.. re-located on the cartesian grid ….

mo

Brian Holmes cites in an interesting article in the austrian art magazin springerin Althusserl with the following “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” and reminds though to continue analyzing the current situation and development of locative technologies under critical aspects.

… Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this satellite infrastructure is that in order for one’s location to be pinpointed, the clock in each personal receiver has to be exactly synchronized with the atomic clocks in orbit. So you have an integration to Imperial time. The computer-coded radio waves interpellate you in the sense of Althusser, they hail you with an electromagnetic »hey you!« When you use the locating device you respond to the call: you are interpellated into Imperial ideology. The message is that integration equals security, as exemplified in the advertising for the Digital Angel, a personal locative device pitched to medical surveillance and senior care. It’s a logical development for anyone who takes seriously the concept of the “surgical strike”: give yourself over to the care of the machines, target yourself for safety.
(read entire text)

I came across this article when reading his reply to Coco Fusco’s recently published and discussed article “Questioning the frame” in in these times. My attention was drawn to her article aready some days ago, but I couldn’t really decide how to react to it. On one side I like her thoughts and the focus she brings back to third world movements … on the other side I thought aspects of mapping not really carefully and under aspects of recent developments viewed, which just leads her to retreat by mentioning her age. Thus a read of her article and the reply of Brian Holmes with links to further information shed an interesting light on aspects of the developments of ‘locative’ technologies and some artistic attempts to deal with them.
The rendering influence those new technologies have on our perceptative systems on many levels are to imortant as to be left to corporate and military interest alone ….

UPDATE 31.12.2004: .. the discussion has been continuing on networked_performance …

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