prosthetic knowledge
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New Media - New Environments
This was my entry for the Transfer3D - Speed Show WROCŁAW, an experiment with Autodesk 1234D and a televised interview from 1967 with technology theorist Marshall McLuhan:
Brief:
Create a piece of work for the Transfer3D SPEED SHOW WROCŁAW, around the concept of 3D
Idea:
Advances in 3D imaging and technology has provided interesting possibilities to explore. In particular, there is a service which can convert multiple still digital photographs into a virtual 3D object called Autodesk 123D Catch.With some understanding of the principles of how it works, it somehow lead me to connect to one of the most important figures in technological thought of the last 50 years: Marshall McLuhan. Having ideas with no single fixed viewpoint, employing ‘Probes’ to understand technological phenomena from various angles, and an influence from the texts of James Joyce and the concepts of Modernism, a connection can be made between both the thinker and the machine.
In 1967, he undertook a televised interview, sitting in a revolving chair in the centre of the stage, surrounded by an audience asking questions from all angles (see video embedded below):Herbert Marshall McLuhan @ CBC 1967 from Sergey Teterin on Vimeo.
I took various frames from the footage to form the necessary collection to help create a potential model, all from various angles and different levels of proximity.
The results are a product of matching images and manually places points connecting the images to one another on particular key features of the person.(See animated gifs above)
Result:
Admittedly, I was hoping to produce a virtual sculptural bust of Marshall Mcluhan, but the 1234D Catch service is designed for colour photography - the images I have used are black and white, grainy, and have been processed from original recording, to video, and eventually digitally processed onto online video services. Also, the subject must be completely still - it is difficult to find exact poses from various angles from someone who is in conversation with his audience throughout the recording.
Many of the attempts are, in relation to my initial plans, extremely disappointing in a representational sense, as well as some questionable orientations - upside down or positioned to the side as opposed to standing upright as would be expected.
My only consolation with the various outputs I have collected are that they still connect to the ideas of multiple viewpoints, abstract forms created from various points and time - machine vision generating pseudo-Cubism virtual sculptures.The project should be considered a fully-finalized product, more of an experiment which, in theory, could provide other objects with continued practice, trying out different frames and combinations.
You can check some of the examples on my Autodesk 123D Catch profile here
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“Pattern recognition is the new form of work which combines into one the roles of hunter, engineer, programmer, researcher, and aesthete.” -
Marshal McLuhan – The Medium Is The Massage CD Re-Issue (via DJ Food)
Marshall McLuhan’s experimental LP will be released next month:
And here it is! After at least 18 months since I supplied a quote to Noah Uman for his reissue of ‘The Medium Is The Massage’ celebrating 100 years of McLuhan‘s record of the book, it finally dropped through the letterbox this morning. It’s gorgeous, full deluxe mini LP style CD sleeve, 40 pg booklet and all in the style of the original.
I’m sharing page space with some pretty esteemed commentators too: Warhol, Woody Allen, Steinski, Don Joyce, Jello Biafra, DJ Spooky… The CD is out on Five Day Weekend (who also have releases from Edan, Mr Chop and the ’80 Blocks From Tiffanys’ DVD) on December the 12th. Well worth it, a unique record, history, literature, social commentary, cut and paste and comedy all rolled into one.
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“Violence, whether spiritual or physical, is a quest for identity and the meaningful. The less identity, the more violence.” — Marshall McLuhan, 1976 -
Happy Birthday Marshall McLuhan
Would have been 100 today. There should have been a Google Doodle for this :(
McLuhan at 100 via The Technium
Why McLuhan’s chilling vision still matters today by Douglas Coupland for The Guardian
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Signet Books Q3739 - Gerald Emanuel Stearn - McLuhan - Hot & Cool
Gerald Emanuel Stearn (editor) - McLuhan: Hot & Cool
Signet Books Q3739
Published 1969; 1st printing
Cover Artist: unknown -
“We shape our tools,” he said, “and then our tools shape us.” Technology, according to McLuhan, is an extension of our own natural faculties. Just as a knife is an extension of the hand, and the wheel an extension of the leg, writing is an extension of speech and of memory. In this general metaphor, automobiles become extensions of our personal bodies, and the city an extension of our collective skin. Electronic communication is an extension of our nervous system, just as computers are extensions of our brains. Once extended, however, these technologies are “amputated.” They exist as external and independent objects, though we remain dependent upon them.” —On Marshall McLuhan’s theory of Media as ‘The Extensions of Man’ - just as media (or technology) can extend our human capabilities, they can also amputate as well.
Kinda feels like that when Tumblr was down for me! [Link]
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“Poets and artists live on frontiers. They have no feedback, only feedforward. They have no identities. They are probes.” -
Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall
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Marshall McLuhan - The World is a Global Village (CBC TV)
Happy Birthday Marshall McLuhan
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“Jobs are finished; role-playing has taken over; the job is a passe entity. The job belonged to the specialist. The kids know that they no longer live in a specialist world; you cannot have a goal today. You cannot say, ‘I’m going to start here and I’m going to work for the next three years and I’m going to go all that distance.’ Every kid knows that within three years, everything will have changed - including himself and the goal.” — Marshall McLuhan (via hm3) -
An ad announcing the Marshall McLuhan Dew-Line Newsletter. A startling, shocking Early Warning System for our era of instant change!
Click to zoom. (via babylonfalling)
McLuhan, inventor of the world’s first blog, naturally. (thepublics)
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Inside McLuhan’s head Marshall McLuhan’s brain was fuelled by fresh blood from the heart through not one but two arteries at the base of his skull, a trait in the mammalian world found mostly in cats and rarely in human beings. As well, people in Marshall’s family tended to die of strokes. Marshall himself had countless small strokes during his lifetime—sometimes in front of a classroom of students, where he’d suddenly gap out for a few minutes and then return to the world.
Why mention this medical information? To establish that Marshall was not merely different but very different, and it wasn’t simply in the way he thought; rather, it was because of the biological mechanisms that made and allowed him to think what he thought.
via austinkleon / ekstasis / embody
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The World is a Global Village - Marshall McLuhan - Explorations - 05-18-1960 (via thoughtcrimeo)
