“Is an ephemeral image, a moment in a streaming video, a thing? Or if the image is frozen as a still, is it now a thing? Is a dream, a city, a sensation, a derivative, an ideology, a decay, a kiss? I haven’t the least idea.”

Extract from David Miller, Materiality : An Introduction [1]

In A Thing Like You and Me, Hito Steyerl plays out her ongoing obsession with the copy, skirting briefly over her wider, yet more implicit concern: the digital. Echoing the work of Bruno Latour, Steyerl acknowledges the materiality by which… ]]> Sat, 11 Jun 2011 04:02:00 -0700 http://art-research.co.uk/digital-autonomy-a-reponse-to-hito-steyerl/is-an-ephemeral-image-a-moment-in-a-streaming-video-a http://dandelionnetwork.org/events/flash-symposium-shorts-on Ideal for the commute, the lunch-hour, the stolen moment: shortness necessitates the perfect user-friendly format, arguably suited to the fast paced nature of everyday contemporary urban living. At the same time such compression of structure and content allows for moments of haiku-like contemplation. This symposium has been curated to celebrate all that is great about the short form.

The first half will feature five minute papers on short forms, from fiction to poetry, from comics to GIFs. The speakers are research students from across the humanities and colleges of the University of London. The second half will… ]]> Tue, 17 May 2011 14:26:13 -0700 http://dandelionnetwork.org/events/flash-symposium-shorts-on http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/events/21st_century_event.php?id=47 Chisenhale Gallery - 21st Century Events: And There It Is:

Goldsmiths MFA Art Writing colleagues present an evening of performances, readings, projections, objects and contemplation. And there it is will chart the outcome of a sustained collective engagement with the decisive enigma of disaster and its many possible presences. 

What if the word and its manifestations are perceived as events? The word might be a thing in the world, said, written or performed, the word might mark both a place of effort and a failure of presence. If the word is an event, a… ]]> Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:31:00 -0700 http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/events/21st_century_event.php?id=47/chisenhale-gallery-21st-century-events-and-there-it-is http://coventryopenmedia.wordpress.com/schedule/ The concept of openness is often employed as part of a radical critique of the closed-off worlds of what might be called ‘traditional media’. It is variously used to urge for the right to transparency, the ethics of sharing, the value of re-use and the benefits of connecting.

This series of research seminars will explore various aspects of openness. Special attention will be given to the benefits and drawbacks of openness, and to the many possibilities openness offers for the future of media production, use and critique. ]]> Wed, 16 Feb 2011 07:54:36 -0700 http://coventryopenmedia.wordpress.com/schedule/ http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/09/and-another-thing-sci-fi-truths-and-natures-errors.html

by Daniel Rourke

In my last 3quarksdaily article I considered the ability of science-fiction – and the impossible objects it contains – to highlight the gap between us and ‘The Thing Itself’ (the fundamental reality underlying all phenomena). In this follow-up I ask whether the way these fictional ‘Things’ determine their continued existence – by copying, cloning or imitation – can teach us about our conception of nature.

Seth Brundle: What's there to take? The disease has just revealed its purpose. We don't have to worry about contagion anymore... I…

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A face to face encounter, devoid of the warm appeal of flesh. The eyes are glass, a cold blue crystal reflects the light in a way real eyes never would. A muzzle of hair, perhaps taken from a barbershop floor or the hind quarters of an animal. The painted scalp peeks through the sparse strands: there is nothing here one might caress with fumbling fingers, or, a millennia ago, pick between to lovingly tease out a louse or mite. The figure balances uneasily on stumps for legs. Its waxen surface bears no resemblance to skin. It is a shade saturated…

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by Daniel Rourke

According to the film industry, to director James 'billions at the box-office' Cameron, Avatar is the first 'true' 3D movie. It takes the experience of cinema to the next (natural?) level, and it does it in a way that makes the movie industry gasp. According to the industry, Avatar is the 3D film that other film makers will be watching for years to come; Avatar is the Citizen Kane of 3D cinema.

It is at this point that I could repudiate this position,…

]]> Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:25:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/02/avatar-were-not-in-kansas-anymore.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/01/on-seeing-an-imitation.html

by Daniel Rourke

“Mimesis here is not the representation of one thing by another, the relation of resemblance or of identification between two beings, the reproduction of a product of nature by a product of art. It is not the relation of two products but of two productions. And of two freedoms... 'True' mimesis is between two producing subjects and not between two produced things.” Jacques Derrida, Economimesis As the day drew closer to its end so I strained… ]]> Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:04:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/01/on-seeing-an-imitation.html http://acertainrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/known-unknowns-4-hours-continues.html The Known Unknowns is a scheduled cycle of continuous readings running parallel to Volatile Dispersal: Festival of Art Writing, an evening organised by Maria Fusco and Book Works at Whitechapel Gallery. The festival reflects on the materialisation and dematerialisation of art writing through six newly commissioned works by Adam Chodzko, Ruth Ewan, Babak Ghazi, Beatrice Gibson, Nathaniel Mellors and Gail Pickering. The aim of The Known Unknowns is to gather an interesting number of contributors to publicly read extracts or entire sections of their own texts. The fluidity and the continuity of the act of reading-aloud will unveil a focus… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:45:00 -0700 http://acertainrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/known-unknowns-4-hours-continues.html http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/27/product_id/385?session_id=1258455028383f96137d95bc221d98b5ce7b7b0bfb Saturday 21 November, 6pm - 11pm Showcasing UK artists and writers, this parley-based event speculates on the materialisation and dematerialisation of art writing through newly commissioned works, together with readings drawn from open submission. The event is hosted by Maria Fusco with Book Works and structured around issue three of The Happy Hypocrite, themed ‘Volatile Dispersal: Speed and Reading’. A specially produced publication is available on the day, published by Book Works. New commissions include a lecture, readings, performances and installations by Adam Chodzko, Ruth Ewan, Babak Ghazi, Beatrice Gibson, Nathaniel Mellors, and Gail Pickering, together with The Known Unknowns,… ]]> Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:43:00 -0700 http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/27/product_id/385?session_id=1258455028383f96137d95bc221d98b5ce7b7b0bfb http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html In Part One of this article I wrote about the instability of the art-object. How its meaning moves, and inevitably cracks. In this follow-up I ponder text, the book, page and computer screen. Are they as stable as they appear? And how can we set them in motion? Part Two "There’s a way, it seems to me, that reality’s fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about... writing about that reality is that text is very linear and it’s very unified, and... I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for… ]]> Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:02:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/11/mapping-the-cracks-part-two.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/10/mapping-the-cracks-part-i.html Part One by Daniel Rourke "The spacetime of the lightcones and the fermions and scalar are connected to the chocolate grinder. The chocolate grinder receives octonionic structure from the water wheel." - Tony Smith, Valdosta Museum Website In 1927 Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass was broken in transit. The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, Duchamp's title for the piece, depicts a mechanical Bride in its upper… ]]> Sun, 04 Oct 2009 21:04:00 -0700 http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/10/mapping-the-cracks-part-i.html