(~: = could be to)

Evolution of Memes:

• Memes are to evolution of culture what genes are to evolution of individuals.

• Memes as counterculture.

• Memes as viral content

Research Questions:

• Could memes become educational tools themselves, not in—or as—theory but in practice?

• Could specific instances of internet memes—like animated GIFs—disseminated through social media—like Twitter—serve the purpose of lectures delivered in the classroom?

• Could educators embark in non-traditional education by examining and exploiting internet memes’ inherent qualities as shared, duplicated, replicated and potentially viral content that does not require institutional validation?

• HOW CAN INTERNET MEMES BE HARNESSED AS EDUCATIONAL INSTRUMENTS?

Relevance

• Education as freely shared information

• Education as suggested pathways

• Education beyond classroom

Methodology

Practice-based research

• Production of animated GIFs and dissemination through social networks (Twitter, Blogs, Google+)
  

  #Occupy urself. Ur #99Percent is still our #1Percent. #FirstWorld #ThirdWorld Bigger? http://tinyurl.com/3u6bqhz

Auto-ethnography

• Online journaling

• Documentation of process and decision-making

• Open-source research

Fieldwork research

• Social networks as communities

• Researcher as participant

Action research

• College classes

Dissemination

Online Journals:

• Journal of Research Practice

• Art&Education

Conferences:

• Mobility Shifts

• SWTX PCA/ACA Conference
  

• Rhizome

• gli.tc/h
  

  Memes : Education::
  Social Networks : The Classroom::
  Animated GIFs & Tweets : Lectures;
  HACKEDUCATION

• art v. visitor
• visitor v. curator
• curator v. artist
• artist v. institution
• institution v. education
• education v. art
• art v. Art
• Art v. visitor

I often wonder if museums are mostly a vestige of times past; most valuable as placeholders for nostalgia than true centers of human interaction and accumulation of knowledge. Do we need arks of knowledge–monolithic, vertical, slow but bright–in these days when information theory has reduced knowledge to bits–multifaceted, horizontal, fast but dim? Are small, independent galleries better suited to keep up with these times? Could a large, rhizomatic network of small, independent galleries fill the shoes (foundations) of museums past?

But then of course, there is always the Hermitage:

On last struggle remains:

• Arks v. archs–of conversations.

passion of the piss christ

Bigger?

source(s)–>religious pathos

argument(s)–> religious pathos

lack of arch, lack of argument, lack of triangulation (unique, singular sources)=no long-lasting effect. only a momentary shimmer to one’s pathos.

I have always argued with worshipers of contemporary art and judeo-christian tenants that both these works are equivalent in how much they depend on the viewer’s previous relation with a specific symbol. if one lack such relationship, one will only find a lack of content, a lack of reasons to care, a lack of arguments to communicate. I find that in many cases research that does not take it’s time to listen and digest to its sources (data, communities, field, practices) will inevitably devolve into ineffectual monologues with no arguments.

When I heard about the within the contemporary art world upon the defacement of Serrano’s photograph I couldn’t help but remember the outcry within the worldwide jewish community upon the release of Gibson’s film, which reminded me of the outcry within the worldwide christian community upon the exhibition of Serrano’s photograph. Bad research tends to enter these type of circular vices.

Bigger?

Nothing intimidates me more than feminist crit. I shrink and have nothing intelligent to add.

• A question of fostering a Read/Write Culture.
• A case (or series of cases) of action and field research.
• Create workflows that turn everyday culture-consuming media into culture producing media.
• Treat workflows as artworks: procedural art.
• Could I convert this into practice-based research?
• Establish rhizomatic pathways to disseminate these workflows.
• Create an online social hub where other users/generators could exchange knowledge and experience on their own practices inverting RO circuitry into RW possibilities.
• Report on the process as findings (?)

However, as the semester progressed and as I should’ve been developing the points above, I found myself instead delving deeper and deeper into the production of potential internet memes (in the form of animated GIFs) and theorizing on them as potential tools to be used in educational practices:

• A question of how to harness the potential of memes (internet or otherwise) for the benefit of education.
• The production and dissemination of potential internet memes.
• Fieldwork research as active participant within already-existing online communities through strategic use of social media (Twitter, Google+, blogs, etc) to disseminate these potential memes.
• A case of practice-based research… I think.
• Theorization on internet memes as educational tool outside of the traditional educational institutions.
• Report on the production, dissemination and theorization processes.

The fact that the second option seems to fit perfectly within the idea of practice (as in arts) based research is espeically important and exciting to me. Also, the fact that the online communities researched will be exisiting ones–instead of establishing my own–seems to be more realistic, pragmatic and effective. The theoretical approaches propossed by the likes of Friere, Benjamin, Amerika, Deleuze and Guatari (etc) still apply, more or less in the same ways. However, a few issues still remain:

• Am I over-conceptualizing simple processes and turning them into more than they truly are?
• Will this give me enough to produce a full dissetation?

I was certain. Now I’m wondering.

A few years ago I created, and began teaching, an elective course in the art department at Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez on the ethics involved in art making practices. More specifically the class was designed to ask collectively (me along with the students) whether or nor ethic issues should be considered when practicing art production. Eventhough it is now part of the required curriculum, to my surprise still some of my colleagues as well as few students in the department are opposed to the question even being asked. Art, it seems to them, should be beyond reproach.

In this sense, of course I am happy to explore and reflect upon the ways in which ethical concerns are taken into account when conducting research; however I can’t help but to find the contrast quite interesting: Where as on the one hand research (academic and otherwise) is expected to be conducted within a strict set of ethical frameworks; much of contemporary art (and much of the criticism that comes along with it) continues to cling to the idea of art for art sake as if it were conducted and produced in a bubble where the rest of human activity is not taken into account. Furthermore, when one speaks of arts-based research, the question to proponents of the art for art sake argument needs to be asked: should, or can, art in the instance of research adhere to the aforementioned argument; or should it abide by the ethical guidelines discussed in class?

After Borriaud’s discussion on Relational forms and artworks within he context of an ongoing encounter with the other; as well as Kwon’s assertions and recount of the debate on community-based art projects I immediately thought of Nicholas Negroponte’s project One Laptop per Child, which attempts to provide affordable and durable custom-built laptops-filled with open source OS and Software-to children in impoverished countries. Some issues and questions arise:

0. Can we consider computers artworks? If so, do they construct (and promote) encounters with users/audiences in completely new fashions than gallery-based artwork? are they closer to mass media (television and film as Borriaud says) or to pieces of interactive 3D art?

1. What were the qualities that Negroponte and his team looked for when identifying the community(ies) they served with OLPC? The community they serve doesn’t seem to be joined by ethnicity or geography-although a look at this map of impact could suggest a worldwide community of people below and around the equator being served by OLPC.

2. The identifiable community trait seems to be need. Is need as a trait for a community equally problematic as the ones brought up by Foster in Kwon’s article? Can need truly be identified by anyone but the person experiencing it?

3. While OLPC’s goals are of course altruistic, the laptops still need to be paid for (either by NGO’s or even Governments themselves). In this sense has OLPC created a new community of consumers (NGO’s and Governments)?

4. Furthermore, is OLPC creating lifetime consumer community of digital content in places that may not be ready to sustain such a community?

5. A lot of the technology used in building the XO computers (as OLPC’s laptops are called) ended up going towards the creation of what are now identified as netbooks, inadvertently creating a whole new market and (you guessed it) a whole new consumer community for technology.

6. Can consumers be considered a community at risk?

7. By asking who do you look and smile like, I am not suggesting that you recognize yourself in the face (and form) of the other, but in the face of the consumer same.

8. I ADORE Nicholas Negroponte and OLPC. Truly one of the actually worthwhile projects that used technology and design as a tool for social and educational change; BUT there issues within it that must and can be addressed through the ideas in Borriaud’s and especially Kwon’s article.

encounters with the Other as form individual and community do not and should not be reduced to any one kind of experience or any one kind of context mediated or not

Creativity breeds knowledge–>knowledge is housed in experiences, ANY EXPERIENCE–>phenomenological, aesthetic, scientific, historic, empirical, ad nauseum–>reflecting upon experiences brings forth the knowledge (?)–> is information not present prior to reflection?–>can reflection take any form?–>speaking out loud can be self-reflecting–>spoken word as arts practice–>SPOKEN WORD BASED RESEARCH–>to speak is to research–>to repeat what is read, what is heard, what is experienced is research–>REMIX BASED RESEARCH–> must research spawn knowledge?–>is knowledge dependant on theory making?–>must knowledge be reported AS theory?–>can theory be foregone?–>can theory become practice instead?–>should theory become practice?–>should practice become theory–>should both practice and theory remain as separate entities?

The verbal-based string of symbols ART bothers me, especially when it is used to signify and erect metaphorical barbwire fences round a specific human activity to protect it from other activities that use a similar (or even identical) set of language(s), instruments, and media. All media are an extension of human ability according to McLuhan, why then can we not approach them all within that context? instead–>segregation.

Should arts-based research be PRACTICE-BASED research? as in everything you practice can spawn research? is practicing mass media not conductive for research? where would Andy Warhol be placed? Nam Jun Paik? John Cage? Koons? Cao Fei? Stanley Kubrick? David Fincher? Akira Kurosawa? William S Burroughs? Neruda? BORGES?

If the distinction cannot be made based on practice and intent must never be questioned, then A QUESTION IS BEGGED.

To give up in intent, must we also give up on the ethical implications? i shudder.

How different would arts for arts sake be from theory for theory’s sake? research for research’s sake? i shudder.

While working in my MA i had a professor who always used to say: “There are only two institutions necessary in society: universities and prisons; one is used to protect the people outside from the people inside; the other is used to protect the people inside from the people outside.” who are we trying to protect here? i shudder.

message is not content–>media are the messages–>the medium is the message–>content is another medium–>the message of the medium is how it changes life, how it extends human beings, how it shifts sense’s ratios–>trains changed the way humans lived, the way they organized lives and cities–>what the trains were carrying is irrelevant–>headphones change what you percieve in the envioronment–>what the headphones are playing (wagner, mingus or tupac) is irrelevant–>a shift in domintant extension (technology, media) suggest a shift in pradigms of life–>from the guttenberg galaxy to the electronic (now digital) age–>a shift in the complexities that we are comfortable calling order suggests a shift in how we understand reality–>creativity means to have senses (and minds) open enough to discover these orders, these structures, these rythms, these harmonies–>a disruptive force for creative endeavors is mechanic activity–>the sort of activity that follows only what is apparently obvious instead of searching for the underlying order(s) (creativity, by the way (the artist) can charge paradigm shifts in McLuhan as well)–>creative, original thought is born–>there is nothing original (new) but the avant-garde’s desire to create  the new in new ways–>to be creative means to stop the world for three minutes (among others)–>creativity as outer body experiences–>the art work as magiwork (not all, just some)–>the artist IS the media–>life is source material–>the artist as medium as message.