Pierre Levy - Collective Intelligence

Pierre Levy - Collective Intelligence, Mankind's emerging world in cyberspace, 

published 1994

In Pierre Levy's most popular book to date, 'Collective Intelligence, Mankind's emerging world in cyberspace', he explains that thanks to the digital network there has been the development of of mass collaboration of all human intellects resulting in the creation of a collective intelligence.

As a well known philosopher thinking around the implications of the internet and digital communications Levy has written extensively about the proliferation of virtual 'cognitive workers' as a result of the developing technological, digital and virtual conditions.


"What is collective intelligence? It is a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, coordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilization of skills… My initial premise is based on the notion of a universally distributed intelligence. No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity… New communications systems should provide members of a community with the means to coordinate their interactions within the same virtual universe of knowledge. This is not simply a matter of modeling the conventional physical environment, but of of enabling members of delocalized communities to interact within a mobile landscape of signification… Before we can mobilize skills, we have to identify them. And to do so, we have to recognize them in all their diversity… The ideal of collective intelligence implies the technical, economic, legal, and human enhancement of a universally distributed intelligence that will unleash a positive dynamic of recognition and skills mobilization." - Pierre Levy 

John Rafman - Kool-Aid Man in Second Life

John Rafman Kool-Aid Man In Second Life

John Rafman's Kool-Aid Man is a Second Life avatar of a popular American advertising character of the 1980s and '90s. The avatar's existence was an ongoing never-to-be completed performance carried out in the virtual world of  Second Life. Recently, though, Rafman killed off the character claiming, "he was taking up too much of my time. I had him commit ritual suicide in a gallery performance. Now I make movies in Second Life instead."

Until his untimely end Kool-Aid Man searched this user-generated world for what Rafman called 'sublime kitsch' and later went on to offer tours of the Second Life world to interested parties - individuals, groups or educational establishments - unfamiliar with the platform. Many users of the game barred him from their excursions in their world thinking he was mocking them. "Often im considered a griefer," he explains, "a griefer is a sorta terrorist or troll in SL, whose sole goal is ruin others experience of the virtual world."

Rafman says: "I see Kool-Aid Man as a self-conscious professional web surfer “breaking through walls” into various Second Life communities and subcultures. He never fully fits in, but he empathizes with whatever he passes. Like Baudelaire’s Flaneur, wandering the arcades of Fin-du-Siecle Paris, Kool-Aid Man keeps a cool and curious eye, strolling through the virtual world in search for the banal sublime. Kool-Aid Man’s motto is best summed up by a line at the beginning of Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil: “I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. On this trip, I’ve tracked it with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter.'"

Rafman's exhibition The Nine Eyes Of Google Street View opens today at the Saatchi Gallery, London and runs until August 29th 2012.

Chris Marker - Virtual Home on Second Life

Chris Marker - Virtual Home on Second Life

Chris Marker is an international author, photographer, film director, multimedia artist and documentarist. Born in France 1921 he became well known for his films 'Twelve Monkeys' and 'Sans Soleil', although often at the centre of media attention he does not allow himself to be photographed or to be interviewed in person. When asked for a photograph of himself he gives an image of his alter ego, an orange cartoon cat, 'Monsieur Guillaume-en-Egypt'

Marker is now a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life, providing the best medium for him to  present himself via his alter ego, he is now widely known via his virtual counter part. In 2008 he hosted a virtual exhibition of his life work alongside an interview on the gaming platform, and continues to live his public life via Second Life.

Below is a film by Michel Favre of Chris Markers L'Ouvroir on Second Life, 

 

John Gerrard - Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinez/Richfield, Kansas)

John Gerrard Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinez/Richfield, Kansas)

2008

Irish artist John Gerrard creates elaborate and complex computer simulatations of entire environments. The works address humanity's relationship to time and the environment, depicting seens of large-scale industrial development such as oil digging, and in this piece, a grain store, in real time simulated environments. The site depicted here used to be one of America's most oil-rich areas. The work meditates upon  the relationships between the power, wealth, oil and trade.

The computer simulations evolve in real time and once set running are alllowed to carry out their course. Angelo Martinez - referred to in the title - is the small figure painting the barn black with an oil stick. The scene runs 24 hours a day, and Martinez will paint from dawn until Dusk for 6 days per week, until 2038, on the day America is expected to run out of oil. After this point his work will be be complete and will continue to exist in this virtual parrellel universe as a 'finished piece'. 

Oil Stick Work is part of a body of work called Animated Scenes, it has been exhibited at institutions globally, including at the Venice Biennale in 2009, and in Canary Wharf, London as part of Art on the Underground program (below), where it was exhibited for an entire calendar year 2010 - 2011.

Godfrey Reggio & Phillip Glass - Koyaanisqatsi

Phillip Glass  - Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance. 1982

cinematography by Godfrey Reggio

Koyaanisqatsi: Life Out of Balance is a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with music composed by Philip Glass. Mostly made up from slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities across the USA, the film is the first in the Qatsi Trilogy which depicts mans relationship to environment. 

Very quickly becoming a cult film, Koyaanisqatsi aided in popularizing modern understandings of Global economic and environmental issues. Although Reggio stated that the Qatsi films are intened only to create an experience and that "it is up to the viewer to take for himself/herself what it is that the film means" the iconic filming of buildings such as the Pruitt Igoe housing estate in Missouri became a well known comment on the potential crisis the world was heading into. 

William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops

William Basiniski Disintegration Loop 1.1

2001

Contemporary music folklore has it that composer William Basinski completed The Disintegration Loops in New York on September 11th 2001 as two aircraft collided with the two towers of the World Trade Centre.

Basinski had been working through archived audiotape recordings of his ambient compositions when he discovered that some of the tapes were ruined. As he played them the magnetic strip flaked away and what he heard was the sound of his music disintegrating away to be lost forever. Basinski cut and pasted the tape into loops which he then played until all the data was lost.

The resulting body of work totals 5 hours of music across 9 tracks varying in length between 11 and 64 minutes. This video, a static shot of the World Trade Center billowing smoke at sunset on September 11th 2001, was shot from Basinski's roof in Brooklyn.

Christian Marclay - Guitar Drag

Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag (2000)

Marclay's 2000 video Guitar Drag is a 14 min audio work showing an amplified Fender guitar being dragged along by a rope attached to a pick up truck in San Antonio, Texas. 

An iconoclasm of the western perception of the electric guitar, Marclay weaves together the ritualised smashing and droning of the instrument so often seen at rock gigs with an association of the history of lynching in the deep South.

First performed as a video work, the piece has gained notable fame as an audio work and was later released as a limited edition vinyl record on 'Neon Records'.