Electronic Beats Spring 2012 [antikvár]

Dear Readers,Some people claimour minds are gearedtowards understandingthe world in narrativeform. Storytelling iseverywhere. In thisissue of ElectronicBeats Magazine, weexplore not only theextent to which themedium is the mes-sage, but also how newmediums have creatednew messages. Is thecore of our commu-nication still peopleexchanging thoughtsand ideas in conversa-tion? Have new formsof digital literacyrevolutionized not justhow we communicatebut what we commu-nicate? For many of theartists, curators andvisionaries featured inthis issue, die answeris a resounding: "It'shard to say We'reproud to presenttheir perspectives onmusical and literaiynarrative, without con-sensus, and in all oftheir seemingly infiniteshades of grey.Best wishes,Max DaxEditor-in-Chieflated from French to English yet,but our readers embraced the factthat you ignored the conventions ofrelease schedules, opting instead tolobby for a book you believe in.HUO: Glissant touches anotherimportant issue of our time: Howdo we archive and contextualizeinformation? I have an archiveof more than two thousand fivehundred interviews, and Fvebeen working together with theInstitute of the 21st Century andthe University in Karlsruhe to findways of making them accessibleand browsable. For example, I havetwenty hours of interviews with thepioneering architect and influentialwriter Cedric Price. We're currentlytagging all key words and namesthat appear in these conversations,something I ve been working ontogether with Armin Linke. Whenwe re finished with that, we 11be able to browse the interviews,digitally speaking, in a completelynew way, and the reader will beable to recombine the interviewcontent very intuitively Ultimately,we'll end up of with a map of tagsthat invisibly connects all of theinterviews with each other. I likethe idea that protagonists who havedied canvia the tagging systemstill contribute to discussions welead todayMD: In this issue, we feature aninterview with Chris Dercon,director of London's Tate Modern,and a conversation betweenhacker-ethicist Steven Levy andthe British poet and blogger RickHolland. In both pieces, new rulesof narration in the digital age arecentral topics of discussion. In yourrecommendation, you emphasizethe importance of documentingthese developments because theInternet does indeed massivelychange one of life's most basicactivities: the way we read.HUO: The English artist EdFornieles makes art out ofFacebook archives, showing thatonline profiles and networks oftenare situations where the individualtools to create and frame realityare not only refined but also habit-ual. As Fornieles told me: "This iswhv character and narrative arethe great frontier for me. Playingwrith them opens up the potentialto make art on a new scale."MD: You mentioned artists whocontinue to contribute discussionseven after they've died. This isimportant, because in the past,magazines like ours used to ignorethe thoughts and ideas of theold and wise. All printed matterseemed to focus on youth. I thinkbalancing the two is kev when itcomes to thinking about the maga-zine of the future.HUO: The art historian ErwinPanofsky said we often invent thefuture out of fragments from thepast. We have to find new andintelligent ways to filter and sortthrough what we have to read andwhat not. EB 1/2012