Roy Ascott's "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?"

In "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?" Roy Ascott describes how in the world of technology and telecommunication, pure art became different than the telematic art, as he called it, in terms of form, content, concept, and behavior. With the electronic media including video, sound, and cybernetic systems, people’s behaviors changed according to this change in the telematic culture and because of the over explosion of information and data which gave the human another way to explore and to use his/her imagination and creativity. The only difference that Ascott emphasizes is the role of the content in sending and receiving the content. He states that in the world of pure art or classical communication, the maker creates the content and the meaning that s/he wants the viewer to receive, whereas in the telematic art world the creator or I shouldn’t say creator because there is no single creator, but creators who are the observers and the system that make the content and the meaning. And that makes the data of the content indeterminate, changeable, irrelevant, and unpredictable. Ascott likes joining science and art together when giving examples about the status of the creator and the participator, he states that the embrace of telematic art and the new technologies and the computer behaviors work in the same way that the quantum principle works in physics and in the same way Duchamp joined opposite emotions and interactions to form a telematic style for his art. The new way of creating and receiving the information from Ascott’s perspective is called the "global vision" where the participator/creator thinks, feels, and sees things in his/her own way, in isolation, and with authority to share the ideas, creativity, and senses live with other creators/participators in totally different world of their own. Ascott gives an example of how the computer in the telematic world is like the heart inside the human body is considered the leader of the circulation system and it is invisible but the effects are visible. Basically, what Ascott is trying to say is that the digital media and the computerized world are being totally different that we have known about art and science. It’s a world of immaterial, shared, spiritual, creative, virtual, and concrete data and thoughts.

Bill Viola's "Will There Be Condominiums in Data Space?"

Based on Bill Viola’s experiences and knowledge about all sorts of architecture and electronic media, he believed in the ability of making non linear video presentation and from that he got his article’s title. He believes that the data space and memory idea function effectively based on the human mind and imagination. Viola states that everything is contained or needs a space to exist like our memories and the memory of a computer in order to be able to save and “record” whatever is going on. Even if this space is an empty space or just a small portion of it is used, it still “exists in its entirety” and serves a function. Viola gives a good example of how a space can be serving a purpose when he says that even if you are recording emptiness with you video camera and it’s videoing, that means it is still on and functioning, but if you turn it off it’s not serving the data space concept. From this point, he based his article on the idea of video/film recording and editing and its relation to memory and how when watching a movie, the scenes become alive at the moment and seem continuos but when ending it and getting out of the mood it becomes past, yet kept in the memory. That’s why when making a film, editing and cleaning up the boring and unwanted parts is crucial and vital to the whole process. He talks about the relation between art, video, architecture, and the computer and how all these relate to a similar context based on historical data about realism and structuralism. Viola explains how the computer emerged into structuring and arranging interactive videos and discs. These videos that take the participant into spatial navigations of different times, speeds, places, and moods. With the use of the computer and the technology we have today, Viola emphasizes on the idea that with the help of the human mind and creativity everything became possible to achieve in this computer/video world to make it seem as real and 3D as possible. the editing techniques and the non sequential, non linear storytelling appeoach of using the video and the computer is emphasizing on the idea of data space and the linkage between the memory and the computer. Although this approach of having condominiums in data space is very successful and has been kind of used in cable TV, it is still in its beginnings and it has a long way to go with the vast amount of technologies and human creativity.