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Ecomedia
How the Natural World is Transforming the Nature of Media.
This weblog is not the usual blog of daily events. It contains a series of notes/thoughts designed to make connections between science and media art.
Sometimes these ideas are tied in with current events, but most of the time this blog is not in any particular order. It serves as a central area for a detailed examination of ideas first published in a 1999 Leonardo Journal article entitled 'Active Vision' that I hope to develop into a book that will discuss some of the current developments in science, ecology, media and society and how they inform and are informed by new technologies. The book will be written for artists working with digital media and anyone who is interested in future directions of the medium.
http://www.andreapolli.com
last modified Sep 7, 2006 at 13:00
There's a great online video interview with Stelarc by Arthur & Marilouise Kroker that is part of a new initiative called CTheory-Live.
You can view it here:
http://www.pactac.net/pactacweb/web-content/videoarchives/stelarc/excerpt01.html
Of particular interest to me was the discussion of the Prosthetic Head project and its origins in the Third Arm project.
Stelarc talks about how the Third Arm project came out of a desire to know the experience of a phantom limb. That is, the experience described by many amputees in which pain is felt in the area of the amputeed limb, even though the arm of leg is no longer there.
Stelarc says he wanted to know what this experience was like but of course didn't want to amputate any of his four perfectly good limbs, so he created a robotic third arm that would replicate the movements of his arm using a dataglove device.
The Prosthetic head project is similar in that it is a robotic second head attached to Stelarc's body next to his actual head. I haven't had the chance to experience it, but as Stelarc describes this head, it is quite humorous. Equipped with a very simple AI unable to understand complex sentences, the computerized head will break into song when confused. He discussed advances to the head like adding computer vision and recognition to allow the head to respond to visual cues in the environment.
Towards the end of the interview, Stelarc talks about a possible new project extending the idea of the phanton limb or phantom head to an entire phantom body that si controlled by a real body, but has no biological presence. This mechanical phantom body would not have the constraints of a human body and would be able to be in an area without breathable air, with dangerous viruses, etc. The body would depend on a human controller, like the drones used by the military.
In June I'll be participating in a residency in Taranaki (New Plymouth), New Zealand called SCANZ (Solar Circuit Aotearoa)
http://www.scanz.net.nz/
and in preparation have been part of a list discussion with the other participants. The current discussion 'Contemporary Mythologies' has brought up some interesting ideas.
Emma Bugden, Curatorial Director of te tuhi - the mark says:
"I've been thinking a lot about Lisa (Reihana's) very interesting comment that she is wary of the term 'mythology' because when associated with indigenous practice the inference is that one is dabbling in fantasy and not with fact. Mythology is certainly a loaded and problematic term, bringing with it a certain amount of exoticism and the 'other'. In defining something as mythology it can relegate it to a domain which is alluring but not considered authentic...what I do like about it as a term is that it includes an acknowledgement within itself of the many layers/slants of truths within any retelling of history. Isn't all fact partly fantasy? Nina (Czegledy's) discussion on the mythologies of ancient Nordic tribes reminds me that The Kalevala, the Finnish epic legend originated from traditional oral folk poems, is what Tolkien based Lord of the Rings on, which then came to be seen as a definitive English tale, and which can now be seen as, depending on whose eyes you look through, either a truly New Zealand tale or an American one....mythologies AND histories are constantly shifting / being co-opted. I'm also enjoying thinking about Lisa's comment that 'Maori thought can collapse time' which Danny also feed into with his comment that 'Maui and the other great tricksters/new-media-artists remind me that to be an agent of change, for 'the new' isn't always for the best.' The non-linear nature of the internet has always seemed a good vehicle for representations of historical events simply because it can host multiple versions of the same event simultaneously..."
The discussion is centered around mythology and non-western cultures, but mythologies (beliefs about the way the world works) shape everything we do, on both personal and social/global scales. Many of these mythologies have come from scientific advances and this underlines the need for sensitivity in the communication of scientific discoveries, where artists make an important contribution.
The current creationist movement in the US is an example, while unapologetically 'anti-scientific' (and in the poltical sphere we're seeing much more rejection of scientific ideas as 'beliefs'), it is important to note the horrible genocides in the 20th (and 21st) centuries that use genetics as justification. Of course a deeper look into genetics shows that there ios no such thing as genetic purity, yet the mythology still remains.
Last night David Dunn presented his work in an event called 'Sound & Science' at Hunter as part of The Ear to the Earth series organized by EMF. One of many fascinating things he talked about was some research on human hearing. Studies on hearing show that the human ears can hear sounds up to 20k hz in frequency. However, recent studies on brain response to frequencies above 20k have shown that the human brain responds to frequencies up to 100k. These frequencies cause vibration in the inner ear, but not in a bone that connects to the ear drum. The ultrasonic frequencies do, however, cause other bones in the head to vibrate that can be perceived. This bone condcutive hearing has been exploited successfully to help hearing impaired people, by using a bone conductive hearing-aid like device, some hearing impaired people can gain a kind of hearing, although not through the ears.
Dunn talked about how this bone structure was found to be similar to the bone structure in some sea mammals, like seals who use a kind of echo-location in water. He thought this could indicate that sometime in the evolutionary line, the descendants of humans may have lived in water.
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