Saturday, November 2, 2013

[Yasmin_discussions] Drone Art , Persistent Surveillance and the DataSexual

Sean Annick

I am moving this exchange from yasmin announcements
to yasmin discussions=

roger malina



ok so the drone art discussion has expanded to a more
general discussion of how art uses fear and shame as
part of its deployment-beginning with religious art

i guess i want to insist that drone art is indicative of
a tipping point in a large practice of artists in surveillance
art- some of marko peljham's projects certaibly connect to this
as does the work of the artists sean referred to in the exhibition
movable borders here come the drones
http://www.furtherfield.org/programmes/exhibition/movable-borders-here-come-drones
as well as george barber's
http://waterside-contemporary.com/exhibitions/the-freestone-drone/

but just to emphasise some of the new developments"

a) the development of " persistent surveillance" systems
( see for instance the US military handbooks such as
http://publicintelligence.net/usjfcom-persistent-surveillance/ )

which now are seeking to "predict and prevent bad actions by people"-

see IEEE spectrum article on Rules for the Digital Panopticon
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/rules-for-the-digital-panopticon

persisent suverveillance systems with built in anticipatory systems
are now a booming business

b) The emergence of the social phenomenon of data-sexuality see
for instance IEEE spectrum article on the phenomenon of people of
obsessively self-track and accumulate all forms of data on themselves
and make it public
http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/test-and-measurement/meet-the-datasexual
- a number of artists explored this in the 1990s anticipating a social
phenomenon- clear the evolving ideas of privacy with public display of
datasexuality shifts the location of shame

roger



Hi All,

Sean Cubitt wrote

> The difficult balance between paranoia and protest: the question is
> whether it is possible to make art by communicating fear and shame;
> and whether it is possible to make art without taking fear and shame
> into account.
>
Which is an excellent question.

Making art by communicating fear and shame
- I guess that a huge percentage of catholic (Christian) art
of the past is precisely based on fear and shame (my
knowledge of other religious art is too weak to say
anything) and quite a lot is considered master pieces
preserved in museums like Le Louvre, etc.

Making art without taking fear and shame into account
- Drones are unmaned planes. They are at the forefront of wars.
But if we consider planes in general, some are military
others civilians planes and I guess we can imagine a
civilian, positive use of drones (not only killing people or
for some kind of Big Brother Panopticon Surveillance).
They could be used for scientific purposes, playfull
worlwide events, auxiliairies to environmental issues, sky
ballets, etc.
And I guess, this civilian use is part of what Marko Peljhan
has been doing and I guess this is what Oron Catts and the
Field_Notes group from the Bio Art Society
http://bioartsociety.fi/ have in mind. But it might be
better to ask them !

Best
Annick

from Sean Cubitt re drone art

Professor of Film and Television at Goldsmiths, University of London

two recent London shows:
http://www.furtherfield.org/programmes/exhibition/movable-borders-here-come-drones
and
George Barber's parodic Freestone Drone (quite widely reviewed):
http://waterside-contemporary.com/exhibitions/the-freestone-drone/

The difficult balance between paranoia and protest: the question is
whether it is possible to make art by communicating fear and shame;
and whether it is possible to make art without taking fear and shame
into account.


roger malina
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