<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div>"Murat you have assimilated both Simon's and Ana's posts in a way that
makes so much sense though I'm wondering if you would say a bit more
about the negative value of nothingness. How is it possible to give
value to absence? . Perhaps our resident philosophers can chime in here?"<br><br></div>Renate, many of my comments during the last two weeks may have appeared off topic, but that is exactly what I was driving at. Kierkegaard describes an unconscious kind of despair. That is I think very much like our modern condition, as Ana describes. I think it is absolute essential to penetrate the obfuscations of modern systems of persuasion to reach consciousness. Consciousness becomes resistance. That is what I mean by negative value of nothing: <u>an intentional slowing down</u>, to undercut what I described as <span tabindex="-1" id=":1sl.1" style class="">illusionary</span> efficiency. If you remember, the main point of my arguments with Bob was that our discussion about boredom had an efficiency bias (which he admitted) which skewered the argument.<br><br></div>In literature, I think, the most succinct example of the kind of resistance I am discussing is in Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener": the clerk who responds to every job he is asked to do: "I would rather not."<br><br></div>A softer version of it which has to do with creativity (about anxiety about the passage of time, anxiety about not being efficient is Keats's "negative capability."<br><br></div>In an interview which I think can be found on line the film maker Renoir talks about the destructive effects in film art of too much, excessive technical prowess (a big issue with digital effect which seemingly enables one to create any effect one wants. The last sci-fi film that has NO digital effects is Blade Runner. Is there any film since them where the visual effects are more startling, more moving or revealing? I think "inneficiencies" force people to "choose" which is the greatest antidote against boredom as in a Panopticon or in a prison cell in isolation.<br><br></div>Ciao,<br></div>Murat<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 24, 2015 at 7:01 PM, Renate Ferro <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:renateferro@gmail.com" target="_blank">renateferro@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br><div dir="ltr">Murat you have assimilated both Simon's and Ana's posts in a way that makes so much sense though I'm wondering if you would say a bit more about the negative value of nothingness. How is it possible to give value to absence? . Perhaps our resident philosophers can chime in here? <div><br></div><div>This might be a great segue into Week 4. While we say thank you to Simon Biggs and Ana Valdes,<div>We welcome Erin Obodiac and Jason Bernagozzi to our final week on Boredom. Their biographies are below. </div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Week 4:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Erin
Obodiac (US) received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University
of</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">California,
Irvine and has held teaching and research appointments at UC Irvine, the</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">University
of Leeds, SUNY Albany, and Cornell University. Her writings assemble</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">residual
questions from the deconstructive legacy with emergent discourses on technics</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">and
animality, robotics, and biomedia. She is currently a Mellon postdoctoral
fellow at</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Cornell
University, teaching a series of Comparative Media seminars and completing a</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">book
called The Transhuman Interface, which repositions critical theory and</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">deconstruction
within the history of cybernetics and machinic life. The Transhuman</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Interface
is a result of the research project “Robots at Risk: Transgenic Art and</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Corporate
Personhood,” which Obodiac began as a Fellow at Cornell’s Society for the</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">Humanities.
The project and the accompanying book manuscript examine contemporary</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri">theories
of machinic life and robotics as well as the philosophical traditions that
underpin them. This summer, Obodiac will finish a cinematic version of her
Ph.D. dissertation, Technics and the Sublime</span><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'">.</span></p>
<p style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman'">J</span><span><span style="font-family:Calibri">ason</span></span><span><span style="font-family:Calibri"> </span></span><span><span style="font-family:Calibri">Bernagozzi</span></span><span><span style="font-family:Calibri"> (US) </span></span><span style="font-family:Calibri">is a video, sound and new media artist living and working
in upstate New York and is the co-founder and chair of the board of directors
of the experimental media arts non-profit Signal Culture. His work has been
featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the European Media
Arts Festival in Osnabruk, Germany, the LOOP Video Art Festival in Barcelona,
Spain, the Beyond/In Western NY Biennial in Buffalo, NY, and the Yan Gerber
International Arts Festival in Hebei Province, China. His work has received
several awards including grants from the New York State Council for the Arts,
Wavefarm and the ARTS Council for the Southern Finger Lakes. He is an Assistant
Professor in Digital Media and Animation at Alfred State College.</span></p>
<p style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial"><span><span style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><a href="http://seeinginvideo.com/" target="_blank">http://seeinginvideo.com/</a></span></span></span></p>
<p style="background-image:initial;background-repeat:initial"><span style="font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial"><span><span style="color:rgb(17,85,204)"><a href="http://www.signalculture.org" target="_blank">http://www.signalculture.org</a></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Calibri"> </span></p>
</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><br></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div>
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