So I finally got it uploaded to tigerbytes ..WHOOO *applause*
Here’s a screen-shot of the initial screen ENJOY
https://tigerbytes2.lsu.edu/users/astew42/frame2.html
Mirrors And Mazes
“Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge. ”7 Digital art and its history are a “Garden of Forking paths”7 that mirror each other in some places and branch off in others. Mirrors and Mazes is a net art piece that draws its inspiration mainly from net art My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, by Olia Lialina, and classic short story “El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan” (The Garden of Forking Paths) , by Jorge Luis Borges. “Mirrors and mazes” attempts to conceptualize many theories, especially those by Noah Wardrip Fruin and Nam June Paik. This piece explores the depths of hypertext’s abilities to create and echo numerous paths of information.
Mirrors and Mazes is a direct result of the reading and viewing of Lialina’s net art piece. Furthermore, Lialina’s piece has been linked back to the Garden of Forking Paths. This short story narrates the journey of a spy, Dr. Yu Tsun, searching for his ancestors Ts’ui Pên labyrinth. Tsun then visits friend Albert who likewise has been curios about the lost labyrinth and has formed a theory to its whereabouts. After a shocking revelation Tsun realizes that he must do something drasitic in order to fufill his duties as a spy. The outcome of his actions proves to be helpful and twists the narrative just as the mystery of the missing maze. The branching that occurs within the short story parallels that of the frames that are used in My Boyfriend Came Back from the War. In this piece the narrative is about a woman’s experience of her significant other returning from war. Both pieces use hypertext as a base to organize related information.
By definition hypertext is text displayed on a computer or another electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence7. Mirrors and Mazes (M&M) uses links as well as images to form a narration that branches and reflects itself in different frames. Users can click on either an image or a word within the text to display another frame that continues the narration similar to Lialina’s piece. As the user clicks on various frames, the narrative seems to become fragmented. To add to the chaos the piece then begins to rearrange and appear again, using the exact sentences and words from previously viewed frames. This collection of data can also be described as a small network. This network of images and text can be accessed randomly until it has fallen “subject to infinite recycling and reproduction”7. The concept of numerous possibilities is also one that is an underlying theme within Borges short story. Borges describes the garden as “a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression”7. Noah Wardrip-Fruin in the New Media reader takes this theory and further elaborates that The Garden of Forking Paths not only uses hypertext, but it can be classified as a hypertext-novel, much like that of Mirrors and Mazes 6. Other related works include Myron Kreuger’s Maze, which allows users to physically interact with space and is a maze that is impossible to win. Each time the user attempts to cheat the maze it regenerates a new pathway. Thus this maze has an infinite number of ways to solve it, but offers an infinite number of branches making it impossible to solve. These narratives of information are indeed linear and by definition of Lev Manovich, in his 2001 argument Database as a symbolic form, syntagmatic3. He further argues that in new media pieces, such as “M&M”, artists create hybrids of databases and narratives3. Hypertext opens the door to an unlimited number of possibilities, which allows the user to participate in the comprehension of the intended narrative and the creation of their own.
The conception of using the web and hypertext as a form of art (as the group ‘net.art’ practiced) did not just start with the creation of the Internet, as it is known today. The history of hyper-text/html begins in 1945 with Vannevar Bush. In his essay As We May Think Bush describes a machine called the Memex. This electrical machine would be an archive that housed books and other documents normally found in a library. It would also “create ‘trails’ of linked and branching sets of pages”1. Douglas Englebert and Ted Nelson are accredited with coining the term hypertext in 1965 .In Englebart’s From Augmenting Human Intellect he explains the functions of hypertext, computing networking, and word processing2. A year later Fluxus (an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media) member Nam June Paik published Cybernated Art. In his article Paik concentrates on the unpredictable nature of communication and theorizes that information is everywhere as if it were an “Open Curcuit”4. Tim Berners Lee in the late 1980s invented the World Wide Web using the founding’s of Englebert and Nelson as a foundation for the organization of information. Tim Berners Lee envisioned the www/internet to be that of an “Open Circuit” described by Nam June Paik. Lee describes the web as a tool that users can use to create databases of information using links and hypertext. Its original intention was never to be commercially driven, but a fluxus of information that can be input by users and accessed by whomever desired knowledge. These theories and inventions along with the new avenues of digital art paired up to form a new medium for Digital artists. Revolutionary art organizations were supportive of using the newly found World Wide Web as a tool including the THING, which was founded by Wolfgang Staehle (the artists famous for streaming the events of Septemeber 11,2001 in a gallery). The ‘net.art’ movement began in 1996 and was formed by Olia Lialinea, Alexei Shuglin, Heath Bunting, Vuk Cosiac, and art team Jodi. Christian Paul describes early net art pieces as “ conceptual, driven by a sense of community and a spirit of spontaneous interventions.” Vuk Cosiac, a standout artist in relation to the “M&M” project, explored artwork that explored the integration of text and computer language along with the way data is infinitely exchangeable. “Mirrors and Mazes” upholds the original concepts of the early classic pieces of ‘net.art’ and maintains the integrity of the history of how it came to formation.
“This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.” Borges attempts to explain the logistics of the garden and its endlessness. “Mirrors and Mazes” attempts to persuade the user to believe that knowledge as well as history and time are continuous. They relapse, overlap, and repeat. Interactively challenging the reader to create their own narrative and consider that there may be other underlying narratives that occur simultaneously without their current knowledge. Using hypertext Mirrors and Mazes links the theories of Wardrip-Fruin and others to the conceptualized creations of Olia Lialina and Jorge Luis Borges. It does not stray away from the core principles of digital art and the ‘net.art’ movement. It is essentially a tribute to the great minds aforementioned. Although new media is rapidly evolving, changing, and branching it can all be linked, analogous with hypertext, together once placed into the context of digital art.
1.Bush, Vannevar. As We May Think, The Atlantic Monthly, 176(1):101-108, July 1945.
2.Englebart, Douglas William K. English, A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, pp. 395-410, AFIPS Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, California, December 1968.
3.Manovich, Lev.Database as a Symbolic Form, Cambridge: MIT press, 2001
4.Paik Nam J. “Cybernated Art”, Multimedia From Wagner to Virtual Reality (1996), Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1996., Pages: 40–41
5.Paul, Christiane Digital Art (World of Art series). London: Thames & Hudson. 2003
6.Wardrip-Fruin, Noah and Nick Montfort, eds. The New Media Reader. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. ISBN 0-262-23227-8.
7.Wikipedia contributors, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Wikipedia, The Freeencyclopedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Garden_of_Forking_Paths&oldid=359981155 (accessed May 2, 2010).
7a. Borges, Jorge L El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan. Buenos Aires, Sur, 1941
The work is in progress!!!! I’m having a little trouble with the frames but it should be okay.
so the basis of my project is html and it’s capability to directly link information(pages, images, ect) together. My goal is to make the artwork as interactive and as random as I can possibly can. As pointed out while reading Lev Manovich’s Database as a symbolic form this artwork according to the article would be considered more like a traditional art object , but the randomness and interactivity of the piece according to Paul is what would classify it as New Media.
The art of the creation of uniqueness and randomness is something puzzling. Is it actually possible to create random access?????
….to be continued
http://www.puzzlechoice.com/pc/3D_Interactivx.html
just for fun, it took me quite a while to figure this out. LOL! see how long it takes you
Progress on my digital piece is coming along lovely! Each and everyday that I attend class there is something That Inspires minuscule details that I believe will come together to make something representational of the Journey of Digital Art as it relates to its never ending maze. I want to take a few moments Just to talk about some of the things that have been inspiring the piece.
Firstly I would have to say Nam June Paik’s quote ” We are in Open Circuits” is what jumpstarted the “organization” of my piece. Before reading his article “Cybernated Art” , I just have visual ideas of an actual concept. After reading, however, I came to the conclusion that I would show these open circuits and make something nonrepresentational BUT it could also be interpreted conceptually. Sounds Twisted right? yeah i know… but What is a Maze?….. Is it not twist and turns that are designed to confuse… With information being all around us can send us on a journey for truth, enlightenment, and just plain amusement.
Another big contributer to not only my thinking/planning of this piece but to the Digital Art field is Myron Krueger. His Digital Art Installation appropriately called “Maze” , gave me the core concept of my piece which is a “never ending Maze of Information which mirrors (repeats)” . In this piece the viewer interacts by trying to solve the maze, but a computer altars the course of the maze as the viewer tries to defeat it, creating a non ending interactive experience.
There is so much to talk about, so many ideas I have written down that I have just not transferred to the blog. I just like writing out my thoughts first. Which makes me old fashion I guess. This raises a question though, Does me writing,planning, and creatively thinking ; Would this suffice as my hand/mark on the piece ? ( as i am going to create it in the Adobe Photoshop Software) Does this make my piece truly Digital Art and not just An image made digitally?
“instead of craft the artist must focus on creativity itself.” – an ideal of Michael Rees Rapid Prototyping Art
hyperlinking is a MAJOR part of my digital art piece … check out this graphic of wikipedia’s web of linkage awesome ….
Just something interesting, while watching Alice in Wonderland I was amazed to see the return of TRON. One of the first films that used computer graphics. If you’re not familiar Tron is the story of a video game developer ( which can be in itself a form of a maze) who spends his time developing a game to rival all Interactive, virtual reality games. I wont spoil it for you just incase you’re interested in seeing the original which I believe can be viewable online..(Linkage: http://www.megavideo.com/?v=T0DFCGX5 ) . Anywho I am very curious to see how Disney takes a timeless classic such as TRON and keeps the integrity of how Disney presented interactivity( The newer movie TRON: Legacy will be presented in 3D but is this really interactivity on the viewers part?) as well a computer graphics into mediums such as film in the older version. Comments are welcome .
Preview of TRON 2010
this would be something that I would be so interested in trying
http://myboyfriendcamebackfromth.ewar.ru/
Above is the link to access Olia lialina’s My bofryiend Came Back From the War.
Wikipedias Description of this artwork: “My boyfriend came back from the war” is a site where there are many frames consisting of sentences and pictures. The user has a choice of clicking what frame they want. The user is allowed to choose their own path. In the sense that the frames are trying to formulate a sentence, but it doesn’t really come out that way.
Please enjoy this piece…its quite awesome
