Lecture: Steve Rushton
Looking at social networking sites and reality TV shows, Steve Rushton will reflect on how the notion of 'feedback' works both as a metaphor and as a material condition in contemporary media. He will pay particular emphasis to reality TV as media that feeds back tropes from an array of cultural sites, such as the social psychology experiment, the 'flying eye' and Candid Camera. He will argue that non-scripted TV serves as an aid to the neo-liberal political reasoning which promotes a culture of self-performance, entrepreneurism, privatisation, volunteerism, and responsibilisation.
Steve Rushton is a founding member of *Signal:Noise*, an experimental cross-disciplinary research project that aims to explore the influence of cybernetics and information theory on contemporary cultural life by testing out its central idiom, 'feedback', through debates, artworks, publications, performances, events and exhibitions. He has been a writer and editor for a range of projects with artists such as Rod Dickinson and Thomson & Craighead. His publications include the series 'How Media Masters Reality' for First/Last Newspaper, Issues 1-6, Dexter Sinister (2009); 'New Walden,' HB2, Issue 1, CAC, Glasgow (2008); 'Experience, Memory, Re-enactment', Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam/Revolver, Frankfurt (with Anke Bangma and Florian Wüst) (2005); 'The Milgram Re-enactment', Revolver, Frankfurt (2003). He also teaches at the Piet Zwart Institute.
Review of Signal:Noise: http://www.furtherfield.org/reviews/feedback-signalnoise
Screening: Faceless by Manu Luksch (2007 AT/UK)
"In a society under the reformed 'Real-Time' Calendar, without history nor future, everybody is faceless. A woman panics when she wakes up one day with a face. With the help of the Spectral Children she slowly finds out more about the lost power and history of the human face and begins the search for its future." excerpt from Faceless.
Faceless was produced under the rules of the 'Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers'. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation. The UK Data Protection Act and EU directives give individuals the right to access personal data held in computer filing systems. This includes images captured by CCTV recording systems. For a nominal fee (£10), an individual can obtain a copy of this data: financial or medical records, or video recordings. Other legislation states that the privacy of third parties must be protected. In CCTV recordings, this is done by erasing the faces of other people in the images - hence the 'faceless' world.
Manu Luksch, founder of Ambient Information Systems (ambientTV.NET,) is filmmaker who works outside the frame. The moving image, and in particular the evolution of film in the digital or networked age, has been a core theme of her works. Characteristic is the blurring of boundaries between linear and hypertextual narrative, directed work and multiple authorship, and post-produced and self-generative pieces. Expanding the idea of the viewing environment is also of importance; recent works have been shown on electronic billboards in public urban spaces and open air cinemas in remote rural places.
see: http://www.manuluksch.com/
Ambient TV Net: http://www.ambienttv.net/content/index.php
Screening: The Suicide Box by (bit) the Bureau of Inverse Technology (1966 UK)
A documentary about the BIT Suicide Box, a motion detection video system designed to capture vertical activity. The Unit includes BITcamera, motion capture card, analysis software and utility concealment casing. In standard operation any vertical motion in frame will trigger the camera to record to disk. The Bureau installed the Suicide Box for trial application in range of the Golden Gate Bridge, California 1996; an initial deployment period of a hundred days metered seventeen bridge events.
Bureau of Inverse Technology [BIT] Incorporated 1991 with limited liability Cayman Islands. The Bureau is an information agency servicing the Information Age.
see: http://www.bureauit.org/
The Sniff, Scrape, Crawl… public lecture series has been realised with the collaboration of Research Programme (Lectoraat) Communication in a Digital Age.
_
Forthcoming PZI Networked Media Events:
April 09: Open House + Mock Show between 11:30 and 18:00
_
For application deadlines and information for the
PZI Networked Media Programme, see:
http://pzwart.wdka.nl/networked-media/category/apply/application/
note: Non EU application deadline is May 01