28 10/09
22:32

Education for Death (1946)

Tags: , , , , | Categories: technical media

Hi,
since the last century there is an intensification of use of media propaganda during war times. Massive production led to massive spreading led to massive consumption led to homogenization within a set of parameters.

Education for Death (1946) shows how USA media industry used the visual language of animation during WWII. They associated fairy tales, popular culture, their own style of cartooning, and a clear political message. Dark times were those of WWII, from a historical (and moral) point of view, those methods against the enemy were justifiable. Today, Are they still justifiable? What media languages are employed today to attack? Are the media weapons?

After watching this piece, I recommend to take a look at two previous posts, Duck and Cover and Social-Sex Attitude in Adolescence.

19 10/09
23:43

Milano (2): Sforzesco

Tags: , , | Categories: viajes

Hola,
hoy el castillo Sforzesco en Milán (Milano) y como siempre cada foto se puede ampliar.

16 10/09
00:21

Healing is shown in Buenos Aires

HI,
healing-video

I have great news for today, Healing was selected for a special show about Colombian Video Art in Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The announcement can be read here and the exhibition will happen between October 16th and December 12th in the following address: Arenales 1540 – C1061AAR. Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. REPÚBLICA ARGENTINA

05 10/09
23:42

The remix is a machine art!

| Categories: art, digital media, machine

Art is dead, long live to the machine art. Vladimir Tatlin.

 
Basic combination of fotos 

‘Machine’ is one of the principal concepts of the modernity. Machine is accurately described, by Broeckmann, as a productive assemblage of forces towards a non-teleological end [1, p.195]. This concept has determined the fate of all sort of practices aimed at producing, organizing, planning, designing, and/or projecting all sort of objects, spaces, social structures, sonic rhythms, and visual sensations in the western societies along at least the last two centuries. In spite of the heterogeneity of forces that are assembled, this concept is totalizing because first, it covers production, organization, and serialization; and second it encompasses all forms of creative work that are treated in similar manners and usually tends towards homogenisation into an uniform social structure at the the same tic-tac-rhythm.

The machinic is the principle that specifies these assemblages, it differs, for instance, from mechanical, electrical, and digital because it covers all of them as characteristics of different sorts of machines, to determine then that what matters is the kind of work the machine does.

Let’s take as example a combinatory machines such as a blender. In a blender different fruits are mixed to produce juice, thus a mix is a homogeneous surface resulting from the assemblage of dissimilar sources. Clearly, a blender could be described as a mechanical machine but mechanical is not enough when specifying the principle that rules a machine that mixes. Mixing is a type of machinic principle.

Remix is another step up in the spiral of rhythm machines that combine ready-made material into new instances. Today, remix can be found everywhere, it has become the form of production per excellence of our times. Lev Manovich has called attention to the remix in contemporary cinema, visual communication, and architecture in which the results are hybrid forms with an homogeneous and fluid surface, and an unreal aesthetic.

If remixing is considered a machinic process, then is a different type of machine art. These forms of machine art cannot be approached based on the type of machine, usually algorithmic, neither they can be characterised by their particular set of visual forms. Rather we have to make use of the principle of combination in which what is being combined is less important than the process itself: the (re)combination. The contemporary machine art differs from that of Tatlin because is one of conversions and not of subversions.


  1. Broeckmann, Andreas. “Image, Process, Performance, Machine: Aspects of an Aesthetics of The Machinic”. MediaArtHistories. Ed. Oliver Grau. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007. 193-205


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