ACTLab: Blackbox Fall 2004

 

We are just totally chillin’

 

What’s inside the box?  I don’t know…. Lets make a project about it!!

Robert Fancher

Blackbox Final Portfolio

ACTLAb: Blackbox (Fall 2004)

What's inside the box? I really don't know

This class is about how and why representation machines—cameras, paintbrushes, recorders Photoshop, Final Cut—become concretized or “blackboxed” into “tools” or “skills.” To do this, we studied the uneasy and frequently incendiary relationship between humans and symbols. We have traced the development of symbol formation from the prelinguistic (human and animal) on through sociocultural language production and on to the ways in which market, social, and pedagogical pressures force representation machines into the form of tools (blackboxing), and what is gained and lost when the black box is closed. We looked at what’s being blackboxed now, what will be blackboxed in the future, and we even opened a few blackboxed things and examine their guts.  I was lucky to be in such a class because I learned new ideas and perspectives and ideologies and mindsets and methodologies and holy smokes I can hardly describe it in words….. So I made those projects off to the left! Click ‘em!

 

 

 

 

I spent the first half of the semester trying to figure out exactly what all of this meant, then I spent the 2nd half trying to catch up with the creativity shown by all my classmates. My first project was about mixing records on turntables, the "blackbox of the dj". I brought in my CD players and my beloved Vestax mixer and tried to display and explain how an electronica dj rocks a crowd. My 2nd project was about 2 brave men who stood up against the tyranny of motion and decided they would remain in one solid state (sitting) for 24 consecutive hours!

This box looks perhaps even more intriguing!

Maybe it’s uranium from Uranus.

Tekno Blackbox

POWER!!!!