Talkstudio is transforming itself into a vehicle for distributing conversations across studios in different parts of the country. Last time I linked by Skype with Graduate Studio Northumbria, there was a relief sculpture behind me in my workshop. I bought it years ago in a junk shop but have never discovered what it represents, nor identified its precise place of origin in India. Of course the object is a cast. This is not carved and polished stone, it is a slab of polyester resin. Nevertheless, the cast presides over the small walled garden at the back of my house as if it is still a sculpture in a temple precinct. Stephen Bann calls this effect ‘ontological communion’ - the ‘there-ness’ at the end of the molding process is remarkably similar to that at the start. We have debated these kinds of low-level mediations in previous talkstudio sessions (for example, Ralph wondered if the digital duplication of a jpeg file on a computer was comparable). But since our last conversation I have been involved in a number of practice-PhD submissions in which the opposite is the case. Terms like ‘remediation’, ‘distributed authorship’, ‘distributed system’ and ‘proliferative preservation’ envisage in a maximum degree of change between the various terminals of an expanded reproductive process. If we stick to ‘ontological communion’ what comes out the mold occupies the same amount of space in my workshop as the object molded back in India. Furthermore, in the same way you would travel to India to stand before the original, you will have to visit me near Oxford to encounter what has been reproduced. In contrast, if you are intrigued by the arts researchers whose ideas will feature in talkstudio as their PhDs become publically available, then you can ‘remediate’ the entire experience by joining the next Skype session in a studio near you. Here you will encounter the distributed network of real-time locations from which our conversations are streamed live.
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