specture readings 04

multispecies storytelling, ecology, sound & listening, kinship structures, landscape, AI classes ::: 20230412–20230419

reading and watching

::: These Lizards Stress-Eat When Loud Military Aircraft Fly Overhead ::: via This week in sound ::: Stress eating checkered whiptail lizards in Colorado — an impact of modern life I hadn't considered before. What other ways are species adapting to cope with noise pollution

::: Nature, Crisis, Consequence exhibition looks at the social and cultural impact of the environmental crisis on different communities across America.

::: Micro, Macro, Interconnected, Views & Relations or Listening and feeling our way through a sensory field, by Paul Fletcher ::: via Radicle Notes, Art+Australia ::: notes and outcomes from the 2022 Art and Ecology residency at Dookie College of Agriculture. One example has side by side videos, of plants and materials from nature juxtaposed with a digitally manipulated version to see another perspective of them. Other works include soundscapes, video landscapes and AR

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::: TransHuman Saunter: Multispecies Storytelling in Precarious Times ::: A Project exploring the Situationist techniques of dérive and détournement and the notion of place as well as community knowledge making / sharing —> from the abstract: "TransHuman Saunter is a geolocative artwork that documents the entanglements of four women artists of color with the multispecies ecosystem of the Indian banyan tree in Brisbane City Botanic Gardens, Australia. The work positions itself during a time when the impacts of capitalism and colonialism are evident in the planetary crisis of climate change and species loss in addition to a pandemic that exacerbates ethno-racial and gender inequity." ::: via Leonardo issue 56(2), funded by QUT's More-Than-Human Futures research project

Gonsalves, Kavita, Agapetos Aia-Fa’aleava, Lan Thanh Ha, Naputsamohn Junpiban, Natasha Narain, Marcus Foth and Glenda Amayo Caldwell. 2023. TransHuman Saunter: Multispecies Storytelling in Precarious Times. Leonardo. 56 (2): 125–132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_a_02243.

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::: A Rave Just for Friends — McKenzie Wark thinks we misunderstood the utopian (2021) ::: by Anders Dunker ::: an interview with Mackenzie Wark covering capitalism; 1990s technology; Wark's idea of "vectoralist class" as the owners of the vector of information such as owners of infrastructure of the Internet, brands, patents (sounds like corporations / companies ?? Douglas Rushkoff has writings on this also); the art world as a space for conceptual thinking & the erasure of conceptual thinking; the need for places of creation and discussion of theory; discussions of the Situationists in two of Wark's books: The Beach Beneath the Street (2011) and The Spectacle of Disintegration (2013) and Guy Debord's ideas on détournement, and the SI having a media strategy and critical practices. I like the ending comment on avant-garde networks for those who have withdrawn: "I think what might be the most important thing now are strategies for building systems of communication that make habitable worlds and lives possible – but discreetly. Like a rave that’s just for our friends." Note that McKenzie Wark has a new book published by Duke University Press called Raving (in the Practices series) released in 2023 — "the rave as a construction site for transitory kinship structures" as Simon Reynolds writes in the opening Praises section of Raving.

::: The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI — Op-ed: Planetary impacts, escalating financial costs, and labor exploitation all factor by Sasha Luccioni

::: Stanford's Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence (HAI) report ::: "The annual report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence, enabling decision-makers to take meaningful action to advance AI responsibly and ethically with humans in mind."

listening

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::: "Listening to (or for/with/as) the Nonhuman Animal Across Digital Screen Media" — a lecture on music in animal-oriented video games and memes by Kate Galloway ::: via This week in sound ::: this was in March, am looking for a recording. also see (Galloway 2022) paper:

Galloway, Kate. 2022. “Sensing, Sharing, and Listening to Musicking Animals across the Sonic Environments of Social Media.” Twentieth-Century Music. 19 (3): 369–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/S1478572222000251.
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::: The Sound of Listening - Woodford Academy VR (playlist) by Noel Burgess - he suggest to use headphones and use a mobile device to view it (move your device around). The exhibition has been shortlisted for the 2023 National Trust Heritage Awards in the Education and Interpretation category. ::: "This sonic and visual installation by artist Noel Burgess is set in a Virtual Reality environment, and explores layers of memory experienced through oral history. Through VR headsets visitors can experience various rooms in the Woodford Academy, the oldest colonial structure in the Blue Mountains, and listen to oral recordings of Gertrude McManamey, the last owner and resident of the Woodford Academy prior to her bequest to the National Trust. This installation affords the audience an opportunity to travel in time and space through the layers of the stories which unfold during a 1988 recorded discussion with Gertrude about her time in the house." ::: via Blue Mountains Cultural Centre

events

::: Five Self-Vibrating Regions of Intensities by Gail Priest and Thomas Burless ::: "...a study of sound as energy. Across five installations Gail Priest and Thomas Burless explore the transmission of sonic energy through materials and its visual manifestations as wave-driven geometric patterns (cymatics)."

::: Tethering by Matthias Schack-Arnott ::: "...a vast and intricate world of interconnected sound. Using a range of repurposed and recycled materials, Matthias creates a musical world in which quivering threads of sound populate the performance space, transferring energy through a thrumming network of manmade and organic materials."

classes

::: ANAT partners with RMIT School of Art ::: via ANAT ::: this is great news, and something to consider for further studies, as ANAT is a great support of and resource for digital & interactive arts

::: Ecology and evolution seminars by Royal Society Publishing ::: "The series will feature a selection of high-quality seminars covering outstanding contributions to the fields of ecology and evolution research based on articles published in Royal Society Publishing journals: Proceedings B, Philosophical Transactions B, Biology Letters and Royal Society Open Science. Each talk will be associated with a recent paper or theme issue, selected by the journal's editors as being particularly innovative or having had significant recent impact."

::: Generative AI: Implications and Opportunities for Business via RMIT & Future Learn ::: "...delve into how generative AI works as you unpack the dynamics and implications of this technology on the economy, society, and work."

artist research

::: Sarah Evans' sketchbook landscape paintings

::: Helen Ward Edge Lands ::: expressive line drawings of the Cornish landscape in graphite and charcoal. Helen creates hand made concertina sketchbooks and also works with encaustic wax medium

::: Studio Morison (Heather Peak and Ivan Morison): Designing Pathways To Nature ::: Silence—Alone in a World of Wounds is a site specific work, that encourages visitors to sit in silence within nature, and is designed to decay to ruins. It asks, "Can art save us from extinction?"

::: Candice Lin’s Infected Mythologies by Rachel M. Tang ::: via Lin's research, she has been "mapping an expansive ecology of colonialism" exploring speculative storytelling and worldbuilding through uncanny objects and multisensorial environments and constructed immersive spaces, using materials such as weaving, ceramics, dyeing, painting, animation, alongside natural processes like fermentation and sporing

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::: also published at substack and medium

note the new name for this newsletter, “specture readings” to reflect the research / readings / collection of links part of my project