Victorian Futures

If you want to get a perspective on the hype surrounding new technology, its always worth looking back through history to see how the past viewed the future. You often find a few persistent visions that recur every time a new technology comes along. These dreams usually have some kind of transcedent aspect to them, and are continually re-invented from the technological capabilities of the time.

A good example of this is illustrated by this series of victorian postcards giving a vision of the year 2000. There are a few future memes that have come up again and again - like personal flying machines and weather control machines. Another consistent curiosity for futurologists is the sea - it seems we're always just a few years from living under it or walking on it. I've got a fantastic album from 1973 by the Soul Searchers called 'We the People' that includes a track called '1993' - "will we all be living/in new homes in the sea/by 1993?" goes the refrain. Funk Futurology - hmmmmmm, nice!

The best thing in this selection of cards is the things they get right - particularly 'Televised Outside Broadcasting' and 'Police X-ray Surveillance Machines'. That last one is almost scarily prescient - but substitute the x-ray with its contemporary heirs DNA and CCTV...

Paris

Eiffel Tower





View from roof of Pompidou Centre





Tuilleries Gardens

West Pier

Some more pictures taken whilst relearning how to use my Mamiya C330. These are of the Brighton West Pier, taken after its recent slump, but before it burnt to a skeleton metal framework.

DumbMobs

Fantastic post on cheesebikini (via tomdolan) about a series of random Mobs being organised via email that involve people getting together to chant a particular phrase or do something odd for 10 minutes, then disperse. Random, pointless, and rather beautiful...

Its a bit like a logical extension of the surrender control project I did with Tim Etchells a while ago, where we sent instructions to people over SMS for a week. I'm currently doing an email interview with Tim for an article, and will post the interview to this blog, along with interviews with Lucy Kimbell and Blast Theory.

I thought i'd post an extended excerpt from the email organising these DumbMobs. Its a bit long, but worth it to appreciate the detail and sheer style being put into these events. For my money, this is ART!

(3) Then or soon thereafter, a MOB representative will appear in the bar, wearing one of the "trucker hats" that is so stylish these days. He or she will pass around slips of paper, on which three important pieces of information will be printed: (a) the MOB site, (b) a particular item at the site, and (c) a secret phrase. Commit all three to memory and put the slip in your pocket. ONCE YOU ARE AT THE MOB SITE, NONE OF THESE SLIPS OF PAPER SHOULD BE VISIBLE.

(7) At 7:37 you should disperse. Thank the salespeople for their help, but explain that the item has been "voted down." NO ONE SHOULD REMAIN AT THE MOB SITE AFTER 7:39.

Comparing Social Art and Social Software

I'm currently writing a piece for Camerawork, a journal associated with the San Francisco Camerawork Gallery. The piece looks at three pieces of work - Lucy Kimbell's Audit, Tim Etchell's Surrender Control, and Blast Theory's Uncle Roy, and discusses them in terms of Nicholas Bourriaud's theory of Relational Aesthetics. Put simply, Bourriaud suggests the term to describe contemporary art that establishes an event or participatory relationship with audiences, challenging them to become 'users' as much as 'viewers', and to question the role or value of the 'art object'. Bourriaud makes a distinction between 60's & 70's performance art happenings, where participatory events were used to break through the deadlock high modernism had created by fetishising the art object, and 90's work, where participation is encouraged as a form of game, or a moment of intimate connection in a globally-mediated world. Bourriaud uses the lovely term 'hands-on utopias' to describe the social, but not necessarily political, environments these artists create.

I'm using this theory to see if its a productive way of discussing networked art beyond the primarily technological/political discourse that underpinned the first 'heroic' [sic] phase of net.art. In particular, I've chosen examples that use the interplay of social relationships mediated through technology as their locus, rather than an exploration of the technology per se.

In my research, I've come across this excellent article on social architectures by Sal Randolph, an artist and writer based in New York. Large parts of the essay could apply to current debates around 'Social Software' as well, including this part that has echoes of Clay's comments on the use-values we inscribe into the architectures of software:

"Looking further into this idea of use, it becomes clear that for social architectures to exist at all, they must be functional -- in other words people have to have a good reason to be part of them (they must have a use for them). Social architectures as artworks are always functional artworks. People need a purpose for becoming part of the social organization beyond the simple fact that they are participating in an artwork, otherwise the motive force of the structure is dead."

As our understanding of social uses of the internet matures from 'is anybody out there?' to 'so what are we going to *do* here?', so networked art is maturing from its initial investigation of the form-factors and politics of the network to an interest in how people are using networked media to connect, and participate in social exchange. Photography matured from technical experiment to social document as the spectacle of the medium wore off, and so networked art seems to be moving on from defining its borders, becoming concerned with the humans beyond the edges of the network as much as the network itself.

MP3s and 'The Great Firewall of China'

Phil Gyford links to a very nice article about the way Chinese DJ's are using the net to get the latest Western music. It seems 'illegal downloads' are playing a major part in establishing contemporary music culture, and that part of the social kudos of the downloads is their illegal status:

"Among some in the Chinese underground hiphop scene, only tracks which have been downloaded are considered truly "underground" and thus valuable, while any music which is available for purchase in physical form is seen as being tainted by commerciality to some degree"

This reminds me of the way in which northern soul DJs used to cover up their singles with white labels, so that other DJs or clubbers couldn't identify the tracks. What's interesting here is that the physical form itself is seen as 'uncool' - only MP3s or anonymous CDRs are seen as 'authentic'.

Is this, like the fad for i-Pod Parties, a sign that music culture is mutating from fetishising material objects (vinyl records, gig tickets, autographs, etc) to fetishising participation and networks (playlists, cut-and-paste bootlegs, P2P, etc)?

Liverpool win 'City of Culture 2008' bid

The winner of the bid to host the European City of Culture in 2008 was announced today - and its Liverpool. Overall, this seems a good choice - Liverpool can point to historical examples of its cultural significance in the Beatles and the legacy of Victorian industialists in the Walker Art Gallery, and it has signs of a resurgent investment in culture in the Tate Liverpool and the newly opened FACT centre. Its not as far down the regneration route as Newcastle/Gateshead, who seemed not to need it, and had a far more focused proposition than Birmingham, who produced a diverse and strongly multicultural bid on behalf of a large swathe of the West Midlands.

Liverpool has strong similarities to Glasgow, still the model for cultural regeneration in the UK. They both share a dockside industrial heritage, followed by lengthy decline and associated economic and social problems, and both had the roots of a nascent cultural regenration on the ground prior to the bid. Liverpool is probably the safest option, as a boost like this will help to coalesce the nascent regeneration, and provide weight for a different scale of ambition that should hopefully create firm roots for the industries that emerge or relocate to the region as a result of the publicity.

There's still a lot of controversy about whether cultural regeneration is really a viable option for long-term economic regneration, or whether it is a current 'fad', as the Garden Festivals were in the 1980s (scroll down the page for info). One things for sure - there *is* an industry sector that has benefited massively from cultural investment in urban areas. Unfortunately, its the consultants, think tanks and quangoes who charge large fees to tell local and regional councils the things that their own cultural service departments have been shouting about for years...