Interpreting Code/Rubin commentary

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend Rubin's presentation, but I wanted to add something to discussion based on the group presentation and from what I read in your responses.

I find myself intrigued with the notion of semantics, aurality and programming code touched on here, especially with regard to the Internet. (Is this a primordial/strucutral aspect of Internet culture?) Rather than being something mysterious, as it may be for a non-programmer such as myself, I find it intriquing that most Internet and programming code follows written grammar as a primary semantical convention. I am thinking of C++, CSS, HTML, etc. Correct me if I am wrong, please.

By utilizing text, Rubin seems to elude to this underlying infrastructure of communication.

I wonder how the re/presentation of his concepts would be disrupted/advanced by alternative output devices.

Imagine, for instance, differing or actual voices of the net-writers on "Listening Post," (more interesting still if the words/voices had been culled from VOIP conversations [Skype, etc]).

The issue I have with a "computer-voice, speaking" the information culled is that the disembodiment absolves intentionality at a certain level. If we were to hear the output from Dark Data or Listening Post, in Dick Cheney's voice... how much more reviled would be by its implications (i.e. data mining)? Wouldn't this create a more accurate picture of the multi-sited life of the Network society? Wouldn't it allow us to focus our fears of survelliance upon certain individuals or parties (Bill Gates, the RIAA, the NSA), giving the 'programmers' a voice?
~Reggie

Ben Rubin Response

I am sorry to not start my response on a positive note, but I found Rubin's presentation to be unstimulating and his work unvaried. The first work that he introduced which coded words to develop infinite simple to complex sentences was without a doubt a complex and thoughtful production for a high school teenager. However, I found the fact that Rubin did not communicate the process through which he created the codes and the reasons for creating the codes a bit annoying. Without any knowledge of computer science and coding myself, I was confused about the process. Rubin's work Dark Souce For me, the work presented words, not art. Must art be able to convey some meaning to the observer through its aesthetic presence?

Taking a positive stance on the first work he presented, perhaps he was laying ground for his presentation, so that we could see his origin as a new media artist. However, allow us to see his origins makes his career as a new media artist less compelling. His work was shown to be are perpetuations of the last, lacking any dynamic character or innovation. For his beginning, Rubin has not been able to diverge from programming merely words. Although programming words into art is not necessarily monotonous, it is is unvaried content as well as his unvaried use of medium that makes it monotonous. On another note, his work neglects to ask any questions or present any reasons for development. I find Rubin to be an intelligent man, but he is not a new media artist.

Ben Rubin

I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet with Ben Rubin prior to the lecture, and appreciate his openness in addressing questions. I really like Miki’s question regarding Rubin’s discussion of failed ideas and whether this is an acceptable mode of presentation for new media artists. While I agree with Charmaine that all of Rubin’s more innovative ideas seemed “reduced” in comparison to what became the final product (because they were unworkable, etc.) I think much of our curiosity with these artists stem from an interest in understanding and being informed about their processes. Is new media art restricted to a completed form? Or could the process, development and execution of ideas be just as thought provoking if communicated in a tangible way? A question that came up last week (which was presented in the class presentation) considered the presence—or lack thereof—of Ben Rubin’s artistic voice throughout his work, a theme that was perhaps less pronounced than previous artists we have studied. Do others feel after listening to Ben Rubin speak that they have a better insight or understanding for his artistic voice?

Rubin Response

I enjoyed Rubin's presentation, as it was very well put together. Moreover, he was very knowledgeable and easy to follow. He seemed to be a very practical artist, who explained his vision clearly. The NY Times building work that he did was very interesting, but I was hoping to see something a bit different from his other similar project. Nonetheless, his emphasis on information with his art was very intriguing.

Rubin/Breitz Response

Rubin's lecture was particularly compelling given the framing device he used to open a discussion of his work: the rules of semantics. As other students have highlighted and as I believe our group presentation did, Rubin presented his work as oriented towards a mediation on and manipulation of the codes of intelligibility.

It was interesting to note that this has thus far resulted in a number of works that address text, and that Rubin's past work with visual semiotics--his failed Master's dissertation for example--seem to present as of yet insurmountable challenges for the field of programming.

This failure suggests a potent insight onto the ways in which contemporary idioms for meaning, communication, and institutionality rely on linguistic structures. For example, linguistically modeled programming drives contemporary databases in banks, health care facilities, and schools. Additionally, the majority of our phone communication rely heavily on text, though the field is heavily cluttered with 'unreadable' signs (as Rubin highlighted during his class visit) such as emoticons.

Though I find Rubin's work draws wanted attention to processes of signification, I do wish his pieces would use form more directly to critique this information. This is perhaps why I felt that the iterations of the "listening Post" format made for boring and unexceptional art. This series has in part convinced me that what makes art 'art' relies fundamentally on the vision or alternative perspective a work provides.

Thus, I would have found Rubin's work more pertinent had he, for example, worked to develop software that could read and scour emoticons, or flikr databases. Or, I would have been excited had his work questioned audience and space more rigorously in his "Moveable Type" and "Shakespeare Machine" installations, or by further work with "Listening Post" live. Frankly, the footage of this last endeavor showed me less that the project was ill suited to theatre, than the fact that Rubin and his collaborators have NO EXPERIENCE in making live performance. This is not to suggest an elitist form of knowledge drives specific aesthetic forms, but to imply that an information cache regarding the types of meaning, resonance, and presentational/representational tropes of a particular form drive an economy of aesthetic exchange that is difficult to trade in if one does not speak the artistic 'lingua franca.'

Restated, I would expect Rubin to make live performance art about as compelling as my computer code (I am practically a technological illiterat). His knowledge of technology is as specialized as my knowledge of theatre and music, and it seems naive for individuals to suppose equal buying power between forms.

Interesting New Media art might be then, simply work that asks, "why this form?' I felt that I set up Breitz to answer this question in her presentation. The purpose of questioning Breitz's work in relation to Diane Arbus' celebrated and groundbreaking photo Identical Twins, was meant in part to critique the content of Breitz's contribution. Displaying 'difference within repetition,' Breitz's artistic goal, has been done before--over and over again...not only by Rochenberg, and Nietzsche...BUT LITERALLY WITH TWINS (by Arbus). Thus, all that I am able to find artistic about Breitz's piece--Factum--is it's medium. What does film do that photo cannot? What does film and the edit, or the loop, do to work that qualifies it as ART as opposed to REPRODUCTION? Breitz's inability to answer this question on Arbus then--stating that she was never really 'into' Arbus' work (??? surely she is familiar with this cannon as an art history PhD dropout)--reads simply as reproduction that just got lucky. While I am a big believer in form informing content (and I believe Breitz's Factum does accomplish this), I wish that Breitz had been able to speak more eloquently about her work within film, and the properties of it that make her work 'art'.

Ben Rubin Response

I want to begin by saying, that I really enjoyed Ben Rubin’s lecture. I thought the depth of his presentation very nicely matched the depth of his work, and the majority of the effects that his work produced were conscious decisions that he made and was very much aware of. I found the most fascinating aspect of his lecture to be about Listening Posts, and more specifically the discrepancy between when it was done completely by computer, and when he had actors take on the different roles of the text. He willingly admits that the piece is more effective when it is completely done by machine, and I agree. The lifelessness and monotone, calming voice that the computer brings to the text, creates a much more fluid piece. Rubin referred to the outcome often times as a “poem.” With the computer speaking, I do feel as if the text in Listening Posts does indeed create a poem. However, when actors try to give life to the words often times it seemed over dramatized and choppy. Furthermore, I really enjoy the piece as something that is disconnected from the real. By this I mean, that the meaning and the words are “out there” in the world of cyberspace, rather than “in here” projected by the voices of people that are in close proximity to us, and whose faces are identifiable.

Ben Rubin Response

I was intrigued by Ben Rubin's text-mining work, although I agree with the point that the way he visually presented his data (flowing text on a screen). Rubin's presentation actually sparked more of an interest in Mark Hansen's algorithms, rather than the final visual and sonic piece. While "Listening Post" is quite compelling, it seems to lose its artistic value with the addition of the New York Times piece and the new Shakespeare work. I would be interested in some sort algorithm that could take images from Flickr or Google Images and present it in a new and compelling form.

During the presentation I would have liked to hear about Rubin's non-textual based projects in further detail. He glossed over the video panopitcon of the world piece, which I thought was very interesting. I would have liked to know why he was showing certain clips on the screens and why he used multiple screens to show a larger image.

Nonetheless I was impressed with the new media aspects of Rubin's work, and hope that he can in the future, produce work that diverges from his previous forms.

Rubin response.

I thought Rubins presentation was enjoyable. His work seems inspired and

pretty innovative.

However, it always strikes me how consistent artists try to be with their work, across projects and years, they want to do the same thing over and over again. This is a problem -- it directly reflects the old media culture that "new" media endeavors ought not be apart of. If we are merely labeling work "new media" because it integrates contemporary forms of technology, (code, screens, algorithms, etc) we're in trouble. New media art needs experiential explorers -- psycho-cosmonauts, people who are willing to take their minds to the moon.

One cannot truly experiment if one is forced to do the same thing over and over (because of financial inconsistencies)...

I thought his Rubins latest exploration of internet chat-text were really pointless, and overall not interesting. Why? Why not just watch television? I failed to see the relationship between the text and actors, other than the imitation of a really horrible soap opera.

Rubin Reaction

When researching Ben Rubin last week, I realized that much of his work was based on the same “scrolling text” model. Although the types of text (the actual words and their sources) featured in each piece varied and was the component that made each piece “original,” the reused scrolling text model made his work seem monotonous to me, perhaps because it seemed too easy to create multiple works based on what was once but is no longer a new technique or form. I felt this same monotony when Rubin presented “Shakespeare Machine,” his sculpture for New York’s Public Theater. I initially found this piece exciting because, even though it still utilized scrolling text as a foundation for the work, his initial models of the piece were different from his previous works in their expansiveness and controlled chaos, by which I refer to the tubes of text intersecting and crossing each other, the text coming together and going apart in the same tube, and the use of both the theater’s inside and outside environment and thereby the engagement of audiences in both environments. However, I felt disappointed every time Rubin said that, in the end, these models didn’t work and was dissatisfied when Rubin presented the model that would actually be used to create the piece; all his great and more innovative ideas suddenly seemed reduced into something much smaller in size and far easier to create. Moreover, when Rubin presented another one of his pieces that took the exact same sculptural form as “Shakespeare Machine,” I really recognized that Rubin is more concerned with the textual components, rather than visual components, of his works, but I find it harder to engage with his work when only the textual components of his pieces are new while the visual forms are not.

A Follow up on Ben Rubin's Talk

I really enjoyed Ben Rubin's talk. He does not need to rebrand himself as a new media artist. He IS a new media artist. His collaborator, Mark Hansen, is also known for his contributions to the subject of statistical computing. I am sure nobody in the audience could think "I can do better!". Or let me correct it, in some of the ATC lectures, for example the Negativeland talk, in many instances I found myself thinking "some teenagers on youtube have done a much more thought provoking collage" I am sure no teenager can harness the idea of text-mining the way Ben Rubin has done!

However, I am surprised by how he explained his "Shakespeare" piece. He did not talk about how dramatic stories in Shakespeare's plays have influenced his artwork. After all we are talking about the greatest dramatist in human history. I was expecting to see him talk about how the ending of "King Lear" or the mythology around "Macbeth" has contributed to his artwork. But what we got was the 3D mechanical design of a number of electronic billboards . And I could hardly see any relation to Shakespeare work in his latest work. But to be fair, on the other hand it was still a work in progress.

Although he compensated by covering more on his artwork for the Contemporary Jewish Museum and it was nice to see him explain it. As an applied math student I really appreciated his short discussion with prof. Goldberg about the combinatorial science. These are important parts of the history of mathematics that are often overlooked in our education system (see this article).

Rubin Response

Although I thought that Rubins concepts were interesting, I did not really see the aesthetic appeal of the execution of his presentation of those ideas. I liked the idea of turning the noise of a chatroom in to a kind of poetry, but I wish that Rubin had highlighted this poetry more in his pieces. All of his works seemed to take on a similar format: small screens lined up in some way with text running through them. “Listening Post” was my favorite piece because of the curvature of the screens and the voice reading the random lines of a chat. This set up seemed to help envelop the viewer within it, and experience the piece. The creativity of “Listening Post” made me excited to see what Rubin would show us next, but I was disappointed to see that the rest of his pieces did not stray far from the format of “Listening Post.” In his movie theatre piece, I was excited by his failed ideas, but was not very impressed with the finished products. I wish he had gone with one of his original ideas in perhaps a different venue. The fact that he compromises his art for a commission makes me think that his art is more about pleasing his employer than conveying a meaningful message in an aesthetically interesting way.

Rubin, new media, and architecture

Rubin's presentation of his latest project made me think about "new media art" as a medium, and the role of the new media artist. He spent a significant amount of time on his Shakespeare project, showing us all the different versions that failed. I think it's valid to ask, WHY? Of course, it's a bit disappointing that all those cool ideas never came to fruition, but it also raises questions about what being a new media artist means.

In Rubin's lecutre, the style of presenting "plans" reminded me a lot of a few architect's lectures that I've been to. Architects spend a whole lot of time planning projects that don't happen, because they enter competitions, go through juries, and work with engineers who tell them their plans aren't possible. I think even Zaha Hadid was saying that most of her designs are never built. Is this becoming an acceptable mode of presentation for new media artists? (Utterback discussed the various experiments she went through in order to make her mall piece work too...)

Through all the presentations in the ATC lectures this semester, the artists have presented new media art as a form very much invested with public spaces, wide audience appeal, and breaking out of traditional spaces of presentation. In order to do this though, new media artists need to find their own solutions. This is a huge generalization, but it seems to me that these solutions often involve site and function specific answers--kind of like architecture. So, I don't really have an argument at this point, but it's an interesting thought to think about how the really really old medium of architecture and a "new" medium of "new media" have so much in common. Which brings me back to a point that Rubin made during the Q and A: new technology is not moving as fast as we think it is. In fact, despite all the obsession with the "new" surrounding criticism and coverage of new media art, perhaps the *new* new media art can also show how things go backwards too, without reverting to the techniques or arguments of preservation or revivalism.

Rubin Response

Although I really enjoy Rubin’s installations that involve light boxes, his lecture made me think that he is stuck in a bit of a rut. Since “Listening Post”, his major pieces seem to revolve around the same concept. For example, in the end, his Shakespeare Machine piece was reduced to flowing text in suspended boxes. And I also agree with the previous two posts because I too was a little frustrated with how he presented this most recent project. He kept sharing interesting and unique proposals, such as having flowing words on the ground outside the entrance that lures the audience in, but they were all eventually unworkable. Rubin was easily defeated by any difficulty that arose with his ideas and gave up. It was disappointing to see his lack of enthusiasm or persistence to find ways around these technical obstacles. It was almost a tease to show us these clever proposals that will never be created. Rubin dwelled too much on blueprints and statistics and lacked in artistic explanation—everything was very mechanical.

Also, in regards to “Listening Post”, it was interesting that when someone in class asked Rubin how he would solve the problem caused by a dramatic decrease in chat room popularity, that he would use old stored data. I would suggest that to keep up with the times, if he could somehow use Facebook or Twitter as more modern sources of data. The text would be equally entertaining and varied. Also, if he used old data, it would defeat the purpose of having the text represent the “Now”.

Rubin response

I found Rubin's perspective at 90 degrees with mine (a definite bias for the visual). Several times he framed the interpretation or development of his work in terms of the text or audio bringing meaning to the audiovisual. An example is in his description of an early design for the NY Public Theatre -- the tubes of light on the ground outside of the building. He said that having the pulses of light come together to form words brought meaning to otherwise random pulses of light. I agree that this may have brought an easier or a different meaning to the piece but I would argue that there is strong meaning in the light itself, it's placement on the ground, it's directional movement, etc. He did not answer the question from the audience regarding the visual component of his work very directly -- he twisted it back to what the audio brings to the audiovisual, implying minimal concern with the visual. The fact that he focuses on audio and text is not too surprising since he is a self-proclaimed sound artist but I was surprised that it was so dominant given his background in semiotics. If it is the case that the visual element of his work just sort of happens, I wonder how it might be different if he gave more equal attention.

A few more not so well connected thoughts:

This maybe a bit harsh since Rubin didn't have time to detail the technical failures of many of his proposal ideas: I was a little disappointed in his lack of ingenuity in overcoming technical difficulties. E.g., wireless technologies can eliminate the need for wires. Financial constrains, I could have understood better.

I actually also got a little bored with the scrolling text motif. Even the current version of the Shakespeare piece (the chandelier) could be improved by juxtaposing the moving text in a more interesting way (e.g. having static phrases where the same letter from the both phrases is in the position where the screens overlap) -- the layered screens seem dated.

I found Rubin's comment about machines being able to generate humor interesting. I wonder if humor is his main criterion or if other emotional states are more-or-less interesting to him or if it is really just semi-recognizable pattern? Random combinations of text are probably more likely to be humorous because things are out of context, which in itself is often funny.

Ending on a positive note, I really liked the idea of sampling other content now available on-line, especially visual components. And I was intrigued by Rubin's description of his work being a combination of chance and mechanism. I am studying this topic of contention (niche vs. neutral theory) in my ecological work. I also think it is a strange complexity in human life -- the rush of the unknown and the longing for the familiar.

Rubin Comments

Rubin stated during his lecture that one major objective of his work that involved extracting words and phrases from their original context was to create new meaning for these isolated phrases while simultaneously stripping them of any intended meaning.  Since meaning relies almost entirely on subjective experience and interpretation, I found it strange that he only focused on the technical and structural aspect of his work while ignoring how audience reception and subjectivity factors into it.  His conception of meaning seems to follow a very structuralist approach.  He discussed at one point how his methods for extracting humorous phrases relied on code that defined what humor was according to a particular pattern or structure, and then mechanically pulled any words that fit within this structure or system of rules.  I feel however, that these complex and well-formulated aggregation systems can be very efficient only at extracting and delivering arbitrary phrases that have the potential to convey humor, or any sort of meaning at all.  The actual construction of meaning falls into the hands of the subjective audience, yet it was generally unclear how the audience was supposed to factor into his work in any active way.  

On another note, I found his work to be very aesthetically impressive, and it was intriguing to see the ways he chose to use mechanized data aggregation to reach an artistic, conceptual end.  It did get frustrating at one point when he kept showing great visions of projects he had hoped to create, but that always "failed for any number of reasons".  It was never made clear why those visions actually failed, or what the significance of showing them to us was in the first place. 

D.Haber Ben Rubin Questions

1. 1. When you first created “Listening Post”, what made you choose the voices of British males to be the sole vocalizations of the dialogue occurring in the chatrooms? Was there motivation behind this particular choice?

2. 2. In the digital world the laws that govern the physical world often become blurred, and un-applicable. Do you think that “Listening Post” is an invasion of privacy to some degree? Or do you believe that the anonymity of the words keeps it from being such?

Rubin

One aspect of Listening Post that I was particularly drawn to was the way it materialized the shift in the nature of the public sphere of today's society, as it seems to continue to collectively move away from physical interpersonal interaction to the highly anonymised(emphasized by the robotic voice, and faceless text) and isolated means of public communication taking place over the internet.  Though notions of surveillance definitely make themselves apparent when observing this piece, I don't feel that Listening Post introduces any new concerns on the matter.  The people who post on chatrooms and blogs are well aware that their messages are made available to the public; they actively choose to put their views and comments on display.  Additionally, Homeland Security, the patriot act, "To Catch a Predator", etc, have made the ideas of security, privacy and surveillance on the internet an object of public awareness and concern.  Issues of ownership, however, do seem to arise. For instance, when we post our thoughts, ideas, and perspectives on public forums online, do they become public property at anyone's disposal, like Rubin? 

What I feel that Listening Post very effectively achieves by being on display in a public space, is creating a juxtaposition of the faceless public sphere as it exists online, and how it exists in a physical environment enriched with face-to-face human interaction and visible emotion.  Does the meaning of this piece rely on this juxtaposition and audience interaction?

Questions for Ben Rubin

Here are my questions for Ben Rubin,

1- In our last reading the author mentioned that Rubin's work is more influenced by his undergraduate studies rather than his time at MIT Media Lab. I am wondering, as a media lab alum, what was it's influence on his work. and which part of his work is more influenced by his education at media lab.

2- My second question is also related to his education. There are a lot of open source art source codes that came out of MIT media lab (for example "processing" programming language). Is he interested in releasing his codes under any community friendly licenses?

He's had a close collaboration with adobe, but some of adobe's software are terrible for audio arts. Did his work with adobe help them to improve their products for arts (I am specifically talking about audio capabilities in Flash)

Ben Rubin- Listening Post

I really enjoyed the sound and structure of Listening Post and too have considered (as it appears to be a running theme among many of the artists we have studied) the use or abuse of privacy in the piece—wondering what measures, if any, have been utilized to protect privacy or insure awareness on the part of chat room participants. If participants were in fact notified, it seems likely that their contribution to a chat room would be influenced, and the message fundamentally altered. A message might also change in meaning, as Charmaine points out, if Rubin takes specific fragments out of a conversation and consequently out of context. This leads me to wonder, to what extent does the awareness and intentionality of the participants in the chat room matter to this piece? While the synthesized voices may have been used in part to protect anonymity, might it also be used to represent a lack of emotion or conviction for statements permeated throughout the internet? In the Frieze magazine article, Peter Eleey suggests the thrill of this artwork is provided by the “excitement of recognition, the discovery of something legible or poignant in what could be a foreign and distant utterance, or simply coming from the room next door.” To what extent is the imagination on the part of the viewer (in reading these messages) important?

Rubin Questions

Like some others who have already posted, I'm curious about the choice of sound (the voice) selected for Listening Post. To me, the voice does two things, one affirming, and the other contradicting the textual information: First, it smooths over the differences in the many voices that the text is extracted from, by unifying it with a single voice. It's almost the opposite from the sound you would expect to hear (--which, in my mind, would be something like fast, incessant digital voices or tones, from which you wouldn't be able to discern individual words or phrases). But then, the smoothness and fluidty of the sound also has the opposite effect of the frenzy of the text coming in--it's impossible to read all the text at once, but very easy to absorb the soundscape as a whole. Are the different functions of auditory and visual perception something you work with?

On a related note, did you receive very different responses to the work as a visual only piece in its early phases at The Kitchen and the BAM from its later phase, with sound?

questions for rubin

1) Media artist Ben Rubin collaborates with statistician Mark Hansen, on various projects. I am deeply interested in how collaboration works in new media art practice, what is their process in creating look like? How may collaboration between different disciplines characterize media art? I find this hybrid/collab very exciting, and wonder what other forms of arts such as a novel, or film would look like, esp with a deeply ingrained collaboration...?

2) Rubin is quoted, "Electronics allow you to be more expressive with the physical forms. You can bring dynamics and behaviors to what would otherwise be a static inanimate object." Rubin's quote prompts questions: How can we characterize the differences between new media art, and previous forms such as sculpture or even welding. What are these dynamics, and does it change not only reception but does it change the ways humans interact with one another and within society? How can we theorize these nuances of contemporary visuality and media art?

--Margaret

Ben Rubin Questions

In Rubin's piece using voices and digital texts from online communities, which specific chat rooms did he use? I am curious to see how he selected the sites in order to either represent the world as a whole, or to single out a specific demographic of people.

I'd also like to know if there is more meaning behind the work other than making a point about people's passive attention to the happenings around us. Is there any specific argument being made?

It is a really interesting piece to me and I'd like to hear more about the creative process of creating it.

Ben Rubin Questions

I am doing Rubin's presentation tomorrow at class, so I will discuss some of his work and major themes during lecture tomorrow. Right now Ill just bring up two major questions that I have.

1) Rubin calls himself media artist, but also reading the articles about him he is designer as well. I have certain opinions and definitions of artists, however, looking at Rubin's work I would mainly call him designer.
Does Rubin categorize his work into the theme of art or entertainment?

2. My second point in terms of Rubin's work is pointed toward the genreal idea of his pieces. I did not find one general topic that connects all pieces.
Is there one common topic throughout all of his art work (and if there is common topic, what is it)?

Ben Rubin Questions

1) In both Spin and San Jose Semaphore you use a minimalist image of a rotating orange disk. Yet in the former you included a soundtrack to each disk, to add texture to the image, as if each were somehow alive. Why did you later strip the sound qualities away and instead code a message into the orange disk? Why did you decide to reuse that same image? And how do you determine what type of sounds or story (the novel The Crying Lot of 49) you encode in these two works?

2) Why did you, in Listening Post choose a male British-tinged voice as the speaker of all the random, found text? What social implications might this have?

Questions for Rubin

In Christopher Hawthorne’s article, “Sound + Vision,” he describes Ben Rubin’s subway project, where Rubin changes the tones of the different sound signals, in order to create a more humane environment for the commuters. Although I think this project has given the station a more positive feel, how would Rubin describe the project as an artistic one? It seems this piece could have been a psychological study on how certain emotions are triggered by certain sounds. Does Rubin conduct studies where he uses test subjects to determine which sounds cause certain feelings?

 

In his piece “Listening Post,” Rubin uses internet chatter to create a piece that exposes common themes and topics of internet discussion.  Internet language, and real life language are very different. This project would have taken on new meaning had Rubin decided to use different parts of conversation he heard while sitting outside on a park bench rather than the chatter he found on the internet. To what degree is Rubin’s art trying to show that group communication over the internet is a reflection of group communication outside of that space? 

Rubin Questions

Given your background in semiotics and programming, so you think of all sound as carrying information? If so, is meaning in semantics (word choice), prosody, or, in relationality -- the grid of call and response your work seems so inspired by? How have you chosen to highlight this relationality in your pieces, and what are the stakes in it? For example, in Listening Post, the relationality of a virtual public call and response idiom is highlighted by bits of displayed text culled from online forums, and intoned voicings of said text. Yet the voicings are homogenized under one male voice--slightly 'British' tinged, according to one review. Is there a loss of will, identity, or liberty in an idiom of relationality? Or, given your Public Outcry piece, whar can be gained by reframing everyday voices?

Code

One way of looking at art in general is viewing it as code. Codes reveal, hide, and instruct. Moveable Type and Listening Post harness the visual/archival record of personal data transmission on networks....I am reminded of Dave Willis' use of eavesdropping scanners in Negativland's music.

Greg Niemeyer stated at a recent BCNM luncheon, there seems to be a grammar-like syntax associated with the kind of Web exchanges that these works capture.

Questions to Ben Rubin: Do you see your work revealing a syntax or grammar of neural networks, and how much would you say that is shaped by technology that is employed to make these statements? What have you learned about the Internet in those pieces, specifically about how the Web is coded and its impact on user interface? ~Reggie

Rubin Questions

1. Not only does your more recent work show an increasing focus on text, but there are few pieces that use a combination of text and sound—is there a reason you tend to keep the those two qualities separate?

2. For you, is the intent of your pieces related to their mystery? For instance, because your texts “Moveable Type” are so fragmented from their original source and context, the audience may feel like they’re missing your intent or where the words came from. In other words, is one of your goals to keep the audience in the dark by hiding the sources behind your texts and sounds?

Ben Rubin Questions Public vs. Private

Ben Rubin’s installation Listening Post displays fragments of text from chat rooms and other virtual communication spaces in real time. He describes this installation romantically as presenting the music created by people chatting on the Internet and providing the response that “[a]nyone who types a message in a chat room and hits ‘send’ is calling out for” (http://www.earstudio.com/projects/listeningpost.html?middle=listening_statement.html). However, the installation seems presumptuous in its assumption that people who communicate on the Internet want to be heard indiscriminately and therefore knowingly and willingly surrender their privacy when they chat online. Moreover, although the Internet can be thought of as a public space where opinions can be shared, users may object to the installation’s ability to take those opinions out of context by changing its location (from the Internet’s public space to a physical public space) and isolating it from the conversation it is part of.

Therefore, has Rubin taken precautions to ensure that he does not violate chatters’ privacy online? Does he only take fragments from conversations in completely public chat rooms or warn chatters that their conversations may possibly be used in his installation? Furthermore, this installation presents only personal statements like those on nationality, age, gender, sexual preference, religion, politics, or daily life, but, because Rubin incorporates only these types of statements in this piece and is isolating them from the context of the conversation they were written in, isn’t it impossible to evaluate whether these are true statements or reflections of their author as opposed to jokes or sarcastic comments? Whether such statements are made in sincerity or jest changes the tone of the installation dramatically.

Rubin’s Listening Post is also interesting in that the text it displays is read or sung aloud by a voice synthesizer rather than a variety of human voices. Did Rubin choose to use this synthesizer rather than human voices in order to mimic the anonymity that people have online, or is he trying to neutralize his piece’s ability to violate chatters’ online privacy by distancing the text from their human authors by having it read by an obviously non-human voice? Moreover, is he emphasizing that people today have more of a digital voice, meaning that (most) communication today takes place in digital spaces rather than real, physical public spaces, or is he showing how everyone’s voice blends together online, that a 1,000 people chatting online can become a single voice through digital technology?

In his pieces Dark Source, Moveable Type, and Four Stories, Rubin similarly flirts with and examines the boundary between private and public space. For example, Dark Source displays the blacked-out code of a commercial electronic voting machine. Rubin obtained this private code, blacked-out to protect intellectual property, on the Internet, a public space where many people could have been able to discover it. Rubin not only obtains this private code from a public digital space but also proceeds to display the code in a physically public space, and this code is what is supposed to aggregate voters’ private opinions into a single public opinion. Again, Rubin is taking something out of context, taking the code from the machine to a paper display and taking the code from its owner’s private space to a public space for everyone to see, while also commenting on how technology can condense many voices into one.

B.R Qs//

What influences your choice of sound for your installations? Thinking about The Listening Post in particular, the musical soundtrack created exhibits a tendency toward minimalism and repeating patterns. How does the notion of planned musical composition, relate to visual regeneration (referring to the text displays, which are generative, in that they continuously renew, in real time, their textual display, where as the music just loops...) ?

What do you think the relationship is between silence and darkness?

If you could design the sound for a firetruck, or a police siren, what would it be like?

Any tips for writing grants?

Ben Rubin Questions

1. Although I find Rubin's Moveable Type to be a visually appealing mode through which to transmit real-time news, the form seems to resemblesthe form used in Listening Post. What was Rubin's motivation for re-using this model? Is there something particularly striking about the simplicity of the pixilated screens, or is this reworking show the limitations to Rubin's practice?

2. In Listening Post, Rubin uses phrases aquired from various chat rooms, bulletin boards and other unrestricted internet forums. What inspired or drew Rubin's attention to the particular forums that he used? Were they merely restricted to topic of politics, or did he extend the content to discussions on media as well?

Ben Rubin questions

1) In most of your past works, you bring a visual element to sound -- in a sense the viewer is seeing sound in ways that they might usually not (the movement of words out into space in Story Pipeline, reaction of the Semaphore to airplane traffic, the visual pattern of words in Listening Post). What is your process in developing how sound extends beyond the audio? External / internal inspiration? Natural vs. man-made experience? etc.

2) In several of you pieces you similarly use early computer fonts and older display technologies (pixelated screens). In many of the same pieces you reduce the visual and/or language to fragments. What is the intent of these choices? E.g., Are they made to reflect the underlying structure of digital/virtual information, on/off signals?

3) Story Pipeline is an interesting juxtaposition of technology weaving through the natural world. There is limited description on your website and are many interpretations. Two in particular immediately came to my mind: the weaving through the trees implies no/limited interaction and the striping of audio from the language coupled with the snowy, bare-treed forest suggests reduced potential. Please comment on your decision to combine these often disparate worlds and what the interaction means to you.