After chatting to Marcus, he gave me some areas to think about. He encouraged me to think outside purely art and design and gave me some philosophy and wider practices to look at.
He discussed “Jussi Parikka” and his practice of Media archaeology.
“Media archaeology sees media cultures as sedimented and layered, a fold of time and materiality where the past might be suddenly discovered anew, and the new technologies grow obsolete increasingly fast.”
“https://www.academia.edu/35452955/Whatis_Media_Archaeology”
Marcus gave the example of betamax, a technically superior alternative to the VHS/cassette but one that wasn’t adopted by the mainstream consumer due to its higher price point. Media archaeologists ask why these technologies become obsolete and question what would of happened if we adopted other forms of technology instead of those which we currently use. To my understanding the principles can be applied both to hardware and software. To me the idea of looking at old software and user interface graphics seems really interesting. Where did theses ideas come from? We can use media archaeology to better understand ourselves.
He gave me an interesting lead which has a more philosophical angle, he talked about Michel Foucault and the “Deleuze societies of control”. These are historical power structures and movements of these structures over time. I will have to research further but he suggested there is a nice link to my area of computer thinking and the digital approach.
I’ve been carrying on my own research and went back to a designer that I briefly researched for my typography project. Zach Lieberman works directly with code and his work aims to show how data is this way can be visualised in graphic forms.
In this talk he mentions Osamu Sato, specifically his book. I thought this quote was really interesting in how it linked to this idea of media archaeology and looking to the past to infer the future though the lens of computation:
“I would also like to acknowledge my favourites, Russian Avant-garde, Futurism and Bauhaus, whose brilliant typefaces and designs have in many ways shaped me own mind. If the artists of these movements were alive now to work with computers, I am certain they would discover new artistic possibilities. The work of past ages accumulates, and is remade again.”
https://archive.org/details/satoArtOfComputerDesigning/page/n128.
I thought the name and visuals were familiar and after doing some wider research, I realised he created “LSD dream emulator” an experimental playstation 1 game in which you walk around a psychedelic 3D environment where textures change and shift as you interact with the world around you. The fan base for this game is really strong and people are captured by its uniqueness. So much so that it has been remade for modern computers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/OsamuSato/
https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/11/osamu-sato-interview
Some further articles and videos I found interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1bPsh1mFUI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNkz8wEJljc
I mentioned in conversation the work of Adam Curtis, specifically his film “Hypernormalisation” I thought his speculation of the escape within the digital and how the post digital era has impacted social-political issues linked somewhat to the reflective nature of the previously mentioned “media archaeology”
Marcus told me to be careful and critical of his working method and encouraged me to watch some parodies of his formula so to speak. It was eye-opening to see this view point as his work had been recommended to me by my CHS lecturer so I accepted its value perhaps too early. Although, I think it’s a testament to the digital working method that such a narrative can be manipulated into existence from stock footage, text and image and the correlation of the two.
I’m currently reading a paper by Jussi Parikka :
https://www.academia.edu/1182981/Zombie_Media_Circuit_Bending_Media_Archaeology_into_an_Art_Method
Cameron Aitken Graphic Design 