IMG Agenda and Topics

September 1997

We started a new thread on conversational dynamics, with which we would like to experiment in the Fall.

Proposals: A new seminar on writing as performance.ÝÝ (ND and XW),  Seminar in letter writing (AW), Talks on multimedia, modernism and dada (GK).

June/August 1997

We continue our maps-transformations discussion and pursuing the summer construction project(s).We are meeting mostly on Mondays.

May 1997

We have been going through an exercise in mapping a space of concepts around computational media materiality. (We started with a pseudo-free association.) The exercise will come in three stages: (1) mapping in a graph-theoretic fashion (London Underground), (2) mapping in a field-theoretic sense, (3) intersubjective and performative mapping and auto-transformations.

We hope to take these and construct at least two artifacts out of them, one more or less traditional hyperdocument, and one installation.
 

  • 5/26 Brian Rotman came to talk about new media forums for the materiality crowd.
  • 5/19 Niklas Damiris presented Internet: The New Agora, a joint paper with Helga Wild.

    • 5/5 & 5/12 we continued our first foray into relativistic or nonlinear maps and transformations, perhaps via topology.

    January 1997

    We're currently discussing problems of designing computationally augmented social spaces. Our goal is to consider some scenario that is interesting for pragmatic and conceptual reasons, and to jointly write a piece about it.

    8-15 January 1997

    First Winter 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 quickly 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