stoppage '08

Par chemín de Benjamin Bailey et Mark E Grimm
Photographic performance by Stavroula Kounadea

Not only are new and general revolutions in communications technology
changing social dynamics as a structure for reference – over business
education or leisure, but the effects on individual visualisation in 
memory reference and in comprehension of one's surroundings are also
being profoundly changed. Internet communication has become a great
catalyst, should be explored in it's new cultural patterns over
unoccupied ground, in order to contribute to our understanding
of local territory and the dispersion of traditional notions of 
restraint via distance.

As artist-researchers, collaborating across the internet and engaging
with new types of performance based on themes of commonality across
the 'stage' of social-digital interaction. Our projects focus on the
ontology of networked interactions and the subjective identities of 
overlapping physical and cultural terrain. We found that although
separated by great distances, patterns of synchronisation in localised
everyday activity and behavior often emerge, effecting major references
such as memory and place, thought, location, navigation, travelling,
walking and learning. The use of personal multimedia communications
technology in our projects is central to our research's implications,
interwoven in the ongoing discourse in which new media artists and
researchers become progressively engaged, but still with so much
un-noted by social and psychological art & sciences. As such, the
light cast by artistic record and documentation of ideas, travel
and media clips can now be seen as becoming increasingly important
in being able to understand the boundaries which form the boarders
to our life as routine. In reflection to this, we explore such
psychoborders, set along regions of potential seen through the
interaction between user visualization and the architectural and
natural dynamics of the new personal environment.

As Deleuze states in his Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography
(1955), “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the
geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the
emotions and behavior of individuals.” We seek to extend this study
through the fabrication of artwork via responsive drafting,
stimulated by that retained in multidimensional visualisation –
recording the musings of new ways of seeing everyday life as the
artist drifts through their familiar environment exploring different
potential, this participatory visualization reacts in reflection to 
contemplation of multidimensional information as it evolves through
the experiences gathered along the way, documented and elaborated in 
the creative process – like a lens on the extension of social systems
throughout nodal micro localities. We begin to see that although
“everyday life” is a complex meta terrain of interweaving materials
and social actors, it contains a simplicity and regularity that can 
also be explored in fine detail. Whether through daily activities,
networked collectivity, research, or creative expression, it is our 
intention to document these consistencies and variations in 
behaviour, whether great or small. The project is an ongoing
collaboration that has already moved through several developmental
shifts, including a long distance collaboration over the simultaneous
mapping of movements within specified time-periods, life logging,
networked communication and media creation. This research is all part
of a new and ongoing publication, mapping ties between culture and 
territory across different portions of the globe. Further materials
are accessible on metaterritory.net

__[paraflow]pond.