Dr. Reinhold Grether’s network research | netzwissenschaft site maps the “emerging infrastructures of all (inter)net research endeavours. net.science as an anthropology of connectivity is trying to overcome the constraints of specialist method transfers on net matters. the protuberance of technical networks necessitates a professionalization of human net knowledge. neither the isolation of concepts as in basic research nor the encapsulation of processes as in applied sciences will ever be able to adequately describe the complex autopoiesis of networks. net.science is undoubtedly developing into a scienza nuova of its own right.”

Check out his Mobile Art and Virtual Performance research areas.

Walter Ong and the problem of writing about LambdaMOO

“I’ve known Sue Thomas online and off for about 5 years. Her contributions to understanding life online are extraordinary for three reasons. She lives fully online meaning that she immerses herself (not that she lives ONLY online). She takes time to critically and sometimes painfully reflect on her experiences. And most importantly, she shares what she has learned.

Recently she wrote an article for trAce, her online professional (and, I sense, artistic) home. In Walter Ong and the problem of writing about LambdaMOO Sue reflects on why it is so damn hard to explain online interaction experiences to those who have never had one of their own. (Bolding below is mine.)
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Ping Me a Melody

“Ping Melody is a music-net-performance. Temporary and unique state of all actions of Internet users has an influence on form of music composition. Musician (instrumentalist or singer) is playing on acoustic instrument/singing and sounds coming from instrument/voice are shared in packets of data information (granulated), then transmitted to selected Internet location (as “ping” unix command).

Most of net artists are using some specific possibilities of Internet: they are working with WWW, streaming, etc. In Ping Melody I treat Internet not so much as a tool which functions in given way, but as a space, that can be observed.”

Simultaneous Translation

John Roach is working on a multilocation networked audio performance called Simultaneous Translation which will involve players from USA, Spain, France, Italy and Germany. The first performance is slated for November 2004 in Madrid Spain. Other manifestations are planned for NYC and Trondheim Norway.

“In my first foray into networked performance entitled Negative Space it was the limitations of the streaming media which made the project difficult and exciting. This lag and flux is the starting point of Simultaneous Translation in which the idea of flux and slippage is put in the forefront and is compared to the slippages and mutations of language as it evolves. Another point of comparison is to the delays that occur on the web as data passes from router hop to router hop. In fact traceroute data will be used to manipulate audio streams from the remote participants, making the delay of the internet itself an active player in the project.”

SPEC-FLIC
Described by Adriene Jenick as a “Speculative Distributed Cinema Project….a series of fictional events performed as distributed cinema. SPEC-FLIC is a platform for speculation, creative experimentation and imagination among UCSD students, faculty, staff and the larger public. SPEC-FLIC’s title refers to speculative fiction (an area of science fiction that is focused less on new science/tech and more on societal impacts) as well as to the size (a “speck”) of the PDA-based video frame that serves as the conduit for this durational collective performance. Originally described as a distributed science fiction soap opera in three phases.” Continue reading

Today’s empyre list (empyre Digest, Vol 18, Issue 14) arrived with a date 1/3/70 and therefore slipped to the bottom my email and probably that of a number of others.

But read it… After Andreas Horbelt?s remarks:

“If somebody stops writing in a textbased surrounding, he stops existing, no matter if he just takes a dramatic pause, if he is laged or if his computer is crashed… In graphical systems, you might still be there (as a visible avatar), but you also might already be gone (if you are lagged or your computer has crashed). So in the end, you’re just alive while typing, and every new sentence is a rebirth.”

Melinda Rackham, in her empyre post (which is about games) speaks of the Pause or Gap as “our portal into difference” — a positive take on a similar occurrence. An opening for the unexpected.