<nettime> Switch v5n3 - Database - now online

[Brett Stalbaum <beestal@pacbell.net>]

Switch - the new media art journal of the CADRE Institute, San Jose
State University.

http://switch.sjsu.edu

[Apologies for cross posting]

Featured Writers: Steve Cisler, Frank Dietrich, Steve Dietz, Alex
Galloway, Eugene Thacker, Joel Slayton, Geri Wittig, Sheila Malone, and
Don Tanner.

Interviews with: etoy, Lev Manovich, Mark Tribe, Rachel Baker, Eugene
Thacker, Olia Lialina, RTmark, Usman Haque, and Heath Bunting.

Intro to Switch v5n3, Database:

One of the most important developments of the 20th century was the
proliferation of the database into every fiber of Western cultural
fabric, (which of course has had profound global impact). The rise of
companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, Sun Microsystems, Wal-Mart, AOL,
and Oracle Corporation are among the notorious manifestations (including
the Internet itself), that have in one way or another reaped the
benefits of database. From "just-in-time" delivery and picking systems
to inventory, process, and financial management, database enables
significant and culturally transforming productivity gains that are
manifested ultimately in the distribution of atoms and the actual. No
doubt, the roots of this revolution can be traced through figures such
as George Boole, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Kurt Gödel, Claude
Shannon, Alan Turing and E.F. Codd, but the changes wrought by this
revolution have been most intense in the very recent past.

In general, artists had tended near the end of the 20th century to
underestimate the degree to which database and network mediate the
distribution of the real, often confusing the Baudrillardian concept of
hyperreal with terms like unreal or imaginary. This led to a lot of
storytelling and legend building, but only rarely to work in which
agency was developed or expressed in collaboration with data itself.
Data is at least real, if not more so. In this issue of Switch, we set
out to explore the issues of data and database, in terms of both
ontological questions, and how they impinge upon various worlds of art.
But you don't need to speak Structured Query Language to rapidly access
Switch v5n3, because these editorial notes provide a reasonable guide.

CONTENTS:

One example of an art world which is being impacted by database is
treated in Arts, Crafts, and Globalization, wherein Steve Cisler, data
traveler, activist and former member of the Advanced Technology Group at
Apple Computer, takes the reader on a journey that exposes how trade
networks impinge upon the world of crafts, collectables, and tourist
trinkets.

Artist and former Silicon Graphics marketing manager for European
operations, Frank Dietrich, expands upon his seminal 1986 essay "Digital
Media: Bridges between data particles and artifacts". In reading the
1986 article, I was reminded (once again), that many of the interesting
and provocative problems inherent in digital media are not "new"
discoveries of the current "net.art" generation, but rather that there
is a tradition of mature thought in technology art that has been largely
ignored in the present euphoria over networks. In Data Particles - Meta
Data - Data Space, Dietrich expands his previous analysis of the
properties of data particles to include speculation about meta data,
navigation, and tranformation rules, as the directions in which further
investigation should proceed.

In Memory_Archive_Database, Steve Dietz, the new media-curator for the
Walker Art Center, gives his perspective on database as art form. This
is done from his unique position inside one of America's most renowned
and progressive art institutions.

Eugene Thacker parses recent developments in bio-engineering in his
Database/Body: Bioinformatics, Biopolitics, and Totally Connected Media
Systems. In the process, he adds a great deal of connective tissue
between these events and the work of theorists such as Manovich and
Kittler on new media. Ultimately he uses this to develop a Foucaultian
analysis of contemporary genetic databases as surveillance systems. This
is an important piece of work (imho), especially given the increasing
numbers of artists who are moving into various bio-technologies as fine
art media.

In Ontology of Organization as System, Joel Slayton and Geri Wittig give
a detailed theoretical account of datum as autopoietic agency. This
essay represents something of an inversion of the tact taken by Thacker
and even Dietz: instead of looking at the effects (social and
ontological) that database has on life or art, Slayton and Wittig seek
to map out the social and ontological qualities of the datum itself.
Alongside Dietrich's notion of the data particle, we get a glimpse into
the secret life of data.

In the The New Performer: Data as Performer and Performance, Sheila A.
Malone looks specifically at how database has entered into contemporary
performance art. In VisiCalc to Cybernetic Babylon, Don Tanner looks at
the history of VisiCalc, reminding us that a spreadsheet program was the
first killer application of the personal computer revolution.

In previous editorial notes for Switch (those that fell near the yearly
turn of the calendar), I had felt it necessary to give something of a
recap of the year's events in the network art world. But this year I
give special thanks to Rhizome's Alex Galloway for giving me the century
off. In net.art Year in Review: State of net.art 99, Galloway provides
his honest view on that world from his position near the eye of the
storm. The only eulogy I desire to add to his would be one for the
romantic notion of the artist-genius, or the meme of the artist as voice
in the wilderness, whose sensitive individuality is opposed to the
artistic constraints of "the academy." I see no reason to carry these
19th century problems for the arts into the 21st. They no longer apply
in a multi-nodal world where collaboration is simply more interesting,
and Starbucks has usurped the Salon in any case. Many argue that 2001 is
the real end of the millenium, so I hold out hope for this particular
eulogy under next year's tree.

Speaking of toys, Switch continues to bring our readers interviews with
the most important artists and thinkers who are presently puzzling over
the problems of new media in the arts. Perhaps one of the watershed
events for the heroic imaginary of the art world, (also rapidly becoming
a cautionary fable in the business world), is the domain name battle
between the Swiss art ensemble etoy.com and the California toy retailer
eToys.com. Geri Wittig spoke with the etoy.PRESS-SPEAKER in the midst of
this battle.

Also, Inna Razumova interviews new media theorist and scholar Lev
Manovich, whose writing on database has become extremely influential in
the network art world. And finally, Paula Poole presents a collection of
interviews taken from participants in the openX symposium at Ars
Electronica 1999, including, among others, Mark Tribe, Rachel Baker,
Olia Lialina, and RTMark.

Happy 2K

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