Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the ...
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This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.Less
This book introduces readers to the iconoclastic work of the French media artist Fred Forest. A pioneer in the fields of video art in the 1960s and internet art in the 1990s, and cofounder of the Sociological Art Collective (1974) and the Aesthetics of Communication International Group (1983), Forest is best known as an ironic media hijacker and tinkerer of unconventional interfaces and alternative platforms for interactive communication that are accessible to the general public outside the exclusive precincts of the art world. He has also made headlines as an outspoken critic of the French contemporary art establishment, most famously by suing the Centre Pompidou in 1994 over its opaque acquisitions practices. This book surveys Forest’s work from the late 1960s to the present with particular emphasis on his prankster modus operandi, his advocacy of an existentially relevant form of counter-contemporary art―or “invisible system-art”―based on the principle of metacommunication (i.e., tasked with exploring the “immanent realities” of the virtual territory in which modern electronic communication takes place), his innovative “social” and “relational” use of a wide range of media from newspapers to Second Life, his attention-grabbing public interventions, and the unusual utopian dimension of his work. Never a hot commodity in the art world, Forest’s work has nonetheless garnered the attention and appreciation of a wide range of prominent intellectuals, critics, curators, technology innovators, and fellow artists including Marshall McLuhan, Edgar Morin, Vilém Flusser, Abraham Moles, Jean Duvignaud, Paul Virilio, Pierre Lévy, Pierre Restany, Frank Popper, Harald Szeeman, Robert C. Morgan, Vinton Cerf, Roy Ascott, and Eduardo Kac.
Jonathan Wolpaw and Elizabeth Winter Wolpaw (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195388855
- eISBN:
- 9780199932689
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388855.001.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Techniques
In the last fifteen years, a recognizable surge in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) research and development has emerged. This emergence has sprung from a variety of factors. For one, ...
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In the last fifteen years, a recognizable surge in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) research and development has emerged. This emergence has sprung from a variety of factors. For one, inexpensive computer hardware and software is now available and can support the complex high-speed analyses of brain activity that is essential is BCI. Another factor is the greater understanding of the central nervous system, including the abundance of new information on the nature and functional correlates of brain signals and improved methods for recording these signals in both the short-term and long-term. And the third, and perhaps most significant factor, is the new recognition of the needs and abilities of people disabled by disorders such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophies. The severely disabled are now able to live for many years and even those with severely limited voluntary muscle control can now be given the most basic means of communication and control because of the recent advances in the technology, research, and applications of BCI.Less
In the last fifteen years, a recognizable surge in the field of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) research and development has emerged. This emergence has sprung from a variety of factors. For one, inexpensive computer hardware and software is now available and can support the complex high-speed analyses of brain activity that is essential is BCI. Another factor is the greater understanding of the central nervous system, including the abundance of new information on the nature and functional correlates of brain signals and improved methods for recording these signals in both the short-term and long-term. And the third, and perhaps most significant factor, is the new recognition of the needs and abilities of people disabled by disorders such as cerebral palsy, spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophies. The severely disabled are now able to live for many years and even those with severely limited voluntary muscle control can now be given the most basic means of communication and control because of the recent advances in the technology, research, and applications of BCI.
Florian Cramer and Matthew Fuller
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262062749
- eISBN:
- 9780262273343
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262062749.003.0020
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter starts with the definition and typology of the interface concept and explains its application within the computer field. It also specifically explores the graphic user interface, ...
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This chapter starts with the definition and typology of the interface concept and explains its application within the computer field. It also specifically explores the graphic user interface, Application Program Interface, and other interfaces. The chapter states that interfaces act as a communication tool between software and hardware to ease the computational practices. It also shows how the increasing advances in technology impact the computer interfaces. The majority of the chapter is concerned with providing a thorough analysis of categories of interface.Less
This chapter starts with the definition and typology of the interface concept and explains its application within the computer field. It also specifically explores the graphic user interface, Application Program Interface, and other interfaces. The chapter states that interfaces act as a communication tool between software and hardware to ease the computational practices. It also shows how the increasing advances in technology impact the computer interfaces. The majority of the chapter is concerned with providing a thorough analysis of categories of interface.
Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.003.0003
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic ...
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Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic production ranging from more conventional multimedia installations to ambitious attempts to create temporary alternative channels of networked mass communication; and a series of conceptual experiments in metacommunication as defined in the Aesthetics of Communication movement. Works discussed in Chapter 2 include The Territory of the Square Meter (1980), TheStock Exchange of the Imaginary (1982), Here and Now (1983), Press Conference of Babel (1983), Learn How to Watch TV with Your Radio (1984), In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron (1988), The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War (1991), Telephonic Faucet (1992), and The Watchtowers of Peace (1993). Chapter 2 also discusses Forest’s greater interest in ecological themes, the ramifications of globalization, and more explicitly political subjects (e.g., the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and the Yugoslav Wars) in the late 80s and early 90s.Less
Chapter 2 examines Forest’s work from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, which was characterized by greater emphasis on simulation, symbolism, and the sensory; a more varied “palette” of artistic production ranging from more conventional multimedia installations to ambitious attempts to create temporary alternative channels of networked mass communication; and a series of conceptual experiments in metacommunication as defined in the Aesthetics of Communication movement. Works discussed in Chapter 2 include The Territory of the Square Meter (1980), TheStock Exchange of the Imaginary (1982), Here and Now (1983), Press Conference of Babel (1983), Learn How to Watch TV with Your Radio (1984), In Search of Julia Margaret Cameron (1988), The Electronic Bible and the Gulf War (1991), Telephonic Faucet (1992), and The Watchtowers of Peace (1993). Chapter 2 also discusses Forest’s greater interest in ecological themes, the ramifications of globalization, and more explicitly political subjects (e.g., the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, and the Yugoslav Wars) in the late 80s and early 90s.
Michael F. Leruth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036498
- eISBN:
- 9780262339926
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036498.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
The Conclusion looks more closely at the utopian thread that runs through Forest’s artistic practice beginning with an overview of his lifelong preoccupation with immaterial forms of territoriality ...
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The Conclusion looks more closely at the utopian thread that runs through Forest’s artistic practice beginning with an overview of his lifelong preoccupation with immaterial forms of territoriality and his personal preference for more “realistic” forms of utopia. After outlining the symptoms of a postmodern crisis in western utopian thinking in its dominant perspectival form emphasizing visual projection, collective projects, and social-technological progress, it goes on to examine the ways in which Forest’s art represents a fundamental reconfiguration of the notion of utopia that differs from the enfeebled western paradigm in several important respects. Foremost among these differences is that Forest puts utopia in reverse by making utopia (i.e., the everyday pseudo-utopia of the modern mediascape, which he subjects to defamiliarizing realism) the mundane starting point rather than the ideal culmination of his utopian artistic practice. The Conclusion closes with a retrospective look at Forest’s body of work through the lens of the four main types of utopian interfaces he creates: the specular interface, the subversive interface, the metacommunicational interface, and the liminal interface.Less
The Conclusion looks more closely at the utopian thread that runs through Forest’s artistic practice beginning with an overview of his lifelong preoccupation with immaterial forms of territoriality and his personal preference for more “realistic” forms of utopia. After outlining the symptoms of a postmodern crisis in western utopian thinking in its dominant perspectival form emphasizing visual projection, collective projects, and social-technological progress, it goes on to examine the ways in which Forest’s art represents a fundamental reconfiguration of the notion of utopia that differs from the enfeebled western paradigm in several important respects. Foremost among these differences is that Forest puts utopia in reverse by making utopia (i.e., the everyday pseudo-utopia of the modern mediascape, which he subjects to defamiliarizing realism) the mundane starting point rather than the ideal culmination of his utopian artistic practice. The Conclusion closes with a retrospective look at Forest’s body of work through the lens of the four main types of utopian interfaces he creates: the specular interface, the subversive interface, the metacommunicational interface, and the liminal interface.
Chris Reed and Alan Cunningham
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199671670
- eISBN:
- 9780191767463
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199671670.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Intellectual Property, IT, and Media Law
A potential obstacle to the development of the cloud market is uncertainty regarding ownership of information stored, created, processed and distributed in cloud environments. This chapter addresses ...
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A potential obstacle to the development of the cloud market is uncertainty regarding ownership of information stored, created, processed and distributed in cloud environments. This chapter addresses these issues in the context of information flows between cloud providers, their customers and various third parties. Distinctions are drawn between content that is stored and processed by users, as compared to information generated by cloud providers. The chapter also explores practical techniques for managing access to information in clouds and issues arising from the use of cloud models for the distribution of existing content. Finally, the uncertain proprietary status of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is considered in the context of the growing importance of APIs as a means of facilitating both interoperability between cloud environments, and portability of data between specific cloud services.Less
A potential obstacle to the development of the cloud market is uncertainty regarding ownership of information stored, created, processed and distributed in cloud environments. This chapter addresses these issues in the context of information flows between cloud providers, their customers and various third parties. Distinctions are drawn between content that is stored and processed by users, as compared to information generated by cloud providers. The chapter also explores practical techniques for managing access to information in clouds and issues arising from the use of cloud models for the distribution of existing content. Finally, the uncertain proprietary status of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is considered in the context of the growing importance of APIs as a means of facilitating both interoperability between cloud environments, and portability of data between specific cloud services.
Margo Farnsworth
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226444666
- eISBN:
- 9780226444970
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226444970.003.0007
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This chapter follows Ray Anderson and his carpet company, Interface, Inc., on their journey toward sustainability in business. Too long set apart from nature, most companies have sought maximization ...
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This chapter follows Ray Anderson and his carpet company, Interface, Inc., on their journey toward sustainability in business. Too long set apart from nature, most companies have sought maximization over optimization and sacrificed a bevy of natural resources along the way through extractive practices and waste. Ray, his employees, and contractors like David Oakey learned that if they could rediscover the wild places around their sites and mimic nature through a process called biomimicry they could operate in sync with the natural cycles and rules of the planet. Biomimicry is a relatively new tool used in business to recreate connections and perhaps even reconcile human technologies and products with the wild. Biologists, designers, engineers, and other business professionals are reconnecting to the wild with biomimicry by emulating organisms and even ecosystems, using nature’s forms, processes, and systems as muse, teacher, and template. Doing this, Interface cut waste, built profit, and acted in line with nature’s existing limits and boundaries. By looking at how nature covers its floors and mimicking those forms and structures, Interface achieved optimization, employee satisfaction, and became the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet tiles.Less
This chapter follows Ray Anderson and his carpet company, Interface, Inc., on their journey toward sustainability in business. Too long set apart from nature, most companies have sought maximization over optimization and sacrificed a bevy of natural resources along the way through extractive practices and waste. Ray, his employees, and contractors like David Oakey learned that if they could rediscover the wild places around their sites and mimic nature through a process called biomimicry they could operate in sync with the natural cycles and rules of the planet. Biomimicry is a relatively new tool used in business to recreate connections and perhaps even reconcile human technologies and products with the wild. Biologists, designers, engineers, and other business professionals are reconnecting to the wild with biomimicry by emulating organisms and even ecosystems, using nature’s forms, processes, and systems as muse, teacher, and template. Doing this, Interface cut waste, built profit, and acted in line with nature’s existing limits and boundaries. By looking at how nature covers its floors and mimicking those forms and structures, Interface achieved optimization, employee satisfaction, and became the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet tiles.
Peter Sterling
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262028707
- eISBN:
- 9780262327312
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262028707.003.0001
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Research and Theory
Engineers commonly disassemble a device to learn how it works. For example, Soviet engineers disassembled an American bomber to copy improvements in design. This process of “reverse engineering” ...
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Engineers commonly disassemble a device to learn how it works. For example, Soviet engineers disassembled an American bomber to copy improvements in design. This process of “reverse engineering” depends upon a comprehensive knowledge of the principles governing design. For instance, engineers know “complicate but do not duplicate”. That is, design a separate component for each function and thereby optimize each component for the task. Neuroscientists engage in a similar process, reverse engineering the brain, and to further this endeavour we set out to demonstrate some principles of neural design. The brain’s “designer” is understood to be evolution by natural selection.Less
Engineers commonly disassemble a device to learn how it works. For example, Soviet engineers disassembled an American bomber to copy improvements in design. This process of “reverse engineering” depends upon a comprehensive knowledge of the principles governing design. For instance, engineers know “complicate but do not duplicate”. That is, design a separate component for each function and thereby optimize each component for the task. Neuroscientists engage in a similar process, reverse engineering the brain, and to further this endeavour we set out to demonstrate some principles of neural design. The brain’s “designer” is understood to be evolution by natural selection.
Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036115
- eISBN:
- 9780262339773
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036115.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Chapter 7 begins to puts REC positive story into action. It opens by questioning the value of appealing to a priori intuitions in trying to understand the character of perceiving. Focusing on ...
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Chapter 7 begins to puts REC positive story into action. It opens by questioning the value of appealing to a priori intuitions in trying to understand the character of perceiving. Focusing on explanatory concerns, it revisits Predictive Processing or PPC proposals about perceiving and defuses arguments that the explanatory punch of PPC requires characterizing perceptual processes and products in representational terms. Instead the chapter shows how REC can successfully appropriate the main apparatus of PPC to explain perception. It demonstrates that mental representations are not needed to explain how intramodal and intermodal forms of perceiving integrate. The chapter concludes by showing how contentless forms of perceiving can connect with contentful attitudes, enabling us to make sense of a range of perceptual phenomena – including our capacity to attune to optical effects and the ways in which we respond to visual illusions.Less
Chapter 7 begins to puts REC positive story into action. It opens by questioning the value of appealing to a priori intuitions in trying to understand the character of perceiving. Focusing on explanatory concerns, it revisits Predictive Processing or PPC proposals about perceiving and defuses arguments that the explanatory punch of PPC requires characterizing perceptual processes and products in representational terms. Instead the chapter shows how REC can successfully appropriate the main apparatus of PPC to explain perception. It demonstrates that mental representations are not needed to explain how intramodal and intermodal forms of perceiving integrate. The chapter concludes by showing how contentless forms of perceiving can connect with contentful attitudes, enabling us to make sense of a range of perceptual phenomena – including our capacity to attune to optical effects and the ways in which we respond to visual illusions.
Clifford Siskin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780262035316
- eISBN:
- 9780262336345
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262035316.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The subject here is system’s shaping of the subject of culture, literature, and liberalism—the modern self. Narrow-but-deep selves emerged from system’s role in mediating the formation of ...
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The subject here is system’s shaping of the subject of culture, literature, and liberalism—the modern self. Narrow-but-deep selves emerged from system’s role in mediating the formation of narrow-but-deep disciplines. With Mary Hays supplying a primary example, the chapter shows that when systems are extended through disciplinary travel so that they can no longer do what isolated systems do—they talk to themselves, the parts making a whole—another kind of self must be formally interpolated to do the talking. Embedded systems yield a newly expressive “I”—that is why in blaming The System we are also somehow blaming ourselves. This chapter bookends the tale of system and self by juxtaposing An Account of the Fair Intellectual-Club” from 1720 to Douglas Englebart’s report on Augmenting Human Intellect from 1962. In the former, young women try to improve themselves through system—both by forming a “club” as a social incarnation of system and by writing systems. In the latter, Englebart describes a “system” in which humans improve themselves by interfacing with technology. The presentation of this report announced the invention of the computer mouse. The chapter concludes by showing how issues of gender and privilege, secrecy and privacy, individual and national development, mix with new kinds of order and method generated by system.Less
The subject here is system’s shaping of the subject of culture, literature, and liberalism—the modern self. Narrow-but-deep selves emerged from system’s role in mediating the formation of narrow-but-deep disciplines. With Mary Hays supplying a primary example, the chapter shows that when systems are extended through disciplinary travel so that they can no longer do what isolated systems do—they talk to themselves, the parts making a whole—another kind of self must be formally interpolated to do the talking. Embedded systems yield a newly expressive “I”—that is why in blaming The System we are also somehow blaming ourselves. This chapter bookends the tale of system and self by juxtaposing An Account of the Fair Intellectual-Club” from 1720 to Douglas Englebart’s report on Augmenting Human Intellect from 1962. In the former, young women try to improve themselves through system—both by forming a “club” as a social incarnation of system and by writing systems. In the latter, Englebart describes a “system” in which humans improve themselves by interfacing with technology. The presentation of this report announced the invention of the computer mouse. The chapter concludes by showing how issues of gender and privilege, secrecy and privacy, individual and national development, mix with new kinds of order and method generated by system.
