mbutler

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Projecting Information into the Distant Future

Launch:
October 18, 2001. 16:30 GMT
International Center, Iowa City (Latitude 41.66 & Longitude -91.53)

Calling all time-travelers.

By creating this document to be institutionally archived as well as passed on as personal heirlooms we are sending you a message. If time-travel is possible when you are reading this please visit us at the above time and location.

The three frames within the video represent the past, present, and future events surrounding the precise moment the traveler should appear. All times used in the document were synced with the U.S. Naval Observatory atomic clock.

You will need a site to visit in the past which you will not disrupt. We are expecting you and will not be hostile as others who are surprised might become. The video will enter into personal and perhaps institutional archives to be later viewed by persons capable of traveling into the past to the moment in which we created the original video recording.

The key component of this process would be the archiving and preservation of the video in order to keep it “readable” by future people. It will be the duty of future archivists and librarians to convert the video into suitable and relevant formats.

The original video was captured on miniDV tape and later converted into Quicktime and Windows Media files.
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Other Resources:
Bebe Williams
MIT Conference

Note that our event predates the MIT event by several years.  This goes to show the University of Iowa is leading the way in cutting-edge research.

If a time-traveler does not appear, one of the following might be true:

1.Time-travel will never become possible.
2.Time-travel becomes possible. Their time travel capabilities are inadequate to visit us.
3.Time-travel becomes possible. They do not wish to visit us.
4.Our archiving and preservation techniques are inadequate. Our message does not reach the future.
5.Time travel becomes possible. They are willing and able to travel to the past. Our archiving and preservation techniques are adequate. The message has not been accessed in its future database.
6. Time travel becomes possible. They are willing and able to travel to the past. Our archiving and preservation techniques are adequate. We are not able to perceive or become aware of their visitation.

Thaw 2002 festival of media and the dATAPLOT exhibit at SXU.

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This was a CD-ROM developed for The University of Iowa’s College of Nursing (in conjunction with National Human Genome Research Institute). It was marketed to nursing educators at the collegiate and hospital staff development levels and included modules on ethics, genetic testing, and case studies on breast cancer and Alzheimer disease. It provided for individually paced, interactive learning with graded quizzes and sample video cases by professional actors. Starting with a 300-page written document we illustrated this text with interactive animations, graphics, video, and sound.

This project was produced simultaneously with The Ethics of Genetic Testing. The CD-ROM included hours of video interviews, stories, and case studies into an interactive learning environment to inform health professionals about the impacts of substance abuse in rural areas. Included on the disc were several multimedia learning objectives for the user to gain an understanding of the biology of addiction including basic neuroscience, pharmacology and behavioral science at a level easily understood by the general public.

Haptic Author was a research project dealing with the writing and modifying of multi-dimensional English sentences and sentence fragments purely through touch. The goal was to discover new ways of presenting and accessing electronic information other than “link clicking” through static content. Often times these experiments blurred the line between subject and object and could shift the narrative voice depending on the user’s input. The project consisted of dynamic sentences with four or more potential versions “hidden” behind each other that could be accessed via custom software designed for a Panasonic touch screen. For this version only binary changes were made at the word level, though multiple changes could be possible. Shown here is the ‘I want/won’t (to) be(lie)ve’ sentence as part of an installation at the Parquet Gallery in Iowa City.

A few of the sentences/fragments used for this gallery version:

{I/You} {want/won’t} (to) be(lie)ve.
{I/You} {watching/touching} {me/you.}
The {haphazardly/carefully} {written/read} line of {poem/code}
{I/You} have {no/a} choice{./?}
{I/You} {know/don’t know} what I/you mean{./?}
{n/m}otions of {pro/re}gress
{I am/You are} {not} {important}

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Sarsenworld is a theoretical video game that explores the concept of “death” in a blurred distinction between fact and fiction. It’s a game-world where players can sacrifice their life and be reborn inside the game. The strange, paranormal interface allows players to control their characters “on the other side,” and communicate or seek guidance with the ghosts of former players. Once players die, however, they are cut from their human body and exist as a self-aware character as part of the virtual environment. To create Sarsenworld, every last nuance of human behavior must be categorized and codified. This gives players the added feature of being able to twist nature to serve their own occult indulgences. We are under the control of an advanced AI who is omnipresent and all seeing; everyone knows that! Learn to perform queries on this cosmic database and you just might “level up.” Sarsenworld requires players to perform cryptic rituals with the screen characters in order to unlock the layers of reality that would allow them to communicate with the beyond. The game also utilizes advanced motion detection and speech recognition technology to translate the verbal commands and hand gestures required to summon the game “spirits” to do your bidding. It takes advantage of PML (Psionic Markup Language) to allow greater functionality with the afterlife. The “spirits” are a proprietary mixture of real ghosts and state-of-the-art algorithms used to simulate personalities and resurrect dead people ‘IRL’. The ability to actually die and be reborn inside the game has been disabled for the demo.

First appeared at the Tender, Squalacious, and Digital show at the University of Iowa Museum of Art.

Scavenged snippets of damaged library A/V material reconstituted into an impressionistic video narrative about ‘helping.’ Displayed as single channel video as well as multiple monitor installation. Winner of the Juror’s Choice Award at the 2001 Film and Video Retrospective, Des Moines Art Center.

Pale-Glo was an extremely short-lived corporation with high hopes. Our plan was to float our ideas (whatever they might be) in the mass media with the hopes of picking up a little publicity. It was going to be fun to use the corporate workflow and advertising structure to create a digital art project for school. We started gaining just a grain of notoriety when another student in the department, John Fryer, exploded in the international media for All My Life For Sale. It was great to see one of us go all the way with a class project, but after John was interviewed by Conan O’Brian and his book was optioned by Warner Bros I started to get really pissed at him because I thought we were being graded on the curve. I couldn’t even get one of our local ‘zines to cover me let alone appear on the Today Show. Fortunately we all got an ‘A’ anyway. Everybody wins.

Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one’s environment. In common parlance, consciousness denotes being awake and responsive to one’s environment; this contrasts with being asleep or being in a coma.

Consciousness is notoriously difficult to define or locate. Many cultures and religious traditions place the seat of consciousness in a soul separate from the body. Conversely, many scientists and philosophers consider consciousness to be intimately linked to the neural functioning of the brain.

An understanding of necessary preconditions for consciousness in the human brain may allow us to address important ethical questions. For instance, to what extent are non-human animals conscious? At what point in fetal development does consciousness begin? Can machines ever achieve conscious states? These issues are of great interest to those concerned with the ethical treatment of other beings, be they animals, fetuses, or in the future, machines.

The term ‘pale-glo’ refers to the barely perceptible emissions from our own thinking process.

Our corporate model

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pale-glo produces more songs for revelation
This was our first attempt at controlling brainwaves through various frequencies and hypnotic effects embedded in music. Many of the tracks also contain subliminal messages and induced EVP recordings.

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30-second radio ad

(CHARACTERS: PICKLE AND PERSON, LIGHTHEARTED, LIGHT COMICAL MUSIC UNDER)

PICKLE: CAN YOU ZIP ME UP?

PERSON: SURE. (SFX: ZIPPER CLOSES) THIS IS A GOOD-LOOKING PICKLE COSTUME.

PICKLE: THANKS. THE KIDS LIKE IT.

PERSON: BEEN A PICKLE LONG?

PICKLE: I’VE BEEN “MR. PICKLE” FOR TWENTY-THREE YEARS.

PERSON: YOU MUST LIKE IT.

PICKLE: NOT REALLY. IT’S KINDA GONE SOUR…I HAVE NO FUNCTION. (RECOVERING A BIT) BUT, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS…YOU’RE A PICKLE ONCE AND THEN YOU KEEP DOING IT AND PRETTY SOON, “WHOOSH,” TWENTY-THREE YEARS. I’M IN A TRAP.

PERSON: YOU’RE IN A PICKLE.

PICKLE: SO TRUE.

PERSON: WHY NOT GET OUT OF YOUR PICKLE AND INTO PALE-GLO?

PICKLE: THEY WANT A PICKLE?

PERSON: NO, PALE-GLO WANTS TO UTILIZE INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AS A COMPETITIVE TOOL TO ENHANCE PERSONAL RESULTS DURING TIMES OF MAJOR CHANGE. PALE-GLO CAN DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PROCESSES USING MULTIPLE DELIVERY PLATFORMS TO ACCOMPLISH THE KEY OBJECTIVES OF ALIGNMENT, AGILITY, AND PRIDE. PALE-GLO WILL GATHER AND ANALYZE MISSION-CRITICAL DATA, INTERPRETING AND EVALUATING THE INFORMATION IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WHOLE WORLD. THEN THEY WILL RECOMMEND UNIQUE STRATEGIC POSITIONING AND WORK WITH YOU TO IMPLEMENT NEW PROJECTS FOR EXTRICATION.

PICKLE: …PICKLES NEED EXTRICATION…

PERSON: ‘COURSE THEY DO. PALE-GLO COULD OPEN UP WHOLE NEW WORLDS FOR YOU.

PICKLE: I’LL HAVE FUNCTION?

PERSON: MAKES SENSE, DOESN’T IT?

PICKLE: (GUNG HO) (SFX: ZIPPER UNZIPS) IT SURE DOES! I’M GETTING OUT OF THIS PICKLE AND INTO PALE-GLO!
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advertising truck

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Recent Mergers
We attempted to acquire several creative projects as subsidiaries of pale-glo by offering up to $200 for the full copyright of semester projects in a digital art class. Here is the legal video produced as part of Recent Mergers.

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Download the assignment of copyright form

This is a conceptual translation of the sentence “Sometimes I think like a computer.” into binary, where each letter is represented by a string of 8 ones or zeros. 1=YES 0=NO. Some people believe that the entire universe is the result of a series of yes-or-no choices that take place at the quantum level. Others believe the entire universe is contained within the human mind. Some feel that our mind is just a computing device. I haven’t made up mine yet. Maybe.

Originally produced for Uber-Setzung/Trans-lation at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. It was later used in the dATAPLOT exhibit at the SXU gallery.

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Composite was a painting installation at the University of Iowa’s Checkered Space. Danielle and Kelli created two large vinyl banners with bingo daubers. Nathan produced a series of palm-sized iconic paintings. Matthew created this computer display to demonstrate a way to classify and access their work via a handcrafted electronic catalog. By clicking on one of the dots a painting appears on the top portion of the screen. If pressed in the correct sequence, different secret video-paintings can be unlocked.

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This video is dedicated to everyone with religious devotion to graphical and media representations of nature. It attempts to look at the Weather Channel from a spiritual standpoint while taking a scientific view on Eternal Word TV. For this initial proof-of-concept, I merely juxtaposed the soundtracks of each video. In the future I’d like to create radar graphics and data that suggested perhaps gods were responsible for the weather. In turn, I’d create a slideshow of scenery set to choir music praising meteorology facts and figures.

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In collaboration with textile artist Ursula McCarty, we produced this CD-ROM which documents her work with at-risk teenage girls at the Foundations 2 program in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Ursula spent several weeks at the shelter with the girls sewing a personally expressive quilt that covered an entire car. The car was then part of the Art on Wheels exhibition at CSPS in Cedar Rapids. We videotaped much of their progress and integrated that video along with text, music, and photos to create an interactive document of the project.

Video installation with Misha Burstein.

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Winner of the 1997 ART ON WHEELS competition sponsored by Legion Arts.