When I was reading Naimark essay I had immediately the picture of the “Skandalkonzert” (March 31, 1923, Vienna) conducted by Arnold Schoenberg in my mind. The audience was shocked by the new experimental music and the they began rioting.

Whats is better, “First Word Art” or “Last Word Art”? To shock people or to enthuse them by excellent but well-known work. There is not better or worse way to touch people, there is no right or wrong. It’s all about what do you want to tell and to find for this moment the right way to do it.

To think new technology means simultaneously better it’s in my mind a false conclusion. To bring “old”, well-known technology in a new context, can be also innovative and gives the old technology a new glance. I think that’s also one point why Schulze prefers to work in the “Trough of Disillusionment” discarding that old technology is cheaper then the brand new stuff.
Where are my interests? I’m not so sure about it and with every new project I try to find for me the best way to be a critical artist which can touche some people with its work. Furthermore I think nothing utterly novel. Everything is a process and everything is resulting from the past.

First Word, Last Word

First word art is groundbreaking and exploratory. It’s playing outside any rule structures. It side-steps competition. People often don’t know how to react to it. Last word art is virtuosity after the rules have been fixed. It accepts the established form, and is judged by comparison.

I believe First Word Art and Last Word Art may both find homes along the spectrum presented by the Gartner Hype Cycle. The question is exactly to place either kind, for as with any spectrum, there is no clear “right” or “wrong” answer. The relationship between First Word/Last Word and the Gartner Cycle is therefore intrinsically intertwined, where the Gartner Cycle is the more precise of the two. I would also like to point out that while the Gartner Hype Cycle focusses on different technologies, it could be used for social advances of many different categories. For example, if one were to substitute the title of art in place of that of technology, one might find a curve with the Helicopter Symphony placed at the beginning/left, installation art at the peak, and photography at the extreme right/end (these are my rough guesses).

Helicopter Symphony

My interests on the hype cycle lie along all points of the graph, as each stage presents a new opportunity. Quantum Computing, for example, is an extremely interesting topic where the results will not be visible for over a decade. If one is not working on developing such machines then there is little one can do. Working with emerging technologies which have established a future for themselves can be much more exciting and rewarding, particularly when there is an element of instant gratification involved. Schultz says in his video that he prefers to work in the “trough of disillusionment” – that area where technologies are accepted but not yet in (or never arrive at) the profitability stage.

“We’re interested in the dull stuff!”

These are technologies which are often mass-produced and are therefore less expensive than many of the emerging technologies will be.

“Of course we’re curious about jetpacks and fancy goggles, but we haven’t got any in North London.”

« The Critical Engineer considers the exploit to be the most desirable form of exposure »

From this statement, I understand that the Critical Engineer wants to expose a third party and that their preferred method for doing so would be to expose a scandal in which this same third party used exploitation to achieve their ends. This links to #5, where the Critical Engineer questions dependency on a technology. Here the Critical Engineer questions the kind of technology we depend on.

I recently read an intriguing book, “Black Holes, Worm Holes and Time Machines” which states that the Physicists greatest ambition is not to prove a very important theorem, but rather to disprove a very important theorem. Upon reading the tenth and last of the tenants of the Critical Engineer I was struck by just how similar the statements are. Both would rather expose a fundamental problem with a system rather than put a new system in place. Both would rather be the Einstein, who put forth a theorem or series of theorums) which technically cannot be proven but which proved our model and understanding of the universe to be but a simplistic and false explanation which is now only used in middle schools, and whose theorem now acts as our best-functioning model of the universe. Or even the Isaac Newton who shook the ecclesiastic world in his time with his discovery that the Earth orbited the sun, rather than itself being the center of the universe.

 

The Garter Hype Cycle acts as a map of where first word/last word pieces are probable–the Innovation Trigger technologies are often still too young and expensive to suitably fit into artist’s hands (quantum computing comes to mind).  First word art begins to emerge as technologies begin to summit the Peak of Inflated Expectations as the technologies become more accessible and popularized outside of academia, whereas in order to artistically “kick” something out of the Trough of Disillusionment and onto the Slope of Enlightenment (and perhaps eventually into the Plateau of Productivity), one needs to create last word art. Creating last word work, redeeming technologies by pulling them from irrelevance back into the public’s interests (and eventually expectations), the is perhaps the allure of the Trough of Disillusionment to Schulze.

I would say my work is First Word in nature. As an artist my goal is to experiment and play with technologies available to me, not necessarily to create technology-defining work. The technologies I choose to work with, however, tend to be those that are falling off the Peak of Inflated Expectations, arguably because they tend to be more accessible to me, as a Midwestern teenager, than a quantum computer or a brain-computer interface.

The Gartner Hype Cycle and Michael Naimark’s First Word Art / Last Word Art relate the radical to the acceptable. Whereas the former is a spectrum of technology maturity, the latter is a dichotomy of emerging forms of art and established forms. These spectra point to the fact that mass adoption of a new art form or technology is closely related to accessibility. In terms of technology, accessibility most closely correlates with cost, where in art accessibility correlates with familiarity to a set of artistic idioms.

I’m primarily interested in First Word Art, which to me means exploring new and radical forms of expression. While this may involve experimenting exclusively in bleeding edge technologies, I don’t think this is always necessary. In my practice, the message or artistic agenda tends to take priority over the medium or technology used. Practically speaking, working in the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” consumes more money and time than working in the “Trough of Disillusionment.”

5. The Critical Engineer recognises that each work of engineering engineers its
user, proportional to that user’s dependency upon it.

This tenet touches upon the extent to which technologies can modify our habits and behaviors. Having experienced dependency engineering in a variety of online and offline settings – Duolingo, Facebook and Scientology come to mind – I find that this tenet is particularly pressing. With an awareness of the potential for engineers to affect the behavior of their users, the critical engineer can go on to deconstruct and critique habit-forming structures.

A critical engineer might be interested in appropriating a tactic like gamification in an artwork or provocation, so as to bring it to the attention of the public sphere. Concretely, this might involve rewarding participants with a badge for every hour that they clean a window. As an aside, I think it’s crucial for an engineer or maker to be intensely aware of the ethical dimension of her work.

SILK PAVILION from Mediated Matter Group on Vimeo.

Developed by the Mediated Matter research group at MIT Media Lab, Silk Pavilion endorses a non-anthropocentric future in which a variety of creatures (engineered or otherwise) play vital roles in the production of shelters and resources. Silk Pavilion is a tangible prototype of a potentially disruptive means of production. It is undeniably beautiful, both aesthetically and in the rich constellation of environmental and social implications it elicits.

At its simplest, Silk Pavilion is just what the name implies – a pavilion constructed by 6,500 silkworm laborers.  A structural skeleton was designed based on meticulous research into the behavior of silkworms, and laid out in silk thread by a CNC machine. This process raises interesting questions regarding robot-insect cooperation.

Silk Pavilion resists disciplinary classification, a fact reflected in the diversity of the research group itself, which includes, among others: architects, interaction designers and scientists from various fields.

Gartner Hype Cycle and First Word/Last Word Art

The Gartner Hype Cycle (GHC) describes how evolves from being the Next Big Thing into something more mature and mainstream. In the essay First Word Art / Last Word Art (FW/LW Art), Michael Naimark discusses first word art, which explores the frontiers of media and techniques, and last word art, which perfects an existing medium to the point where it doesn’t seem worth working with anymore.

The GHC and FW/LW art seem to be the same idea once you abstract away the art/tech domain specificity. FW/LW art talks about the maturation of art media, so if you consider technology to be a medium for art, then the GHC is just one way of describing a trajectory of maturation. What makes it harder to fit GHC into FW/LW, though, is that, while GHC assumes that after some hype and disillusionment, a technology will become productive, art media don’t necessarily mature that way, steadily improving (e.g., television).

My Interests

In terms of the GHC, my interests mostly lie at the peak of inflated expectations, or low on the slope of enlightenment. I think this is because I always want to test out the potential of new things (see what they can do), and because I like to imagine uses for technology that hasn’t really been used well yet.

In terms FW/LW art, I’m less interested in creating new media than expressing myself through existing ones. I think I’d only get to FW art if I imagined something that couldn’t be done in any existing way, but that I was determined to do.

Schulze The Trough of Disillusionment

I think Schulze prefers to work in the “Trough of Disillusionment” because

• It’s cheaper to use those parts.
• The limitations and capabilities of the technology are relatively well understood, so you’re less likely to be disappointed by something that’s been hyped up.
• It’s fun to surprise people by repurposing things they’ve disregarded.

Tenant 0 of the Critical Engineering Manifesto

The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.

In my own words

A “Critical Engineer” is an engineer (in this context, more likely a programmer/hacker/roboticist than, say, a mechanical engineer) who believes that Engineering (which I read as technology/products of engineering) has immense cultural influence. Such an engineer, beyond learning about and deconstructing technologies, uses his or her knowledge of those technologies to infiltrate them, and to show others how those technologies affect their behavior and assumptions.

Based on the tenant’s description of such a Critical Engineer, I imagine someone deeply understanding web technologies, then using that understanding to, say, hack Facebook, and replace a person’s newsfeed with a message to go offline.

And as much as hacking Facebook and telling people to get off it is an appealing idea, I worry that that idea and the Critical Engineer’s manifesto are naive. They focus on critique of new technologies, assuming tech is nefarious and needs to be “exposed”, rather than on really thinking about the role technology plays in people’s lives, and how the people they wish to inform will react to the “exposure”.

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Questions this raised for me:

• How much does technology shape the way we move, communicate, and think? Is it enough to really make a difference in people’s lives? Does it make the basic experience of being a human now that different from that of humans of the past?
• How aware are people of the influence technology has on their lives, and what is the best way to make them think reflectively about this?
• How do the roles of critic/outsider and creator/insider overlap? What can someone in each role achieve?
• Are hackers (in general and specific ones) doing it for the attention and recognition, or to really change things for the better?