Image: Paul Ramirez-Jonas, Another Day 2003
Jonas’s project is one of five selections made for Transitio_MX 03.

I am very excited to share information about a curatorial selection I made for Transitio_MX. This year’s event appears to be just as ambitious as its predecessors, if not more.  I’m on my way to Mexico City, to participate in the opening events and symposium.  The next days will be overwhelming.  I will write about things as they develop, and post them here for future reference.  Some information about my selections below:

First Disagreement: *Dissidence. Non places & Device art*

Curators: Eduardo Navas / Machiko Kusahara

http://en.transitiomx.net/programa/eventos/4

This curatorship deals with techno-artistic praxes. In it, disagreement revolves around the artists’ usage and reshaping of devices and how the latter lead critically towards a stance different from that in which they originated.

Detail of the exhibition “Diseñar a diario (Design Day to Day)” on view for the month of August, 2009 at Cultural Center of Spain’s Gallery.  Design by local artists.

One of two workshops with participants of Premio Arte Joven, which took place at the Cultural Center of Spain during August 24-29, 2009.

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Image source: Mashable

In January of 2009 I wrote two brief entries, “On Content and Form: 2009 Forecast” and “Further Reflections on Content and Form in 2009,” which evaluated the difficulty that developers are encountering with the constant change of delivery devices.  Since then, there appears to be more interest in having constant access to information than on the devices themselves. I also noted the possibility that consumers may develop fetishes for hybrid devices like the iPhone.

Yet, as we move on to the second half of 2009, the actual subject of analysis is becoming more apparent: the screen.  It is the aesthetics of the screen, a vessel of simulation, of make believe, of simulacra proper that is turning out to be the recurring device in all media.  From the early days of film on to television, and currently the computer and its supplementary devices, including GPS systems, text readers such as the kindle, portable DVD players, and of course the iPhone, the screen has played a defining role in the ongoing expansion of global communication.

The screen’s never-ending evolution, then, is what needs to be considered carefully in order to understand how media is changing with the growth of network culture.  The challenge in this acknowledgment is that our familiar window for entertainment and communication, while always a comfortable rectangular format of malleable dimensions, has no actual stable material form; it keeps shifting at an ever increasing speed; and because of media’s dependency on the screen, developers need to change their approach to product development.  This also means that content providers need to rethink their relation to media delivery, whether this be print, or online.
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