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DIVVY/dual.symposium.04 [Discussion]
Duration:
28 minutes and 11 seconds
Country:
Japan
Language:
Japanese
Genre:
Instructional
Producer:
NTT InterCommunication Center / NPO Gadago / Mozilla Japan
Director:
Dominick Chen
Views:
337
(12
embedded)
Posted by:
dominick on Apr 22, 2007
DIVVY/dual symposium at NTT ICC on 09.24.2006. Discussion with comments with Hiroo Yamagata, an expert in open-source and free culture philosophy and critique of euphoric 'sharing' paradigm.
Transcription and initial translation by:
- Ashley Rawlings
- Tomomi Sasaki
- Lena Oishi
- Chihiro Murakami
- Dominick Chen
Related links:
0] DIVVY/dual
1] TokyoArtBeat
2] NTT ICC
3] Mozilla Japan
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- My father developed Alzheimer's in his 80s.
- I thought it was unusual, but apparently a lot of my students' relatives also had it.
- As I realized how common the disease is, I felt a certain 'fear'.
- I have the same genes, so perhaps I too will have the disease in a few decades.
- A TV program the other day stated that we will have a cure in 2 years.
- And I thought 'Yes! I don't have to worry about it then'.
- I saw my father's brain scan and was shocked. It's shrinking.
- I was faced with the reality of his brain physically 'disappearing'.
- Seeing Endo san's work now, I'm afraid I think that the details are still rough.
- It's more frightening if the letters shrink while you contemplate. You're forced to type anything at all.
- The material/physical manifestation of the brain, i.e. the text, might disappear at any moment.
- If you change it to shrinking font, I would want this software.
- But it only shrinks slightly. You might just notice it if you leave it for an hour.
- Not radical shrinkage, but very subtle, delicate, but changing for sure.
- I think you can create a 'fluctuation' in the text, visually.
- This way, the reality of 'facing your own text' is expressed more vividly.
- Disappearance is more frightening than becoming larger, I think.
- In the early days, the first kanji that appeared were related to 'sacrificial victim' and 'curse'.
- Kanji's roots stem from 'sacrificial victim' and 'curse'.
- It was Baudrillard who said that 'white' is radical.
- The kanji for 'white' is 'haku', meaning 'death's head'. Human scull. Skeleton.
- Apparently the kanji for 'white' is based on the two holes of a scull's nose.
- We communicate with people using such tools full of curses and jinx everyday.
- We are exchanging 'curses' that our ancestors created. I got goosebumps when I first read this.
- The reality of reading a book that gives you goosebumps. Can media art give you goosebumps too?
- Unless we evolve to a phase where an unfathomable reality gives you goosebumps,
- media art itself is in trouble. The question is, how to go about this.
- Tsubaki san mentioned that 'we have to move towards the everyday'.
- Endo san and Matuyama san's piece itself is not art.
- Rather, when the installation, and the project is seen as a whole
- the whole thing becomes one art piece.
- However, what is the difference between distributing free software online,
- and an artist displaying the work as 'art'?
- I wanted Endo san's opinion.
- This application was not created intentionally as open source art.
- 'How does Yamagata san write his reviews?'
- These are the questions that we wanted to reveal in our work.
- So in this sense, maybe it's not art.
- We talked about the concept of 'platform' before.
- Rather than saying 'Yes!' to the piece itself, it's the process of creation that's important.
- So in a sense, maybe this is like the 'platform'.
- Yes. Everyone uses words, and the reason why we deal with spoken language in
- is because words are universal. Anyone can use them.
- Many language don't have characters, but every language is spoken.
- It's not a special skill, like being good at drawing.
- But everyone writes a lot of text.
- Even a sentence like 'Wow, what's this?' undergoes various raw processes before it's confirmed.
- It's fascinating, and I want to keep working with this.
- Rather than knowing everything then and there, on the spot,
- I feel like we're trying to breed a habit.
- Endo san mentioned the word 'Type-do' (art of typing) before.
- I wrote about 30 comments in the experimental stage. You really need to focus.
- You're forced to write rapidly, or else the font gets bigger and bigger.
- I think the effects can be adjusted easily, as Tsubaki san mentioned.
- Diminishing font, for example. We also thought about the idea of words smudging away like ink.
- The different effects might influence the way you write.
- If it's an entirely new writing experience, then that might influence your thoughts too,
- You might experience an entirely new reality.
- Maybe this offers an alternative reality of sorts.
- Yamagata san's serial at the Kyoto Art Center made me think of this.
- Yamata san writes a serial called 'Dear Text', you can read it on his home page.
- He writes about his radical stance towards art.
- At the end, he mentioned 'scientific art' and whether unduplicable, original art exists.
- Sorry, this is a very rough summation.
- He concluded that softwares are already very open,
- and that maybe they hold the possibilies for the future. This was in 2003.
- Now that 3 years have passed, I wonder what you think about it now.
- Can I ask your opinion regarding this matter?
- My thoughts since then haven't changed, although I am confused about one thing.
- I've talked before about how wonderful free software is.
- Also, I've supported the loosening of copyright and protective influences
- like Creative Commons. But lately, my thoughts have changed.
- It's related to the idea about what makes art and the act of creation possible.
- There is one thing that Levi-Stauss said. It's also online.
- He says that creativity and originality is most realized
- when you have a vague idea but can't obtain the actual thing itself.
- For example, say I was impressed by a film or a painting.
- I only have a vague image of a strange lady smiling.
- When I try to paint it myself, I come up with something entirely different or new.
- This is when creativity is realized.
- If everyone suddenly starts buying Mona Lisa replicas
- then the potential for originality goes down.
- So to have a situation where free-for-all artworks are distributed digitally,
- maybe this is bad for breeding originality.
- Things like artist's copyright, open source...
- Open source here means 'ability to share' or 'openness' from both sides.
- Are they really beneficial?
- As soon as restrictive copyrights increased dramatically,
- the potential for replicability or digitization (they mean the same thing) also increased.
- I think that this is symbolic.
- This subconscious need to 'supress' the situation of 'free replicability'
- may have always existed in the collective knowledge of humans.
- So then, people who used to think 'That guy is copying me, oh well'
- might start to think 'Hmm, maybe I should stop them before it's too late'.
- In other words, does open source really promote originality?
- Maybe interrupting open source with things like copyright promotes originality even more.
- So then, I begin to question whether everything should become open source.
- But this is just the big picture. I still think that things should partially be much more open.
- But I'm realizing that not everything must be open.
- Perhaps open source isn't the only way for future art.
- Of course, it's great to have people involved in a piece.
- For example, Endo san mentioned the possibilities of social hacking.
- People at the website '2 channel' created 'Tashiro-guns'
- and tried to get 'Masashi Tashiro' on the cover of time. That was great.
- I can even consider it as art, if I must.
- But not everybody agrees with this,
- I'm beginning to think that 'open source' and 'art'
- are not entirely compatible. Only partially.
- Thank you. Yamagata san's opinion in the 6th or 7th 'Dear Text' called 'The Future of Originality'
- relates to this discussion about open source, but it's also more universal.
- As Yamagata san said, when people's assets are shared and parallelized,
- I wonder whether people can actually create and gain from that.
- The Fruxus score that Kusumi san introduced at the start was free at the time of release,
- but 30 years on, it's become a fetishized item that sells for 300,000 to 400,000 yen.
- Using Yamagata san's words, this is probably 'the consequence of a subconscious collective knowledge'.
- Creative Commons is often misunderstood.
- People think that it's about 'overthrowing copyright', promoting everyone to stop using it.
- I was very disappointed when an American lawyer emailed me saying similar things.
- But this isn't true. As Lawrence Lessig often states,
- it's 'the restoration of balance'.
- He says that the aim is not to make everything open or subject to creative commons.
- It's tough having to go around explaining yourself all the time.
- The reality is that it's difficult for people to imagine a middle ground. How about you, Tsubaki san?
- Dominick's comment about not being able to imagine the 'middle ground' refers to a fundamental human bug.
- We deliberately omit detail. Biologically, we like to dichotomize things.
- 'Morning and night', 'man and woman'. All twos, right? It's not 'man, woman and alien'.
- Dichotomizing is part of us. It's like flicking a switch.
- The question is, how do we present the details?
- Unless we bring the details back, we'll be wrapped up in ideological conflict.
- We have to increase the level of accuracy and ...
- There was an interesting piece in SIGGRAPH.
- An interface called VooDooI/O
- There are many stakeholders, so I think it's important to talk about specific numbers.
- This is true for creative commons too. We want to quantify things.
- Rather than 'Should we have copyright, yes or no',
- we tried to quantify it, like '6:3 or 78%'. But it didn't go well.
- The environmental ministry did an interview about a project.
- When they mentioned 'global warming', everybody assumed that it was about the rising seas.
- Elementary schools teach that global warming leads to higher seas. How do we fight this propaganda?
- So artists have to fight the social trend of being either 0 degrees or 100 degrees.
- How to adjust this. Our job is to introduce accuracy, and say 'Wait a minute'.
- If someone says 'It's like this, right?'
- we would say 'No, that's not true. Look at it from this angle'.
- When we create works that people can touch and experience for themselves,
- they are made to reconsider the way they think. Like, if everyone downloaded the typing software.
- By slowing things down, you prevent major catastrophes.
- My job is to constantly offer information to prevent such major catastrophes.
- I think that this is a very important function of art.
- And we should promote it through things like creative commons.
- In other words, I want to increase the number of 'notches' up to every millimeter, every angstrom.
- This is one thing I'd like to keep doing.
- This relates to what you just mentioned, but I think information will continue to increase.
- People can change the code or contents of an open source piece.
- For example, you might spend 3 hours remixing your favourite song,
- and suddenly discover what sort of sounds they were using.
- Or you might be using Illustrator or Photoshop
- and suddenly realize all these connections when you start deconstructing the image.
- This ties into Tsubaki san's idea about increasing 'notches'.
- I think that this creates a new form of critique.
- Endo san's piece intervenes from an entirely different angle.
- It's not the same as that dophin helper that pops up in Windows and Excel.
- It's important for art to offer 'intervention that people don't necessarily want'.
- I was previously involved in 'intellectualization of space'.
- The users wanted agents to help them out, so I created noise instead.
- Very violently, too.
- Art collapsed because the way we created noise did not accurately adhere to the times.
- Society kept changing.
- 'Art is an explosion!', 'What sort of explosion?' 'It's an explosion, that's all'.
- This rough generality doesn't pass anymore.
- But it's a fine line. Endo san's software intervenes on a daily level.
- In the 'intellectualization of space', it's important to determine at which level interference should occur.
- On one end, there's Dr. Kawashima's 'Brain Training' for Nintendo DS.
- That's a sign that people want to stimulate themselves in some way.
- They're afraid that they're degenerating in an increasingly automated society.
- So people are watching Dr. Shibaki on TV or playing Dr. Kawashima's game on DS.
- Art can offer noise to stimulate their consciousness,
- and technology would be a significant part of that.
- I'm anticipating ICC to create some sort of vivid action.
- I have a question.
- Open source software has a clear aim,
- which is to become better and faster.
- So if a piece or project became open source, how can we measure whether it's better or not?
- In other words, does it become better if 100 people participate in the project?
- For Tsubaki san, the question would be whether Radikal Dialogue can be measured like that in quantity.
- We're trying to think about art in an open source context.
- When open source is a method, to what extent is it valid?
- And can this be considered as 'noise', as discussed earlier?
- Our aim is to offer noise, right?
- What is the incentive for 100 people to come together to maximize that noise?
- One successful example of Tsubaki san's point would be 'post pets'.
- You'd be writing normal emails, and a bear would appear and lose the email or send dummy mails.
- People embraced this.
- Microsoft's dolphin Kyle was hated,
- but people were happy to be interfered by 'post pets'.
- So one aim would be to create something that the market would embrace.
- Using Tsubaki san's example, one reference is to see how many people created that Tashiro wallpaper.
- But whether it's good art if more people participated is an entirely different matter,
- and depends on Tsubaki san's overall goal.
- Participation doesn't make the piece better or more powerful,
- but if more people participate, the more it's connected to the market, so there's more value.
- This is one way of thinking about it.
- The next question would be whether it's successful if it sells.
- That's a major issue, and should be discussed seriously.
- Takashi Murakami always pops up in these discussions.
- His way of pinpointing certain angles is successful overseas.
- He's also involved in 'Geisai'. That's open source in a sense, right?
- But people don't participate in Geisai because it's open source.
- They come because they want to make money with art.
- They think: 'I'll be discovered and become rich' or 'I'll be shown at Tomio Koyama or NY'.
- The system looks open source from the outside, but the inside is entirely different.
- But the content is quantifiable, and it's rated highly.
- That's why people participate. Same with 'post pets'.
- It's difficult to say whether popular art that sells is 'good'.
- I'd say it is, at 7:3 odds.
- 'Post pets' are good, and Takashi Murakami's 'Geisai' is another such system.
- I wonder what ICC can offer.
- Rather than rejecting everything, it's good to innovate possibilities through media and technology.
- There are a lot of possibilities out there.
- People around the world access that dodgy Palestinian website.
- Even access from Palestine. There are so many possibilities.
- I'm not very skillful, so I can't offer everything. But the possibilities are there.
- You're right. The question of how to distribute media art in the market is huge.
- This project aims to distribute software for daily use, for free,
- and see what the long-term consequences are.
- I agree that this is a critical point of discussion, but I'm afraid we've run out of time.
- I'd now like to take one or two questions from the audience.
- The question can be to one person, or the panel as a whole. Please raise your hand.
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