I've lurked through most of this (extremely interesting and
enlightening) discussion as I'm just beginning my forays into this
area, but this is a topic that I know something about...
My background is in neuroimaging of brain function (fMRI, if you know
of the field). Many, many, many scientific research labs that you
might consider "basic science" are in fact funded by the US Defense
Department through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). It's a sad state when the lack of governmental support for
research causes scientists to (metaphorically only?) sell their soul to
the DoD.
For example, I know of a couple labs at MIT (where I work) that study
human face perception from a computational perspective. Much of their
work is funded by DARPA in order to develop more efficient
face-recognition systems for, e.g., identification of suspects in
crowds.
I'm lucky in that my boss' views on this subject match mine; she
refuses to apply for DoD grants, even though there are, as was
mentioned below, many grants available from the DoD and the DHS.
As many on the list are probably aware of, much work in the biological
sciences is funded by pharmaceutical companies, who then try and
suppress the publication of the work if it isn't a glowing endorsement
of their product...
To bring this back towards the main topic at hand, I wonder if it is
ever possible to, as Grant says, "[subvert] the corporate-industrial
power structure from within". Can one accept the funding that is
necessary to do their work without said funding showing up as an
influence in their work? Is there an opportunity here to create works
that comment directly on their funding sources? Perhaps these are
naïve questions, as I'm coming at this from an outsider perspective...
nick
On Sep 11, 2004, at 11:07 AM, Goebel, Johannes E. wrote:
> Just a side-bar - - -
> From what I "hear", the best way to get funding in the academic sector
> for "media development" like interactive systems, crowd tracking
> systems, GPS in combination with path modeling, immersive gaming
> environments combined with behavioral research etc. is developing
> proposals, which model terrorist behavior as a predictive tool for
> homeland security. I am not sure if one puts it that directly - and it
> may as well be a rumor as it may be reality, maybe someone in this list
> is more in touch with this aspect and can inform us. Analysis of the
> language of research proposals in this field may yield a perspective on
> how semantic constructs yield "pragmatic taxonomies" and how
> terminologies are coined in order to reach a "well-defined" goal.
> It's a little bit like in the beginning (well, not only then ...) of AI
> when music was the field to demonstrate and present the humane/cultural
> benefits of research and theorems of AI in a non-semantic /
> non-mathematical output - i.e. in a non-academic, non-scientific way.
>
> Johannes
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ryan griffis [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2004 6:27 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Reverse Engineering
>
> This is right on from my experience... from both sides of the coin. And
> it's effecting not just art departments. i was recently teaching in a
> Univ. department called Media, Journalism & Film under the same
> conditions Grant mentions.
> How these classifications play out will indeed play a role in
> determining how funding is distributed. The current trajectory for
> media arts in the US is creating a situation where the most significant
> public investment is being channeled into a highly profitable private
> industry - namely, gaming (and away from other things). And the
> media/entertainment industry is fairly unbalanced in many way relating
> to demographics as it is. (just ask a child to draw a picture of a
> computer scientist or video game designer) So, it seems important to
> consider how the language we adopt is influenced by/influences the
> situation. What are the goals?
> ryan
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