ConsecutiveMatters (a.k.a. jonathantdneil.com)

‘Information Architectures’ just finished last night at The Drawing Center.  Here’s the official write up that went out:

The Drawing Center is pleased to present Information Architectures, a series of talks and discussions in which leading philosophers, architects, designers, editors, and artists consider how information is diagrammed, modeled, structured and otherwise disseminated in the expanded field of drawing.

As artists, designers, and intellectuals are increasingly regarded as “content providers” within the broader spectrum of our cultural interests, it seems increasingly necessary to consider not simply how certain forms-or “formats”-give this content shape, but how the entire form/content divide may be rendered irrelevant, or obsolete, by the mutability of information itself. From this perspective, drawing is not seen as an ancillary medium but rather as a privileged theoretical and practical tool with which to work out the tricky business of in-form-ing.

The series was organized by myself and Brett Littman, and over the course of the last three nights, six very talented and interesting people gave presentations on their work.

On Tuesday we had artist Danica Phelps and philosopher Alva Noë; on Wednesday, artist Nathan Carter and editor/designer/architect Jeffrey Inaba presented; and last night, my friend Peter Macapia and the formidable Alice Aycock spoke.

Instead of offering any kind of afterthoughts on the three evenings (except to note that I think they went very well), I’m going to post the videos of the talks.  (Unfortunately, our camera died at the beginning of last night’s talks, so I’m going to have to cook something up for Peter and Alice’s presentations.  We have the podcasts, so perhaps with their permission I’ll lay that over their slide shows and capture it in Flash.  We’ll see.)

Eva Diaz has posted an excellent polemic on the false, or unstated, promises of “curatorial studies” programs over at ArtWorld Salon.  It’s worth a read…and a think.

It may seem sacrilegious to say for someone who has invested so much time and energy in the academy, but this piece by Charles Murray in the WSJ, which argues for the replacement of the 4-year, BA-track college education with certification tests of every variety, makes no little bit of sense. One wonders what administrations will muster as a defense, undoubtedly something along the lines of: “College campuses foster communities of critical thought and creative production which certification testing could never possibly quantify.” True. But then again, that’s an argument of thinking for thinking’s sake, and though I’m sympathetic to the idea of finding realms of experience that cannot be instrumentalized by career or market forces, it would seem to me that “college,” especially at the undergraduate level, has already lost out on that front. Why else would so many people (myself included) find themselves returning to the academy for “advanced” degrees, and there finding the intellectual engagement they either missed or squandered over the course of that first four year try?