Via: Bill Spornitz

Yo;

a thought: We web-folk, we love our web, and sometimes we look at the text-folk
who live next door and think "look at them, plucking away at their Hermes
3000's... what they need is a bit of the ol' web!" so, during over-the-fence
conversation, we good-naturedly mention an opensource collaborative filter
module or two, collaboratively being written in Rails and being group-improved
at a geometric rate, as we speak, and would they ever like it it's so k3wl and
l33t... their eyes glaze over.. Bruce, you could write this scene better than
I!

another thought: Once, while directing an epic at the local planetarium on the
subject of time and space, I had to manage a group of Actors, the lot of which
had to cover various show-times and script improvements over the course of the
3 month run (we love our Planetarium shows up here, as you know) so I built
them a little php-powered web Forum and showed them all how to use it; it was
the perfect solution to co-ordinating all of this showbiz and they posted a
total of 4 messages over the three months, most of them of the variety: "Is
this thing on?"... IOW - the web didn't work for them.

I agree that the "moderation whining" is tedious; we've seen it before. I also
agree that their obstacle is structural in nature. My recent Community College
DBA training tells me this: they need some Systems Analysis.

... but there's no time for that. The last couple times this discussion cameup,
I think I said something like:

-> How about plugging some infrastructure into the input stream BEFORE it gets
to the moderators - like a group moderation engine that could entertain those
who enjoy such things, with it's own output for those who enjoy that kind of
thing... the royal moderators could then take the stream that comes out of that
engine and perhaps be able to leverage whatever Knowledge that process was able
to glean from analyzing the input stream to help provide the classic nettime
list experience for those who prefer that. (me)

But, maybe that's (sort-of) what we are seeing come out of the event in
Montreal. A group tapping into the input stream before it gets to the
moderation.

(Sorry for all the typing; my step-daughter is practising her Bach as I type
this and I am enjoying typing along in time with her....)

The tomatoes are well

-b

> From: Bruce Sterling
> Date: 2006/06/17 Sat AM 04:00:37 CDT
> To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
> Subject: A Modest Proposal
>
> John Battelle, the "band manager" for the explosively popular
> boingboing.net, is considering installing a collaborative web filter
> on his blog "Searchblog."
<...>

Via: nick knouf

On Jun 19, 2006, at 10:21 AM, twsherma@mailbox.syr.edu wrote:

> Here's how it works. A criminal suspect or a terrorist is shown
> pictures of the scene of a crime or a terrorist training site. The
> suspect's brain waves are monitored, looking for brain waves of
> recognition, signs in the suspect's memory that links the suspect
> to the scene of a crime or terrorist activity. These brain waves of
> recognition are called P300 waves. The suspect may deny any
> involvement, but a real-time analysis of his or her brain waves may
> conclusively establish prior criminal activity. Previously
> undetectable memories determine guilt.

As someone who has designed, run, and analyzed a number of EEG, MEG,
and fMRI experiments in the past, I can say that this is still far
off as an everyday device. There are a number of practical and
conceptual problems involved. Oftentimes the journalistic accounts
gloss over the difficulties, which are many. Yet I think it's still
important to be concerned and develop appropriate responses and
procedures for using any type of "lie detector".

But onto some of the issues. First, getting a reliable result within
a single subject is extremely difficult for these types of
measurements. The data are so "noisy" (physical noise from the
measurement device, as well as physiological "noise" that we may
someday find out holds interesting data) that results must be
averaged across many subjects before stable peaks can be found.
However, it can be done in some cases and for some stimuli in single
subjects: if you want to get reasonable results from only a single
subject, you must present him/her with a large number of trials---
anywhere from 150-200 trials per condition (in EEG/MEG) and around
100 (in fMRI) (this is all based on my experience and with the
analysis tools I've used).

Second, we still do not know enough about the underlying mechanisms
of memory to know how, in the case of EEG or MEG, the signals we
measure are related to the underlying mental processes of memory and
recognition. All we have here (and with fMRI) is a correlative
measure; none of these techniques can establish causation. Perhaps
the correlation is enough for a court of law; I don't know enough
about legal standards of evidence to know for sure.

Thirdly, all of the techniques require a willing subject to remain
still for anywhere between one and two hours. It's possible to
sedate a subject, however the sedation process will affect the
results measured to an uncertain degree. Also, with fMRI (and
somewhat so for MEG, but for different reasons), you cannot scan
people who have certain types of metal in their bodies, suggesting a
possible (if invasive) countermeasure.

Finally (for now), there are still open questions as to the best way
to analyze the data. For example, with fMRI data there are a number
of tactics to use: you can morph the data for each subject into a
standard template, allowing direct averaging across subjects; you can
"localize" areas in individual subjects, and then average the results
across the localized areas; you can map the data into an agnostic
"spherical" space to again allow averaging across subjects; and so
on. Besides these spatial issues, there is also certain disagreement
as to the signal and statistical analysis techniques to use, both in
fMRI and EEG/MEG.

Some journalistic articles:

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb111401.shtml
http://neuroethics.stanford.edu/documents/HankArticleStanfordReport.pdf

Some articles from scientific journals (I have not read these
articles to know if I agree with their methodology):

http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=11835606
http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=16161128
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10%
2E1371%2Fjournal%2Epbio%2E0020150
http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=11588589

Cheers,

nick knouf

Have you ever had your brain fingerprinted? Brain fingerprinting is a new
kind of lie-detector test. Instead of looking for nervous reactions on the
surface of the skin, brain fingerprinting technology looks directly into
the mind of a suspect. The FBI and CIA in the United States hope it will
become one of the most significant forensic tools since the advent of DNA
analysis. Governments all over the world are excited about brain
fingerprinting.

Here's how it works. A criminal suspect or a terrorist is shown pictures
of the scene of a crime or a terrorist training site. The suspect's brain
waves are monitored, looking for brain waves of recognition, signs in the
suspect's memory that links the suspect to the scene of a crime or
terrorist activity. These brain waves of recognition are called P300
waves. The suspect may deny any involvement, but a real-time analysis of
his or her brain waves may conclusively establish prior criminal activity.
Previously undetectable memories determine guilt.

Brain fingerprinting technology is already widely used by advertising
agencies to determine the effectiveness of television and radio
commercials, as well as billboard and magazine advertising. People are
offered cash to get them to volunteer to have their minds read
periodically, to see if advertising campaigns are having their desired
effects. Governments are also very interested to see if their public
service announcements are sinking in. Have you ever had your brain
fingerprinted?


Nerve Theory: http://www.kunstradio.at/2006A/H5N1en.html

Via: nick knouf

On Jun 18, 2006, at 9:50 PM, Kali Tal awrote:
> Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2006 07:29:37 -0700
> From: Kali Tal
> Subject: Re: Comment on Paul Miller's Entertainment Nation
>
> I'm with you, Paul. How do you suggest we go about it, though? A
> television boycott? A movie boycott? A movement towards live
> entertainment? A coalition that is geared towards recreating a non-
> mass-media social life?
> [...]
>
> At the same time, we need to figure out how to start creating a real
> alternative media. The problem is that corporations buy up all the
> small guys and the FCC is set up to make it next to impossible for
> ventures with little capital to jump the hurdles that will allow us
> into the game. But it's far from hopeless. I can tell you one group
> that's gotten around this in an interesting way: The Nature
> Conservency (http://www.nature.org/). They raise funds and buy lands
> that are threatened with environmental degradation.
> [...]

I understand that it would require the raising of more money than any
progressive group that I know of has raised before, but the FCC _does_
auction off frequency bands occasionally:

http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auctions_home

What if a progressive organization were able to purchase spectrum
for our own uses? What if we didn't let mass media "own" all of the
frequencies? Of course there are certain philosophical issues with
playing by the same rules as everyone else; I, along with others on
this list, I would suspect, am against any one corporation "owning"
a band of frequencies. But just as the Nature Conservancy buys up
land to prevent it being used by multinationals, we too could buy up
frequency space to prevent _it_ from being used by multinationals.

Perhaps the organization would simply let the frequency band
be fallow; perhaps we'd create the infrastructure to allow the
underrepresented a place to allow their dreams, their grievances to be
heard. Far fetched? Perhaps, but Pete Tridish and the Prometheus Radio
Project (http://www.prometheusradio.org/) has already helped many
people apply for local low-power FM radio stations: organizations that
provide local news and entertainment in an age where many rural radio
stations are entirely unmanned.

To be honest, I haven't looked into the purchasing of spectrum further
than a quick perusal of the FCC site, but it might be an analogous
option.

Cheers,

nick knouf

Via: Alan Sondheim

Making a general reply, in regard to cinema, digital, analogic, or
otherwise::

First, There is _no_ cinema; there are discursive practices, fields of all
sorts, with fuzzy boundaries, technologies that come and go, labors and
energies that drive them. 'Cinema' itself already connotes style, 'seri-
ousness,' formal and overdetermined histories, a viewpoint which already
tends towards its status as the 'dominant form' of art in the 20th
century.

I submit there is no dominant art form in any century; this is what art
historians do: make dominance. For whom would cinema be dominant in this
manner? What demographics? Is this the result of polling? What is cinema?
Perhaps rock is dominant? The novel and proliferation of literacy in
general? Street theater? War? Disease?

Second, perhaps you know more conservative or media-bound people than I
do; almost all the interesting work (video, qt, flash, etc.) I've seen
online is done by people without a film, or for that matter, a digital
video background. Someone will say or write, 'I've done a piece in quick-
time'; they don't say they're videomakers or filmmakers or web artists
(well, sometimes) or net artists (that phrase already seems overdeterm-
ined as well with such a short 'history'). And they certainly don't say
they're 'quicktime artists' or some such.

Even 'film theory' - Metz for example - works as well with avatars, online
behavior, MOOs, performance, being onine or offline. Film theory did
interesting turns back then as theorists themselves increasingly blurred
the boundaries of their subject matter until everything inside and
outside media was encountered.

I think distinctions should be dropped at this point; they're rotted!
They're rotted because of the effects they continue to have - on universi-
ty departments (what is and is not acceptable), on granting organizations,
on distributors, on both online and offline venues. I give an example of
my own work, obviously closest to that. I do laptop performance, have a
show up now with video and computer projections, video and computer moni-
tors, my online work splashes across a variety of media (defined in terms
of applications), some has been interactive, some not, some has deliber-
ately broken down, some seems to play forever. When I apply for a grant in
category X, I'm told the work doesn't 'fit.' I'm not the only one in this
situation - if I was, it could be nothing more than pathology, idiolect.
Most artists I know - some from video, some from film, some ab nihilo in
terms of background - run into these problems. In other words, definitions
a priori carry power, carry the _cut,_ exclude by their very nature.

(I should add this is particularly true for artists whose work is primar-
ily online (one way or another): this is where all those issues of
intellectual property, history, grants to the ephemeral, come to roost.
And schools generally respond to all of this by rear-guard creation of new
boundaries, divisions; it's interesting as well to see what is
academically acceptable and not acceptable in terms of online publication
- this continues to change, as academies hold onto non-Wiki/blog bound
objecthood, even in the absence of material, i.e. paper, production.)

This isn't anything new; it's out of Foucault obviously. But the problems
persist, as if humans today have to learn how to _look_ again, without the
cultural baggage that leads eventually to connoisseurship and all the
problems that entails. And 'cinema,' 'cineaste,' has, one way or another,
been deeply embedded with, in bed with, the connoisseur.

If I believed in manifestos, I'd be screaming: Down with Definitions!
Destroy All Cinema! Learn To Look! (but then I'd be already imitating the
old Destroy All Music festivals which produced some of the most interest-
ing performance, sonic or otherwise, that I've encountered).

Finally, at least in some areas, for example net art, the very use of
distinctive terminology carries arrogance and (cultural) power with it -
again, whose net art, what history, etc. etc.? There are probably well
over a billion online at this point, and as Tom points out, everyone is
making video, but also everyone is making everything; in the midst of the
misery of the planet, creation is bursting forth. So there's a political
agenda to my reply here: Online, let the URL or whatever, telnet, ftp,
etc. etc. take you to unfathomable places where you're lost, challenged,
surrounded, exhilarated. And leave the old forms, whatever they are or
were, with whatever histories, far behind. Even if one is bound to
recreate the past, it's _new._

- Alan

Via: Kali Tal

I'm with you, Paul. How do you suggest we go about it, though? A
television boycott? A movie boycott? A movement towards live
entertainment? A coalition that is geared towards recreating a non-
mass-media social life? How do we circumvent the vertical monopoly on
media and still get the word out to everyone? Slow media might catch
on; slow food is making some comeback. But most of us expect our news
and our communications at lightning speed, and the same companies
that own our media also own huge sectors of the internet, where
private toll roads will shortly become the rule, at least in the
United States.

I've been thinking quite a bit about the dangers of vertical monopoly
in mass media for the last decade, especially as I watched my college
students become more and more alienated from each other; less able to
interact without the mediation of tv, film, video games, concert
attendance, shopping, eating at (primarily chain) restaurants,
cellphones, internet connections. Fewer and fewer of them practice
any sort of creative art (making music, painting, dance, theater),
and fewer and fewer of them talk to each other (or anyone else) about
anything that truly matters in their lives. I know this because I
had the benefit of teaching small classes for the last decade, and
creating the kind of classroom environment that demanded
participation of each student. Many of my students said that my
classes were actually making their relations with their friends more
difficult because they were finding they disagreed with those friends
about more and more things but they didn't know how to have real
discussions with those friends. I'm not saying I'm a spectacular
teacher -- I'm a good teacher, but no better than my own good
teachers were when I was in college. I'm saying this because one of
the things students in my classes are asked to do is to observe
themselves, take notes on their own culture, conversations, habits.
And over the last thirty years, I've seen those habits change a lot.
This may be shifting a bit with the involvement of youth in creating
their own internet presence, but the most popular venues, like
MySpace, are owned by the same companies that own the rest of the
media. In the case of MySpace, it's Rupert Murdoch, which makes
MySpace a sibling of Fox News, which certainly should give us pause.
Exciting things are happening in online spaces, but they are fragile
because we, the people, don't own them.

Don't think I'm making a pitch for nostalgia, because I'm not. The
"old days" weren't so great either. But I know that there was more
choice available for people in terms of activities, in terms of the
news they read, in terms of what they did for entertainment, in terms
of what they did when they met in groups and socialized: the days
before immortal, amoral vertical media monopolies became concrete
entities and began to invisibly edit the world for everyone in reach,
lately spreading out of the industrialized nations and swallowing
huge segments of what we used to call "Third World" populations,
growing, like The Blob, bigger every day.

Of all the things my students do for entertainment, the most
liberating and the most communal is actually talking on their cell
phones. Don't laugh. I hate cell phones, and I hate it when people
are talking to people who aren't there, especially now that invisible
headphones exist and you can't tell the schizophrenics from the
"normal" people anymore. I got mad if a cell phone went off in my
classroom and I made my students turn off ringers and vibrating
functions at the door. In the last year I taught (1996), I had to
ban students from chatting on wireless internet devices when they
were in class. But at least this medium lets young people *talk* to
each other. It's active, not passive communication, even if it
consists mostly of people telling other people where they are and
what they're doing, and making plans to meet up later to engage in
some consumptive, passive activity.

When you call for change, you need to realize that the change must go
far deeper than rejecting the media options that are out there for
us, provided by the corporations whose end goal is selling us into an
intellectual and moral stupor. Before we tell people, "don't watch
TV," we need to offer them opportunities to create something else to
do. And we're not very good at that, we folks who call ourselves
progressives. There needs to be a whole lot more dancing at the
revolution before people will start coming. P-Funk said it best:
Free your ass, and your mind will follow. There are a lot of polls
rolling around showing that the majority of Americans do not approve
of Bush, and especially disapprove of the Iraq war and the tanking
U.S. economy. Maybe people are ripe for turning their backs on media
that don't represent their beliefs or opinions, but they still need
something to entertain their minds and hearts when they come home
after work and on the weekends. The average American works hard, with
long hours and lower and lower pay (if you count wages in real
dollars), and if we don't want them to put their feet on the coffee
table and sack out in front of the television, we need to give them
an alternative; or, rather, we need to create opportunities for THEM/
US to create alternatives.

Progressives have to be out there building youth centers, supporting
local libraries, starting book clubs, community sports teams, putting
on dances, sponsoring music and arts education and performance in the
community, forming outdoor clubs, cooking clubs, hosting picnics and
building alternative press structure. We need to do this in an
organic way, so that it's not "prescribed entertainment"; in short,
we need to ask people what they want to do for entertainment and
social connection, and help them find the resources they need to do
it. This means getting out of our heads and going into our
communities and figuring out how to unite "progressive" and "fun" for
a change. Throw a dinner party, and at the party, talk about
boycotting mass media. Encourage your friends to throw parties and do
the same. Get one community to mobilize for "mass-media free"
entertainment, and see how it catches on. The underlying theme is
"We Can Do It Ourselves" -- we can be active, have fun, and not rely
on the vidiot box in its various packaged forms.

That's the above ground part of the movement. An underground
movement would probably co-evolve to include coordinated billboard
defacement, pirate media, sabotage, civil disobedience that disrupts
broadcasts, and all sorts of enjoyable and exciting monkey-wrenching
activities for those who require a heavy dose of adrenaline with
their entertainment. Something for the kids to do....

The Right Wing understands this, by the way; particularly the
fundamentalist Christians. They understand it's a very short walk
from the church social to the abortion clinic picket line, and that
the family that prays with its neighbors is the family that preserves
white supremacy, sexism, property values and the Republican Party.
They understand that a sense of neighborliness and community is
crucial to building and sustaining their power base. A sermon shouted
from the pulpit is easily translated into an anti-gay-marriage letter-
writing campaign, especially if the church pre-prints the letters and
cards for their parishioners to mail. The "family values" promoted
by fundamentalists incite people who have the capacity to be
extremists to do things like shoot doctors who perform abortions,
burn down black churches, and lynch homosexuals -- acts that the
above-ground fundamentalist movement overtly condemns, while covertly
encouraging.

People are social animals and gravitate towards organized
institutional structures, especially if those structures reinforce
their notion that they are good people, doing good things. The
Christian fundamentalists feel mutually supported and part of a
righteous community. We progressives don't feel that way, in large
part because we have forgotten that not all institutional structures
are The Enemy -- that we need institutions that support us and share
our goals and affirm our lives and our sense of purpose. Social
organization is not necessarily a cage or a trap; there are
alternative modes and we can find them if we look. (A good place to
start, by the way, is with Wini Breines' brilliant study of Sixties
organizing, _Community Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The
Great Refusal_.) One of the reasons that the progressives of the
Sixties were successful at all was because of the communal spirit
that motivated organizers and participants alike. We may scoff at
Woodstock today because we have been taught to scoff at Sixties
culture (primarily by the right wingers--via their media machines--
who were frightened by that era so deeply that they swore that Never
Again would their power be threatened by the masses), but go watch
the film of Woodstock again and you can see that politics and culture
were so deeply meshed that they couldn't be separated. You can see
that in a lot of the Sixties footage, from the newly re-released
_Winter Soldier_ (http://worldfilm.about.com/b/a/257116.htm) to
radical films that are deeply buried and long out of print (_FTA_,
_No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger_, _Citizen Soldier_). You can
see that, too, in the few activist enclaves that truly act as
communities -- Gainsville, Florida is a good example of a place where
Sixties activists are still alive, kicking, effectively working
towards political ends, and regularly recruiting new blood. They
also, I hear, play volleyball together.

The corporations won't like it, if we start having fun without
watching their commercials or buying their video games, their CDs and
DVDs, their newspapers and their magazines. They won't like it if the
people re-purpose their billboards for educational and community
services. But they're corporations and they have no loyalty, even to
their own media branches, so if we quit watching their commercials,
they'll quit advertising on those stations. If we're really
successful, they'll try to coopt the activities in which our
communities engage, as they did so well the first time around (which
is why we're here talking about this in the first place). But if we
did this intelligently, as a national community of progressives, with
the intent of rebuilding (or, in many places, building for the first
time) neighborhood ties in ways that promote solidarity and co-
dependence, it might actually work. Right now the liveliest
"neighborhood" organizations are all about protecting property
(homeowner's groups and "covenants") and keeping out the riff-raff
(Neighborhood Watch). We can apparently be persuaded to spy on each
other a lot more easily than we can organize ourselves to party
together. (The Homeland Security Department went straight to
Neighborhood Watch when they wanted to begin their "outreach"
program.) There's no doubt there will be a concerted mass media
attack on "subversives" who want to kill their televisions, and who
advocate others doing the same. I'm sure we'll be called every name
they can think of, but if we're not watching them when they're
calling us names, who cares?

At the same time, we need to figure out how to start creating a real
alternative media. The problem is that corporations buy up all the
small guys and the FCC is set up to make it next to impossible for
ventures with little capital to jump the hurdles that will allow us
into the game. But it's far from hopeless. I can tell you one group
that's gotten around this in an interesting way: The Nature
Conservency (http://www.nature.org/). They raise funds and buy lands
that are threatened with environmental degradation. They don't
politic; they own. They put money down on our future, and they have
a well-developed strategy that helps them make good choices. We
ought to be doing the same with media. Corporate media isn't going to
change. We're a long way from the world socialist revolution that
will place the media in the hands of its rightful owners, the
people. I'm all for working for socialist revolution, but in the
meantime, I think we ought to emulate the Conservancy's strategies.
McDonalds is buying up rainforest and razing it for cattle. So the
Nature Conservancy said, hey, we can buy rainforest too. And they
did. We can buy media technology the same way, if we're smart about
it. Sure, environmentalism is cool, but it wasn't always. People-
owned media used to be cool, and it could be again if, as
progressives, we're willing to put our money where our mouths are.
We need to start a Media Conservancy and start building an alternate
infrastructure.

Technology is on our side, as it is always on the side of the
newcomer, since we aren't heavily invested in old hardware and
software. Indymedia, CommonDreams, MediaChannel, would all be better
off if they ran on an alternate "people's internet" (and maybe then
the Google ads and Google/Yahoo search engine censoring would
disappear). Now that movies are almost all video products from start
to finish, it's not impossible to conceive of an alternate Hollywood,
as well, where progressive stars, directors, and other industry
workers pool money to develop production and distribution channels
that don't depend on the major media corporations. But we'd all have
to *want* to do this, to be willing to believe in the value of
communal ownership of the means of production and distribution of
media, and develop a level of trust that would transcend the
infighting for which the left is famous. I believe we can build new
political and economic structures if we are also concerned with the
social structures within which we live -- if we feel responsible to
and for one another. Building community will bring many of us
outside of our comfort zones and it will require a level of tolerance
for people who don't adhere to our particular ideological line. On
the other hand, it will also offer opportunities to grow, to make new
and rewarding connections with folks we wouldn't otherwise have
invited over for dinner, to be less insular and more in touch with
what everyone in our communities wants (rather than the small circle
of friends we usually inhabit), and, most importantly, to have a good
time without resort to mass media products. It's a kind of Tupperware-
Party strategy, I admit, but it sure worked for Tupperware, and what
we'd be selling is communal self-sufficiency; a far more attractive
product, I'd hope.

Peace.
Kali Tal

On Jun 17, 2006, at 5:15 AM, Paul D. Miller wrote:

> This is a "remix" of an article I have in the current issue of The
> Nation Magazine. It goes on newstands today/tomorrow
>
>
> Digital Music Revolution
> by Paul D. Miller
> his article can be found on the web at:
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/miller

Via: John Young

While already a commonplace conventional gadget for TSA-pre-approved
road warriors and women hammering at the reinforced glass ceiling
suppressor, it is likely the cellphone will grow as the weapon of choice
for youngsters hoping to escape being the oppressive tools of their
ambitious parents and, no offense intended, their dedicated teachers
expected to do what parents have no time or skill for -- prepare the
kids for subservience or for a few to be enforcers of subservience.

Cellphones being banned in schools, in many workplaces, and especially
in havens of secrets, show how much they threaten controlled environments.
While computers are being force-fed to students and workers, cellphones
free them from the machines of control, no matter that the operators of
wireless networks control the cellphones in the background as mainframes
once also worked their data-amassing devilry out of sight.

The PC had a short life as a liberator, and as might have been expected
those most expert in PC manufacture, marketing and education, didn't
resist the irresistable temptation to cash in on the readily dispensed
trust of machines which appeared to be under the individual's control,
and were if you could afford the pricey gadgets -- until hooked up the
Internet, then loss of control followed instantaneously although there
were fabulous promises of the empowerment of interconnectivity
and few warnings of the easy of gathering of information on users.

All the while the background technology, finance, law and politics
welcomed another illusion of consumer-citizen control of communication
and discourse, ready to wire-tapped, surveiled, banned and ridiculed
whenever it went too far.

Cellphone wizards will appear presumably who will show how to
violently misuse the toys meant to infantilize to counter the computer
liberation geeks who have grown comfortable as mature adults with
payola for advice on homeland surveillance and sagacity dispensing
shopworn promises of the subservient, treacherous Internet.

And so it went with freedom of the press, of religion, of the right
to elect government officeholders, of a nation of laws. Apologias
for these thuggeries is a surefire invitation to the club.

Via: Keith Hart

Swift's original 'modest proposal' was to get rid of excess Irish
children by eating them. Similarly Bruce's suggestion to replace people
with machines...

Keith Hart

On June 16, Alan Sondheim wrote:

I have absolutely no idea who you're talking about and I know a lot of
filmmakers, videomakers etc. form all over the country. I don't even
understand why you say the 'central digital art form is simulation' -
where is this coming from? And what is 'hyper-reality' about all of this?
Are you talking about studio photorealist work or small independents? As
it is this is problematc. for that matter, the aspect ratio hasn't been
'stretched' - it's changed with HDTV, but there has been analog letter-
boxing for years.

TS: Hi Alan. I've had several responses to this post from filmmakers and
they admit they call their work (in video) 'film.' I'm glad to hear you
know some filmmakers who call their work, in video, video. I say the
central digital art form is simulation because for decades digital media
has been replicating all things previously analog in the interest of
reproductive fidelity and reliable conveyance. Digital video doesn't do
anything different than analog video, except it copies better and gets
from point A to point B with less degradation. The shift from 4:3 to 16:9
is not just about HDTV, it is the adoption of a cinematic frame (as you
point out, letter-boxing for the cinematic look was happening before
HDTV). Simulations of both 'reality' and 'film' end in the complete fake:
the fusion of the copy and the original.

> Filmmakers, displaced and stunned by these developments, have latched
> onto video. Wanting video to be film they slow video's frame rate and
> insist upon progressive scan. Video's aspect ratio has been stretched
> from 4:3 to 16:9. Filmmakers try to slow down and overtake an electronic
> medium that runs at the speed of light. Major equipment manufacturers
> exploit this migration, for the time being... The central digital art
> form is simulation. The goal is the creation of a complete fake: the
> fusion of the copy and the original. As with 'reality television,' the
> digital 'film' demonstrates the difficulties of controlling
> hyper-reality.

Sondheim wrote: There is NO explicit natu of video and certainly video
does not 'undermine' fictional narrative; just watch an evening of
television. As far as instant replay goes, that's also been in existence
for years with video assists.

TS: I disagree. Almost all fiction (and advertising) on television is
shot on film and distributed via the video signal of television. It is no
surprise that 'reality TV' uses the video look established by the ENG
technology that pushed 16mm film off newscasts in the mid-1960s. Yes, you
could argue that 'reality TV' is a form of fiction. But it is formed
using cybernetic strategies. Video is used like an instrument to examine
'real' or ordinary people who are exposed and humiliated in video. Video
is an explicit medium, offering less distortion of time and space than
film. Of course some of the first reality shows, Candid Camera (1948) or
The American Family (1973) were shot on film, but audiences wouldn't
accept the film look as reality programming today. Film as a descriptive
language simply doesn't have the 'live' look. My point is it is
ill-advised to shoot fiction in video if you are working with the
conventions of traditional cinema: the adaptation of script, actors and
staged drama to large or small screen.

> Filmmakers collectively attempt to transform the balanced, brutally
> explicit retinal-acoustic reality of video into an electronic, digital
> photo-optical simulation of 'film.' They try to blanket the video
> medium's essential cybernetic characteristics (behaviour shaped and
> governed by instant replay) with scripts and actors and the conventions
> of cinematic history. It has not yet dawned on filmmakers that the
> explicit nature of the video medium undermines the illusions of
> fictional narrative.

Sondheim: Which filmmakers say this? People I know say that they work in
video? And for that matter filmmakers aren't 'confined' to anything -
there is still film and all sorts of admixtures.

TS: Again, most filmmakers working in video today call what they do 'a
film by ...,' or 'a movie by ...' They are "confined" to video because as
film becomes increasingly prohibitive financially and technologically
arcane, even those absolutely dedicated to shooting, editing, and
projecting in film find it beyond their means, unless they work with
Super-8. Sure there is still film and plenty of film/video hybrids.

> The semantic trail of this awkward takeover is amusing. Filmmakers now
> say they work in 'digital cinema.' 'Video cinema' or 'video film' are
> too straightforward and don't sound right (video sounds better as a noun
> than it does as a verb). Filmmakers, confined to computers and
> non-linear editing, are attracted to the term 'movies' (as in 'QuickTime
> movie files') -- but the idea of digital 'movies' is ultimately too
> small and fails to encompass the grand 20th century scale of cinematic
> history. The word cinema must remain in a description of filmmaking in
> video. The millennial practice of making 'films' in the medium of video
> is exactly what it is: cinematic video. It is filmmakers making cinema
> using the medium of video. It is cinematic video.

Sondheim: This definition seems very unnecessary and confining; what
bothers me is the constant need to define and redefine whole fields of
practices ranging from analog film through video installation through
video art online through interactive work or Internet II work, etc. etc.
As far as the history of 'cinema' goes or 'cinema' itself? Which history?
Which cinema? I certainly don't seem my work in this tradition, if such it
is, at all - there are cinemas of the 20th century surely but I'd be hard
picked to define any of them. As far as 'cinema' goes, I think the word
itself carries too much baggage.

TS: This may seem "unnecessary and confining," but calling video (shot,
edited, distributed/streamed and projected in video) 'film' is a sloppy
use of language. Cinema is a big word, as it was the dominant art
practice of the 20th century. Pick your cinema, Hollywood or
experimental--if you carry this practice over into the medium of video,
cinematic video may be a helpful, perhaps useful designation.

Tom.

http://canadianart.ca/articles/Articles_Details.cfm?Ref_num=332

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