Selected writing by David Topping

October report to supervisor

Though the concept of 5 years of study seems rather a long time at the outset, I perceive the need to move quickly from something that is woolly, vague and ill-formulated, to a specific plan of action with the minimum of delay. I really want to tackle this simultaneously on both the practical artwork and in the conceptual, research area.

In 1982 Nancy Burson created Androgyny, a composite image of six men and six women. Commenting on this Margot Lovejoy points out the tension and fascination of "face value". She goes on to say "Yet, information simulation resonates with the impossible, revealing what refers to nothing, a ghostlike personality without real substance and history. Burson taps an important Post-modern vein in her subject matter and in her use of information as simulation."¹ This allows us to consider the notion of information and data simulation (rather than 'real', unmediated data) as perhaps a process for generating a different view on what it means to be human. In 1985 George Trow wrote that vision itself had become a crisis in art², and anecdotal evidence suggest this is a view held by Bill Viola, who's electronic work has epitomised the traditional beauty of the image. The fascination of going beyond the visual, getting at the data that exists within our environment and representing this in, what one may term 'more relevant' ways, becomes a central issue. When referring to digital image processing Viola says, "Everything is encoded into the system and as a viewer or producer you just determine what part you're revealing."³. This idea that the role of the artist is to decide what data or information to reveal, or to aim a spotlight at, requires further development.

Profile

In terms of practical work, I see two areas for development at the moment. The first is the area already identified as profiles, building data images of fictitious identities. The problem with this I think, lies with the methodology used to build these profiles. The artwork is encapsulated in the method of production, which forms are filled, which items are responded to. I think that this artwork requires a very formal, behavioural, scientific systems methodology, including perhaps things like control groups, and a careful evaluation of what, when and how to respond. I intend to approach David Smith with a view to drawing up a 'proper' scientific methodology as a possible way to proceed with this particular piece and hope to have some more information on this for when we meet.

After some more thought I think a reasonable way to proceed is to create 16 profile's, 8 ostensibly male and 8 female, 50% single, 50% married. All will be the same age. (example below)

Lifestyle 10 items
Financial 10 items
Employment 10 items

Online 50%
Paper-based 50%

Grievous Angel

Grievous Angel is the second area that I see work developing in, and there are some notes on this on the next couple of pages. It takes as its premise the notion of credit scoring and wraps this up with ideas from Saint Michael's judgement of souls. Perhaps there are some issues here around the notion of data as a flawed god (if god is omnipotent, or if the idea of absolute knowledge is linked to just having access to lots of data, and perhaps having the tools (cognisance?) to make some kind of 'truth' from it)

Data, criterion, married/not-married, house owner/renter

I want to move away from the idea that the data itself is important. Experiments themselves tend to be rather special events and consequently, participants bring their own expectations and perceptions to bear on the situation. Controllers of experiments may try to minimise the resultant skewing of data. In this system I need to look for 'some other kind of truth' that isn't dependent on the accuracy of data.

The experimental work of the group Knowbotic Research suggests one possible avenue: their creations and workshop processes are factional; that is, they are extracted both from empirical data and from the realm of fiction, to which they always seem to want to return. In the circensic Net they strive to direct visualization (Knowledge and its organization) while at the same time hinting at a seduction, without which art as a sensitizing terrain for the experience of the enigma is (no)thing at all. In order to develop this character of the double agent, the "Knowbots" have been assigned a second mode of existence that can assume form outside of the Net: in the event, in the once-removed setting of publicly accessible space, they once again become empirical bodies, sensations.⁴

"Or will new, artificial bodies be created in the form of bodies of knowledge, and their mise-on scène in the form of aesthetically experienced volumes in the tele-age, moving and ephemeral artifacts in antiquated space?"⁵

As the hard-headed Florentine bourgeoisie grew in power and independence they felt the need of a world like their own, a world of common sense and basic human values, of forthright criticism and intellectual mastery, where all knowledge, both ancient and modern, was concentrated for the use of man.
Kenneth Clarke, The Art of Humanism, 1983

A variable is a location in memory set aside to hold data that may change in the course of the program execution. A variable is defined by giving it a name according to the rules of the computer language.
Daniel Kohanski, The Philosophical Programmer, 1998

Today the new bourgeoisie still spend their money in the pursuit of knowledge. The techniques of data-mining effect us all. Merchant's collect and analyse data in the pursuit of knowledge. This however is not a pursuit of a higher order, one for the betterment of humankind, but one of profit. My question is regardless of motive can the collection of data be defined as art or the practice of art? What form would this form of art take? 

The Dutch artist....takes the text of his daily existence as the substance of his art. He catalogues on a daily basis all the text he has on his body each morning. In his pockets, coins, paper money, clothing labels, watch, credit cards. Our lives defined by data streams.

What kind of art am I going to create from this?

Far beyond Palo Alto and MIT, in the margins and on the Nets, phantasms hover over the technologically mediated information processing that increasingly constitutes our experience. Today, there is so much pressure on 'information' - the word, the conceptual space, but also the stuff itself - that it crackles with energy, drawing to itself mythologies, meta-physics, hints of arcane magic.
Erik Davis "Techgnosis: Magic, Memory and the Angels of Information" in "Flame wars: The discourse of cyberculture"

How much does the medium, and the context in which information comes to us, affect the content and our interpretation of that content? How do we sort through all this information to find what is useful for us? Put another way, what's the difference between information and knowledge? If information consists of separate, unconnected pieces of data-and knowledge means the application of selected information in a particular context, which requires some judgment, analysis, or interpretation-then how do new media affect the process of knowledge making?

The most abstract art has nothing to do with the flat square of the canvas, the cube of the gallery. It is the art of the vector, of the movement of a concept through the nebulous semiosphere. So Gunther turns his creativity towards finding a form of words with which to transport information about the leading edge of the abstraction of movement - the military - from A to B. But in the virtual geography of contemporary space - there is no such thing as A and B, beginning and end, and no such thing as a medium in-between. One can find no points of origin or finality, only junctions in the endless circuit of images and stories. Ingo Gunther Seize the data - World Art 2/1995 p. 20

Current reading list

Authors
After God: The Future of Religion
Don Cupitt
Disappearing Through the Skylight: Culture and Technology in the Twentieth Century
O. B. Hardison Jr.
Discovering Data Mining: From Concept to Implementation
Peter Cabena, Pablo Hadjinian, Rolf Stadler, Jaap Verhees, Alessandro Zanasi
Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture
Mark Derry (Ed.)
Postmodern currents: art and artists in the age of electronic media
Margot Lovejoy
Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the philosophy of art
T.E. Hulme, Herbert Read (Ed.)
Super Humanism: A British Art Movement
Nicholas Treadwell
Superhumanism 2 (S-oohpaahhumanismmm) A survey of a current art movement
Nicholas Treadwell
The Art of Humanism
Kenneth Clark
The Philosophical Programmer: Reflections on the moth in the machine
Daniel Kohanski


Library cataloging data from current reading list
Art, Italian
Art, Renaissance - Italy
Artificial Intelligence
Arts - History - 20th Century
Business -- Data processing
Computer art - United States
Computers and civilization
Culture
Data mining
Electronic digital computers
Human evolution
Internet (Computer Network)
Marketing -- Data processing
Nature
Philosophy
Postmodernism - United States
Programming
Technology and civilization
Technology and the arts - United States
Video art - United States
Religious - Philosophy
Language and Languages - Religious aspects
Religion - Forecasting
Religions - Forecasting
Religions (proposed, universal, etc.)

1 Lovejoy, M (1997) Postmodern currents: art and artists in the age of electronic media, Simon & Schuster, New Jersey. p. 157.
2 Trow, G (1985) Infotainment, catalogue, J. Berg Press, New York. p. 21.
3 Viola, B quoted in Youngblood, G (1983) "A Medium Matures: Video and the Cinematic Enterprise," The Second Link: Viewpoints on Video in the Eighties, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Center of Fine Arts, Canada. p. 12.
4 Zielinski, S Multimedia, Items on the Net in Leeson, L (Ed) (1996) Clicking In: Hot links to a digital culture, Bay Press, Seattle. p. 341
5 Ibid. p. 340

Last Updated 08 October 2000