An Interpretive Framework for Contemporary Database Practice in the Artscurt cloninger:c:>You are tweaking one of any number of devised, esoteric,>man-constructed relationships (in this instance, the relationship>between land and abstracted/virtual data).b:>Also though, we include the social and individual in that>relationship between land and abstracted data… although the>individually meaningful resources have hardly been released. My hope>is that soon you will be able to go to a website and produce virtual>hikes to follow and so forth. Right now, the closest thing is>probably any uses to which you might put the 1.0.3 version of the>API (which is public, GNU), or anyone can download the tracklogs for>the Rush Creek Wilderness Trail and go.c:This open source aspect of the project (research project asart-making meta-tool) at least allows for a subjective element to beinjected by other artists/users/participants later down the line.And perhaps if you had enforced your own more overt subjectivenarrative from the beginning, your bias would have been embedded intoyour tool/approach, and would have limited variable uses later on.Yes, that seems a fair point.c:>I hope you’ll allow this necessarily metaphysical assertion –>without humans to cognitively translate between the real and the>virtual, there is no virtual. The real tree never falls in the>virtual forest, so to speak.b:>Possibly no. Delanda (rereader of Deleuze who makes a good case to>recapture Deleuze for the analytic side of the>continental/analytical split), makes a case for abstract machines>replacing essences. Every system has manifold possibilities (and>some impossibilities), but crystallizes or slips into an actual>state. The actual state is what we tend to call real, but the other>possibilities for any system are a kind of reality too… and for>Delanda and Deleuze, these too have qualities and tendencies that>are important to note. In fact, contemporary computational>techniques allow their simulation and exploration of real spaces>that are not yet actual, but which might become. To ref your nuclear>example - the US no longer tests actual atom bombs - but does them>in simulation. We can know how a new design will function without>shaking up the state of Nevada… So I guess our point is that in so>many ways these predictive technologies now play a role in producing>both the social and the real material world. (Using software to>determine if a dam will work there, how fast it will silt up, etc>plays a role in the decision making about what actually happens…>and the virtual allows the landscape to enter into the social>conversation…)[...]
(Via Rhizome.org Raw.)

[tags]netart, database, deleuze, art, interview[/tags]