<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">in appreciation of mycelium<div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I’ve been digging in my garden alot, marveling at the webs and mats of mycelium running between tree and flower and creeper and vegetable, a dense net that doesn’t discriminate between soils and plants and surfaces and simply adapts and reroutes - a better internet! i have also over time played with harvesting wild yeasts from the air to make mothers fro breads and cheeses (i love the way the mother varies from region to region, giving breads their particular tastes), and have had kitchens dense with scobies (such a great fungus! i found it growing in all kinds of places that i didn’t organise after i started growing tea shrooms! also, it will grow into any shape and any size and can make a kind of leather). i lived in a very fungal place - the kind of place where if you turned your back on your shoes or belts you’d find them covered with molds, spores, slimes, shrooms when you went to wear them… <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">literally breathing spores… sporulating genders...<br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">- and the mushrooms light up at night</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">- and the rhizome beds grow dense and layered and will not be annihilated</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">never had much luck with strawbs and their runners...</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">i’m just racing out the door, but wanted to raise a fungal hand and wave my fingerlings, will drop in again later and make more of a contribution.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">vx</div><div class=""><div class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; border-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><div style="font-style: normal; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;">・・・--------☆ Ø ☆--------・・・</span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;">Virginia Barratt<br class="">Doctoral candidate, University of Western Sydney, Writing + Society Research Centre<br class=""><br class="">ph: +61 435925245</span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;">w: <a href="http://virginiabarratt.net" class="">virginiabarratt.net</a></span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;">e: <a href="mailto:virginia@virginiabarratt.net" class="">virginia@virginiabarratt.net</a><br class=""><br class=""><i class="">monstering the logos eros</i><br class="">・・・--------☆ Ø ☆--------・・・</span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 11px;"><br class=""></span></div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="orphans: auto; widows: auto; margin: 0px; color: rgb(30, 73, 125);" class=""><span style="font-size: 11px;" class="">I acknowledge the traditional custodians</span><span style="font-size: 11px; text-align: -webkit-auto;" class="">, past and future,</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 11px;" class=""> </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 11px;" class="">of the land on which I live and work.</span></div><br class=""></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></div></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
</div>
<br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 26 Jun 2018, at 11:30 AM, <<a href="mailto:empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> <<a href="mailto:empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class="">Send empyre mailing list submissions to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><a href="mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au" class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au</a><br class=""><br class="">To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/empyre<br class="">or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>empyre-request@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><br class="">You can reach the person managing the list at<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>empyre-owner@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><br class="">When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br class="">than "Re: Contents of empyre digest..."<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">Today's Topics:<br class=""><br class=""> 1. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (dollyoko@thing.net)<br class=""> 2. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (warkk)<br class=""> 3. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (Alice Famer)<br class=""> 4. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (patrick lichty)<br class=""> 5. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (warkk)<br class=""> 6. Re: rehearsal of a network - [week 4] (Shu Lea Cheang)<br class=""> 7. entropical -> reharsal of a network - [week 4] (Jaromil)<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">----------------------------------------------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 1<br class="">Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 06:16:15 -0000<br class="">From: dollyoko@thing.net<br class="">To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><013a2afb07a95c4676900a5f79ce5998.squirrel@webmail.thing.net><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">dear shu lea and empyreans<br class=""><br class="">yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters,<br class="">deep code luscious moon brown stem<br class="">the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in borrowed loft<br class="">wiping sweat, not swiping left<br class="">(write left alt write)<br class="">Floodnet!<br class=""><br class="">i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today<br class="">feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br class=""><br class="">'powerful poetic gestures'<br class="">'alternate sentiences'<br class="">'the incomputable'<br class="">'nature is not a system'<br class="">'break all separations'<br class="">'imps fuelling the real'<br class="">'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br class="">'t-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br class="">'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br class="">'we begin to think like a forest'<br class=""><br class="">how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age) created in<br class="">the 90s<br class="">[while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media list, or skiving off to<br class="">PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down]<br class="">before other 'we(s)' were born<br class=""><br class="">Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one answer to<br class="">Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br class=""><br class="">i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013, prompted by<br class="">projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie Circuits -<br class="">instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and (equally wonderful)<br class="">Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what the mycelial<br class="">potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect there's something<br class="">though...... for example, a nascent project I'm doing with Virginia<br class="">Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it starting point:<br class=""><br class="">-----------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">"A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment (multi-user<br class="">domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised performance,<br class="">experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the (ethereum)<br class="">blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the construction of<br class="">intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br class=""><br class="">We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming subjectivities to<br class="">explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies, outside of social<br class="">re-production, and bring those practices to bear upon the ?real?. Only a<br class="">few years after the emergence of the WWW, social networking habits were<br class="">harnessed and stratified into machines for the production of social<br class="">capital and new affective forms of extractivism within the paradigm of<br class="">info-capitalism. Yet the outlier LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small<br class="">phreak family as a working experiment, an enclave among other secessionist<br class="">servers (caves, sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out<br class="">space to platform lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br class=""><br class="">The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and<br class="">Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as becoming-kin<br class="">to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds through which datablood<br class="">flows. This queered approach to extensible and open family platforms<br class="">generates intentional spaces for the reconfiguration of blood ties beyond<br class="">blood types, and another mode of hexing Capital."<br class=""><br class="">--------------------<br class=""><br class="">I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait the 12 hours<br class="">for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br class="">I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way<br class="">while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have aerials'<br class="">might take a mycelial turn<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Warmly, to all<br class="">doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to this<br class="">conversation, tomorrow<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned<br class="">space----------------------_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 2<br class="">Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 08:13:28 -0400<br class="">From: warkk <warkk@newschool.edu><br class="">To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAK5B+H_6eUKw2o61hAyROL25-d0AH6ss66QTfGGK6vuaohdroQ@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for online<br class="">encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger point might<br class="">still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these days.<br class="">There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's Living on<br class="">Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a new book<br class="">by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts of Echo and<br class="">The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.<br class=""><br class="">Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book is the<br class="">best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think of the<br class="">book as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers." Its<br class="">hard to keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class<br class="">enterprises of our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that<br class="">proprietary environment.<br class=""><br class="">A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend to default<br class="">to dispersed ones....<br class=""><br class="">dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist<br class="">servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular approaches<br class="">to infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with the<br class="">themes Shu Lea suggested).<br class=""><br class="">Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up largely<br class="">invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to be rather<br class="">discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a good thing<br class="">for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody figured<br class="">out how to monetize it.<br class=""><br class="">mw<br class=""><br class="">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <dollyoko@thing.net> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">dear shu lea and empyreans<br class=""><br class="">yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters,<br class="">deep code luscious moon brown stem<br class="">the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in borrowed loft<br class="">wiping sweat, not swiping left<br class="">(write left alt write)<br class="">Floodnet!<br class=""><br class="">i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today<br class="">feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br class=""><br class="">'powerful poetic gestures'<br class="">'alternate sentiences'<br class="">'the incomputable'<br class="">'nature is not a system'<br class="">'break all separations'<br class="">'imps fuelling the real'<br class="">'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br class="">'t-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br class="">'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br class="">'we begin to think like a forest'<br class=""><br class="">how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age) created in<br class="">the 90s<br class="">[while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media list, or skiving off to<br class="">PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down]<br class="">before other 'we(s)' were born<br class=""><br class="">Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one answer to<br class="">Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br class=""><br class="">i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013, prompted by<br class="">projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie Circuits -<br class="">instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and (equally wonderful)<br class="">Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what the mycelial<br class="">potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect there's something<br class="">though...... for example, a nascent project I'm doing with Virginia<br class="">Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it starting point:<br class=""><br class="">-----------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">"A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment (multi-user<br class="">domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised performance,<br class="">experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the (ethereum)<br class="">blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the construction of<br class="">intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br class=""><br class="">We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming subjectivities to<br class="">explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies, outside of social<br class="">re-production, and bring those practices to bear upon the ?real?. Only a<br class="">few years after the emergence of the WWW, social networking habits were<br class="">harnessed and stratified into machines for the production of social<br class="">capital and new affective forms of extractivism within the paradigm of<br class="">info-capitalism. Yet the outlier LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small<br class="">phreak family as a working experiment, an enclave among other secessionist<br class="">servers (caves, sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out<br class="">space to platform lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br class=""><br class="">The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and<br class="">Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as becoming-kin<br class="">to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds through which datablood<br class="">flows. This queered approach to extensible and open family platforms<br class="">generates intentional spaces for the reconfiguration of blood ties beyond<br class="">blood types, and another mode of hexing Capital."<br class=""><br class="">--------------------<br class=""><br class="">I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait the 12 hours<br class="">for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br class="">I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way<br class="">while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have aerials'<br class="">might take a mycelial turn<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Warmly, to all<br class="">doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to this<br class="">conversation, tomorrow<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned<br class="">space----------------------_________________________________<br class=""></blockquote>______________<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""><br class="">McKenzie Wark<br class="">*Professor of Media and Culture*<br class="">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class="">65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class="">warkk@newschool.edu<br class=""><http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#><br class="">T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class="">-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20180625/98bd4f74/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 3<br class="">Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:27:52 +0930<br class="">From: Alice Famer <juniorfarmer@gmail.com><br class="">To: empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">Cc: Amy Ireland <amy.e.ireland@gmail.com><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CADbz5Rwr_Af+KZ9j7QvXQaQfot_KSEyWO8xRzx=ssXLbozXaWA@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">speculative networks:<br class=""><br class="">there's been some discuss (twitter/wordpress/othrrr places) about<br class="">patchwork/weaving, focusing on seccession/Deleuze + Guattari's<br class="">ontology/smooth space/plane of immanence/spinoza's substance or nature.<br class=""><br class="">would b interested in what (specifically Ken) makes of it.<br class=""><br class="">here r some resources on it:<br class="">https://xerosones.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/patchwork-a-minor-introduction/<br class="">https://xenogothic.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/6638/<br class="">https://xenogothic.wordpress.com/2018/04/13/patchwork-qa/<br class="">https://xenogothic.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/patchwork-101/<br class="">https://xenogothic.wordpress.com/2018/05/15/identity-politics-and-patchwork/<br class="">http://www.christianhubert.com/writings/smooth_striated.html<br class="">-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20180626/61fdb583/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 4<br class="">Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 21:10:31 +0400<br class="">From: "patrick lichty" <p@voyd.com><br class="">To: "'soft_skinned_space'" <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID: <00b501d40ca7$6dea2440$49be6cc0$@voyd.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain;<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>charset="us-ascii"<br class=""><br class="">As someone who would call himself postcybernetic rather than postinternet,<br class="">I agree with Dollyoko nd Ken. The spaces for intereaction were highly<br class="">heterogenous and diverse, and Honestly, I find the postinternet discourse<br class="">relatively bland by comparison, as a lot of what it talks about is reference<br class="">to postcybernetic/cyberdelic. MOOs, MUDs, Even back to nets of online<br class="">communities (Thing, Compuserve, Delphi, Fidonet, Usenet) was amazing. In<br class="">many ways it seems like the corporate stacks combined with academic FOMO has<br class="">created a tremendous amount of conservatism compared to the crash theory<br class="">days of the Krokers.<br class=""><br class="">In many ways, I think our era of risk aversion and its pruning of the<br class="">rhizome is indicative of the relationship between culture and capital. As<br class="">art fairs and consolidating gallery culture, as well as the struggle (in my<br class="">mind) to figure ourselves out more as Postmodernism fractured into the<br class="">Speculative Turn, the notion of the rhizome has turned into reality bubble<br class="">foam that generally swirls under megacorporate umbrellas.<br class=""><br class="">This is why I love things like Dina Karadzic's FUBAR bunch, and Shu Lea's<br class="">work the other year at the Leonore residency, but I also wonder why the<br class="">notion of the mycorhizome is so strong these days as opposed to the<br class="">strawberry patch (Deleuze), is it a subliminal signifier of fruit and decay<br class="">and rebirth?<br class=""><br class="">Also very interested in t-shroom discussion.<br class=""><br class="">Love from the desert<br class="">(also apologies for the typos - my current computer has a very flaky<br class="">keyboard)<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-----Original Message-----<br class="">From: empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> On Behalf Of warkk<br class="">Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:13 PM<br class="">To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class=""><br class="">Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for online<br class="">encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger point might<br class="">still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these days.<br class="">There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's Living on<br class="">Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a new book<br class="">by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts of Echo and<br class="">The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.<br class=""><br class="">Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book is the<br class="">best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think of the book<br class="">as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers." Its hard to<br class="">keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class enterprises of<br class="">our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that proprietary<br class="">environment.<br class=""><br class="">A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend to default<br class="">to dispersed ones....<br class=""><br class="">dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist<br class="">servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular approaches to<br class="">infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with the themes<br class="">Shu Lea suggested).<br class=""><br class="">Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up largely<br class="">invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to be rather<br class="">discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a good thing<br class="">for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody figured<br class="">out how to monetize it.<br class=""><br class="">mw<br class=""><br class="">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <dollyoko@thing.net> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">dear shu lea and empyreans<br class=""><br class="">yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters, deep code luscious <br class="">moon brown stem the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in <br class="">borrowed loft wiping sweat, not swiping left (write left alt write) <br class="">Floodnet!<br class=""><br class="">i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today <br class="">feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br class=""><br class="">'powerful poetic gestures'<br class="">'alternate sentiences'<br class="">'the incomputable'<br class="">'nature is not a system'<br class="">'break all separations'<br class="">'imps fuelling the real'<br class="">'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br class="">'t-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br class="">'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br class="">'we begin to think like a forest'<br class=""><br class="">how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age) created <br class="">in the 90s [while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media list, or <br class="">skiving off to PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down] before <br class="">other 'we(s)' were born<br class=""><br class="">Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one answer to <br class="">Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br class=""><br class="">i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013, prompted <br class="">by projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie <br class="">Circuits - instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and (equally <br class="">wonderful) Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what <br class="">the mycelial potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect <br class="">there's something though...... for example, a nascent project I'm <br class="">doing with Virginia Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it starting point:<br class=""><br class="">-----------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">"A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment <br class="">(multi-user domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised <br class="">performance, experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the <br class="">(ethereum) blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the <br class="">construction of intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br class=""><br class="">We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming <br class="">subjectivities to explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies, <br class="">outside of social re-production, and bring those practices to bear <br class="">upon the "real". Only a few years after the emergence of the WWW, <br class="">social networking habits were harnessed and stratified into machines <br class="">for the production of social capital and new affective forms of <br class="">extractivism within the paradigm of info-capitalism. Yet the outlier <br class="">LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small phreak family as a working <br class="">experiment, an enclave among other secessionist servers (caves, <br class="">sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out space to platform<br class=""></blockquote>lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and <br class="">Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as <br class="">becoming-kin to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds through <br class="">which datablood flows. This queered approach to extensible and open <br class="">family platforms generates intentional spaces for the reconfiguration <br class="">of blood ties beyond blood types, and another mode of hexing Capital."<br class=""><br class="">--------------------<br class=""><br class="">I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait the 12 <br class="">hours for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br class="">I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way <br class="">while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have aerials'<br class="">might take a mycelial turn<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Warmly, to all<br class="">doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to this <br class="">conversation, tomorrow<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned<br class="">space----------------------_________________________________<br class=""></blockquote>______________<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""><br class="">McKenzie Wark<br class="">*Professor of Media and Culture*<br class="">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class="">65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class="">warkk@newschool.edu<br class=""><http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#><br class="">T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 5<br class="">Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 14:06:19 -0400<br class="">From: warkk <warkk@newschool.edu><br class="">To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID:<br class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><CAK5B+H--Ft83FGQwTnR_Qj9t_Cp-Rs4Zz9nSA_BebXRH9aL3Hg@mail.gmail.com><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"<br class=""><br class="">Thanks for the links, Alice. I started reading but Nick Land came up so i<br class="">stopped reading immediately. I never took him to be state-of-the-art<br class="">theory. Others might find the space interesting but its just not for me.<br class="">Reaons given here: https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3284-on-nick-land<br class=""><br class="">Patrick is i think pointing us both back to the nineties but also forward,<br class="">and i think that's a good note to hit before anyone starts getting into a<br class="">nostalgic vein. I think its more about bracketing-off what networks came to<br class="">be in the two consolidations of the power of what i call the vectoralist<br class="">class. The first was around 2000, with the rise of corporate forms built on<br class="">nothing but IP. The second came a decade later, with the commdification not<br class="">just of information but also of the social network itself.<br class=""><br class="">Patrick also asks why the mushroom as a figure. I don't really understand<br class="">how this part works, but it is the bit i find intriguing: that mushrooms<br class="">have 36,000 genders, or something like that. Maybe Shu Lea's introduction<br class="">of the mycelium into discussion will encourage me to get a layhumans' grasp<br class="">on how that works. It seems just at first sight to be be an interesting<br class="">thought-image of how protocols might work otherwise.<br class=""><br class="">mw<br class=""><br class="">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 1:10 PM, patrick lichty <p@voyd.com> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class="">As someone who would call himself postcybernetic rather than postinternet,<br class="">I agree with Dollyoko nd Ken. The spaces for intereaction were highly<br class="">heterogenous and diverse, and Honestly, I find the postinternet discourse<br class="">relatively bland by comparison, as a lot of what it talks about is<br class="">reference<br class="">to postcybernetic/cyberdelic. MOOs, MUDs, Even back to nets of online<br class="">communities (Thing, Compuserve, Delphi, Fidonet, Usenet) was amazing. In<br class="">many ways it seems like the corporate stacks combined with academic FOMO<br class="">has<br class="">created a tremendous amount of conservatism compared to the crash theory<br class="">days of the Krokers.<br class=""><br class="">In many ways, I think our era of risk aversion and its pruning of the<br class="">rhizome is indicative of the relationship between culture and capital. As<br class="">art fairs and consolidating gallery culture, as well as the struggle (in my<br class="">mind) to figure ourselves out more as Postmodernism fractured into the<br class="">Speculative Turn, the notion of the rhizome has turned into reality bubble<br class="">foam that generally swirls under megacorporate umbrellas.<br class=""><br class="">This is why I love things like Dina Karadzic's FUBAR bunch, and Shu Lea's<br class="">work the other year at the Leonore residency, but I also wonder why the<br class="">notion of the mycorhizome is so strong these days as opposed to the<br class="">strawberry patch (Deleuze), is it a subliminal signifier of fruit and decay<br class="">and rebirth?<br class=""><br class="">Also very interested in t-shroom discussion.<br class=""><br class="">Love from the desert<br class="">(also apologies for the typos - my current computer has a very flaky<br class="">keyboard)<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-----Original Message-----<br class="">From: empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""><empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au> On Behalf Of warkk<br class="">Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:13 PM<br class="">To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class=""><br class="">Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for online<br class="">encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger point might<br class="">still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these days.<br class="">There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's Living on<br class="">Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a new book<br class="">by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts of Echo and<br class="">The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.<br class=""><br class="">Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book is the<br class="">best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think of the<br class="">book<br class="">as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers." Its hard to<br class="">keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class enterprises of<br class="">our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that proprietary<br class="">environment.<br class=""><br class="">A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend to default<br class="">to dispersed ones....<br class=""><br class="">dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist<br class="">servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular approaches<br class="">to<br class="">infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with the<br class="">themes<br class="">Shu Lea suggested).<br class=""><br class="">Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up largely<br class="">invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to be rather<br class="">discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a good thing<br class="">for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody figured<br class="">out how to monetize it.<br class=""><br class="">mw<br class=""><br class="">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <dollyoko@thing.net> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">dear shu lea and empyreans<br class=""><br class="">yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters, deep code luscious<br class="">moon brown stem the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in<br class="">borrowed loft wiping sweat, not swiping left (write left alt write)<br class="">Floodnet!<br class=""><br class="">i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today<br class="">feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br class=""><br class="">'powerful poetic gestures'<br class="">'alternate sentiences'<br class="">'the incomputable'<br class="">'nature is not a system'<br class="">'break all separations'<br class="">'imps fuelling the real'<br class="">'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br class="">'t-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br class="">'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br class="">'we begin to think like a forest'<br class=""><br class="">how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age) created<br class="">in the 90s [while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media list, or<br class="">skiving off to PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down] before<br class="">other 'we(s)' were born<br class=""><br class="">Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one answer to<br class="">Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br class=""><br class="">i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013, prompted<br class="">by projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie<br class="">Circuits - instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and (equally<br class="">wonderful) Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what<br class="">the mycelial potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect<br class="">there's something though...... for example, a nascent project I'm<br class="">doing with Virginia Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it starting point:<br class=""><br class="">-----------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">"A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment<br class="">(multi-user domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised<br class="">performance, experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the<br class="">(ethereum) blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the<br class="">construction of intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br class=""><br class="">We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming<br class="">subjectivities to explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies,<br class="">outside of social re-production, and bring those practices to bear<br class="">upon the "real". Only a few years after the emergence of the WWW,<br class="">social networking habits were harnessed and stratified into machines<br class="">for the production of social capital and new affective forms of<br class="">extractivism within the paradigm of info-capitalism. Yet the outlier<br class="">LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small phreak family as a working<br class="">experiment, an enclave among other secessionist servers (caves,<br class="">sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out space to platform<br class=""></blockquote>lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and<br class="">Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as<br class="">becoming-kin to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds through<br class="">which datablood flows. This queered approach to extensible and open<br class="">family platforms generates intentional spaces for the reconfiguration<br class="">of blood ties beyond blood types, and another mode of hexing Capital."<br class=""><br class="">--------------------<br class=""><br class="">I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait the 12<br class="">hours for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br class="">I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way<br class="">while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have aerials'<br class="">might take a mycelial turn<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Warmly, to all<br class="">doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to this<br class="">conversation, tomorrow<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned<br class="">space----------------------_________________________________<br class=""></blockquote>______________<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">--<br class=""><br class="">McKenzie Wark<br class="">*Professor of Media and Culture*<br class="">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class="">65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class="">warkk@newschool.edu<br class=""><http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#><br class="">T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""><br class="">McKenzie Wark<br class="">*Professor of Media and Culture*<br class="">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class="">65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class="">warkk@newschool.edu<br class=""><http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#><br class="">T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class="">-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20180625/218e0a4e/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 6<br class="">Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2018 20:37:42 +0200<br class="">From: Shu Lea Cheang <shulea@earthlink.net><br class="">To: empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID: <25cf200d-6c2f-0587-60bf-44e426c05895@earthlink.net><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"; Format="flowed"<br class=""><br class="">ok<br class=""><br class="">on how mycelium/mushroom as a figure ... the mycelium cult would wants <br class="">to dive in and argue forever , but quickly, we quote-<br class=""><br class="">My mecelium network is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of <br class="">a planet or the explosion of its parent star can wipe me out? all my <br class="">mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyper light communication across <br class="">space and time. - Terence McKenna, The Mushnoon speaks<br class=""><br class="">I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. <br class="">Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing <br class="">membranes. ?..The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication <br class="">with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses <br class="">to complex challenges. - Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms <br class="">Can Help Save the World<br class=""><br class="">We are stuck with the problem of living despite economic and ecological <br class="">ruination?.. Neither tales of progress nor of ruin tell us how to think <br class="">about collaborative survival. It is time to pay attention to mushroom <br class="">picking. Not that this will save us? but it might open our imaginations. <br class="">- Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The mushroom at the end of the world : on the <br class="">possibility of life in capitalist ruins<br class=""><br class="">This answers back to [week 1] how we got started... interesting we flash <br class="">back to the 90s here..<br class=""><br class="">bring up all nodes and bolts... loosen and to be fastened...<br class=""><br class="">damn, and dollyoko are finger tight!!<br class=""><br class="">over<br class=""><br class="">sl<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">On 25/06/18 20:06, warkk wrote:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Thanks for the links, Alice. I started reading but Nick Land came up <br class="">so i stopped reading immediately. I never took him to be <br class="">state-of-the-art theory. Others might find the space interesting but <br class="">its just not for me. Reaons given here: <br class="">https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/3284-on-nick-land<br class=""><br class="">Patrick is i think pointing us both back to the nineties but also <br class="">forward, and i think that's a good note to hit before anyone starts <br class="">getting into a nostalgic vein. I think its more about bracketing-off <br class="">what networks came to be in the two consolidations of the power of <br class="">what i call the vectoralist class. The first was around 2000, with the <br class="">rise of corporate forms built on nothing but IP. The second came a <br class="">decade later, with the commdification not just of information but also <br class="">of the social network itself.<br class=""><br class="">Patrick also asks why the mushroom as a figure. I don't really <br class="">understand how this part works, but it is the bit i find intriguing: <br class="">that mushrooms have 36,000 genders, or something like that. Maybe Shu <br class="">Lea's introduction of the mycelium into discussion will encourage me <br class="">to get a layhumans' grasp on how that works. It seems just at first <br class="">sight to be be an interesting thought-image of how protocols might <br class="">work otherwise.<br class=""><br class="">mw<br class=""><br class="">On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 1:10 PM, patrick lichty <p@voyd.com <br class=""><mailto:p@voyd.com>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""> As someone who would call himself postcybernetic rather than <br class=""> postinternet,<br class=""> I agree with Dollyoko nd Ken. The spaces for intereaction were highly<br class=""> heterogenous and diverse, and Honestly, I find the postinternet<br class=""> discourse<br class=""> relatively bland by comparison, as a lot of what it talks about is<br class=""> reference<br class=""> to postcybernetic/cyberdelic. MOOs, MUDs, Even back to nets of online<br class=""> communities (Thing, Compuserve, Delphi, Fidonet, Usenet) was<br class=""> amazing. In<br class=""> many ways it seems like the corporate stacks combined with<br class=""> academic FOMO has<br class=""> created a tremendous amount of conservatism compared to the crash<br class=""> theory<br class=""> days of the Krokers.<br class=""><br class=""> In many ways, I think our era of risk aversion and its pruning of the<br class=""> rhizome is indicative of the relationship between culture and<br class=""> capital. As<br class=""> art fairs and consolidating gallery culture, as well as the<br class=""> struggle (in my<br class=""> mind) to figure ourselves out more as Postmodernism fractured into the<br class=""> Speculative Turn, the notion of the rhizome has turned into<br class=""> reality bubble<br class=""> foam that generally swirls under megacorporate umbrellas.<br class=""><br class=""> This is why I love things like Dina Karadzic's FUBAR bunch, and<br class=""> Shu Lea's<br class=""> work the other year at the Leonore residency, but I also wonder<br class=""> why the<br class=""> notion of the mycorhizome is so strong these days as opposed to the<br class=""> strawberry patch (Deleuze), is it a subliminal signifier of fruit<br class=""> and decay<br class=""> and rebirth?<br class=""><br class=""> Also very interested in t-shroom discussion.<br class=""><br class=""> Love from the desert<br class=""> (also apologies for the typos - my current computer has a very flaky<br class=""> keyboard)<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""> -----Original Message-----<br class=""> From: empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""> <mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class=""> <empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""> <mailto:empyre-bounces@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>> On Behalf Of<br class=""> warkk<br class=""> Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 4:13 PM<br class=""> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""> <mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au>><br class=""> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] rehearsal of a network - [week 4]<br class=""><br class=""> Alan is quite right to stress how extensive the options were for<br class=""> online<br class=""> encounters in the 90s, beyond the handful i named. The larger<br class=""> point might<br class=""> still be that knowledge of any of that world is fairly thin these<br class=""> days.<br class=""> There are a few period accounts. dollyoko mentions Marshall's<br class=""> Living on<br class=""> Cybermind. Julian Dibbell wrote a book about LambdaMoo. There's a<br class=""> new book<br class=""> by Claire Evans called Broad Band that has good brief accounnts of<br class=""> Echo and<br class=""> The Word and is focused on innovations in computation by women.<br class=""><br class=""> Of course one could ask whether the linear prose form of the book<br class=""> is the<br class=""> best or even a necessary way of documenting such things. I think<br class=""> of the book<br class=""> as an instance of what dollyoko calls "successionist servers." Its<br class=""> hard to<br class=""> keep them out of Amazon, one of the biggest vectoral class<br class=""> enterprises of<br class=""> our time, but they will at least 'run' independently of that<br class=""> proprietary<br class=""> environment.<br class=""><br class=""> A book is a concentrated swarm whereas online communication tend<br class=""> to default<br class=""> to dispersed ones....<br class=""><br class=""> dollyoko has some great language for an ongoing project: secessionist<br class=""> servers, intentional family, open family platforms, vernacular<br class=""> approaches to<br class=""> infrastructure. (To just pick a few that i think go together with<br class=""> the themes<br class=""> Shu Lea suggested).<br class=""><br class=""> Maybe its a good thing that 90s cyberculture experiments ended up<br class=""> largely<br class=""> invisible and excluded from history, as now it might be time to be<br class=""> rather<br class=""> discreet about the possibilities uncovered then. Maybe it was a<br class=""> good thing<br class=""> for mycelium that it was largely invisible for so long, as nobody<br class=""> figured<br class=""> out how to monetize it.<br class=""><br class=""> mw<br class=""><br class=""> On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 2:16 AM, <dollyoko@thing.net<br class=""> <mailto:dollyoko@thing.net>> wrote:<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------<br class=""><br class="">dear shu lea and empyreans<br class=""><br class="">yes, finger fucking across platforms and waters, deep code luscious<br class="">moon brown stem the shadow of a venetian blind on summer body in<br class="">borrowed loft wiping sweat, not swiping left (write left alt write)<br class="">Floodnet!<br class=""><br class="">i'm immersing eyes into this generous mycelial conversation today<br class="">feeling the tendrils of one hundred minds<br class=""><br class="">'powerful poetic gestures'<br class="">'alternate sentiences'<br class="">'the incomputable'<br class="">'nature is not a system'<br class="">'break all separations'<br class="">'imps fuelling the real'<br class="">'vernacular approach to infrastructure'<br class="">'t-shroom as family heritage and long-living family member'<br class="">'i have a vast genetic network in me'<br class="">'we begin to think like a forest'<br class=""><br class="">how to extend the intentional families we (of a certain age)<br class=""></blockquote> created<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">in the 90s [while perhaps reading Bruce Stirling's Dead Media<br class=""></blockquote> list, or<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">skiving off to PMCMoo or RiverMOO when LambdaMOO was down] before<br class="">other 'we(s)' were born<br class=""><br class="">Jonathan Marshall's book 'Living on Cybermind' might be one<br class=""></blockquote> answer to<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">Ken's Q about how to capture the non-linear threaded lives<br class=""><br class="">i've been returning to build at LambdaMoo since around 2013,<br class=""></blockquote> prompted<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">by projects such as Networked Art Forms and Tactical Magick Faerie<br class="">Circuits - instigated by the wonderful Nancy Mauro-Flude, and<br class=""></blockquote> (equally<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">wonderful) Furtherfield's Beyond the Interface... I'm not sure what<br class="">the mycelial potential of such old platforms might be, I suspect<br class="">there's something though...... for example, a nascent project I'm<br class="">doing with Virginia Barratt and Alice Farmer takes as it<br class=""></blockquote> starting point:<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">-----------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">"A multi-platform artwork comprising a LambdaMOO environment<br class="">(multi-user domain object-oriented), performing avatars, improvised<br class="">performance, experimental hypertext fiction, cryptokitties on the<br class="">(ethereum) blockchain, and a hand-bound XenZine. The subject is the<br class="">construction of intentional family beyond blood and kind.<br class=""><br class="">We revisit LambdaMOO as a site for gender non-conforming<br class="">subjectivities to explore the production of xenofam and xenobodies,<br class="">outside of social re-production, and bring those practices to bear<br class="">upon the "real". Only a few years after the emergence of the WWW,<br class="">social networking habits were harnessed and stratified into<br class=""></blockquote> machines<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">for the production of social capital and new affective forms of<br class="">extractivism within the paradigm of info-capitalism. Yet the<br class=""></blockquote> outlier<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">LambdaMOO is still maintained by a small phreak family as a working<br class="">experiment, an enclave among other secessionist servers (caves,<br class="">sinkholes, hackpads, labyrinthine clouds) carving out space to<br class=""></blockquote> platform<br class=""> lives of creative resistance, blasphemy and joy.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">The performing avatars, the unholy trinity of Witchmum, Mum 2.0 and<br class="">Precocious Meme Savant, have cooked, co-habited and coded as<br class="">becoming-kin to instantiate xenofam, building affective bonds<br class=""></blockquote> through<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">which datablood flows. This queered approach to extensible and open<br class="">family platforms generates intentional spaces for the<br class=""></blockquote> reconfiguration<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">of blood ties beyond blood types, and another mode of hexing<br class=""></blockquote> Capital."<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class="">--------------------<br class=""><br class="">I want to write more, but I need to buy bread as I can't wait<br class=""></blockquote> the 12<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">hours for the wild yeasts to do their thing.<br class="">I will try to attract some xenofeminist and other spores this way<br class="">while thinking about how Ken's 'we no longer have roots, we have<br class=""></blockquote> aerials'<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">might take a mycelial turn<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Warmly, to all<br class="">doll fingers + witch thoughts, perhaps a spell cast from and to<br class=""></blockquote> this<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">conversation, tomorrow<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">----------empyre- soft-skinned<br class="">space----------------------_________________________________<br class=""></blockquote>______________<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote> <mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote></blockquote> <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""></blockquote> <mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote> <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><br class=""></blockquote><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""> -- <br class=""><br class=""> McKenzie Wark<br class=""> *Professor of Media and Culture*<br class=""> EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class=""> 65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class=""> warkk@newschool.edu <mailto:warkk@newschool.edu><br class=""> <http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#<br class=""> <http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#>><br class=""> T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class=""><br class=""> _______________________________________________<br class=""> empyre forum<br class=""> empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class=""> <mailto:empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au><br class=""> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu <http://empyre.library.cornell.edu><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""><br class="">McKenzie Wark<br class="">*Professor of Media and Culture*<br class="">EUGENE LANG COLLEGE<br class="">65 w11th st, NEW YORK, NY 10011<br class=""><br class="">warkk@newschool.edu <br class=""><http://www.newschool.edu/marketing-communication/email-signature.html#><br class="">T 212 229 5100 2241 / M 646 3697266 / @mckenziewark / room #456<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre forum<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">-------------- next part --------------<br class="">An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br class="">URL: <http://lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20180625/062d0af0/attachment-0001.html><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">Message: 7<br class="">Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:49:18 +0200<br class="">From: Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org><br class="">To: empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">Subject: [-empyre-] entropical -> reharsal of a network - [week 4]<br class="">Message-ID: <20180625224918.i6wvn2qybeiir7rc@reflex><br class="">Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">Dear Empyreans,<br class=""><br class="">Many thanks for the inviation, enjoyable dialogues. Many familiar<br class="">voices: I love this way we keep communicating through the years, the<br class="">usenets, the MOOs, the IRCs, all despite the distance and the silly<br class="">human life that kicks in. Still we use plain text as a medium for our<br class="">ideas and visions, typed away into our keyboards.<br class=""><br class="">Surely there is mycelia growing between the keys. Threads here make<br class="">me think sometimes they are the ones writing. As Lissette Olivares<br class="">put it "What kind of poetry could mycelium write?"<br class=""><br class="">OK now, my intro. Simple: I'm a hacker and I'm following Shu Lea<br class="">everywhere she leads, because that's how I met the most special people<br class="">in my life. You all included. And I think I'll keep lurking here after<br class="">this event if you don't mind.<br class=""><br class="">My artistic token to the discussion is a project made together with<br class="">Debra Solomon, whom was introduced to me also by Shu Lea and by way of<br class="">Caroline Woolard. The project is http://Entropical.org and it started<br class="">in 2015 (international year of the Soil) and composed of some<br class="">different artistic productions, with one in particular titled "REAL<br class="">BOTANIK". Entropical was last exhibited in Amsterdam by Zone2Source at<br class="">the Amstel Park Glashuis Pavillon two years ago, part of the works<br class="">were commissioned to Debra Solomon by the CCANW in UK.<br class=""><br class="">Why talk about this? With Entropical we enquire into possible and<br class="">imaginary ways to bring very different value systems into a direct<br class="">productive relationship. We do so at a time in which intensive<br class="">computation is valued far more than ecological regeneration. In<br class="">REALBOTANIK we presented cardboard mats inoculated with oyster<br class="">mushrooms growing mycelia using the 'waste' heat released by a<br class="">computer producing Bitcoin. The installation references an approach<br class="">that was little know in 2015, but kept gaining enormous traction<br class="">within the industry: that of using heat as a byproduct of information<br class="">industry, recycling it to grow nutrients or warmth for living<br class="">spaces. The title 'REALBOTANIK' references the term 'Realpolitik',<br class="">reflecting on the different value attributions for resource exchange<br class="">between the different contexts of the soil organism and of financial<br class="">networks, as an embodiment of the notable differential between "use<br class="">value" and "exchange value" in Marxian economic theory.<br class=""><br class="">We realised this installation almost as a beautiful yet grotesque<br class="">provocation, since its impossible to draw a meaningful relation<br class="">between the abstract processes of value creation in finance and the<br class="">material value creation of living processes. There is no more food<br class="">market, there is no more agriculture business. Its all completely<br class="">artificial. By promoting this perspective we focus our work on the<br class="">contemporary production of "entropy": a word that resonates for its<br class="">meaning both in the discipline of applied cryptography and in that of<br class="">physics, but also in the body of works commonly referenced as<br class="">"Bio-economics" by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen which has the merit of<br class="">re-contextualising the Second Law of Thermodynamics in the economic<br class="">discourse.<br class=""><br class="">Did we ever understood what he meant with that? and most importantly,<br class="">is there anything among human-made value systems that can be shared<br class="">with nature?<br class=""><br class="">Let me graft this reflection into what has been discussed so far.<br class=""><br class="">I'll start quoting Audrey of Fraud: "it is essentially cheaper to<br class="">pollute. Since the amount is governed solely by the laws of the<br class="">market, any target of raising the value is non-sensical unless<br class="">regulations would be implemented. In case anyone would want a quick<br class="">sight as to the (de)value of carbon we have it here:<br class="">http://carbonderivation.space (the salvaged wood mention is part of an<br class="">installation - unrelated). Carbon credits and the green economy are<br class="">not, /not helping fast enough/, they are damaging faster than can be<br class="">comprehended."<br class=""><br class="">Again, Ricardo Dominguez: "Multiple networks are always being<br class="">rehearsed and it is always good to not only eat local but see what<br class="">poison shrooms are also being grown next door."<br class=""><br class="">Spot on! wait and see when the waste of algorithmic computations is<br class="">deployed (soon on an consumer commodity scale!) to allocated its<br class="">liability -heat- as an asset.<br class=""><br class="">Anyone remembers Schumacher? he once wrote exactly this: "when waste<br class="">is used, a liability becomes an asset" and yes that was a lesson for<br class="">the green-washing out there to "do no evil". The lesson is learned and<br class="">exploited, the computations stay: for what? Value systems won't<br class="">change. For them, "the rulers", the ZAD is still worthed nothing and<br class="">just because it doesn't want to play within their value systems it<br class="">represents a problem to be eliminated, even when no waste is produced.<br class=""><br class="">As John Jordan puts it: "For the rulers of the world, such visible<br class="">alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that despite crisis<br class="">after crisis, the system must, necessarily be patched together in the<br class="">same form."<br class=""><br class="">So, I know I'm getting long here and it was ages I wasn't writing such<br class="">a long mail. However the point I want to do is between Franz Xaver's<br class="">call, among the first very important emails here: "We need a opposite<br class="">to the algorythm. We need to sleep for regeneration our brain. I think<br class="">our Informationtechnology is wrong. It only want to generate truth."<br class="">and the problem Aud raises when talking of the "finantialisation of<br class="">nature through emission trading systems and green bonds." because<br class="">"there is an interesting tension between the incomputable, the<br class="">uncapturable, as a method of resistance and survival, as well as<br class="">disappearance/extinction from the network.".<br class=""><br class="">Then let me draw towards an end for this mail and echo this quote:<br class="">"[P]ower is in fact grounded in the very ability to calculate, count,<br class="">measure, balance and act on these calculations. Inversely to make<br class="">oneself ungovernable one much make oneself incalculable, immeasurable<br class="">uncountable" (Eyal Weizman) plus another sentence by Franz Xaver again<br class="">"This is important, when the whole world is building a global world of<br class="">information with the algorithm rules of Claude Shannon. This is the<br class="">real dangerous thing of our present. With this Information technology<br class="">of pure rationalism we have a serious enemy."<br class=""><br class="">This is where more or less this month started and also where I'd like<br class="">to conclude my first intervention, honoured to be part of week 4.<br class=""><br class="">I believe we need to work through these ideas because even in the<br class="">green-washing vision of sustainable computing, the supposed<br class="">"neutrality of algorithms" is the real treat to nature. Even with 100%<br class="">green computing we'd be doomed by the way we are thinking and we are<br class="">augmenting our thought processess in a way that is not only hurting<br class="">nature, but what's most obvious since ages also most fellow humans out<br class="">there. And beware this is not about quality of samples we feed to<br class="">them, which doesn't changes the result as much as the very code.<br class=""><br class="">Arguably, the "deep learning" techniques (and neural networks, and<br class="">AIs) for the way they declare to deal with data sample are an<br class="">instrument to disenfranchise algorithms from their responsibilities.<br class="">Pretty much as we humans use algorithms to disenfranchise ourselves<br class="">from the embarassment of decisions we take.<br class=""><br class="">Ultimately all decisions about values.<br class=""><br class="">So it's still about value systems and how they are inscribed in code.<br class=""><br class="">I recall there was one embarassing decision made with an embarassingly<br class="">big project and one of the biggest "parallel" networks I've ever<br class="">participated into: Bitcoin. This project has responded well to the<br class="">call put forward by Brett Stalbaum here "If you want to resist, keep<br class="">focused on the possibilities for making something that might actually<br class="">work dangerously. No shame in failing. Trust us, the Transborder<br class="">Immigrant Tool (as big a fail as there ever was) actually and really<br class="">worked"... and so did "Crypto". It gave us even some positioning in a<br class="">financial battle on critical access to networks (at the time of the<br class="">Wikileaks blockade); but on the long term it is clear: it did not<br class="">change in any way our relationship to power, profit and nature - it<br class="">has in fact worsened it for the most.<br class=""><br class="">And still, no mycelium has given a flying fuck about what we are<br class="">doing. Not even when the heat is produced by an imploding financial<br class="">industry whose value system is impossible to relate to anything<br class="">real. "Everything solid has melted into thin air", already a century<br class="">ago. Perhaps that's why is still worth to have spores flying around?<br class=""><br class="">ciao!<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">-- <br class=""> Denis Roio a.k.a. Jaromil http://Dyne.org think &do tank<br class=""> Ph.D, CTO & co-founder software to empower communities<br class=""> ? crypto ?????? ?????? ?????? ?? ??????? ???????<br class=""> GnuPG: 6113D89C A825C5CE DD02C872 73B35DA5 4ACB7D10<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">------------------------------<br class=""><br class="">_______________________________________________<br class="">empyre mailing list<br class="">empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au<br class="">http://empyre.library.cornell.edu<br class=""><br class=""><br class="">End of empyre Digest, Vol 162, Issue 35<br class="">***************************************<br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></div></div></body></html>