Locative Media & The City

http://www.brianmassumi.com/textes/Urban_Appointment.pdf

I found this essay by the contemporary French philosopher, Brian Massumi (I had known of him first as having done the English translation for Deleuze and Guattari's 'a thousand plateaus' and Jacques Atalli).
This paper discusses the work of a group of artists, assembled to participate in the HUMO (HUge and MObile) workshop dedicated to projecting extremely large images upon urban structures. Interestingly, Massumi uses the metaphor of the Situationist 'Possible Rendez-Vous' in which one participant is invited to wait alone in a public place for the possibility of an encounter with another participating subject. Since the encounter is merely a possibility of an infinite number of scenarios the participant is "freed from the bothersome obligations of the ordinary rendezvous since there is no one to wait for." (Debord 3). Interestingly, Massumi anthropomorphizes the massive image projections as a potential subject of the Situationist practice. I wonder if this is perhaps stretching too far the relevance of this practice which is already taken considerably out of context.

I thought there was a lot to be obtained from Erwin's presentation aside from what might be referred to as his 'business model' (which, of course, should obviously be a sound one). I found it very interesting to hear an artist--particularly an artist working mostly with visual materials--discuss work which is almost entirely concerned with the formal and structural components of experience. Erwin made it clear in citing his interest in the music of Steve Reich, other 'phase musics', algorithmic music (Xenakis), and computer music that his interest resides in this area. The music of James Tenney, I believe, is entirely pertinent to this discussion as well; this is a music that, in some ways, asks a listener to deal with structure and form in as direct a manner as possible (of note: early Bell Labs Computer music, Diapason, Having Never Written a Note for Percussion). This intention can be related, as Erwin discussed, to minimal artists such as Carl Andre, Robert Morris, or Donald Judd whose interest in 'form for form's sake' can be related (and perhaps traced) to Cage's interest in 'sound as sound' (to paraphrase: 'I don't deal with meanings I deal with sounds').

I would like to expand upon the initial ideas I mentioned in class regarding a critique of the Sonic City project described in Anne Galloway's Ubiquitous Computing essay. Essentially, my comments centered around the fact that a 'categorically similar' experience would pervade a person's use of this device (this was prompted, of course, by another comment questioning the 'sameness' of the experience). By 'categorically similar' I was referring to the use of electronica (-like), dance, and similar pop music styles (as illustrated in the video documentation presented in class) for "real-time, personal audio creation" (Galloway p.13). What is the significance of the use of electronica (even pop music in general), an over-coded, populistic sound source, in the context of a spatial mapping of the city? Does this sound source act as a sonic 'mask' (referring to the acoustical phenomenon of masking), in effect removing the participant from the sonic reality of the city rather than allowing the user to more fully confront their surroundings?

I was thinking about Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control" admidst another frustrated contemplation about my own situation with credit card(s). I was reminded of an artist whose work is very much about 'identity' and, perhaps, 'the subject'. Albo Jeavons [http://albojeavons.com/] makes work that is concerned with the new ability for corporations to operate as if they were people ('individuals'). A true conflation of group and individual; a confirmation of Deleuze's thesis? Curious to know how others feel about this work.

[sexuality]
an article written by an old calarts friend of mine:
Cellular phones as sexual objects

I'm trying to wade through de Certeau's Walking in the City chapter and make sense of it while also trying out some possible critiques. I've been trying to decide whether de Certeau's use of text and language in relation to movement and space is itself the use of metaphor--or if it can operate on some kind of concrete level--does it matter? What might the significance of this be? Clearly he was keenly aware of the subtleties of metaphor, metonomy and synecdoche, etc. (he makes a useful comparison at one point with synecdoche and the 'spatial continuum' (101)).

de Certeau seems to follow the typical structuralist approach in this work. Am I wrong to sense a tendency of reductionism and totalization? Does this reduction negate de Certeau's own assertion that 'traces are no substitute for the paths themselves'?