connective extension to other relevant artistic and theoretical endeavors. She persists in artistic creation as the practice of theory. A critical researcher on the History of Everyday Life, her works focus on historiography, visual and auto-ethnography, urbanity and popular culture. Her teaching revolves around the criticality of micro/meta narrativity. She has also designed, at SCM, Hong Kong’s first courses in generative art & literature at the university level. She is founder of Hongkong-based new media art group, the Writing Machine Collective (2004) and has completed 5 major group exhibitions on questions of computational thinking and contemporary art. Though broadly known for her videography in the international art venues, she creates in different artistic mediums to turn art-making into criticism, history-writing, gaming and voyages of discovery. Her digital and non-digital works have been shown in key venues in many cities in Europe, Asia and the US, including the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, the Open City London Documentary Festival, LOOP Barcelona, Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival in the Czech Republic, the Fourth State of Water (CoCA, Torun, Poland), Women Make Waves Film Festival (Taipei), International Centre (New Delhi), and the various Experimental Film/Video Festivals in Seoul (EXiS), Taipei (EXiT), Macao (EXiM), Kuala Lumpur (KLEX) and Hong Kong (HKEX). Lai considers herself a montage artist: to her, images are intensely rich perceptual surfaces that defy the binary division of representation and abstraction. Many of her works also deploy the notion of an archive and self-archiving, including her recent work “1906-1989-2012: Guangzhou-Hongkong-Shanghai-Anji,” commissioned for the 9th Shanghai Biennale 2012 at the Power Station of Contemporary Art, which is also a piece of experimental history playing with childhood memory, the use of everyday objects and folk material, the postal history of Hong Kong and family stories. Lai seeks for intermedia moments and modes of connectivity, be it conjugation, modulation, combinatorial logic, permutation…
Acknowledgements 鳴謝: Research/Technical Assistant: Wong Chun-hoi 研究及技術助理:王鎮海 Technical Consultant: Mike Wong 技術顧問:王健明 Programming Consultant: Hector Rodriguez, Philip Kretschmann 程式顧問:羅海德, Philip Kretschmann
In this talk, software artist Hector Rodriguez will describe in detail the creative process leading to the production of his recent work Theorem 8 (2013), now on show at the 5th Writing Machine Collective exhibition. The main challenge of the project was to transform an abstract mathematical concept into a visual artwork. In particular, the basic idea for this piece is to assert and explore the geometric structure of digital images. The artist will outline this conception and the process of developing it. While the content of this talk necessarily contains mathematical ideas, these will be presented in an elementary way suitable for a non-technical audience.
This talk offers a unique opportunity for audiences to experience a very detailed and in-depth description of the production of a specific work of art, from the standpoint of its creator.
The mathematical consultant to the project was Felipe Cucker, Chair Professor of Mathematics at the City University of Hong Kong. Professor Cucker is the co-presenter of the talk.
Hector Rodriguez (WMC Research Director) is an experimental software artist whose work investigates the specific possibilities of information technologies to reconfigure our experience of moving images and our relation to film history. His work integrates video art with mathematics and computer science, exploring the tension between digital abstraction and cinematic representation. He currently teaches computer arts, film theory, and art/science at the School of Creative Media of the City University of Hong Kong.
Felipe Cucker (Chair Professor, Mathematics, City University of Hong Kong)
19.10.2014 (星期日Sun) 5:30-6:00pm
WMC_e5 on 11 Oct 2014
No ideas. Just things. The Hatter’s wisdom and an exhibition about writing. Or reading
實作評閱一個有關讀寫的展覽
Harald Kraemer (城大創意媒體副教授School of Creative Media City, University of Hong Kong)
19.10. 2014 (星期日Sun) 7:15pm
Datafied Research
數據化的研究
(Transmediale series / Transmediale 短講對話系列) – an evening of short position papers // Christian Ulrik Andersen (丹麥DK), Manuel Bürger (德國GER), Geoff Cox (英國UK/丹麥DK), Søren Pold (丹麥DK), Jane Prophet (英國UK/香港HK), Daniel Howe (美國US/香港HK), Damien Charrieras (法國FRA/香港HK)
The Transmediale Series is organized by the Participatory IT Research Centre, Aarhus University,
transmediale/reSource, and the School of Creative Media, the City University of Hong Kong.
It has already gone too far. Who knows when? Who knows how? It just gradually happens. We remains, Wandering randomly, On the streets, Into the alleys, And in our faintly discernible memories. One day, Seems to be secretly, Or quietly, It comes. Again, It comes.
The Fading Piece is a duo stop-motion animation with sound. The animation on the right shows a diminishing pastel while the one on the left reveals the development of a line-drawing on the Kwun Tong landscape, simultaneously, line by line. Gradually, the skyline of the city is covered by black strokes left by the pastel.
The Fading Piece (2014, Jess Lau) @WMC_e5, Connecting Space-HK
Substances and energies are unceasingly circulating and transforming. A stop-motion animation in the virtual world formed when the pastel in reality transformed into the scenery (Kwun Tong landscape) on paper, simultaneously, line by line. The animation is the recorder as well as the carrier of the energy.
I spent around half a year, 4 to 5 hours a day, to make this stop motion animation. Alongside every stroke I made, I had to record the drawing and also the pastel. I repeated around 14,000 times to finish it. Unlike other animations, I highlighted the process of the creation of animation, an all-along meditative process of making as it happened.
Jess Ching-wa Lau– a media and illustration artist, born in Hong Kong, 1991. Her works often contemplate the relations between animation and contemporary arts in general. 劉清華–熱愛媒體藝術及插畫。1991年生於香港。作品往往是當代藝術與動畫之間的多重對話。
ne.me.quittes.pas, sketch for site display @ WMC_e5 (2014.10) / Audrey Samson
ne.me.quittes.pas is an installation displaying digital data funerals. It is based on interviews that were conducted with participants on the subject of digital death, and how they imagined the afterlife of their data. The participants selected files they wish to permanently delete. The files were transferred to USB sticks which were then placed in highly corrosive acid at the bio-chemistry lab of the City University of Hong Kong. Once the IC chips containing the data were irremediably corroded, the remnants were collected like ashes. These corroded chips are exhibited in ‘urns’ in juxtaposition with the interview material. A video documentation of the degradation ritual is also displayed.
‘Digital death’ is a growing concern as more and more data becomes digital including personal data and archives. It refers to the issues surrounding data ownership and rights after death. In recent years, numerous start-ups are adressing the issue as well as megopolies like Facebook, Google and Twitter. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have a large number of clients that have deceased.[1] Families and friends start making requests: for the data to be erased, handed over, hidden, or partially shared. These companies have consequently developed policies for what happens after their clients die.[2] Facebook has a profile memorialisation option while Twitter will discontinue the account. Ik R.I.P. was a platform developed in 2009 as a reflection upon this then ‘new problem’.[3] It enabled users of the Mediamatic site to draft a sort of digital will of their Mediamatic profile. More recently companies like Perpetu based in Hong Kong is concerned with handling your digital legacy after you die, a sort of digital executor of your social networking life.[4] LIVESON is a platform that proposes to continue your Twitter presence after you die based on your previous behaviour (with AI).[5] Eterni.me goes a step further and anticipates to collect “almost everything that you create during your lifetime” to then generate an avatar that emulates the deceased and acts as an interface for loved ones to gain access to this database of a lifetime. A host of companies offer services to safeguard passwords to digital data and distribution to the appointed person after death (Legacy Locker, Entrustnet, Digizeker). Some services include the passing on of messages upon death (Deathswitch). There are also a plethora of memorial platforms (Life.Vu, Forever Missed.com, Legacy.com, Tributes.com, Remembered.com, iLasting.com, Last Memories.com). Mostly, efforts are being made to think of ways to keep access to data alive after a person dies, in some cases even a simulation of the deceased.
There is very little said, however, about erasure. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger addresses the issues of data privacy that arise with digital archiving in ‘Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age’. The lack of context inherent to digital information for example can come back to haunt people later, they may loose a job over an unsavory picture posted 10 years earlier, or be denied access to a country. Many of the initiatives that are thinking about digital death are concerned with data privacy issues, the political and social implications of lingering data.[6] Who should have rights over a person’s data after they die for example. There is another aspect to digital death that Mayer-Schönberger points to, that is that forgetting is paramount, a built-in function of the brain, not a defect, that enables it to function properly.[7] It would appear that a recent study at the University of Basel shows that the brain actively erases information and that mental illness could arise should that process be disrupted.[8] Though we might perceive our memory as failing, it would seem that selective retention is how it is meant to work. The question then becomes, with the advent of digital technology, and cheap, plentiful storage devices, how is this nearly limitless archiving affecting our need to forget?
ne.me.quittes.pas begins to adress a very underconsidered and important part of digital archiving ubiquity: the erasure of digital data. As big data sets are constantly amassed the materiality of data and the question of its erasure is no longer an issue solely related to digital death and mourning but also to privacy, data ownership, surveillance, cyberbullying, etc. The right to erase and/or forget becomes a political gesture that attempts to surpass datafication. ne.me.quittes.pas proposes a digital data funeral in which data is physically degraded, leaving no readable trace, only empty casings. What is already lost in the cloud is out of our control, it is therefore a poetic gesture, a symbolic act, and a mourning ritual. (Audrey Samson)
[7] Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Delete: The virtue of forgetting in the digital age. Princeton University Press, 2009.
[8]Cell, “A plastic nervous system requires the ability not only to acquire and store but also to forget.” Volume 156, Issue 6, 13 March 2014, Pages 1153–1166
Audrey Samson is an artist and researcher currently based in Hong Kong. She holds a BFA Major in Design Art from Concordia University (Canada), an M.A. in Media Design from the Piet Zwart Institute (The Netherlands), and is currently a PhD researcher at the City University of Hong Kong. She has taught at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Willem de Kooning Academy in The Netherlands, and set up and managed the Digital Art Lab at the Centrum voor Kunst en Cultuur. She co-founded Roger10-4 together with Sabrina Basten, a duo of women that make/break discarded electronics to build wearable electromagnetic field ‘sniffers’. She is also member of genderchangers; a collective of women which promote the exchange of technical skills between women; and a member of Aether9, a collective which explores the dramaturgical possibilities of remote real-time storytelling. She routinely gives workshops on subjects such as wearables, FLOSS, and networked performance.
Audrey Samson 藝術家、研究員,現居香港。於加拿大康克迪亞大學取得藝術學士,專修設計藝術,又於荷蘭的Piet Zwart Institute取得媒體設計碩士。現為香港城市大學新媒體學博士候選人。曾於荷蘭Gerrit Rietveld學院及Willem de Kooning學院任教。創立及管理Centrum voor Kunst en Cultuur 內的數碼藝術實驗室。又與Sabrina Basten共同創立「Roger10-4」二人組,生產電子廢物,也分解被扔掉的電子物品以製作可穿戴的含電磁場的「嗅探器」。Samson亦是「genderchangers」和「Aether9」成員之一。前者是一個推動女性之間交換技術的組織,後者則探討遙距即時式說故事的戲劇理論可能。她亦定期舉辦有關可穿戴的電子衣裝、「FLOSS」及網絡表演的工作坊。
Acknowledgement
The ne.me.quittes.pas project is indebted to Prof. Michael H W LAM and Sharon Chiu from the Department of Biology and Chemistry at CityU, for their expertise and generous assistance and facilitation in conducting the experiments.
How does the way war is thought relate to how it is fought?
NATO forces invaded Afghanistan on October 7th 2001. At that point a system for reporting every interaction between NATO and local people started up. On 25th July 2010, WikiLeaks released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, over 91,000 (15,000 withheld) reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports, written by soldiers and intelligence officers, are mainly short descriptions of military actions but they also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and other details. This document was used by a group of newspapers to generate articles, many of which gave new kinds of insight into the prosecution of this war. The full data set however is rarely seen, and access to it is blocked in many territories around the globe. As a full document it is 108MB of text. It gives unique insight into the futile nature of the war in Afghanistan but also the ontology of contemporary war as it is carried out on the ground. Just as an algorithm is an ‘effective procedure’, a series of logical steps required to complete a task, the Afghan War Diary shows war as it is computed, reduced to an endless permutation of jargon, acronyms, procedure recorded, cross-referenced and seen as a sequence or pattern of events.
On 25th July 2010, WikiLeaks released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, which includes over 91,000 (15,000 withheld) reports by soldiers and intelligence officers covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. Endless War is not a video installation but a prolonged real-time processing of the data set seen from a series of different analytical points of view. As the war is fought it produces entries in databases that are in turn analyzed by software looking for repeated patterns of events, spatial information, kinds of actors, timings and other factors. Endless War shows how the way war is thought relates to the way it is fought. Both are seen as potentially endless, computational processes. The algorithmic imaginary of contemporary power meshes with the drawn out failure of imperial adventure.
Endless War is not a video installation but a real-time processing of this data seen from a series of different analytical points of view. Pick-up microphones on the central processing unit feed back to the inner working of the machine as it processes each result. N-gram fingerprints categorize the summaries of the records finding a pathway through the 76,000 files. The reduction of words to sequences of bytes or letters allows patterns to emerge from the sequences which can be used in trigram matching between entries; and searches for the frequency of terms within those entries. As the war is fought it produces entries in databases that are in turn analyzed by software looking for repeated patterns of events, spatial information, kinds of actors, timings and other factors. Endless War shows how the way war is thought relates to the way it is fought. Both are seen as, potentially endless, computational processes. The algorithmic imaginary of contemporary power meshes with the drawn out failure of imperial adventure.
*****Endless War, YoHa with Matthew Fuller, 2011, was exhibited at Void Gallery, Derry, Northern Ireland, 2011 and the Kunst Hal Aarhus, Denmark, 2013.
YoHa
About YoHa
Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji have lived and worked together since 1994. YoHa’s graphic vision and technical tinkering has powered several celebrated collaborations, including Harwood and Yokokoji’s co founding of the artists group Mongrel (in 1996-2007), which specializes in digital media, and the Mediashed a free-media lab in Southend-on-sea (2005-2008). In 2008 they joined long-time collaborator Richard Wright to produce Tantalum Memorial, which won the Transmediale first prize (2009), was then featured at the ZeroOne Biennial (San Jose, USA), Manifesta07 (Bolzano, Italy), the Science Museum London, Ars Electronica, Plugin (Switzerland), and Laboral (Spain)
Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji 自1994年起互為生活及工作夥伴。「YoHa」對圖像的灼見和對技術的玩弄撮成了多個知名的合作計劃。他們共同創立了以數碼媒體創作主導的藝術家組織「Mongrel」(1996-2007);又於英國濱海紹森德設立了自由媒體實驗室「Mediashed」(2005-2008)。2008年,與長期合作伙伴Richard Wright共同製作了「Tantalum Memorial」,並獲Transmediale 2009第一名,其後於美國聖荷西的ZeroOne藝術雙年展、意大利波紮諾的「Manifesta 07」、倫敦科學博物館、奧地利國際電子藝術「Ars Electronica」、瑞士的「Plugin」及西班牙的「Laboral」展出。