~e; rfc: excavating EM assemblage

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

Actuator arm with circuit board from computer hard disk unit.
http://electronetwork.org/education/decons/harddrivearm2.jpg

and: robot arm, painting by J. Davis
http://www.jenniferdavisart.com/robotarm.html

(sidenote: upon taking apart the drive the very first image of
the actuator arm reminded me of a painting 'robot arm' by J.
Davis (see: http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=19426
or http://www.jenniferdavisart.com/robotarm.html   (larger))
and it goes back to a project which I wish to communicate
about yet do not have the words to do so-- to continue an
earlier idea which is a question about the relationship of
electromagnetic art and artifacts (robotic arm of harddrive
compared to robot arm painting, for instance, in an exhibit,
as a thought-experiment of including the art in science and
science in art, etc. where the actuating 'arm' which reads &
writes data may, in one way, perform this via microchip onto
a data storage platter, while another may also do this via a
microcontroller like circuitry, to read/write repetitive action.
thus, it was wondered if such two things were juxtaposed,
what may be a gray-scale area-- maybe a poem of reading/
writing code, for instance, where the spectrum of an idea
might be contemplated at once, and integrated together.
this approach was going to be a proposal for an essay to
follow-up on the great opportunity to show works offline,
yet to me it is a conversation and it is hard to know where
to start or even how. which is partly related to newsletters
as this 'Excavating the EM assemblage' is something of an
enigma in terms of how things are perceived, represented,
considered, and the above two urls are able to do what is
hard to capture in a direct artifacts approach. thoughts?
the following artifacts were to be questioned in relation to
one another, though cross-referencing of ideas, not only
by medium: http://www.electronetwork.org/assemblage/
(which is also the #1 reason I believe that 'new media' is
directly related to what exists in museums now, though I
know others know much more about the entirety of this
realm, I cannot fathom separating a scientific experiment
from other correlations in art and artifacts- and in this way
many types of museum collections could co-exist, also to
acknowledge the importance of new electronic media art
in relation to pottery, painting, non-digital works, that with
EM (or other content-based realms) there is a consistency
no matter what the medium is. ideas are what intrigues,
it would seem, at least in part, if on paper or videowall.
(and the above essay ('excavating') was to propose how
a modular approach could allow for such varied works
by creating a common platform using today's technology,
and see if gathering ideas and presenting them this way
may be the way to write the follow-up by sharing what is
learned, what could be possible, and collaboratively to
share ideas and document this instead of a finite essay
which is a formal presentation alone, and not a lot of fun
when so many imaginations who do this work are here.
I've wanted to create a series of mock-up images of what
a space may be like, juxtaposing such things as an arm
of a harddrive with a painting, in a wunderkammer-like
way, yet also more tangible, empirical, keeping science
and technological knowledge as part of the experience-
that is, education, to learn and think and imagine about
such things. In any case, thought of sharing this now...)

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