Geek week 8

i have barely written about other people's art in the last 2 months, so i apologise profusely to all the poor souls who are sick of hearing about me.

but if you could be patient, i'm off to europe next month for a super extended trip, so you'll be hearing plenty.

back to geek-town, though.



this week liquid architecture were installing in the space and i had the great opportunity to assist Lionel Marchetti (top pic) with his work. It's a beautiful installation, referencing renaissance painting, with an electronic sound/loudspeaker element to it. it's super-dramatic and really captivating to watch.

having the sound boys and girls in here was a bit exciting for me - all that techy, specky goodness. it was also interesting to see what kind of mess sound-based crew make, compared to a painting or photography crew. i noticed that these media arts kids set up little workstations for themselves with laptops, powercables and chairs as tables - like little cities that sprung up in the gallery overnight.




of course i still had a stack of other work to do after database week last week, so it's back to uploading content to the new structure for the website.


i started to get into a bit of a rhythm, which was great and only just today i feel like i'm finally making inroads into it. thankfully i have a volunteer to help me, which is super-ace, as we're trying to upload at least 6 years' worth of stuff as much as possible before go-live.


we also had a web-meeting, to reconnect after a couple of weeks without different staff members, and we really nutted out some of the structure and the language of the site: how to name the pages/sections and exactly what order they're in. we had done 80% of that work, but we did the final tweak yesterday.

i found it interesting that, as in art, most of the discussion was about language. do you go with the tried-n-true ways to describe the sections of the site? or do you have it reflect something else about the gallery? how do you keep the tone?

and how does tech language change over time? how much risk can you take with it to reflect your identity, in line with social (tech) norms? i know that when i go to sites and they've got dicky menu names or navigation words, i vomit a little. but if there's no thought in it either, i roll my eyes.




so what do the structuralists/post-structuralists say about language in technology?

I had a quick peek and there are some interesting blogs and wiki articles i've stumbled upon today, which talk about structure vs agency, structuration and the social construction of technology. all social theory vs technology stuff. eep!

when i have some time and brain space, i think i might have to investimigate a little further*. it will be interesting to see how it will influence the decisions about the site made from here on in.


*excuse to hit the bookstores! huzzah!