hypertrace

[hypertrace]

My PhD is complete and available online through the University of Wollongong’s thesis collection 

Abstract: Media increasingly screens itself. To extend the understanding of our media-ontic world, we need to observe inside, behind, and through the medium’s surface effects. The trace of a medium, if followed between the poles of immutable representation and unstable mutable symbolic work, becomes of interest as medium in itself. This thesis highlights articulations of ‘trace’ that traverse assemblages of analogue-digital media couched in network culture and asks: How does the trace of a medium survive transversal analogue-digital media assemblage and what qualities of the trace hold potential in thinking about media cultures and practice? The answer presented hererests on the development of a concept of ‘analogue-trace,’ which is a concept built upon a combination of theories in the writings of Walter Benjamin and various authors on media archaeology and cultural techniques, the ‘deconstructionist’ philosophy of Jacques Derrida and Bruno Latour’s ‘circulating reference’ in ActorNetwork Theory. Images and diagrams are addressed as articulations of the trace throughout the thesis. The key focus is how an investigation of ‘analogue-trace’ as cultural technique informs a media archaeology of the analogue-digital converter(A/DC). The A/DC facilitates three main forms of material-symbolic trace and these are analogue-digital affordance, analogue-digital feedback as an interdependence, and signal ‘distortion’ from reproducing ‘nothing.’ Thus, the thesis uses a broad media archaeological method associated with creative practice and critique, suggesting that, as an operator in an analogue-digital assemblage, the trace is a useful pointer helping to ‘make visible’ and unbox the hidden operations of media technologies that are at work inscribing the ‘analogue-trace’.

[hypertrace]

TRANSVERSAL TRACE

Intelity: #14, C-type matte photograph by Maximilian Tomozei (2015), showing a closeup view of a scratched and degraded electronic security chip. The piece highlights a transversal site between a physical trace and the trace of digital identity as stored in or via the chip. http://www.tomozei.com/intelity/

0h!m1gas, an audiovisual installation with a plexibox housed ant colony, turntables, audio, camera, monitor, variable dimensions, by Kuai Shen (2012). The work shows an example of transversal media practice as something more than ‘multi,’ ‘convergent’ or ‘mixed’ media in that new, bizarre or experimental channels of signal feedback between disparate spheres of communication are facilitated for new knowledge. In this case, nature and technology are ‘connected’ allowing feedback between ant colonies and a media artefact (turntable). http://kuaishen.tv/0hm1gas/

Computerwelt: MOTOROLA 68030, analogue 8x10 format film scan photograph by Christoph Morlinghaus (2015), showing an extreme close-up and long exposure of a Motorola 68030 microprocessor. The image production relies on an analogue photographic process to capture the physical intricacies of a digital signal processor. https://www.wired.com/2016/08/extreme-closeup-computer-hardware-looks-like-tiny-cities/

[hypertrace]

Concrete Trace

The mark, like the trace, can sit prior to the unstable referential meaning of signs. As a site between medium and content, Benjamin’s mark, as highlighted by Mules, is a lingering layer of mediation between a material origin and symbolic effect that unavoidably imposes a distance between signifier and signified, or origin and experience, in processes of media reproduction—the trace of the medium standing in reserve and ready to surge forth. Inscriptive medium types suit this perspective and we are reminded of the microscopic registrations and misregistrations in a substrate, traces critical to their operation and characteristics.

Scanning electron microscope image of digital compact disc registration puts by Chris Supranowitz, Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, showing dust and cracks in the substrate 

http://www2.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/cml/opt307/spr05/chris/

Scanning electron microscope images of vinyl grooves by ChrisSupranowitz, Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, showing dust and imperfections in substrate registration 

http://www2.optics.rochester.edu/workgroups/cml/opt307/spr05/chris/

[hypertrace]

¼ Inch presents St Vito (Sensor Technology Visual Interactive Touch Orchestra)

Western Sydney University Research Creation Showcase 2018: Creative Cities, Riverside Theatres, Parramatta.  (Featured work – documentation video,  postproduction and motion graphics)

¼ Inch: Performance of Sound and Moving Image (www.1-4inch.com) ¼ Inch is an ongoing series of events that showcase national, international, emerging and established sound and audio-visual artists. The events are curated by Greg Hughes and Aaron Hull. Greg continues to maintain the branding, promote, film, document and archive the event and its performers. ¼ Inch continues to seek community and institutional collaboration in its drive to merge creative practice, media experimentation and practice-led research.    

This video features St Vito (Sensor Technology Visual Interactive Touch Orchestra), a Berlin-based performance collective, filmed in Wollongong, Australia. St Vito blend improvised contemporary dance and LED screen suit comprising an array of WI-FI connected sensors that enables interaction between dancer movement and live VJ programming. [Filming, motion graphics and post-production: ¼ Inch (Greg Hughes), Music: Klaudia Miłoszewska, Dancer: Alma Edelstein, Light programming: James Hudson, Top costume layer: Greta Melnik, "Tech" layer: ST VITO and @jl_costumedesign, Extra camerawork: Sarah Hudson.]

[hypertrace]

Trace fossils 

[hypertrace]

1/4 Inch presents Donna Hewitt (film/ videography) — Rad Bar, Wollongong

Video Work 2017 

Donna is a vocalist, electronic music composer and instrument designer. Donna’s research has been primarily exploring mediatized performance environments and new ways of interfacing the voice with electronic media. She is the inventor of the eMic, a sensor enhanced microphone stand for electronic music performance and more recently has been creating wearable electronics for controlling both sound and lighting in performance. Her work has attracted funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, most recently with all female collective Lady Electronica. Donna has held academic positions at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Queensland University of Technology and is currently the Convenor of Music at the University of New England.

[hypertrace]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by 1/4 Inch (@1_4inch)

Motion Graphic promo work 

Off the the back of our first show for 2017, 1/4_inch announce another wild night of abstract, psychedelia! This event will focus primarily on glitch, broken beats, and recordings made from the earths stratosphere via weather balloons! - Artists include: - Julius Ambroisine (Sydney) - Weather balloon recordings and micro sound - Hiraeth (Wollongong) - Modular Synthesis - DAID (Sydney) - Psychedelic Noise Band

[hypertrace]

Severe distortion.

From the back matter of The Comprehensive Commentary on the Holy Bible, ed. by William Jenks (1836). Original from Columbia University. Digitized February 11, 2010.

[hypertrace]

Dialectical Images? Metapictures?

http://www.johnheartfield.com/heartfield-photos-images/heartfield-art/aiz/1932-adolf-superman.jpg, http://www.johnheartfield.com/John-Heartfield-Exhibition/john-heartfield-art/political-art-posters/heartfield-posters-aiz/heartfield-aiz-hitler 

http://subscribe.adbusters.org/collections/back-issues/products/ab127

[hypertrace]

Mapping the Hidden Structures of New York City's Internet Networks

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/mapping-the-hidden-structures-of-new-york-citys-internet-networks?

[hypertrace]

https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/walter-benjamin-messianism-revolution-theses-history/

[hypertrace]

Trace Fossils 

[hypertrace]

#NoFilter 1

(35mm film, hydrochloric acid, acetic acid and sodium chloride)

#NoFilter 2

(35mm film, hydrochloric acid, acetic acid and sodium chloride)

Research Creations 2, Penrith Regional Gallery, December 2015

Greg’s #NoFilter prints are test images produced inline with ground covered in his PhD research. Archival film from Greg’s past practice is saturated in various corrosive materials. The prints are inspired by Cooke and Reichelt-Brushett’s (2015), Southern Cross University, after | image project where the material surface of archival film is intentionally degraded to question photography’s alignment with personal and collective archival memory.  The findings of the Cooke and Reichelt-Brushett’s project lead them to question digital imaging technologies against the physical (analogue). The authors suggest digital archives improve preservation of material works but introduce a new set of material concerns such as storage formats, programmed obsolescence and upgrade cycles.  #NoFilter asks a little more of such a linear digital context and pushes thinking the archive to digital network culture. The physical qualities of a medium and its degradation ‘presents’ rather than ‘represents’ the past in the present, but what if we emulate a medium’s trace on mass? The likes of Instagram, as a social image-sharing network, commoditise the trace of analogue photography via a set of one-click image effects. These ‘filters’ have altered as cultural techniques to form symbolic practice including the hash tag #Nofilter. The tag is a boycott of Instagram’s filters suggesting a more honest, original or ‘present’ image within the framework. Conversely, the tag is used dishonestly and any stable reality the image degradation of the past may have been able to offer is lost. The process forms what Gansing (2013) describes as a transversal and generic yet generative media archaeology practice. Greg’s #NoFilter prints, as early work-in-progress, are a tongue-in-cheek intervention on the stability of Instagram user’s generic media archaeology.

[hypertrace]

James Hoff's art glitches music and images with malware like NSA-created Stuxnet and the ILOVEYOU viruses.

[hypertrace]

Phantom Terrains

The man who can hear Wi-Fi wherever he walks - New Scientist

I am walking through my north London neighbourhood on an unseasonably warm day in late autumn. I can hear birds tweeting in the trees, traffic prowling the back roads, children playing in gardens and Wi-Fi leaching from their homes. Against the familiar sounds of suburban life, it is somehow incongruous and appropriate at the same time. As I approach Turnpike Lane tube station and descend to the underground platform, I catch the now familiar gurgle of the public Wi-Fi hub, as well as the staff network beside it. On board the train, these sounds fade into silence as we burrow into the tunnels leading to central London. I have been able to hear these fields since last week. This wasn’t the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation, but an upgrade to my hearing aids. With a grant from Nesta, the UK innovation charity, sound artist Daniel Jones and I built Phantom Terrains, an experimental tool for making Wi-Fi fields audible.

[hypertrace]

Surface Tension 2.0 @ Speak Easy 2014

When? The Exhibition: October 23rd - November 1st 2014

Where? Project Contemporary Artspace, 255 Keira St Wollongong Australia - a Wollongong City Council sponsored community gallery.  

How? Via invite/ selection from Speak Easy 2014 curator Aaron Hull and Project Contemporary Artspace. 

What? Speak Easy - A multi night event featuring select Wollongong exhibiting artists, sound art performances and live music.

Surface Tension 2.0 - 30min video projection and large format prints - Surface Tension 2.0 is the next iteration in Greg’s continuing cymatic data visualisation experimentation. Mean sea level and coastal wave data is combined and transposed into audio signal phasing and traced in the surface waves of a built micro liquid environment. The layering of data and resultant collisions form combinations of what in physics are known as standing, constructive, destructive and harmonic surface wave phenomena. In this particular iteration of the Surface Tension series a harmonic pattern is found, continuously played and asked to survive mean sea level data normally destined for applied scientific analysis. The work hopes to make the destructive subtleties of a micro water environment visible while invigorating coastal environmental discussion from a gallery context.

Media and Promotion?

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/events/1542552152645307

https://www.facebook.com/events/724597564278231

Gallery http://www.projectgallery.com.au/speak-easy/

Review/ Promotion/ Interview http://roomforhorse.com/creative-subversion-a-phone-call-with-speak-easy-organiser-aaron-hull/