Elliptical notes documenting where we've been in discussion.
See also the email.
We discussed our project and themes for the Winter quarter.
First IMG session Jan 8, 1997
We started to discuss our plans for this quarter by talking about practices (possibly to get away from the notion of Media which felt a bit frazzled at the edges at the end of last quarter). Xin-Wei mentioned "alternative practices." During the next minutes everybody noted practices as possible approaches to the study of media: medical practice (operations under distant control?), educational practice, publishing practice, political practice ,etc.
It qickly became clear that each member expects different things from such a focus. Some expect practical help, some innovation in specific a specific domain, others would take it as a frame to explore theoretical ideas. Alternative practice was also interpreted as a way to reflect on our own position inbetween industry and university, a position which could be made more stable or legitimate through establishing of a new practice. Then we all agreed that we would rather work together as a project team with the goal of designing/ creating the specifications for some thing leaving unspecified what this thing might be. It was also agreed that we will not at first be narrowed down to implementable things or will try to find money for the effort.
In the following brainstorming a number of topics were brought up; some of them as candidates for the design effort, others are issues that should / could be addressed within the design.
Candidates
Reconceiving /Designing of:
advertisement / space(s)/ electronic field trip/ smart clothes or jewelry/
innovative (=non-imitative) forms of publishing on the web/ news (room/
genre)/.... sketching/....
Issues to be considered
Money as part of practice/ money as a symbolic object/ continuity of experience/ shading...peripheral vision for the experience of space/ getting away from objecthood / differential geometry and topology to provide inspiration for different structures/..rhtyhm/ shading as a temporal indicator/...
We agreed that we will audiotape from now on every session (Helga responsible for that), and have a note taker on a rotational basis.
Task for next session: We discuss candidates and issues, and the forms of participation in this round.
- HW
>>> Please, everyone who's on the img-mail goup
>>> post your reactions to
>>> img-mail@lists.stanford.edu
>>> so we can see what people would like to work on this term,
>>> Please propose questions/scenarios you'd like to study
>>> and for which you can take some responsibility in discussion.
>>> - SXW
Submit responses to 8 & 15 Jan 1997
Helgi-Jón Schweizer presented a talk about natural interactivity.
We started discussing technologies of writing, with a chapter 6 -- "Language Symbols" -- from Leroi-Gourhan's Gesture and Speech This week, we'll continue with Leroi-Gourhan's Section 2, on Memory and Gesture. There are paper copies available, as well as online version of the Leroi-Gourhan. (This will pick up a thread that we started last year about hieroglyphic and ideographic writing, and picture languages.)
Year-End Report to the Humanities Center, summary of the seminar's activities in 1995-1996.
Lecture/Performance of the Lightning Instrument, Mark Goldstein.
Discussion of C. Alexander's A Pattern Language.
Discussion of J. Baudrillard, VRML continued.
Discussion of Walter Benjamin, VRML 2.0.
John Keeling spoke about reading hyperfiction and other discursive structures.
Topic: For this first Winter meeting, I'll open with an introduction to digital representations of media. This will be an elaboration on some topics I had to brush over in a presentation for Jeff Schnapp's seminar on a Material History of Literature last term. If you're curious about the context, take a look at the outline for that presentation, section IV, Preliminaries about representations, models, metaphors. - Xin Wei