Veduta di detroit.a. copy

PHILLIP.BALDWIN@GMAIL.COM
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1Monday, August 19, 2013

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VEDUTA di DETROIT
STATIONS OF THE MIND AND VIEWS OF GLOBAL CITIES: thought compass
IDEA – the concept or artistic impetus behind the work:
This is a series of installations in telematics applied to Detroit that are similar to the Veduta di Roma of Piranesi. I have made a series of
‘views’ of the current Detroit to be perceived within the context of the interconnected global cities within a ‘Post-Industrial’ America. At the
time of the ‘views’ of Rome that Piranesi etched in the 1760’s Rome was at a low ebb. When the prints of these fantastic ruins within the
ancient city were mass-produced it ignited the ‘grand tour’ of the cultured European gentlemen and then women within the newly rich
northern European cities and then the U.S. This was a case of a ‘transmedia’ transformation of Rome as a destination place of experienced
culture. A type of ‘Momento Mori’ or remembrance of all things that end in death and decay attended the lesson of these prints and the
grand tour of Rome as a destination.
My proposal attends to the way multiple ‘views’ of Detroit, using the recent technologies such as the telematic or ‘all things mobile
computing and the internet’ can transform the past, present, and future of this Post-industrial city. The subject will sit within my ‘telematic
portals’, or in front of a façade of particular buildings. He or she will wear a Neurosensor cap that detects and then moves emotion
according to the scale of the feelings from calm to excitement. The result of the Mindwave neurosensor on the subject within the context of
the ‘ruins’ will then scroll through and trigger webcams, films, and other select augmented reality ‘portals’ within the larger, interconnected
global city database. The resulting views, it is hoped, will have a local and online presence in terms of the result of the emotional ‘scrolling’.
In this way Detroit is placed back within the line up of important global cities (similar to how Rome was revived as a secular pilgrimage city)
with the ultimate message expanding from the original ‘Momento Mori’ of a vital city’s decay.
The orchestration of individual emotions around the idea of Detroit, Ruins, and Memento Mori:
I will Place and install a series of 6 chair stations that circle a rotunda. Behind each of the chairs there is a high lumen projector. At each
station the subjects place a ‘Mindwave Neuro-sensor’ on their heads and then they trigger film, internet links of global cities in the form of
film streaming, sonic environments, and Internet feeds through the Mindwave and their emotions from calm to excited. The interpolation of
these emotions, videos, Internet feeds, are then projected within the constructed scrim structure or on or within a ‘ruins’ of the city. With
these linked neurosensors the individual will be able to ‘upload’ films on the diverse trails, vectors, and flows that make up the diverse
historical and ethnic fabric of a modern metropolis as well as the ‘new’ Noosphere of interconnected minds. This is the new Nuero-Aesthetic
Veduta. The software is placed within an individual laptop, projector, and Max/Msp/Jitter custom computer code. This results in a new
means of perceiving cities, narratives, and the human destiny within the ‘Noosphere’ of current telematics. The new Views are digitally
reproduced, collapsed within present time, and ubiquitous: if one is aware of them.
PRACTICE – the effectiveness of how the work is put into practice and the impact it has on those experiencing it:
These are the general questions that attend the making and the participation in the augmented ‘triggers’ and attend to the concept and
emotions surrounding Momento Mori:
1. What do you feel about your individual destiny, fate, and ‘Faustian’ deals you have taken to get you to your personal demise ‘in the
future’?
2. What do you feel about your lust, desire, and thirst for connection with ‘the other’ through immersion and ecstasy?
3. What do you feel about your mother, father, and your past family who brought you into being with love, lust, and nurturing, or nightmares?
4. What do you feel about the mystery between the total number of people the earth can support (currently seven billion... which has
doubled from 1960!), the current amount, and the ‘real’ number of sustainable balance between quality of life and what the planet can
‘provide’.

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5. What do you feel about the truth and lies of a political authority, system, machinery, who you ‘pay’ through your taxes and civic
participation? What do you feel about the ‘pay to play’ legal system, political sacrifice, voting, and other civic duties?
6. What do you feel about the ‘authorities’ who control the ‘markets’, prices, broadcast propaganda, the pyramids, the bubbles, and the
general, daily, ‘pay to play’ behavioral conditioning of the necessities of life like food, shelter, education, and communion?
DEVELOPMENT – the contribution the work makes to the development of the artists involved, the art form, and the arts more widely: the
work of the artists will be coordinated to exhibit the work. This is a series of practices in art and tech. Why are they separate? What is the
destiny of reuniting these separate features? Do they have a cultural legacy together as they might be blended as a new art form? What is
the ‘extended nervous system’ of the modern connected individual (In McLuhan’s formulation) when it is constantly connected to ‘things
telematic’?
CONTEXT – the context in which the work is being presented and the appropriateness of the work to that context:
What are the ends of interface and network? What is a networked city? As the present moment has expanded with the light speed
instantaneous information of the Internet what does it mean to have a past and a future? What happens when a whole dynamic city slips
from ‘the grid’ of productivity and capital production? What is the modern ‘grand tour’? What is the relationship between those who could
leave and those who cannot? What are the ‘ends’ of a single human life and ‘destiny’? Do we view lives as individual ‘Faustian’ cowboys
working out destinies in the landscape of infinite anomie? Have we already moved through a time where the combined cloud computing of
the Metaweb has reached a type of sentience? Do we live in global cities anymore or in small rooms of individual alienated blue screens?
Is global industrial growth untenable as a ecological paradigm? What are the many relationships between simulation and database? Would
a fracturing of forms merely create a further digression? This is a project that will ask some, express, and demonstrate all these questions
implicitly. This installation addresses many of these questions in a unique, ethereal, manner: new Neuro-Aesthetic technologies.

PHILLIP. BALDWIN@gmail.com
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PHILLIP.BALDWIN@GMAIL.COM/917 385 2446
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M I N D S C R E E N

PHILLIP.BALDWIN@GMAIL.COM/917 385 2446
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