Visualizing Ideas: New York City in Pastiche

PSFK introduced me to something rather interesting. The project itself can be found at Christian Marc Schmidt’s website. It is described as a collective composition of New York City which visually combines the geographic neighborhoods of New York with the digitally communicated ideas floating around in the blogosphere. This piece culminates with the virtual/verbal representation of New York organized by its many neighborhoods.

Pastiche—A Collective Composition of New York City, by Ivan Safrin & Christian Marc Schmidt from Christian Marc Schmidt on Vimeo.

My first thought when stumbling on this piece was a flash back to good old Jay Gould and his Oral History of the World. But the difference here is this piece is fundamentally written by the world and does actually exist. It most certainly is art of the communal and experiential kind, harking back to the days of the Dadas who, through those questionable Cadavre Exquise, formed works of art not centered on the talents of any one person but existing through the collaboration of the group. That is the heart of this project and though it has its creators: Ivan Safrin and Christian Marc Schmidt, it can only exist through the contributions of the blogosphere.
thoughts and reactions…

-huysmans

The Internet verse Tradition Part 1

It began as a discussion between one of my closest friends and myself years ago. But now with us both beginning our professional lives it is time for the discussion to move up a notch and to become a series of dialogues I hope to have here.

The topic is grand and vague and in most cases too confusing to understand what the hell is going on, but somewhere in the language lies a very interesting debate over the future of human interaction and the creation of art. The Role of The Internet, on its surface a seemingly endless answer with parts that are constantly growing and changing with or against time. But that simple yet confounding fact does not exempt the internet and its future from discussion, just the contrary actually. So now it is time to begin again. Pay close attention Mark, I’m ready to do this on your turf now:

The first concept I have been struggling with is the idea of separating two very distinct areas of the Internet’s development (I don’t mean to say there are only two but rather that there are two that this will focus on, or at least that there are two I don’t want to get confused over). The first is the internet as a tool of communication, as the great democratization of information distribution, where as my friend reported he was able to hear about the Hudson crash through Twitter faster than any “credible” news media service could deliver. Now the second area is the Internet as a medium for the creation and publication of art and it is in this title that I want to explore. I want to look at the pros and cons of the Internet as the democratization of publishing, or rather I want to look at the idea that the Internet is doing such a thing to begin with.

The question at hand is whether or not editors and “credible” publishing services are needed as filters for highlighting what is actually worth reading. On the opposite side of the fence, that of the internet users, the editors are replaced (or augmented by) the sheer populairty given select published pieces by the masses. Thus the question really is: Should the masses control what is read or the editors or some combination of both? We should start with that last addition, perhaps the internet has no intentions of destroying the traditional methods of publication and critisicm, but if that were true than we shouldn’t have seen the destruction of nearly every newspapers book review section save the Times. So it is clear that we can agree a change is happening, and that this change is destroying, to a certain extent, the authority of traditional editors and critics.

But maybe it isn’t destroying them, maybe those critics and editors are moving to the Internet, are combining with it to create a new format for finding the next great literary publication. Along with that point is the Long Tail effect of the Internet to allow for every possible niche market to find itself and its companions, but in order to find what you are looking for in that respect you have to be pretty experienced with how to search, is that an assumption we can make about the masses?

Anyway that’s enough for part 1, I apologize for introducing a lot of differing points but I had to start somewhere. The real question I have for the Internet is this: How will it protect the minority opinion in art if the masses are always dictating the path?

-huysmans

Sent from my iPhone

It is time for the return of the CBF. I know our discussions and posts have been… well… nonexistent since last summer and that has all to do with the basic and near dominating transition from college to the real world. But now as real people making real earnings and going to real jobs we at the CBF are ready to return. This here will be the first post (if that isn’t obvious already).

From now on I am afraid I will be changing the way I post. Since posting to my blog has always greatly reflected the work I was involved in at college it should be of no surprise that my posting style as well as content will change. For example now that I am a New York City public school teacher I am sure education will take a more prominent role on this blog.

So now on to the subject of this post… the iPhone, or rather the effect of the iPhone world in which we live. I just saw Fan Boys yesterday and its opening credit role, in the style of Star Wars, ends by declaring the previous message was sent via an iPhone. This got me thinking about how our world, already changed by the internet, seems to be changing again (in the most obvious of ways) to one where we are not limited by our “office.” The writing space has always been transportable and the act of writing applicable to any location, but the act of publishing was once extremely limited. First it was limited to the funnel of editors and periodicals, then (and I know this is already a large jump) to the limits of a 56k or later high speed connection established for the communication of a clunky to now sleek device that could connect to that World Wide Web capable of instantaneously publishing your work. But now we live in a world where that device has become completely portable as well, you don’t even need the Starbucks wifi to get a post out. This brings a whole new level to those cell phone novels already taking form in Japan.

But then again I only started this post on my iPhone, I finished it at my computer in my room.

Time you think you don’t have

Grant Text Auto has introduced me, based on the time I had to read the post and click the link, to the No Time Machine.

Take the time and observe what we are saying about time that we don’t have. As far as this project and its artistic qualities are concerned. It is art of the masses, because without us talking about time, there wouldn’t be substance for this creatively engineered project. So take the time and observe how time is being interpreted by those who believe they haven’t it.

Time out,

Huysmans

Welcome to the Comparative Blogging Foundation

The Comparative Blogging Foundation is a project birthed from the former Literature’s Next Frontier as well as the evolution of the Avant-Garde based experimental art of the twentieth century. Today the Foundation acts as a repository for artistic experiments and discussions with a focus on exploring what art is today.

What is art? What role does it have in today’s world? What can be art? How does it exist in different facets of our lives? These are the questions we have started from and will use to explore the awesome potential of the contemporary scene.

The Foundation is just starting and was technically launched on March 20th, 2008. As this project develops we hope for the community of artists and art critics of the web to gather and engage the authors in the discussions established.

Thank you,

Huysmans,

Comparative Blogging Foundation