Some Brief Notes on the Future of Digital Arts – The Sensorial Realm Stephen Andrade, Associate Professor ILS4130 Some brief notes, quotes and reflection on the emerging world of ‘senses’ as digital art and technological interface. These notes were gathered from a number of sources listed below. Andy Warhol once said, “ The reason I am painting this is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do. We all want to be the machine, or perhaps the perfection of the machine, or the desirability of the machine, or the ideal of the machine.” Each wave of new technology innovation brings us to fulfilling more elaborate fantasies of a fuller sensual life. Ludwig Wittgenstein famously theorized “I can never be certain that my ‘blue’ is your ‘blue”; I can only persuade you to share a consensual languages-game whose referents are sufficiently stable to function. Through such cultural mechanisms ‘modernity’ believed it had anchored the common human senses. Post modern digital artists turn some of those modes of ‘representation’ against themselves, destabilizing, disrupting, hacking the comfort level of shared perceptions. Are digital artists of the present moment charting new path of experience or further aestheticizing the fragmentation and colonization of the body (senses) that was modernity’s signal achievement? Caroline Jones in the introduction of her book “Sensorium” says, “new forms of subjectivity (self perception) were theorized from cyborgs to digital excursions to networked hive-minds. The early 21st century registers a subtle shift in the discourse. On the level of consumer products, prosthetic supplementation is increasingly acceptable and even desired; cosmetic neurology is proposed by scientists; venture capital flows into biometric products hybridized of polyester and cartilage; and bio computers have been tested at the Nano-scale. Contemporary artists continue to press for an edgier awareness of the implications of this new techno-sensual comfort zone.” Historically art has been segmented for one sense at a time - paintings for vision, music for ears, food and fragrance for taste and smell, textile for touch and feeling and so on. But we are reaching a state of technology where some of these senses can be combined to enhance the artistic experience as a hybrid involvment for the patron. The aesthetic attitude of this hybrid moment goes something like this - modernist segregation of senses is giving way to dramatic sensorial mixes, transmutations, and opportunities for intensified and playful mediation. Our overlapping senses form the threshold of desire (and experience) and limit, and increasingly technology tests how far we are willing to go. Cosmetic neurology? Personal olfactory headspace design? Recreational prosthetics? Art constitutes a powerful stimulus and response to such sensory possibilities, allowing us to try on concepts, experiences and altered states and producing cultural space for debates about the merits (for example) of a temporary visually induced schizophrenia or an aesthetic simulation of the ‘smell of fear’. Some artists exploring new sensorial experience in digital art: • Mathieu Brand - spiritual paths and controlled schizophrenia • Ryoji Ikeda - mind bending son et lumiere • Janet Cardiff and George Bures Millers - evocative psychological soundscapes • Natasha Sadr Arnings - curatorial essay • Bruce Naumans - night visions • Francois Roche and R&Sie(n) - body fluid architectures • Anri Sala - human replications • Sissel Tolaas - odor saturated walls • Jeffery Wall, Gregory Crewdson - hallucinogenic cinematic photography Sound – A Brief Example Sound is one sense that has undergone tremendous manipulation over its history in organized society. Public sound was once the norm and channeled human experience to align to patterns, experience, calendars and so on. Public sound created a sense of community (bells, choir, market place noise), but noise has always been a problem. Ancient Buddhist scriptures complain of noises in the great city. Graffiti in Pompeii begged for peace and quiet. Mondrian’s cube isolated inhabitant from noise (and any other input), creating the ultimate cone of silence. Acoustically dampened rooms are called “dead rooms”. Controlling sound created the illusion of controlling society and separating one from the masses. Modernisms white cube (Le Corbusier domestic living space), stripped of ornamentation, such spaces would include ‘white noise’. Our ideal today is climate controlled, sound-proofed, lighting controlled, all glass – no windows. Sound scape artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller – hyper mediate acoustical urban lives – acoustical choice is always ready in the sound mediated space of sensorium. Pre-modern sounds are largely unavailable; machine laden urban streets themselves become an aural medium. Hitler said “without loudspeakers we would never have conquered Germany.” The urban sonic envelope now includes amplification, reduction segmentation, and competition. Artist Ryoji Ikeda explores this in his work. 20th century modes of acoustical dampening have been dedicated to desires of the individual and required new forms of social behavior. Early concert halls demanded quiet, MTV visualized sound and music delivery, digital files and Napster created music sharing ecosystems, now we’re all plugged into private ear buds. John Cage theorizes about noise and sound in this short video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y “The self is being instrumenalized, we are joined to the sensory tools we have made to amplify and accompany our senses. Fluxus and Dadaist formed to explicitly to counteract modernist’s sensory hegemonies and complicate modernist segmentations. Whether shuffling through mounds of coffee, wearing 3D glasses or headphones or other immersive digital artscapes, art patrons in the new millennium are met with dramatically syn-aesthetic and kin-asethetic scenarios that produce their news from the ostentatious destruction of a bureaucratic modernist regime. By now, form has thoroughly engaged with antiform, begetting current desires for (always mediated) experience.” Resources: Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research http://0-search.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&jid=L2O&site=edslive Hill, Linda A. Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. , 2014. Print. "Unleashing the Collective Genius in Your Organization What is the relationship between leadership and innovation? How can some companies innovate again and again-continuously producing products and services that customers want-while most other firms cannot? How do you unleash consistent creativity in those around you? By a team of preeminent thinkers-leadership scholar. Flitner, David. Less Noise, More Soul: The Search for Balance in the Art, Technology, and Commerce of Music. , 2013. Print. The digital revolution has enabled the creation and distribution of music in ways previously unimagined. This title brings together original essays by a select group of industry professionals. Malloy, Judy. Women, Art, and Technology. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2003. Internet resource. Lu, Xiaobo, and Yuelin Liu. "Embodiment, Interaction And Experience: Aesthetic Trends In Interactive Media Arts." Leonardo 47.2 (2014): 166-169. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. http://0search.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=95027701&site=edslive&scope=site Droitcour, Brian. "The Perils Of Post-Internet Art." Art In America 102.10 (2014): 110-119. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. http://0search.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=99315083&site=edslive&scope=site Allen, Barry. Artifice and Design: Art and Technology in Human Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008. Internet resource. There are many books about art, many about technology, but few about art and technology— about their affinity and the relationship of both together to human experience.1 It is this relationship that is mytopic here. I develop philosophical concepts of art, artifact, knowledge, technology, and tool, which I use to explore parallel questions about artistry in technology and technics in art. The result is a work of interdisciplinary philosophical research, with concepts and arguments drawn from evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, science studies, aesthetics, and the history, philosophy, and anthropology of art and technology. Donovan, Art. The Art of Steampunk: Extraordinary Devices and Ingenious Contraptions from the Leading Artists of the Steampunk Movement. East Petersburg, PA: Fox Chapel Pub, 2011. Print. Strongman, Jay. Steampunk: The Art of Victorian Futurism. London: Korero Books, 2011. Print. Ackley, Clifford S, and Stephen Coppel. Rhythms of Modern Life: British Prints, 1914-1939. Boston: MFA Publications, 2008. Print. Lin, Fanghua, and Changyou Wang. The Analysis of Harmonic Maps and Their Heat Flows. Singapore, SG: World Scientific, 2008. Internet resource. http://0-site.ebrary.com.helin.uri.edu/lib/jwu/detail.action?docID=10698964 Telea, Alexandru. Data Visualization: Principles and Practice. Wellesley, Mass: A K Peters, 2008. Print. Ward, Matthew, Georges G. Grinstein, and Daniel Keim. Interactive Data Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications. Natick, Mass: A K Peters, 2010. Print. Paravati, Gianluca, and Valentina Gatteschi. "Human-Computer Interaction In Smart Environments." Sensors (14248220) 15.8 (2015): 19487-19494. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Sept. 2015. http://0search.ebscohost.com.helin.uri.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=109128447&site=edslive&scope=site
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