MOTION SIGNATURE:
Ruminations on a Nerve Form
.
by Ebon Fisher


The nerve form winding through this website traces the
human activity in Stevens' Art & Technology Program. It might be described as the collective motion signature of the program. As architect of the website, I'm attempting to illuminate the living network at the center of our collective activity. Drawing from conservation ecology, one could say I'm attempting to "re-wild" our information architecture. Form follows full furry function.*

here William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement in 19th Century Europe glorified twigs and brambles as an expression of Earthly connection, it might be said that highlighting the branching of social networks is in a proud tradition. The Art & Technology nerve form is an attempt to reveal the wilderness undulating in our midst.

Of course, attempts to exalt in the wild and the Earthy have pulsed throughout civilization, from the cracks in a raku tea pot to Jimi Hendrix' feral electric guitar. The nerve form's mission is to cultivate such Dionysian dynamics within the arid matrix of our current information age.

CAPTURING a BLUR

Motion capture in film, traffic control and security systems has established a variety of graphic conventions for the representation of motion, chief of which is to reduce a blur of multi-limbed activity to precise linear pathways. The goal of Stevens' Art & Technology web system was to work the networks of motion back into a fleshy form, albeit a new form quite different from the animals from which it was derived.

NETWORKS of FLESH

Networks are an increasingly celebrated feature of our information age. They are most apparent in the wiring of computers and the internet, but we are beginning to see networks emerge as overlapping hives of communication within the wires. Cellphones, GPS tracking systems, RFID chips, even nanotechnology extends these digital networks far beyond the office into the smallest micro-processes and out to the solar system. An almost hysterical degree of growth and creative adaptation is occurring. It's a new jungle growing amidst the old.

In theory a network is comprised of nodes and links, but these can be graphically represented as thick or thin, bent or straight, flat or volumetric. A network can be presented as an abstract diagram or a photograph of telephone lines, roads, veins or neurons. Any one of these historical networks, properly featured, can stand in for networks generally. So why not represent networks as a hybrid form, embodying the motion of both bodies and neurons? Why not render it red and writhing, an organism unto itself?

RAPID PROTOTYPING of a NERVE FORM

By building a 3D model of the Art & Technology program's architecture and situating the motion signature within it, the website could draw upon a range of angles, colors and lighting qualities. The 3D model, in effect, acts as a database for an evolving set of media, including web, hardcopy and video. The 3D model's wireframe can also lend itself to rapid prototyping with a "3D printer." We are working with Stevens' Department of Product Architecture to test out different scales and approaches, including small, wearable pendants.

SOUND SIGNATURE

To accompany the motion signature, I composed a "sound signature" of the Art & Technology program based upon a sample of student and faculty voices. Where the nerve form charts external movements of bodies, the vocal samples attempt to encode resonant interior ecologies.

"Form follows full, furry function."

– Ebon Fisher, architect of
.. Art & Technology's web system

Page design by Williams Morris for an
essay by John Ruskin, The Nature
of Gothic (Kelmscott Press, 1890s)

Click to enlarge + print:

Detail of green screen with
motion path in development

 

 

A TRANSMEDIA SYSTEM

I've approached Stevens' Art & Technology website as a living system comprised of bodies, minds, software and both real and virtual architecture. At the heart of the transmedia system is the 3D digital nerve form which might be seen as a kind of "bionic code" for our little creative community.

I first used the term, bionic code, in 1992 to describe social network experiments I was conducting in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I have since explored a number of social coding systems, including media rituals and Zoacodes.

– Ebon Fisher
Director, NERVEPOOL.NET

_____________________________________________________
*A modification of Horatio Greenough's phrase, "form follows function," which was popularized by the US architect Louis Sullivan and became a mantra for modernist architects. "Form follows full furry function" is Ebon Fisher's attempt to re-introduced the wilderness back into culture, aiming for what he calls a "submodernist" approach to art, culture and technology.