history

Interview with Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden

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http://rwm.macba.cat/en/sonia?id_capsula=819

Founded in Coventry (England) in 1968 by Michael Baldwin, Terry Atkinson, David Bainbridge and Harold Hurell, Art & Language brought together the work that these artists had been creating jointly since 1965. A year later, they published the first issue of the homonymous magazine Art-Language, a publication that reflected on theoretical problems of conceptual art and became a platform from which to develop the group’s projects. During 1969 and 1970, Mel Ramsden, Ian Burn, Joseph Kosuth and Charles Harrison joined the group, which eventually ended up bringing together more than thirty artists in subsequent years. Since 1977, Art & Language has consisted of the artistic collaboration between Michael Baldwin and Mel Ramsden, with the theoretical contribution of the historian and art critic Charles Harrison, who died in 2009.
SON[I]A

Surveillance in Science Fiction

Posted by Christian

A fantastic list of surveillance devices thought up by Science Fiction authors: Surveillance in Science Fiction  About how most things that were once science fiction are now here and in use. Plus a list of actual surveillance measures deployed right now.

http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jun/6/natural-history-surveillance/

Submitted for your consideration: an entire list of surveillance concepts, proposed by science-fiction stories. Note the technologically real items: Augmented Reality, ubiquitous surveillance, drones, eavesdropping rays, and tracking systems. These are all things that we might call “cutting edge tech”, but indeed, certainly real tech. Surprise, shock, uncanniness, paranoia— yes, it is repeated enough to be cliche–the future is here.

But what is truly uncanny about our present “not-so-distant future”, is that we continue to refer to it as the future. There is no need to speculate. We have a fully evolved culture of surveillance technology in the United States.