The concept of the palimpsest relates in its most literal sense to the re-use of writing surfaces by performing an erasure of existing content to render the surface suitable for new inscriptions. This process creates a physical, visual and conceptual relationship between the original and the replacement texts and between their interpenetrating contexts. This metaphor has been applied in archaeology, literary theory, cultural theory, and indeed is common in the visual and plastic arts and in media theory related to contemporary digital media and the internet. This paper takes up the metaphor of the palimpsest and discusses the conceptual notion of the re-writable surface and 'temporal compression', giving examples of palimpsest in animation as well as in recent art works by the authors. We expand on theoretical potentials of machine aided physical, digital and virtual palimpsest and describe through these examples the relevance of the palimpsest metaphor in digital contexts which complicate the notion of erasure, surface and the temporal relationships captured in palimpsests. This theoretical metaphor and the practical examples contribute to a broader moment in animation and art theory concerning the constant expansion of 'animation' as a concept, which Suzanne Buchan has recently described as 'pervasive'[1]. There are relations between these practices that defy the boundaries of the media - some are clearly not 'animation', but the relation between the practices involved links them through the metaphor of the palimpsest.

Since its emergence as an art medium, Augmented Reality has developed as a number of evidential sites. As an extension of virtual media, it merges real-time pattern recognition with media, finally realizing the fantasies of William Gibson through goggles or handheld devices. This creates a welding of a form of perceptual vision and virtual reality, or optically registered simulation overlaid upon actual spatial environments. And even though AR-based works can be traced back into the late 1990s, much of this work required at least an intermediate understanding of coding and tethered imaging equipment from webcams to goggles. It is not until the advent of marker-based AR possessing lower entries to usage, as well as geolocational AR-based media through handheld devices and tablets that Augmented Reality as an art medium would begin to propagate. While one can make arguments that much AR-based art is a convergence between handheld device art and Virtual Reality, there are gestures that are specific to Augmented Reality that allows for its specificity as a genre. In this chapter, we will look at some historical examples of AR and critical issues of the AR-based gesture, such as compounding of the gaze, problematizing the retinal, and the representational issues of informatics overlays. This also generates four gestural vectors analogous to those defined in The Translation of Virtual Art (Lichty in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), which we will examine through case studies. Through these case studies, historical and recent to the time of this publication, we may determine the issues of the gestures and aesthetics of AR.

In the September, 2012 50th Anniversary edition of Artforum, Claire Bishop wrote an article entitled “The Digital Divide”1 in which her first sentence was “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO DIGITAL ART?” This e...

From ARToolkit’s emergence in the 1990s to the emergence of augmented reality (AR) as an art medium in the 2010s, AR has developed as a number of evidential sites. As an extension of virtual media, it merges real-time pattern recognition with goggles (finally realizing William Gibson’s sci-fi fantasy) or handheld devices. This creates a welding of real-time media and virtual reality, or an optically registered simulation overlaid upon an actual spatial environment. Commercial applications are numerous, including entertainment, sales, and navigation. Even though AR-based works can be traced back to the late 1990s, AR work requires some understanding of coding and tethered imaging equipment. It was not until marker-based AR, affording lower entries to usage, as well as geo-locational AR-based media, using handheld devices and tablets, that augmented reality as an art medium would propagate. While one can argue that AR-based art is a convergence of handheld device art and virtual reality, there are intrinsic gestures specific to augmented reality that make it unique. The author looks at some historical examples of AR as well as critical issues of AR-based gestures such as compounding the gaze, problematizing the retinal, and the representational issues of informatic overlays. This generates four gestural vectors, analogous to those defined in “The Translation of Art in Virtual Worlds,” which is examined through case studies. From this, a visual theory of augmentation will be proposed.

This chapter examines New Media art practices in virtual worlds. It focuses on 3D platforms, multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft (WoW), and multi user virtual environments (MUVEs) like Second Life (SL). It analyzes the translation of these worlds from the tangible to the virtual and considers the "mixed/cybrid" and the formal work of virtual art. It also discusses the four aspects of artistic practice in virtual worlds that relate to the representational modality and the permeability of the boundary between worlds, the associated problems of audience, the context of the virtual or transmediated, and the questions of form.

Contemporary technologies in art are available from the 1960's. Virtual Fluxus is the result of more than a decade of digital practice events, which give a definition of the online world. This article on Virtual FLUXUS discusses the paradoxes of the Virtual in Contemporary Art. It starts its discussion with a citation from Al Hansen, as: “Fluxus is a Virtual Reality system where the glove doesn't work properly and the helmet doesn't fit. Other things happen than what was intended”. In this chapter, the author underlines that when Virtual FLUXUS happened, the gloves and goggles began to work, and when inside, things were more gloriously broken than could have been imagined. In this chapter, there are several examples of virtual artworks from different authors examined.

As part of the CPOV project with the Institute of Network Cultures, we published a Wikipedia reader titled Critical Point of View. The Reader is edited by Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz. The essays, interviews and artworks brought together in this reader form part of the overarching Critical Point of View research initiative, which began with a conference in Bangalore (January 2010), followed by events in Amsterdam (March 2010) and Leipzig (September 2010). The Reader collects original insights on the next generation of wiki-related research, from radical artistic interventions and the significant role of bots to hidden trajectories of encyclopaedic knowledge and the politics of agency and exclusion.

The ongoing Made In China series takes a historical event from art history and combines it with elements of networked society and globalization. Made in China was created as art objects suitable for the gallery and museum industry, which has as part of its funding base corporate officers guilty of global outsourcing and resultant wage deflation. This series seeks to maximize the artist's return on investment (ROI) through utilizing Chinese copyist ateliers to short-circuit part of the capital outflow to Asia by obtaining retail pricing for the artist, while providing some compensation for workers in other countries. The historical precedent for this work comes from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who gave directions to a sign shop for construction of a work over the phone. In the internet/globalist age, the sign shop is no longer around the corner; it is in any of the developed/developing countries. The artist no longer needs the " school " or atelier model; the atelier is now a just-in-time online reseller of ironic physically repainted digital copies, to be reworked by the artist, mounted and hung. Currently, there are 12 works in this series.

ARTIST STATEMENT When originally conceiving the translation of low-resolution digital photography to a physical form, I wanted to consider the historical precedents to the Cartesian image grid. The most logical of these is the Byzantine mosaic, which is a close ancestor of the digital bitmap. Although not rectilinear in the case of the Byzantine, the use of colored ready-made pieces of media to create a larger whole has a rich artistic tradition and is seen in arts and crafts from collage to needlepoint. This technique is a perfect match for low-resolution imaging and physical representations. However, the images in question were allowed to abstract themselves to a resolution of 8x8 pixels, where only the most basic elements of composition and form would remain. In this way, these seminal works in ceramic digital imaging would explore the aesthetics of translation from the digital to the physical and reassign the role of the portraiture to an abstracted composition. TECHNICAL STATEMENT These wall sculptures are translations into ceramic of portraits created from low-resolution images from my Casio Wristcam. The source images, already at a low 120x120 pixel x 256 grayscale resolution, were allowed to degrade to a sub-iconic resolution of 8x8 pixels and flattened to a two-bitplane depth (four grayscales). These images were then recreated using specially ordered tiles to match the tonal values in the images. Contact Patrick Lichty 355 Seyburn Drive Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70808 USA +1.225.766.3811 voyd@voyd.com

ARTIST STATEMENT To the computer, there is seldom a qualitative judgment of the information it processes or contains. Its function is to store and process information. With the use of computer technology, data are encoded into various patterns for reading by scanners and bar code readers that are completely opaque to the human reader and human valuation. The aesthetic of these codes is strangely compelling, much like that of the Rosetta Stone, and beckons us to try to read the code, but without the proper tools, we can’t. On the back of one’s identification card, any information could be encoded, and it would be difficult to determine what data the card actually contains.

October 01 2001 Artists' Statements Cory Arcangel, Cory Arcangel Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Mark Daggett, Mark Daggett Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Serban Epuré, Serban Epuré Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Kenneth Huff, Kenneth Huff Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Patrick Lichty, Patrick Lichty Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Austin Miller, Austin Miller Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Dennis Miller, Dennis Miller Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Andrea Polli, Andrea Polli Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Kathy Smith, Kathy Smith Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Mark J. Snyder, Mark J. Snyder Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Thomas Swiss, Thomas Swiss Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Skye Giordano, Skye Giordano Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Liu Wei Liu Wei Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Cory Arcangel Mark Daggett Serban Epuré Kenneth Huff Patrick Lichty Austin Miller Dennis Miller Andrea Polli Kathy Smith Mark J. Snyder Thomas Swiss Skye Giordano Liu Wei Online ISSN: 1530-9282 Print ISSN: 0024-094X © 2001 ISAST2001 Leonardo (2001) 34 (5): 523–526. https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401753521674 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Cory Arcangel, Mark Daggett, Serban Epuré, Kenneth Huff, Patrick Lichty, Austin Miller, Dennis Miller, Andrea Polli, Kathy Smith, Mark J. Snyder, Thomas Swiss, Skye Giordano, Liu Wei; Artists' Statements. Leonardo 2001; 34 (5): 523–526. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/002409401753521674 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsLeonardo Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2001 ISAST2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

In the technological sector, the first development stage of a product is known as ‘Alpha’ phase. The essay posits that techno-industrial culture and the production of technological art have been superimposed to the point where artists are often indistinguishable from commercial entities trying to sell the next hype-laden device. This is also true in the case of intangible on-line art, as market and institutional forces rematerialize net and other forms of screen-based art. The combination of hype and the temporal constraints of development and production result in a milieu where professed claims seldom live up to the final product. The cycle of promotion of the ‘Next Big Thing,’ whether art, data, or consumer object, outstrips any possibility for finished products to keep pace with expectations raised by the ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ prerelease stages. The result is an inordinate degree of media attention focused on ideas that are barely out of conceptual stages or ‘Alpha Revision,’ so that conceptual artists of the informational milieu must become engaged in the high-speed production of concept proposals, or ‘Alpha Revisionist’ works.