To remember and forget: lecture 5

Transcript

1. To remember and forget:
   Memory and machine
   Lecture 5
   Taeyoon Choi
   NYU ITP
   10.6 2014
   

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2. 1. Review
   2. Affective memory
   3. Presence
   4. Object
   5. Space
   -Break-
   6. Project: Device to help forget
   

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3. Last week’s special visitor
   http:/
   /TegaBrain.com
   

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4. Class picnic
   

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7. Feta  cheese  and  cured  olives  help  give  the  pasta  salad  a  dis3nctly  savory  taste,  which  is  rounded  out  by  the  tangy  dressing  and  various  fresh  
   and  pickled  vegetables  spiked  throughout  the  mix.  A  combina3on  of  different  vinegars,  oils,  and  cheese  result  in  a  slightly  sharp  but  en3cing  
   smell.  
   This  pasta  salad,  originated  by  my  Aunt  Paula,  made  an  appearance  at  every  family  gathering  during  the  summers  of  my  childhood,  and  it  
   remains  a  staple  dish  to  this  day  (on  trips  home  I  can  depend  on  finding  the  same  large  tan  tupperware  container  filled  with  pasta  salad  in  my  
   mother's  refrigerator.)  It's  one  of  those  dishes,  like  chicken  parmesan,  grapefruit-­‐sized  meatballs,  and  pasta  drowning  in  red  sauce,  that  has  no  
   place  on  an  authen3c  Italian  table.  It  is,  instead,  a  celebra3on  of  the  humble  abundance  my  family  found  at  the  supermarket,  the  kind  we  could  
   have  never  imagined  enjoying  only  one  or  two  genera3ons  ago.  My  aunt's  pasta  salad  is  a  decidedly,  undeniably  Italian-­‐American  inven3on,  just  
   like  my  family.  And  so  whenever  I  make  it  for  myself  now  in  New  York,  a  century  aLer  my  great-­‐grandfathers  (great  cooks  in  their  own  right,  I'm  
   told)  landed  here,  I  find  myself  following  them  back  home,  if  only  for  a  few  brief  bites.  
   Boil  pasta  for  approx.  9  min.  in  a  large  pot  of  well-­‐salted  water  un3l  al  dente.  Shock  boiled  pasta  in  ice  bath  or  with  cold  water.  Steam  broccoli  
   for  approx.  4-­‐5  min.,  then  shock  in  ice  bath  or  with  cold  water.  Wait  un3l  pasta  and  broccoli  reach  room  temperature,  then  combine  with  other  
   vegetables  and  feta  cheese  in  a  large  mixing  bowl.  In  a  separate  container,  mix  together  dressing  packets,  vinegar,  and  olive  oil  (per  instruc3on  
   on  packets).  Pour  dressing  slowly  over  bowl,  carefully  and  thoroughly  mixing  with  other  ingredients.  Add  salt  and  pepper  to  taste.  Cover  bowl  
   3ghtly  with  plas3c  wrap  and  refrigerate  for  at  least  8  hours  before  serving.  Best  enjoyed  chilled.  
   Pasta salad
   24 oz short tri-color pasta
   1 package crumbled feta cheese
   1 can small black olives, rinsed and sliced
   1 jar pickled yellow pepper rings, rinsed
   4-5 fresh baby bella mushrooms, rinsed and roughly chopped
   1 jar roasted red peppers, roughly chopped
   1 package frozen broccoli florets, steamed
   2 packets Good Seasons italian dressing
   Extra virgin olive oil
   Red wine vinegar
   Salt and pepper
   

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8. “My  aunt's  pasta  salad  is  a  decidedly,  undeniably  Italian-­‐American  inven3on,  just  like  my  
   family.  And  so  whenever  I  make  it  for  myself  now  in  New  York,  a  century  aLer  my  great-­‐
   grandfathers  (great  cooks  in  their  own  right,  I'm  told)  landed  here,  I  find  myself  following  
   them  back  home,  if  only  for  a  few  brief  bites.”  
   

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10. communication
    communion
    community
    commons
    

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11. Affect Presence
    Intensity Access
    Affect is delivered by Intensity. It’s the pre-personal, pre- emotion/feeling. It’s the fluid
    vehicle for emotional mechanism.
    Presence is the state or fact of existing, occurring, or being present in a place or thing.
    

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12. Presence Models
    Object Space
    With some thoughts on the meaning and significance in our memory, we will look at
    models, metaphorically and literally, toward thinking about objects and space.
    

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13. Technical
    objects
    Memory
    Forgetting
    Device
    Remembering
    System
    

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14. Access Presence
    

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15. Wendy Chun, The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory,
    

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16. Nam June Paik, Altered Piano
    http:/
    /www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2013/05/08/conserving-a-nam-june-paik-altered-piano-part-2
    

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17. Wendy Chun, The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory,
    

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18. XFR STN at the New Museum
    http:/
    /www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/arts/design/xfr-stn-offers-a-digital-update-at-the-new-museum.html
    

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21. http:/
    /oneterabyteofkilobyteage.tumblr.com/
    http:/
    /contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/
    Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age
    

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23. Wendy Chun, The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future Is a Memory,
    

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24. Alva Noe, Varieties of Presence
    

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25. Presence Absence
    

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26. “The world shows up for us. But it doesn’t show up for free. This is my
    main focus in this book. We achieve access to the world around us
    through skillful engagement; we acquire and deploy the skills needed
    to bring the world into focus.”
    

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28. Presence is manifestly fragile. This idea will be developed throughout;
    it is a discovery. We spontaneously squint our eyes and shift our head
    and body position to keep things in view, or to get a better look at things
    that interest us. In this way we exhibit our sensitivity to the fragility of
    our access to the world.
    

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30. We move and squint… we achieve access, stabilize our contact with the world around us.
    

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32. We know it exists although we don’t
    see it or touch it.
    We see less than we think, we
    remember way less that we believe.
    

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34. `
    

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37. “This story kind of reminds of the whole hype around big data, quantified self.”
    

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40. http:/
    /www.olafureliasson.net/
    Olafur Eliasson
    

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41. http:/
    /inigomanglano-ovalle.com/index.php?/projects/icebergs/
    Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Icebergs
    

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44. Juan Munoz
    Human presences are recreated and
    reproduced as objects with human
    quality. The objects are in turn made
    into immobile things, bag of stuff.
    

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45. space of
    conversations,
    attention and
    presence between
    individuals.
    

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46. the stuff carves out space, creating
    negative spaces: voids which in turn
    creates presence.
    

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47. the objects are less
    direct representation of
    specific figures or
    situations but the
    theatrical recreation of
    relations and
    conversations.
    

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48. human presence and
    object
    

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50. Buckminster Fuller, World Game, 1961
    

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51. Space
    Objects
    

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52. Janet Cardiff, Her long black hair, 2004
    www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/longhair.html
    

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54. Download from phiffer.org/hlbh
    

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59. https:/
    /www.flickr.com/photos/lightwerk/28370730/in/set-640300
    

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60. “In my view - even though Cardiff does not use any sophisticated computer,
    networking, or projection technologies - her ’walks’ represent the best
    realization of the augmented space paradigm so far. They demonstrate the
    aesthetic potential of laying new information over a physical space.
    

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61. Their power lies in the interactions between the two spaces - between vision
    and hearing (what the user is seeing and what she is hearing), and between
    present and past (the time of the user’s walk versus the audio narration,
    which, like any media recording, belongs to some undefined time in the past).”
    !
    - The poetics of augmented space, Lev Manovich, 2002
    

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63. Space as memory object
    

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64. The Jewish Museum in Berlin
    

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65. “The architect put together a map which showed the addresses of Jews who
    were living in the neighborhood of the museum site before World War II. He
    then connected different points on the map together and projected the
    resulting net onto the surfaces of the building. The intersections of the net
    projection and the design became multiple irregular windows.
    

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67. Cutting through the walls and the ceilings at different angles, the windows
    point to many visual references: narrow eyepiece of a tank; windows of a
    Medieval cathedral; exploded forms of the cubist/abstract/suprematist
    paintings of the 1910s-1920s. Just as in the case of Janet Cardiff's audio
    walks, here the virtual becomes a powerful force which re-shapes the
    physical. In Jewish Museum, the past literally cuts into the present. Rather
    than something ephemeral, here data space is materialized, becoming a sort
    of monumental sculpture.”
    Dialogue between Lev Manovich and Jenny Marketou via email, January 25 - February 4, 2002.
    Breeder (Athens), no. 5, 2002.
    http:/
    /manovich.net/index.php/projects/breeder-interview
    

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69. presence-less placelessness
    

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74. http:/
    /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts
    

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75. Trevor Paglen, “Detachment 3, Air Force Flight Test Center, Groom Lake, NV; Distance ~ 26 miles” (2008).
    

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76. National Security Agency on Fort Meade, Maryland
    

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77. Trevor Paglen, Keyhole Improved Crystal from Glacier Point (Optical Reconnaissance Satellite; USA 186) (detail), 2008
    

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79. Image as object
    

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80. ultimate device for placelessness.
    minimizing any encounter with the place other than creating
    of images.
    banalities aside, has humanity reached new level of
    shamelessness?
    

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82. Or simply continuation of our research and development in perception and representation?
    

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83. Cory Arcangel, tl;dr, Team Gallery
    

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85. For this New York exhibition, Arcangel has produced a body of work expanding upon his use of
    cultural and technological obsolescence as the source of an artistic vocabulary. In the gallery, he will
    be showing a series of works called Lakes. These sculptures consist of flat-screen televisions turned
    on their sides, displaying images taken from pop culture to which the artist has applied the Java
    applet “lake,” which creates a shimmering, seemingly liquid reflection along a horizontal axis. The
    effect is familiar but dated: something seen regularly on personal websites of the late 90's but rarely
    since. These works explore a tension in societal attitudes towards the preservation of culture: the
    obsessiveness with which we conserve and narrativize visual art and popular culture, yet dismiss
    technology as somehow adversarial to art and art-making.
    http:/
    /www.teamgal.com/artworks/1232
    

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86. http:/
    /www.coryarcangel.com/downloads/Cory-Arcangel-OnC.pdf
    

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87. As my recent Skrillex experience demonstrates, I might not be suitable in
    mind, body, and style for the front lines anymore, but as countless
    middle-aged men before have proven, that will not prevent me from
    obsessing over the music I loved at 17. So, yes, I’ll be that middle-aged
    guy—the one with gray temples, riding in his 1957 Corvette, or the one
    with the monographed Rolling Stone luggage—except I won’t be reliving
    the ’50s, ’60s, or ’70s. I’ll be reliving the ’90s, and I’ll be collecting techno
    12 inches. They will be meticulously looked after, perfectly organized,
    labeled, bar coded, condition-checked, and stored under ideal
    conditions. In this—my own private archive—it will always be 1995.
    http:/
    /www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/2012-065-audmcrs-essay
    

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88. Project: Device to help forget
    

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89. https:/
    /www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgCFQ5no2jg
    

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90. http:/
    /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
    

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92. https:/
    /www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvhiRIT5DvU
    

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94. Brody Condon, Level 5
    https:/
    /www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8YhmLAobPg
    https:/
    /vimeo.com/17607945
    

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95. Melanie Gilligan, Popular Unrest
    http:/
    /popularunrest.org/
    

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96. Seth Price, How to disappear in America
    

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97. “There are many good reasons to disappear from
    society. There are many bad reasons to want to.
    There are many good ways to disappear from
    society and there are many bad ways to disappear.
    While I won’t delve too deeply into the whys of
    disappearing, I will cover my opinions on how to
    disappear successfully.
    !
    This essay covers what I consider to be most salient
    points on how to disappear and remain successfully
    hidden in American society. “ (Susanne Bürner)
    http:/
    /www.mottodistribution.com/shop/publishers/casco/vanishing-point-how-to-disappear-in-america-without-a-trace.html
    

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102. Aram Bartholl, Hard Disk Crusher
     http:/
     /datenform.de/blog/computer-art-of-today-hurt-me-plenty-opening-speech-by-olia-lialina/
     

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104. Zach Gage, Lose/Lose 

     http:/
     /www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/
     

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108. Next week: Cybernetic dream
     

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113. https:/
     /github.com/tchoi8/RememberAndForget/
     Material used for this slides were found on the Internet. I do not own images and text that have been used.
     The slide is shared for academic purpose and can be edited if there are copyright issues.
     Contact taeyoon@sfpc.io
     

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