jeanpÓÓle on Wed, 12 Feb 2003 08:17:01 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-bold] blast theory / data terra review


Title: blast theory / data terra review
Here's a blast theory / data terra review,
 first published in realtime Jan 03, australia...
and now up here:
http://www.octapod.org/jeanpoole
along with roboguts, latex yogaboy & udder scribblings..
       
the book review of FutureActive by Graham Meikle might interest some net-timers?
( Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet
by Graham Meikle, Pluto Press, 2002.  )

ciao bunnies :-)
jp

Future Screen :: Data Terra Review
"data [information] terra [earth] investigates not only the technological, but emotional, psychological and spiritual implications of the digital paradigm, and... delves into the advent and purposing of data mapping. " - dLux Media Arts flyer, Nov 2002

Birds are Filling the Skies Again
Feather numbers be up and up. Graph spikes in what the birdologists refer to as 'incidents'. Witness the parklife across from Sydney's Central Station. Abundance of beak and claw, a near liquid blob of feathery life force gathered, feeding ravenously. Can't even see the footpath. People watch nervously from a distance, awed by the spectacle, daring not to think what such a mass might be capable of. Whispers travel around the perimeter - a little boy in there somewhere, all of eight years old.

dLux Blurbalish
futureScreen02::data*terra (Nov 15 - Dec 7, 2002) was the 5th annual dLux X=ploration of new media meets cultural theory & emerging sci-tech. 'Investigating the mediation of data across technological, cultural and physical terrains,' number 5 boiled down to :
- A live debate over dinner ( no spectators ), Data Conspiracy.
- A survey and exhibition of database voyeurs and network fetishists, curated by John Tonkin, The All Star Data Mappers.
- 3 commissioned essays - Terra Texts by Sean Cubitt, Dr Ann Finnegan, Bill Hutchison & Mathew Warren - read at dLux online.
- live thematic audiovisual assaults,  Interalia at The Chocolate Factory, Surrey Hills.
- and a large scale installation at Artspace by Blast Theory (UK) - Desert Rain.

The Man on TV
He said there had been a major earthquake in Tokyo, Japan. SBS coincidentally, had pre-programmed for that night's viewers, a cautionary tale about the inevitability of The Big One that'd shake Tokyo far beyond it's state of the art emergency services. And so it was with added resonance, that the fragile, interconnected nature of our global economic electronic was emphasised, one sober late nineties evening. Sever the Tokyo tendrils and the world wakes to a depression.

Joining The Dots
The All Star Data Mappers mostly consists of websites clickable from the dLux homepage, so visualisation and data mapping enthusiasts can still explore this fine selection of provocative datamapping tools many months after the exhibition has ended. Oz-gong for me, went to the Firmament software interface for a radio telescope by Mr Snow & Zina Kaye. Josh On's now infamous TheyRule.net slices through the Fortune 100 company connections with an incredible visual succinctness and Minitasking.com highlights the distributed backbone of the popular popular peer to peer gnutella filesharing network.

Virtual Warfare
As a large scale and much hyped Virtual Reality environment and interactive art installation, I expected to engage with Desert Rain @ Artspace as a little boy. Not that I'd be grinning because I was getting free trigger finger in textured corridor practice, just that I expected there'd be more technology than necessary. Somewhere amidst the gee-whizadry, the novelty, the gimmickry, the sheer cost of it all, I expected I'd feel like the little boy who notices that the emperor isn't in fact wearing any clothes. Once the impressive infrastructural veneer was peeled away, would it reveal a lack of substance at the installation's core?

Real Warfare
" If they do it it's terrorism, if we do it, it's fighting for freedom, " said a U.S. Ambassador in Central America in the 1980s, asked to explain how such U.S. actions as the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and bombing of airports differed from the acts of terrorism that the U.S. condemned around the world. Since World War II, the United States has dropped the bomb on 23 countries. These include: Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959- 60, Congo 1964, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73, Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983, Lebanon 1984, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua 1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-1999, Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, and Yugoslavia 1999.

Veneer Peeling
Artspace. Spanky, Nick Eye-fi, The Lalila Duo & a little boy. All of us in the raincoats provided. In separate fabric cubicles, wearing microphone headsets and staring at screens. Which are formed by water dripping from the ceiling in front of each of us. Projectors glare up against the other side of the water, providing an almost blurry, ghost-like image to navigate through. Finding our way around is done by leaning left, right, forwards or backwards on the small platform beneath our feet, and by talking through our headsets to each other when we become within range of each other in the 3D space we are watching. With the sound of the constantly raining screens, each other's muffled headset banter and the polygon war playground shining in the glimmery mist, it's hard for a little boy not to be impressed. We have 30 minutes for each of us to find their target characters, and collectively get our butts to a particular exit. But what does it all mean?

Oil Soaked Birds
"real events lose their identity ... when they become encrusted with the information which represents them... As consumers of mass media, we never experience the bare material event, but only the informational coating which renders it 'sticky and unintelligible' like the oil soaked bird."  - Paul Patton tackles Baudrillard on the Desert Rain flyer.

Desert Guts
So I'm in this 3D Pac-man game and I've found my sticky 'target'. Eerily silhouetted in front of the projector, a character approaches the water screen from behind, and then walks straight through it, and gives me information about my target. Actors as soldiers had also instructed us on our mission, guided us to the cubicle and over a large quantity of sand to a mock-motel room, where our team learnt via video that each 'target' had actually experienced the Gulf War in an unorthodox manner. This physical integration of actors into it's virtual environment, and the evocative aesthetics of the physical environment distinguish Desert Rain from most war based computer games. This is just as well for it's creators, Blast Theory (UK), because Desert Rain's simplicity means it couldn't compete on gameplay alone.

Breadcrumbs
Ritual and sacrifice are understandable responses to larger forces we don't understand. Daily breadcrumb dumpings were now occurring to appease the flocks. Thing was, a kid had been trapped under one dumping and when the birds finally started to flutter away, he was no longer there, just a distraught mother hopelessly scanning the empty footpath for some trace. As she looked up, about to cry to the heavens, she fell to her knees rubbing her eyes, they were flying in formation in the shape of her boy.

Motion Blur 75%
Blast Theory's stated goals are about blurring the boundaries between real and virtual events, "especially with regard to the portrayal of warfare on television news, in Hollywood films and in computer games." Their 'mixed reality' approach succeeds with this to some extent, hampered by the amount which you are shepherded through the process and the lack of real capacity you have to do anything meaningful in the installation - explore a maze representing a Gulf War bunker, find character and find exit. The Gulf was a resonant and important theme, but I didn't really gain any new insights about it's real or virtual nature through the game options I was able to explore, that couldn't have been expressed through a simple website or even pamphlet. It was still a highly engaging experience nonetheless, and Blast Theory's next work which happens on the streets and online using satellite tracking and handheld technologies should build on this, and possibly appear as part of futurescreen:03.

Jean Poole is a Melbourne based vidi-yo artist.
jeanpoole@grafitti.net


Websites:

art:
www.dlux.org.au/dataterra
www.blasttheory.co.uk

war:
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Terrorism_watch.html
www.middleeastwire.com/newswire/stories/20010927_meno.shtml