interaction 13 - the dream of the 90s is alive

http://www.possible.com | @jasonbrush | #DreamOf90s

THE DREAM OF THE 90s IS ALIVE

J A S O N B R U S H

Sleeping in until 11

Hanging with friends

Going to Clown School

G.W. Bush presidency didn’t exist

Riding unicycles, skateboards, public transportation

Wearing flannel shirts

Buying and selling CDs at a record store

You can put a bird on something and just call it art

Nostalgia for the things in the song? Or just nostalgia for youth?

Life is rich as we fill it with things

beautiful to remember.

— Goethe

A benefit of memory: our lives in the present are enriched by experiences in the past.

The past is never dead.

It's not even past.

— William Faulkner

A risk: we let the past haunt us, hover over us, infect our present.

Saying “yesterday was better than today.”

It’s easy for me to be nostalgic about independent film.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hollywood-earn/

We live in the digital age and, unfortunately, it’s

degrading our music, not improving it … It’s not

that digital is bad or inferior, it’s that the way it’s

being used isn’t doing justice to the art. The MP3

only has 5 percent of the data present in the

original recording. … The convenience of the

digital age has forced people to choose between

quality and convenience, but they shouldn’t have

to make that choice ...

Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music and his

legacy is tremendous, but when he went home he

listened to vinyl.

— Neil Young

At least Neil Young is thinking about the future...

We're hunting for information; we're

starving for new equipment; we are in

a personal arms race [for] memory or

speed.

— Laurie Anderson

With technology, its very nature keeps us from falling into the trap of nostalgia. If anything, we have amnesia.

1990: MS-DOS was the dominant OS

Microsoft had just released Windows 3, the first version of Windows to achieve notable success.

1990: E-mail access through a terminal UI

Photo: functoruser

1990: Sharing media: floppy disks

The CD-RW didn’t come until 1997, and Apple’s abandoning of the floppy drive in 1998 with the iMac was considered a radical move.

It was also a time of immense change. 1990 saw Nelson Mandela freed from political prison.

1990: launch of the Hubble telescope.

1990: reunification of Germany.

A program which provides access to the hypertext world

we call a browser. When starting a hypertext browser on

your workstation, you will first be presented with a

hypertext page which is personal to you: your personal

notes, if you like. A hypertext page has pieces of text

which refer to other texts. Such references are

highlighted and can be selected with a mouse (on

dumb terminals, they would appear in a numbered list

and selection would be done by entering a number).

When you select a reference, the browser presents you

with the text which is referenced: You have made the

browser follow a hypertext link.

— Tim Berners-Lee, Robert CailliauNov 12, 1990

1990: invention of the Web

1993: Mosaic, first widely distributed Web browser.

Radio is one sided when it should be two. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him. On this principle the radio should step out of the supply business and organise its listeners as suppliers.

— Bertolt BrechtThe Radio as an Apparatus of Communication (1932)

Took previous concepts of creating a technology which was both the means of production and distribution and made them real.

[Alan] Turing simply defined the

computer as a machine that could be

any machine...

To paraphrase Turing, the computer is

the medium that can be any medium.

— Simon Biggs

The effect of concept-driven revolution

is to explain old things in new ways.

The effect of tool driven revolution is

to discover new things that have to be

explored.

— Freeman Dyson, Imagined Worlds

Linear/AnalogExperience

Non-Linear Experience

Lived Environments

Artificial Constructs

Hypertext ➜ net.art

As a film student, I had been working in cinema which is necessarily about capturing the real world and creating a linear experience with beginnings, middles and ends (although, as Goddard says, not necessarily in that order).

Hypertext was something radically different — artificial and non-linear.

There had been experiments with these aesthetics in the past, e.g. William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s cut-up collages.

Mark Amerika, HyperTextual Consciousness 1.0 (1995)

“Will remove the limitations of physical space and will enable us to avoid having to be in a specific place at a specific time.”http://www.grammatron.com/htc1.0/

Credit Sam Pottshttp://sampottsinc.com/ij/

David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (1996)

Credit Noah Smithnoahdanielsmith.com

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Olia Lialina, My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996)

Experiments in how specific behaviors of HTML — e.g. Framesets — could shape experience.http://www.teleportacia.org/war/

Alexei Shulgin, This Morning (1997)

Creating time-based experiences with HTMLhttp://www.easylife.org/this_morning

Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, A Hypertext Journal (1996)

Experimenting with “the WWW as Live Interface”; Predates “weblog” (1997), “blog” (1999)

Sites should have as their root emotive/meaningful content

The net presents huge possibilities for relaying this type or

'performance' or time based work

Remaining open to interaction is a struggle but a worthwhile

one

Sites must be in some way time based if an audience is to be

engage in more than a once only 'quick flick'

The basic building blocks of the net such as email, IRC and

basic html are of huge interest and potential use to artists

whether it is as a production or communication tool

By using the net artists are able to contectualise their own

work by linking to material they choose — this could of

course be by themselves or others.

— Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie

Jim Petrillo, Cinema Volta (1995)

CD-ROMs allowed artists to distribute content which would have required too much bandwidth — audio, large graphics, video.http://youtu.be/Tkrjr0dpPNQ

Through the 90s, a kind of

technological vertigo was a fact of life.

— Simon Penny

Recording images for the blind.

Realize they can record dreams.

Addicted to dreams.

“For those who can’t put it down.”

Laurie Anderson / Hsin-Chien Huang, Puppet Motel (1995)

Album “Bright Red” released in 1994; blending

jodi.org (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) (1995 –)

“Jodi is Code stripped of all functionality, Code for its aesthetic value, Code as abrasive language, Code as hallucination, Code as theater.”http://jodi.org/

Ben Benjamin, Superbad (1997)

http://superbad.com/

Alexi Shulgin, Form Art Competition (1997)

Could the artifacts of the digital age be exploited for expressive capabilities?http://easylife.org/form/competition/competition.html

Alexi Shulgin, Desktop IS (1997-98)

http://www.easylife.org/desktop/

The human essence is no abstractum

inherent in the single individual. In its

reality it is the ensemble of social

relations.

— Karl Marx

Sixth thesis on Feuerbach (1845)

Everyone is alone and yet nobody can

do without other people, not just

because they are useful (which is not

in dispute here) but also when it

comes to happiness.

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

The World of Perception

Heath Bunting, Cybercafe (1994)

http://irational.org/cybercafe/xrel.html

The body is our general medium for

having a world.

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Phenomenology of Perception

Linear/AnalogExperience

Non-Linear Experience

Lived Environments

Artificial Constructs

Hypertext

Body Interfaces

➜ net.art

Bruce Nauman, Going Around the Corner Piece (1970)

David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)

David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)

Jim Campbell, UNTITLED For Heisenberg (1994)

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/portfolio/installations/untitled_for_heisenberg/

Jim Campbell, UNTITLED For Heisenberg (1994)

http://www.jimcampbell.tv/portfolio/installations/untitled_for_heisenberg/

Rafael Lozano-Hammer, Surface Tension (1992)

http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/surface_tension.php

Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)

Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)http://www.joachimsauter.com/en/work/zerseher.html

Jeffrey Shaw, The Virtual Museum (1991)

http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=88

Jeffrey Shaw, EVE (Extended Virtual Environment)

http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php?record_id=91

Ulrike Gabriel, Breath (1992)

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/breath/

Char Davies

Char Davies, Ephémère (1998)

http://www.immersence.com/

Remember to remember.Question the present.The future is now as open as it once was — it’s ours to make.

Life is rich as we fill it with things beautiful to remember.

— Goethe

Remember to remember.The present came from the past.The future is now as open as it once was.

Links

Mark Amerika, "HyperTextual Consciousness 1.0" (1995)

Olia Lialina, "My Boyfriend Came Back from the War" (1996)

Alexei Shulgin, "This Morning" (1997)

Nina Pope & Karen Guthrie, "A Hypertext Journal" (1996)

Jim Petrillo, "Cinema Volta" (1995)

Laurie Anderson / Hsin-Chien Huang, Puppet Motel (1995)

http://jodi.org

Ben Benjamin, "Superbad" (1997)

Alexi Shulgin, Form Art Competition (1997)

Alexi Shulgin, Desktop IS (1997-98)

Heath Bunting, Cybercafe (1994)

Rafael Lozano-Hammer, Surface Tension (1992)

Joachim Sauter, ZERSEHER (1991)

David Rokeby, Very Nervous System (1982-1990)

Ulrike Gabriel, Breath (1992)

Char Davies, Ephémère (1998)