Abstract

Grammar for

Installation

"Rather tha
discovering
isolated fa
preferred l
already kno
together."

h|u|m|b|o|t

Source: A.v
"Personal
Narrative..

Screenshot: H|U|M|B|O|T installation, 'net condition',

Zentrum fr Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, Germany,
1999-2000 with a team of hackers, datatects, artists and
architects assembled by Philip Pocock.

An Aesthetics of Participation rather

than Consumption.
There are risks involved, of course, facing
cybercinema strategies. If an author usurps his or
her authorship, sharing authority over the
production of media with audiences, as
unpredictable as human nature is. Applying dated
aesthetic criteria stamped by an imperative of
passive audience consumption, cybercinema cannot
be measured. The value added by a radical, and in
some ways ancient, rebalancing of consumption and
production, unfolding a new participatory
aesthetic into a consumptive one, has far too few
precedents of its own in technological media.
Critics must rewind to pre-literate,
pre-technolgical, oral and corporeal cultures, to
imagine a set of criteria which may be applied to
measure the value of a aesthetic rebalancing

Diagram: FL
[Green - H|
interweave
FLATBOOK [Y
Humboldt] o
screens acc
parameters
time, situa
keyword com
logs of rec
cybercinema
at the site

consumption and production by all participants,

authors and audiences alike.
H|U|M|B|O|T audiences may passively trace previous
interactors on the site, or lean forward and
participate themselves. If the dramaturgy falls
short due to an ingrained aesthetic based purely
on consumption of our media, at least, a message
encouraging individual involvement in the
production of global culture is being delivered,
along with lyrical and informational cybercinema.
It may seem chaotic, just too many interactions,
but essentially interactivity by individuals in
the consensual creation of content (form and
meaning) is as crucial a tool to ensure personal
freedom and human rights as voting. There is only
an active vote, and although it may seem lost in
an ocean of votes, it does have meaning. To
produce rather than consume political leaders may
be not much more important in the unfolding
century, as producing rather than consuming our
media
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