- Publication: Nouveaux medias, nouveaux langages, nouvelles écritures
- Authors: Jean Cristofol, Colette Tron, Douglas Edric Stanley, Michel Simonot, Alain Giffard, Emmanuel Verges
- Editor: Colette Tron
- Publisher: L’Entretemps éditions
- Public presentation: 18:30, 11 January 2006 @ Cabaret Aléatoire, Friche bel de mai
I’ve just been included in another collective publication. It’s called Nouveaux médias, nouveaux langages, nouvelles écritures, and was edited by Colette Tron from the ECM/Alphabetville projet at the Friche bel de mai in Marseille.
Alain Giffard is one of the contributors, as well as my friend and collaborator Jean Cristofol. My article is pretty wonky. The deal was this: we got together for two days of private presentations of each other’s work. We debated several subjets and basically opinionated on this and that. And while Jean and I pretty much rejected the whole “New Media” moniker — proposing instead a number of concepts we’ve been working on — we ended up with a book entitled “New Media, blah blah blah”. Ho hum. I could tell things were going in this direction, so I just slapped together a quick and dirty little article. Colette Tron didn’t like it, but Jean did, so I went with it. Apparently the publisher took to it as well, so there it is. Another little contribution.
Ludovic Burel was also part of the discussion, but decided to drop out for some reason when it came to writing an article. Too bad. We met back at the Villa Arson years ago, where we were both fish out of water : I as lepered-artist-in-residence-in-limbo, while he was working as an intern. He does cool in-your-face icon “selections” for Multitudes. By the way, he was the only one with decent shoes — figures, as he came from Paris.
We’ll be giving a presentation of the book at 18h30 on the 11th of January at the Cabaret Aléatoire, Friche bel de mai. Jean and I will be there.
If you can read French, there is more information on Alain Giffard’s blog.
My school director just mentioned that there is a reference to my work in the latest Parachute magazine. I haven’t red it yet, so I’ll have to let someone else comment it to me. Apparently, it’s pretty minor and takes place in Jean-Pierre Cometti’s article The Mind Devoid of Mind: Art and Artifices of Intelligence. I found the article on the Parachute website, but I’ll have to read it at the school’s library which carries the magazine. Since I’m stuck in bed for a few more weeks, it might take awhile.
Jean-Pierre Cometti was one of the speakers at the Jouable Conference that was held at the Centre pour l’mage contemporain in Geneva. We’ve actually never really met, despite the fact that he works down the road at the University — on top of it all, as a philosopher in the art department. I suppose my reticence comes from the fact that he’s a Wittgensteinian. That said, I do have many friends that suffer the same disease, so I’ll try not to hold it against him.
It looks as if there is also an article on my brilliant collegue France Cadet, whom I work with at the Laboratoire LOEIL.
The paper I read at the conférence Colloque Jouable was just publised as part of the Jouable book. It’s called “This is Fun!”, although in spite of its title, you’ll have to be able to read French to understand it.
The Jouble book catalogues all of our efforts over the past three years within the Jouable project. Other than my article, I was a bit squeezed out of the book (typical); for example, no references to the workshops Play!, Big Brother, or Collective Spaces, that were (at least in my biased opinion) influential to the project(s). Ho hum, no big deal.
So I got another mention in an Annick Rivoire article today, in an article on Art and Code. Actually, the mention came from her interviewee, David-Olivier Lartigaud who made the following comment :
A.R.: Pourquoi est-il si difficile de qualifier les créations de ces artistes ?
D-O. L. : A la base de toutes les oeuvres avec un ordinateur, il y a du programme. Beaucoup d’artistes, comme Claude
Closky, s’intéressent au code, sans forcément programmer leurs oeuvres. Au contraire de la posture artistique d’un Douglas
Edric Stanley, qui insiste pour que les artistes soient auteurs de leurs programmes.
I suppose I can’t really deny that. That is indeed a statement I’ve made in the past: that computer art requires a computer program of some form or another. I’ve also insisted that artists should do their own coding. But that’s always been a provocative statement, designed to make a point, to invite artists to reflect on the ideology of code, and not a moral recipie for how-to-make-art. I’m not a moralist. I’m too Nietzschean for that. And Claude Closky’s brilliant, so I’ve definitely got nothing against him. But oppositions help to understand the dynamics of a specific problem, so I suppose its ok if David needs to polarize me in this way. I suppose I also deserve it.
I got a brief mention in Annick Rivoire’s article “Clash Scratch Flash” today. We actually planned to meet and discuss my installation more in depth, but for the second time she never showed up. Ah, les journalistes… So all I got was the following mention, not really a critique of any sort, but she was positive about the work, so I shouldn’t complain.
Fond et forme. Les images expérimentales d’aujourd’hui redéfinissent le cinéma dans sa forme, éclatée dans les installations interactives, «mappée» (superpositions de couches d’images) dans les courts métrages , morphée d’effets spéciaux, bidouillée pour la vieillir artificiellement ou lui donner un effet pixel. Le fond aussi est métamorphosé : narration interactive, où, à la façon d’un Chris Hales, le public est sommé de choisir la suite, narration algorithmique (générée par l’ordinateur), où, comme avec le beau projet de Douglas Edric Stanley, Concrescence, les mains des spectateurs effleurent une table de projection et recomposent ainsi de courtes séquences du Psychose d’Hitchcock.
The rest of her article can be found on the Libération website.
Oh, did I mention that Chris Hales was one of the artists invited to Némo? As Annick mentions, he’s still working with interactive narratives. He’s really quite charming, I liked him a lot. He also gave a great presentation this evening, very wacky.
In today’s edition of the French newspaper Libération, Marie Lechner published a review of our exhibition. She had nice things to say about my installation.
Parallèlement au très pointu colloque scientifique H2ptm (un jargon barbare pour hypertextes, hypermédias, produits, techniques et méthodes) qui s’achève aujourd’hui à l’université Paris-VIII, le département hypermédia propose au grand public une extension artistique et pédagogique, avec ateliers, performances (lire agenda ci-contre) et exposition d’installations interactives. Projets aboutis ou prototypes, nombre d’entre eux flirtent avec le cinéma et la notion de spectateur. Comme le prometteur Concrescence , de Douglas Edric Stanley, un dispositif de «cinéma algorithmique». En déplaçant ses mains au-dessus d’une table, le visiteur fait apparaître des mosaïques d’images animées (ici de très courts extraits de Psychose ) qu’il peut manipuler. L’ordinateur analyse ses mouvements et lui propose de nouvelles images à partir de celles dévoilées. A l’opposé d’un scénario interactif où l’utilisateur choisit le destin de l’histoire, Concrescence repose sur un subtil pas de deux entre l’humain qui influence l’histoire et la machine qui improvise des suites cohérentes. Pour une narration elliptique, fragmentée, ni totalement maîtrisée, ni vraiment automatique.
The rest of the article can be found here on the Libération Website: Scénarios pour un hypercinéma
