-Announcements
- powering up/powering down (extra credit)
- Miller Puckette & Julianna Snapper "En echo" Thursday 15 Jan 7pm SDMA Balboa Park
www.sprucestreetforum.com

Class related:
 - problems - see me (office hours)
- change of office hours next week (1/20) to wed 1/21 1:30-3pm
- webboard requirements
- Faculty Mentor Program
- rats.ucsd.edu

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Last week Subject/Tool/medium

-In your labs intro to HTML/show & discuss site as example of use of computing as an expressive medium

talk more about the precursors and other developments that use text as an element.

Earliest Vision was in 1945
POST-WAR
"AS WE MAY THINK" by Vannevar Bush - published in Atlantic Monthly
viewpoint = postwar - turn energies away from destruction toward creation & human improvement - how to apply tech gains to better humanity

important distinction between repetitive thought (calculation) and creative thought - saw a place for a machine anywhere where repetitive thought occurred (seeing patterns, analyzing data, etc.)
"Whenever logical processes of thought are employed - that is - whenever thought for a time runs along an expected groove - there is an opportunity for a machine"

predicted wearable computing, desktop machines, hypertext
read page 3-4 & page 10 (MEMEX)

Chief features of memex:

-direcxt input through speaking
- walnut sized camera
- handsfree
- ASSOCIATIVE INDEXING ****
process of mimcking way people think - by tying two things together in new associations that can be developed by individual user
ENVISIONS new form of encyclopedia

Hypertext - TED NELSON
 

1. Hypertext
Hypertext refers to text on a computer that is not arranged linearly or sequentially. Users do not have to follow a pre-determined path to use the information; they can jump from one topic to another at will.

First conceptualisation of computer-based hypertext: Ted Nelson, 1965
Followed on Vannevar Bush's vision - how to make it work?

Other examples of associative indexing:

 TALMUD
 Footnotes
 OULIPO experiments
 Library of Babel/ garden of forking path -  Jorge Luis Borges' vision

WHEN COMBINED WITH INTRODUCTION OF INTERNET
 - originally project of military/academy based researchers
 - how to build a network that was decentralized in order to protect it from completely going down if one system were to be attacked
 - later understood the strength of greater number of systems with distributed processing & parallel computing
 - also - distributed ownership & nodes allowed for exponential growth (open system - no gatekeeper)

BASIS OF THIS IS STILL HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language) & http (hypertext transfer protocol)

Really took off with development of first browser in early 90s (Mosaic)

Net.Art was born in mid-nineties as a subset of multimedia produced on the net that was both global and conceptually based.

Elements of:
-nonlinear
-interactive
-responsive to "reader" (unique experience - follows their motivations)
- intimacy

SHOW SOME (Grammatron, Mendi obadike, world's largest collaborative sentence)

Collab sentence (one year or one mile - very popular - one mile came quickly - stopped it with a period - then protests - reopened next day)

Disadvantages of:
- nonshared experience
- cognitive overload / confusion (where am I?)
- technical mediation (waiting for downloads, etc.)

BREAK

net.art
net allows for publishing without publisher/other middlemen

global/conceptual
CHEAP ART
Dynamic - driven by artists (ahead of institutions)
Philosophocal undercurrent
TAZ - Te mporary Autonomous Zone = internet = like an uprising that does not engage directly with the state, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself, to re-form elsewhere, before the state can crush it.

(IDEALINE
Form art, Heath Bunting,)

Beginning - Utopian moment
- anyone can be an artist
- get your work everywhere/seen by everyone (no gatekeepers!)
- death of the author
- view source (allowed for open learning environment) - proliferation/experimentation
- direct feedback with audience

jodi.org, refresh

www.altx.com

changes:
 - desire by institutions to categorize/quantify
- desire by historians/critics/artists to have common ground

21 Distinct Qualities of net.art (DAVID ROSS used to be at Whitney now at SFMOMA):

- Shift in authority
- epic work (world of wonder)
- ephemerality
- equitable relation between large & small
- intimacy/directness
- discourse of work embedded within
-transactional (exchange)
- not directly commodifiable
- small is king
- inherently global (potential - distribution)
- malleable
- idea of mastery is obsolete (changing tools - strategies)
- pace of production/reception
 

APPROXIMATE ART FORM
- space received in
- what they were doing before/after/during
- browser/monitor
- color/resolution
- time spent with piece varies greatly (what does a "hit" mean)
- fonts & images appear differently
- download times
attitude/mood of viewer (rushed or contemplative?)