And yes, another year begins in earnest.

     I am hoping to explore new territory as well as show paths that go from one land to the other. I know that I am getting known as the "time guy" but in the end, it is in the use of duration, speed, wave or undulation that seems to be what is being brought forward in acute ways within the complex of activity of the human/computer~interface.

     And what of the new landscape created by data pathways? Has it been represented? Should it be? Much is made of the use of affect in New Media, it is articulated as a "fait accompli" of the medium. Brian Massumi, whose writing I very much appreciate, seems to be looking very closely at what is the coming-to-being of sensation and experience. Though the potential is obviously out there, it seems like the artwork that stays at the forefront is the work that uses clever sensorial hooks and technologies that seem to be reviewed in the journals. The look towards them is always fairly similar, using what I perceive to be the Whiteadian position. I still wonder how exact Einstein was in his calculations; much of this thinking seems to build from the concept of relativity and tends to use it as a given, a proof, a theorem. All well and good, but what if it is wrong and instead of the apple falling on Newton's head, it was rather Newton who fell upward into the apple?

Response... kind of

Just read an interesting post at ArtWords (http://xplsv.blogspot.com/2011/12/rafael-lozano-hemmers-recorders.html?showComment=1324513212403#c5997972311010712949) which got me thinking about participatory media and the convergence of life and culture (they might be the same thing but let us assume for the moment they are not).

Though the following video does not necessarily present an "art piece" is it not, to a certain extent, a cultural expression that takes its cue from present society and the Long Now? And is this not art?

L(ook)istening, find(oud)ing

As we search, we see things, things that need to stay in the back of our minds and either fester or evolve into the perfect kind of mutation.

Twisted Bodies Carry Electricity from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

The concept of using the body to move electrons is not new, but one can continue to wonder what effect those electrons have on the surfaces and connections they caress and provoke. And what of those electrons pushed into motion by "foreign"bodies. Are we witnessing a new form of parasitism, or is it rather symbiosis? And exactly when do we come up for air?

I am constantly going back to "Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means (Electronic Culture: History, Theory, and Practice)" by Siegfried Zielinski. In this great look at the history of the electronic-human relationship the reader visits with searchers who, for one reason or another, were not pushed to the front pages of the history books. It is the confluence of showmanship, electricity and affect.