Technoetic Arts - Volume 11, Issue 3, 2013

Real-time computer graphics and complex sensory input challenge past assumptions of highly constrained metaphors based on static imagery. Access to research and gaming interfaces have popularized the understanding of tracking technologies that tailor interaction to ambulatory displacement and dexterous handling of objects, expanding the realm of metaphors from visual to physical phenomena. But behaviour and the mind have been studied far before there were real-time computer graphics or digitally created synthetic environments. Dynamic relationships between environment, body and thought are being dissected today by neuro-scientific research, and, conversely, synthetic environments are being utilized to address psychological disorders. This article examines research on scientific and philosophical fields that advance the definition of representation, from an image-based realm as limited by previous popular media to an understanding of action and immersion, where attention is activated by change, and rooted in the body. From this perspective, the advent of embodied representation may not be as much of a change of medium, but the perceptual relation with the medium, the medium being a created Umwelt, where the virtual world builds the mind through the body.

The meaning and function of the image has been evolving over all time. This has been separated from mimesis and given greater openness and an emergent meaning to be adapted to the fluxes that characterize our contemporary society. Throughout this process Art has lost the primacy and exclusivity of the image to share it with science and its visualization procedures and with a social function, now disseminated trough social networks. This article points out the decisive moments – and illustrates them with examples – through the evolution from the image in Postmodernity to the open and co-participated meaning of the Postmedia age image, and the new relation with the real world that characterizes the image of the Postdigital situation. Finally, we propose that the Postdigital Condition, related to new advances such as augmented reality (AR), geopositioning devices and ubiquitous informatics, is making the appearance of a new image type possible, here called Tracking-Image. This Tracking-Image is self-generated with data, from the flux of inputs generated in physical space and registered by networked users and sensors, becoming the protagonist of a new encounter with the physical fluid reality that characterizes the Postdigital situation.

In this article we wish to present the typographic experimentations of four designers, each of whom looks at typography and its implementations from different viewpoints; however with similar goals – namely to investigate how typographic systems can be implemented, their attributes as carriers of semantic meaning be redefined, and/or their functions be improved upon within the digital medium that presents challenges as well as opportunities that enable graphic designers to reach well beyond the traditional medium of typographic work; i.e., printed paper. The article will examine these four projects under the umbrella concept of Deconstruction, also extending into a consideration of Legibility; setting them forth as examples of the impact that the digital medium has brought to bear upon typographic practice in recent decades.

In South African slang ‘Half-Tiger’ refers to five rand, half of a ‘Tiger’ (ten rand) and amounts to approximately 60 US cents. It is at the ‘Half-Tiger’ level of commerce where contemporary and deeply afro-urban digital cultural practice is found. A mass street level culture that in East Africa is driven by the mobile phone as socio-political development tool. And in South Africa by a booming media industry that has been hacked and gone viral. These cultures augment music, fashion, politics and social shifts with a digital aesthetic unique to each city. The article addresses mobile and digital culture in the two cities and compares the effect of mobile technology and its residue in the cultural practices of these very diverse urban environments. I will be addressing the work of key artists and musicians, looking closely at how they respond aesthetically and in a uniquely afro-urban way to a shifting engagement with digital mobile media and networked social practices.

Presently we are experiencing a world where distributed information reshapes human modes of expression and being. The avalanche of images presented to us daily shifts our attention between numerous contexts and systems of meaning. Faced with the intensity of this broadcast, one tends to turn to abbreviations and flattening of the message. Jacques Rancier talks about aesthetics as a form of disconnected experience, which operates as a disinterested gaze. The disconnection serves as a coping mechanism allowing one to function within the informational deluge. On the other hand, this flattening of an image does not represent the whole truth. Behind every image one senses a depth of meanings, which gives rise to a particular manifestation. In this article, I propose that image hides a being, which through that image individuates itself. While the acquisition of specific qualities constitutes this process of individuation, the being is the motion and agency enabling the process. Culture can be seen as technology and prosthesis, which facilitates memory of our mortality and forces us to individuate. Following this logic, image as part of culture is a technology of being.

Our article will take the reader on a tour through collected observations based on digital images, created both by the Syrian Al-Assad regime and anti-regime groups. The pool of digital images on which our observations and deductions are based, are scraped from social media such as Facebook and YouTube. We do not claim to have an entirely representative nor objective collection, but perceive the selected images as being valuable to understand and decode the current political situation since the Syrian uprising started in early 2011.

We trace the development and strategies connected to online image production and distribution. What began in 2011 as a euphoric and celebratory use of online images by anti-government protestors, soon became a web of propaganda. On opposing sides of the battle skilled Photoshoppers and hackers join forces in a virtual battle of images and data. Manipulated images, strategic false campaigns, identities and rumours became the norm. We contemplate the lack of identity of the Syrian opposition, as a result of vague and splintered fighters, activists and disappointing leaders. We speculate around the ways that historic images of leaders and childhood characters are re-inscribed to claim an important place online, where leaders and heroes are missing.

Postnational, or after or more than national, is a world that connects the international with the local. Technollaboration, is how creative digital communities use technology to improve methods and environments for collaboration. Postbiotanical, after or more than biotanical, represents the future of human-centric collectives around farming and urban living and sustainability. Village, is ambiguous and raises the question how large is local, and how does a village-centric view impact the way we treat each other? Art traditionally functions as an environment for philosophical and creative activity that works to secure its borders from intruding dictatorial ethics, ideology, politics or dogma that might sully its aim to maintain its open arduous exploration of the clash between image and meaning, icon and significance, or perception and identity in reference to culture and history. Integrating technology into this discourse introduces a milieu of associations, expectations and conclusions about how technological innovation, practices and products should be steered, which can also influence what we both make and teach. The web has since evolved into a pervasively instantaneous space for more involved forms of communication (Google hangout), content sharing (SVN), publishing (blogs), community building (messageboards, Facebook), creative performance (Isadora) and more. Now creative interactive initiatives are not limited to merely making a statement or triggering a semiotic synapse, but rather can have a social impact, enacting, mobilizing and serving as a resource for the public. Telematic Art that includes the activities surrounding Digital Communities and their behaviour, does not merely provide an environment to discuss social issues, but embodies social interaction in ways in which new forms of collective expression can be realized. The development of telematics tools is empowering for the public while serving as a medium that influences how individuals interact.

Between DIY/DIWO models, open source hardware, software, and creation initiatives, practivist initiatives, creative hacking ideologies, immersion, and web-based communication tools to localize the international collaborative workshop, I believe our formats for education and exchange are becoming more collective and empowering, and with the inclusion of digital social collaboration initiatives seen in myriad examples of Telematic Art, there exists the potential to motivate a mindset desiring new shifts in perception and making with the goals of serving the global community in significant and direct ways.

The City is a dynamic living narrative, an unfolding autobiography, a melding of countless invisible stories; unravelling not in words but in movement, fear, desire, need, coupling the daily of living. The city seen is a narrative; meaning definition is found not in the narrative but in the illegible depths of the unseen city. Art practices of every kind are one fragment of the ever-unfolding narrative. New technological possibilities have also revolutionized the way the narrative of the City can be ‘told’ and ‘reproduced’. Narrative is transcribed into a new cultural code through technological advances. Many works of art tell stories; indeed, most of the humanities involve stories. This article is going to study a number of innovative projects in digital art: locative media and interactive media. They all reveal how City is seen by them through their ‘stories’ and narratives. It will explore further the role of story-telling processes. All projects are site specific, participatory and interactive. They also have the capacity to map hybrid city in a mobilized and digital world. How do we picture urban life and formulate our experience of it? How can this experience be reflected via new technologies? Do new ways of narrative and story telling emerge through new technologies? How does audience respond to these practices? Can these practices be a cinematic means of digitalized story telling? These are some of the questions that will be answered in this article.

Culture is the result of the actions taken in order to communicate with our selves, our society and the environment or nature, which hosts us. This simplification of culture creates a number of paradoxes and complexities but it still gives a good meaningful landscape. Image of course is an element sensed by a sensor with limited spectrum (visible light only) being the human eye.

Digital persona is a part of the individual identity that has been extended into the online sphere to which corresponds a digital unconscious structuring a digitally divided self. It has personal, social, institutional, legal, scientific and technological aspects that have to be reconsidered to allow for new ways of understanding and managing identity. However, the fragmentation of scientific analysis fails to explain what happens to the digital personae in an interdisciplinary way. This is reflected by the current lack of comprehensive framework, the tendency to develop fragmentary management tools and gaps in legal frameworks. In this context society, experts, institutions and groups are still in a fragile unconscious, or pre-conscious phase, regarding the opportunities and problems associated with the management of digital persona. The objective of this article is to offer a first set of comprehensive features that shape the personal and social sense of digital selfhood and identity and provoke a reflection regarding the future personal, social and institutional management of our digital personae. This on-going research aims at contributing to define the digital persona and to develop models and typologies of digital personhood that are still being developed.

The instructions inscribed in French on a strip of metal glued across Marcel Duchamp’s work, also known as Small Glass, translate into English as follows: ‘To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour’. In exploration of the implications of such strenuous procedure the original instructions will be expanded upon: ‘To Be Looked at (from Multiple Sides) with more than One I, Close to and Even Closer, for Almost an Instant’ - an invitation to exercise the polyphibic awareness of multiplicity of appearances, the ability to look at a phenomenon not only from one or the other side but from multiple sides, in its multiple potential apparitions.

Many areas of contemporary art and culture in the United States and Europe can be shown to have a direct lineage to the rich history of the Western Mystery Traditions, rooted in ancient esoteric and magical philosophies of Greece and Egypt. Video mash-ups and audio sampling have inherited the cut-up methods of Beat poets and artists, who in turn were influenced by the Surrealists and their contemporaries. Early twentieth-century artists such as Austin O. Spare drew upon magickal practices derived directly from renaissance practitioners such as John Dee’s use of The Key of Solomon and Giordano Bruno’s Art of Memory. Methods of employing graphical imagery for the purpose of accessing insight or influence from alternate realms continue to draw upon Gnostic and Hermetic philosophies of ancient Greece and Egyptian antiquity. We can easily see the persistent influence of these ancient beliefs and practices in the contemporary use of logos and symbols of popular culture as well as in contemporary art and music.

This article contextualizes digital practices within architectural spaces, and explores the opportunities of experiencing and perceiving domestic environments with the use of media and computing technologies. It suggests methods for the design of reflexive and intimate interiors that provide informational, communicational, affective, emotional and supportive properties according to embedded sensorial interfaces and processing systems. To properly investigate these concepts, a fundamental criterion is magnified and dissected: dwelling, as an important ingredient in this relationship entails the magical power to merge physical environment with the psyche of inhabitants. For this reason, a number of views are presented and discussed, providing necessary conditions to include matters of affectivity, ubiquity and layering complexity of interior space. Moreover, specific processes of the possibilities of the digital are mentioned, and examples are presented of the infusion and diffusion of ubiquitous computing technologies within domestic spaces. To briefly conclude, this article is an attempt to discuss the relationship of human-architecture-computer symbiosis and the design process of creative and innovative spaces that affect states of memory, perception, experience, as well as mood and emotion.

There are strong indications that ancient Egyptian mythology contains knowledge of the nature of space up to higher dimensions and provides ontologic answers to the question about the creation of matter. This article examines the pentagonal interpretation of the myth of Isis and Osiris by comparing the iconographic details with recent findings from the art research project Quantum Cinema, where an interdisciplinary group of digital artists and scientists established a virtual space model for visualizing the usually non-perceivable processes in the microcosm on a Planck scale. At this scale, quantum mechanics applied to space itself leads to a discrete amount of quantum states. For this research, a new geometrical tool proved invaluable: the epitahedron. The double heptahedron named epitahedron (E±), a 3D Penrose kites and darts representation, confines the dodecahedron in many ways and seems to be Plato’s fifth element. It is a 5D space cell, decorated with fragments of circles, which allows to visualize the permutations of symmetry elements within a discrete lattice (Z5). This higher-dimensional configuration is also the appropriate space to create a quantum-mechanical depiction of particles with inherent wave-like character by means of 3D animated geometry. Disguised in a mythological language the same subscendent space structure with the same golden polytope (E±) can be revealed: is this the origin of the concept of aether, the quintessence model which was a basic scientific task for the last 2500 years?

Why is the urge to lose the iconic image relevant to reformation and modernism? A question so central in a society built more than ever on visual media dependency. Is that relevant to sceptical questioning of the essence of reality, and if the image is a reflection of reality in the era of new technology of image creating and manipulating? As iconoclasts began deliberately destroying images at the alter as a sign of reformation, modern art was no longer bound by truthful representations of iconic reality; from shift in colour as a medium to a scientific light reflection, to pushing colour boundaries in reality, to losing the object for the absolute representation of abstract and supermatist visual, to deliberate losing of intended visual representation to materials, then to the empty frame, and to the empty gallery … on goes the iconoclastic gesture of modern art.

Followed by a transitional shift from iconic representation all the way to resonance in visual communications, exploring with the possibilities of different referential functions of signs, and thru to minimalism and replacing visual by verbal referential codes.

This article studies actions and motives of deliberate loss of iconic image, examining the factors associated with the development and process, criss-crossing the boundaries of two image dependant yet very different domains; art and visual communication.