Information Is Alive : Art and Theory on Archiving and Retrieving Data by...

Description: The archive has proven to be a powerful metaphor: history is viewed as an archive of facts from which one can draw at will; our bodies have become a genetic archive since being digitally opened up in the human genome project; our language is an archive of meanings that can be unlocked using philological tools; and the unconscious is an archive of the traumatic experiences that mold our identity. More and more artists and architects are developing software systems in which data is automatically organized into complex knowledge systems, a process in which the user is only one of the determining factors. Databases, software and archives increasingly form the inspiration for artistic interventions. More and more artists and architects are developing software systems that automatically organize data into complex knowledge systems, in a process within which the user is only one determining factor. Information Is Alive considers the artistic potential of these couplings in a selection of essays, interviews and projects. Arjun Appadurai reports on the desire to shape collective memory, as expressed through examples such as the official discourse on archives, and discusses alternative ways of forming such memory being put into place by subjects who are ignored by world capitalism. In a meditation on various theoretical perspectives, Sadie Plant looks at cellphone use as a social bond in communities whose members are geographically dispersed. Artist Ingo Günther presents Worldprocessor (1988–2003), a project that proposes interfaces for visualizing statistical data related to global geopolitical phenomena (life expectancy, immigration rates, energy consumption). Through a philosophical reflection on the concept of movement, Brian Massumi evokes the paradoxical nature of information, which is both rooted in abstract systems (language, computer code) and understood subjectively when it is physically deployed. The book also includes interviews with researchers working in different scientific fields (Simon Conway Morris in biology, George Dyson in epistemology, Winy Maas of the collective MVRDV in architecture, Antonio Damasio in neurology, and Scott Lash in sociology). These specialists comment on procedures used to sort and interpret the data gathered in their research. Information Is Alive considers the artistic potential of these couplings via a selection of essays, interviews and projects by paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, artists Margarete Jahrmann, Lev Manovich, Michael Saup, Jeffrey Shaw, Stahl Stenslie and others. Published on the occasion of the third Dutch Electronic Art Festival (DEAF03).

Price: 55 USD

Location: Portland, Oregon

End Time: 2024-11-25T22:52:46.000Z

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