Paul, the newest OIKOS member, and I visited the zone de confluences at Villette Numerique 2004. It's a digital art expo (21 Sept - 3 Oct) that explores the way technology changes our perception of time and space... There are some pretty cool video installations. Many of the artists I had never heard of...at any rate, this kind of art expo is a rare treat in Paris... the new media world still has a distinct anglo flavor and doesn't usually show up on french radar. It was interesting that the majority of the installations used English whenever language was important. For example, David Sadison's work is called Rage Love Hope Despair, "algorithms punctuate the architectural space with the emotional behaviours and moods of human beings as a new theme."
It made me ask the question as to whether we think more often in words or in pictures. I know that I tend to think in pictures. Seeing the words representing behaviors and emotions projected on each others faces was far more moving than seeing them against a wall. Interestingly, a young french woman sharing the same space with us mentionned that she felt "Un décalage émotionnel" (emotional distance) because the words were in english. The word "pain" was projected in red across her mouth as she spoke. I wonder if words, as symbols of what is real, don't always create an emotional distance. It seems to me that images which simulate what is real will always bring us closer to a "real" experience than words can. That distance must be even greater when the language used is your second or third or not "your" language. These words rambling out from my fingers through my keyboard and onto your screen may just bring you further and further from any semblance of the real... it's even better than the real thing.
One of the goodies we found was this clip called We accept. It is the artist's (D-Fuse) attack on the the commercial invasion of the internet. Paul is basking in the aggressive scan light of an omnipresent visa card. You can download the quicktime video here for free!
the whole expo is organized around "des mots clès" or key words/concepts. This page is only in French, but it will link you to a wealth of knowledge (often in English) on concepts like mixed reality and ethnomethodology as well as links to artists exploring ideas like mobilité, simulation, narration, and noosphère. I know these "mots clès" are just words and, more often than not, french words but they do stimulate color, space, and movement...at least in my mind.
tell me if you can. is this really Paul or just a simulation? it looks like paul, but was he really at the expo? was he there the same time i was? do you really know? you don't do you.
them, or read the mute syllables graven in silica. To see a red stone is less than seeing it as jasper—metamorphic quartz, cousin to the flint the Kiowa carved as arrowheads. To name is to know and remember.
