Sunday, September 20, 2015

[Yasmin_discussions] Whats on the Mind of the YASMIN art/science/technology community of practice ? disruptive media

John et YASMINERS

I admit i was wrong to bring in the word 'disruptive' into the discussion
launched by
william joel and picked up by paul fishwick- you are absolutely right that
the
term "disruptive" is now associated with a particular discourse tied to the
'ramping up' of consumption, and you are right ( as I also emphasised)
that the precursor activities of people like Robert Adrian X, Galloway and
Rabinowitz, Ascott and many others developed most of the concepts that
are now being commercialised

I recently came across https://blab.im/ which is in beta and is an
amazingly
streamlined platform for multi person performance with live audiences- and
the ability
to record with a click and re broadcast - paul sermon could have done
a four bedroom "telematic dreaming" performance with three clicks and !

so what is new is not the ideas or concepts that were developed by artists
decades ago, but the mass participation ( both active and passive) that
is now occuring- it is this that is perhaps 'disruptive"

there is a a certain growing discourse, which is part of the drivers of
current
interest in art-science-technology collaboration to > creativity> innovation
and voila- entrepreneurs and job creation- which feeds into your point.

as you point out:

"Perhaps something to be worried about if one is overly dependent on things
as they
are in ones daily (technological) 'Western' life. There will be an
increasing number
of instances when the management of change is absolutely beyond our
capacities:
these are the disruptions that we need to discern and prepare for rather
than paying
heed to Silicon Valley pseudo-gurus endeavoring to profit via 'managed'
pseudo-change."

this is of course one of the main points that Paul Virilio developed about
the 'fragility'
of the symbiotic human/technological society we are building- and on that
both
bernard stiegler and bruno latour are addressing in different ways

the word 'disruptive technology' i agree is associated with a certain line
of
argument promoted by companies and investors- and the arts and humanities
community brings to the table deep soul searching and the power of
proposition
about the values and ethics of the kind of society that is getting built-
what kinds
of jobs ? what kinds of symbiotic relationship between human society and
massive
deployment of technological systems - the work of artists working with
scientists
and engineers has the potential of creating other cultural imaginaries and
utopias !!

roger malina



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>
Date: Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Yasmin_discussions] Whats on the Mind of the YASMIN
art/science/technology community of practice ? disruptive media
To: yasmin_discussions@estia.media.uoa.gr


Some musings on disruption:

what one might call disruptive media ?
>>
>
> Or next generation tv/radio. millions of user streamed channels.
> Live and on-demand.
>
> All of this implies that an individual can receive content without
>> ever using a "TV" or leaving their domicile. How will this impact
>> performance arts such as film, theater, dance, music? Will we see more
>> and more of a virtual audience presence at these "events", perhaps
>> leading to the "death" of the physical performance?
>>
>
> Or why not get an even BIGGER TV and watch/PARTICIPATE in live
> multi-location
> studio sessions as artists perform their new pieces or more informally,
> when
> the are rehearsing new material. Invite people into your multi-city live
> sessions.
>

But these kinds of projects have been done for more than 30 years (see
projects by Robert Adrian X who recently passed away, for example), 20 if
you count easily available consumer-level technologies (that I've got
experience with) -- for doing collaborative live-streamed multi-point
performance work. So I would suggest that it's not really disruptive in
that temporal sense. On the other hand, I find that few people take
advantage of such technologies with their experimental potential, and the
'field' of activity is still quite fringe. It would seem that most people
are involved with the so-called 'disruptive technologies' for a 'radical'
ramping-up of consumption if anything!

Disruption seems to be just another marketing ploy -- following the Red
Herring Magazine view of technological change that is simply another path
in the capitalist/consumption miasma that we are immersed within. Change is
a continuous process based on a system's ability to maintain its own level
of organization or not. I believe we are living in a time where the energy
necessary to maintain the level of social order that we are 'used to' is
simply no longer 'easily' available (energy is spread among more people on
the planet, and the 'West' no longer has a monopoly over consumption). This
situation yields more instances where a system's order will drop. True
disruption is therefore a sign of the increasing entropy of of our system.
Perhaps something to be worried about if one is overly dependent on things
as they are in ones daily (technological) 'Western' life. There will be an
increasing number of instances when the management of change is absolutely
beyond our capacities: these are the disruptions that we need to discern
and prepare for rather than paying heed to Silicon Valley pseudo-gurus
endeavoring to profit via 'managed' pseudo-change.

Cheers,
JOhn

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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